The battle of the beach has long been an issue overseas, or as the British like to point out, it’s always a race to beat the Germans to a sun lounge. In Italy recently I tried to swim in Sorrento and had to pay something like 60 euros ($99) to sit there for a couple of hours by the sea. That’s the way of their world.

Such things have rarely been an issue in Australia, the land of sun and surf, where we have all the beach we could want, but with greater awareness of the threat the sun poses to our skin and a need to swim between the flags, that mass beach expanse seems to have shrunk somewhat.