Beaches

I have just returned from a delicious lunch with a friend who is visiting from the UK. In the course of a chat over a Vietnamese feast fit for 10 (eaten by 2), she remarked how she was not a beach lazing holidayer, more a trekking, sightseeing, photographing, generally doing kind of traveller. The idea of spending umpteen thousand dollars to go sit on a beach, get a tan, occasionally swim and not touch even the faintest skerrick of a foreign culture does not appeal to her. Nor to me to be honest.

Is this an Aussie phenomenon? Are we so blasé about tropical getaways because a large percentage of our population lives so close to the ocean? I know plenty of people who holiday to the Whitsundays, Gold Coast, Byron Bay – you name it – but rarely are they from a city/town close to the beach. Why spend the time and money to travel to a beach when one is a short walk, drive or bus ride away?

I am soon to be relocating to the Sunshine Coast of Australia, a laid-back area 90km north of Brisbane. It is the holiday destination of thousands every year and many people go for a week and stay for years. It is exciting but not the beach part so much. Admittedly I am not the hugest beach person but I like a trip to the sand and salt water as much as the next man. It is the lifestyle I am looking forward to – the climate, the slower pace, the lack of planes, trains and anything else that emits 150+ decibel noises with unnerving regularity. Not the beach. To me it is an added extra. This is due to the fact that I have had ready access to the beach for the past 18 months and let’s be honest, so many times in life we take what we have for granted. If I was moving to Canberra or the bush I would be crying about the lack of beach – perspective is needed at all times.

People like many different things about the beach – for some it is the salt spray, others the sand littered with scantily clad bronzed beauties, some the sound of the rolling waves crashing into the shore, others the feel of the sand between their toes as they take their morning run. It is the image of the eternal summer that gives the beach its pull on our psyche.

I have come to realise lately that we need to be happy with what we have and never take it for granted. This is easy in theory but hard in practice. Too many of us crave the unknown, that which is out of reach or unattainable. Get out and enjoy the beach, lake, river, paddock, mountain, lookout, walking track – get out and make the most of what is on your doorstep for one day it may all change.

Me, I’m going to head north, embrace a new life and go to that beach. I will go there, soak up what it has to offer and enjoy it. That way if I ever find myself in an office in London, in the dark, staring out of my cubicle at a sleety, grey murk outside I can dream of that beach and the times I spent there – and avoid jumping out of the office window for one more day.