From boogie boards to giant cabanas, the Aussie summer keeps evolving

We think of an Australian summer as if it is timeless and unchanging. “It’s always been like this,” we say, and we buttress that idea with memories of our own childhoods or those of our children.

And it’s true that some things are unchanged. I watch my grandchildren as they repeat scenes from my children’s summer holidays – the overly ambitious sandcastles, the whinging over sunscreen and its application, and the hats that disappear whenever you want to leave the house.

What’s your Aussie summer staple?Credit: iStock

There are some things, too, unchanged from my own childhood: the beachside motels (we went once, but what a thrill), or the car keys hidden in Dad’s sandshoes to deter thieves (a cunning trick used by every person on the beach), and the long car trip home with the same backseat chant (“Are we there yet?”).

But here’s the truth: the Australian summer is in a state of constant reinvention. We add things and subtract things, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better.

For a start, there’s the idea that you should bathe in the sea, and do so for fun. An Indigenous writer would be best placed to talk about First Nations people and their long engagement with the sea, so let me stick to the post-1788 experience: bathing for fun doesn’t really start until the end of the 19th century.

Before then, you might have a dip, but only to wash your body. It’s why the term “bathing costume” was more popular than “swimming costume”. Also restricting the fun: local by-laws usually restricted such activities to the nocturnal hours to protect the sensibilities of anyone who might be wandering past.

All this changes from the early 1900s as the passion for swimming and sunbathing grows, despite local rules that sometimes prevented men and women from experiencing these joys simultaneously.

In the 1970s, the chief occupation of most children was shedding skin.

What of the other icons of a Sydney summer? The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote a famous book called The Invention of Tradition that argued nearly all the ancient traditions of the UK, in particular those involving its royal family, were about five minutes old.

The same, by and large, is true of the icons of the Australian beach. I mentioned sunscreen as part of my children’s childhood. But – other than some zealots, or as we could call them, “good parents” – it wasn’t part of my own childhood, or that of earlier generations.

My body is covered in weird bumps – “not dangerous”, says the doctor, but he agrees, “certainly unattractive”. They are courtesy of being a baby in Papua New Guinea, plonked for hours on Ela Beach in nothing but a nappy.

Later, along with every other kid, I’d spend days at the beach – shirtless, hatless, with maybe a stripe of zinc on my nose, slowly turning lobster red. On the trip home, every child’s skin would stick to the vinyl car seat. At the end of the trip, your dad would rip you free, like Velcro. There was the same sound effect. In the 1970s, the chief occupation of most children was shedding skin.

All our icons of summer have a starting point. Like sunscreen, they come with their own history.

The rubber thong, for example, that symbol of an Australian summer, doesn’t really get going in this country until the late 1950s when Dunlop imported 300,000 pairs from Japan. The company commenced Australian production in 1960.

Chicken salt, without which chips simply cannot be eaten on an Australian beach, is likewise a relatively recent arrival. As Adam Liaw discovered, it was invented by Peter Brinkworth for his hot chicken shop in Gawler, South Australia, but was available widely only from 1979 when an Adelaide company began commercial production. (Oh, and whatever the Americans think, it doesn’t contain chickens.)

Consider also the boogie board, that surfing weapon of choice for anybody under 10, and for a few of us over 10. It didn’t exist until 1971, when it was invented in Hawaii, and appears to have taken a while to arrive here. The first mention I can find in an Australian newspaper is in April 1978, in the “lost and found” column of the newspaper in Coffs Harbour. A green and blue Boogy (sic) Board had been lost on the south end of Sawtell beach. If you find it – and maybe it’s still out there – please contact Sawtell Police.

The “invention of tradition”, in Hobsbawm’s phrase, continues. Maybe a future generation will look at the recent lines of beach cabanas, each more elaborate than the last, with their chairs and Eskys and sound systems, and assume that the Australian beach was always separated from the sea by this pulsating canvas suburb.

“I guess it was always so,” they will say, and when they look at Max Dupain’s Sunbaker from 1937, with his shining sun-darkened skin, they’ll wonder: “Yes, he looks great, but where’s his sunscreen, and where’s his rash-vest, and where’s his hat? And, most of all, where’s his cabana?”

All the same, we’re blessed, are we not? We of this continent surrounded by sea. We’re girt, that’s the thing, and we love it.

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