Opinion: Beach clubs must not be allowed to encroach on shared sands
Beaches are Australia’s great social levellers. Once your shirt comes off, there’s no them-and-us divide. Let’s keep it that way, writes Mike O’Connor.
Another Queensland summer looms as the jacarandas bloom, the days get longer, the temperature rises and the afternoon storm clouds begin to gather.
Time to dig out the board shorts, suck in your stomach and accept that it’s too late to go on that diet that you’ve been definitely thinking about starting next week for the past six months.
We’ll start flocking to the coast soon, the beaches a sea of the blue-and-white-striped CoolCabana sun shelters that have made a multimillionaire of their inventor Mark Fraser, who reportedly paid $18m for a vacant block of land at Noosa with CoolCabana proceeds a few months ago. Aussie ingenuity at work. Good on you, Mark. Your shout at the Noosa Surf Club.
As you sit back in your beach chair and soak in the vista of sun and surf that is so quintessentially Australian, you might ponder this cautionary tale for as sure as I am that this year as in every other year at some point this summer a seagull will crap on my head, calls will be made to set up clubs on our beaches.
Beach clubs are common in Europe, and Premier Crisafulli and Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate have already backed the proposal, with the Premier claiming that the Gold Coast was already poorer for not having them, supporting them as long as they did not become enclaves for the rich and famous.
A couple of months ago we were walking along a beach in Greece looking for a spot to flop when we spotted a hundred or so sun lounges and umbrellas in neat rows, towels folded on their headrests.
“How much for the day?” I asked.
“They’re all taken,” replied the attendant.
“But there’s no one here and it’s 10 o’clock,” I said.
“All taken,” he said, turning his back and walking away.
I then realised that behind the beach was a resort and that the resort was keeping the lounges for the exclusive use of its guests by claiming that they had all been reserved by members of the public, creating in effect a private club for its privileged guests on a public beach.
We kept walking and found an operator charging €50 – or about $90 – for two, and kept walking until we found some “cheap seats” for the bargain price of $45 for the day.
The Premier may hope that if clubs are allowed to operate on our beaches they do not become the enclaves of the rich and the famous, but what will prevent this from happening?
Will the government introduce price controls, setting a maximum that the operators can charge, and will these charges be prominently displayed to avoid any price gouging and how will these restrictions be enforced and what will be the penalties for ignoring them and charging whatever the market will bear?
Be aware that in Europe the people running the clubs aren’t happy with any patch of the beach. They want the best sites, so they erect their fences to keep out the riff-raff like you and me near the water’s edge, and charge extra for the front row of lounges, for the closer to the water the more you pay.
So you’ve agreed to pay around $100 for a nice day in the sun on a pebbly European beach and think that’s the end of it.
No way, mate, for you didn’t read the fine print about the minimum spend.
Having been fiscally screwed for your nice sun lounge, in many clubs it is likely that you will then be required to peel off at least another $100 as an absolute minimum spend on food and beverage, although given the prices they charge this is hardly a challenge.
Thinking of taking a cooked chook and a six pack to the beach for lunch?
Forget it, mate.
There is also the issue of beach club creep.
This occurs when a club is given a licence for a set number of lounges over a certain area, but as soon as the government officials have turned their backs – or, as has been proven to have occurred, an appropriate bribe has been paid – the club’s footprint expands.
If clubs are allowed here they will be expensive and beyond the reach of many.
Our beaches are great social levellers.
Once your shirt comes off, there’s no them-and-us divide on the beach.
Let’s keep it that way, for there is something deeply un-Australian about fencing off sections of our beaches for the fortunate few.
