The Greg Dening Papers, held at the State Library of Victoria Archives, and at the University of Melbourne, are voluminous, and enigmatic. The collection invites interrogation into the possibilities and poetics of engagement with archive, memory, and difference, and deep histories of place. Dening’s innovative ‘ethnographic history’ approach to interpreting encounters between Europeans and Pacific Others on beaches, islands, on ships, and in between, speaks powerfully to questions of scale in history and allied disciplines. He crossed disciplines – history and anthropology – as the Natives and Strangers in his Marquesan ethnographic history crossed beaches and islands. In doing this, he was fascinated with metaphors and aphorisms: beaches, theatre and theatricality, performance, reflection, and ‘in-between-ness’. Reflecting on my encounter with the Dening Papers as the 2014 Redmond Barry Fellow, in this presentation I inquire into the ways in which some of the key metaphors that drove Greg’s work were brought into play in diverse scenarios, from small-scale, local encounters in place, to an imaginary of Pacific-wide peoples, crossings and journeyings.