It’s a long couple of months, the southern winter. However many times we’re told that Australia isn’t a land of perpetual sunshine, it’s still a bit of a shock for Joe Expat when the heat hazes and brilliant sunshine of December and January are replaced with weather more suited to the land we left behind.
Nowhere are the extremes of the Australian meteorological system illustrated more vividly than that golden strip which, for most of us, was the deal-clincher during those many ‘should-we-shouldn’t-we’ moments we faced as we filled in visa form after visa form – the beach.
Writing this now, smack bang in the middle of winter to meet WP’s deadline, I know what would be waiting for me if I decided to drift away from the laptop and head down to Mulalloo. Yeah, it’d be dramatic, poetic even, but frankly I didn’t come to the other side of the world to witness that kind of coastline. Grey skies over towering waves? Howling winds and driven rain pounding your skin like drawing pins shot from a howitzer? All very well, but you can get that nonsense in Cromer.
The thing to remember, however, is that unlike the barren beaches of Norfolk, things are going to change in Oz – that cast iron guarantee, the absolute certainty that summer is actually on its way, is one of the biggest ticks in the ‘pros’ column for all would-be immigrants.
Within a few weeks, the beaches of all the good bits of Oz will be basking in temperatures that the Algarve would be proud of and they’ll look, for the most part at least, once more like the ones in the holiday brochures.
I say for the most part simply because when you pick up a glossy travel agent mag, you’re going to see a lot of beautiful people peppering the sand. Unfortunately – and I hate to burst your bubble here if you’re about to experience your first Australian summer – that’s not always the case. The reality is that you’re more likely to be sharing sand space with a host of characters that may or may not enrich your beach experience.
Public servants that we are, then, we offer you here a beginners’ guide to the people you’re going to meet after you’ve set out your towels and unpacked your eski. Pre-warned is pre-armed and all that . . .
The Senior Surfer
From a distance, he’s just another typical Aussie bloke at the beach, overlong hair straggling down his back, board under his arm padding towards the waves. But as he approaches, you realise that this is no teenage thrill-seeker, or even a thirty-something tradie keeping himself in trim with a dip in the ocean.
Nope, the Eternal Surfer is sixty if he’s a day.
This can often come as a shock for the newly-arrived. Back home, we still expect our pensioners to shuffle around or sit on park benches shaking their sticks at noisy children. In Australia, however, there’s a whole slice of the population which is closing in on its three score and ten but has no intention of coming quietly.
Skin tanned to near leather-like proportions, the Eternal Surfer’s been surfing every day for the past half a decade and he isn’t planning on retiring any time soon. He’s more of a loner now than he once was – skin cancer took a few of his mates and others now spend more time with their grandkids than they do waxing their boards – so he tends to come off as sullen as he approaches the ocean in a businesslike, no-nonsense fashion. Once in, though, he is 21 again. He’ll head out further than most anyone and take on the biggest swells. His balance is still exemplary and he rides the waves with an impressive confidence.
All in all, he’s a low maintenance addition to beach life. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.
The Don’t Know They’re Borns
One of the most frequently used rallying cries in the expat community is that Australia’s a brilliant place to raise kids. You’ll generally hear British parents rolling it out after a long whinge about the lack of decent restaurants/television/shops open after 5pm, tagging it apologetically onto their complaint almost as justification for their decision to come here in the first place.
The thing about it is, however, is that it’s true. Australia is a brilliant place to raise kids – and a brilliant place to be a kid. Which is why coming across of a gaggle of Don’t Know They’re Born teenagers at the beach can be so bloody frustrating.
When I was in that brief period of life twixt child and adult, I had to do it in an East Anglian market town. When me and my fellow 15-year-olds were hanging out, we were behind the cattle market. Our free time was spent chain-smoking B&H in Sainsbury’s car park or sipping Merrydown and Thunderbird on broken park swings.
If, then, we came over as a bit surly, then, frankly we had a reason to be so.
The Don’t Know They’re Borns, however, really should learn to cheer up a little.
They’ll traipse down to the beach on a Saturday afternoon, half a dozen teenage boys hooking up with a similar amount of teenage girls. Once there, they’ll slump down in the sand, pull out cigarettes and smoke badly while complaining about the heat and keeping an eye out for any figure of authority who might remind them of the beach’s no smoking laws.
Best to give this lot a wide berth. Not nasty, per se, but the frustration factor can become immense. A teenagehood full of beautiful beaches, board shorts, bikinis and baking sun and still you’re whining? Shaking teenagers is, unfortunately illegal in Australia, so, as I’ve said, make sure you’re not close enough to hear them complain.
The Common Expat Brood
It’s comforting, but also slightly delusional, to imagine that emigrating to a foreign land gives one membership of a small elite club, that those who have made the bold, big step to carve out a better life in foreign climes are all Panama hats, white linen suits and G&Ts on the terrace while trading bon mots. Sorry but that simply isn’t the case.
For every family led by a Wildean wit looking to broaden their children’s horizons with adventure and travel, there are this lot – the Common Expat Brood. They’re here not for the culture and the life-changing experiences but for the cold hard cash and bright burning sunshine.
They’ll arrive at the beach in one of those Nissan 4x4s that’s the size of a minibus and looks like it wants to be a pick-up after driving from their house in the suburbs – a six-bedroom, two-storey pile with a pool, hot tub and ‘entertainment room’ which they bought for cash after selling their three-bed semi in Basildon for stupid money.
Dad, an electrician who simply can’t believe how much he can charge out here even after three years of taking customers to the cleaners, is stocky, short and angry looking, even when he’s actually in quite a good mood. He’s wearing a baggy muscle T-shirt – ironic as he’s lagered-away any definition he once had a decade back – union jack board shorts and thongs. To hide his dramatic hairloss, he shaves his head, meaning the scar he won during a glassing at a theme pub in 1992 is clearly visible.
Next comes mum. Deeply tanned and a good three inches taller than her pugnacious husband, she’s surprisingly trim. The good life has given her scope to spend the majority of the hours when the kids are at school and her husband’s out hoovering up Aussie dollars at the gym. And she’s dressed to show off the results – tiny denim shorts over an expensive string bikini let her sashay along the sand imagining she is the archetypal Desperate Housewife.
Her husband, who knows we’re all thinking that he’s punching above his weight, watches her with a confusing mixture of pride and anger as their two kids set up their stall on beach towels. The boy, 15-stone of flabby 12-year-old over-confidence, hair cropped nearly as short as his father, will waddle off to the water, gut wobbling, ready for an hour’s shrieking as he boogie boards too close to the toddlers paddling in the shallows. The girl, three years his senior, meanwhile will simply plug in her ipod, pull on her over-sized sunnies and top up her tan as her mother looks on, silently seething over the fact that her daughter doesn’t need three hours a day in a gym to keep her stomach that flat.
My advice? You want at least 30 feet between you and this family’s base camp. And, whatever you do, if you’re a chap, don’t get caught by the husband checking out his wife.
The Handbag
The skin cancer thing’s very big in Australia. Scary adverts tell you that it’s not just vampires that have to fear the sun – go out without a generous coating of sun screen, a ridiculous hat and head-to-toe attire and the big C’s gonna get you.
And, mostly, people have got on board, such has been the illness’s powers of persuasion. As such, then, it’s almost staggering that The Handbag still exists, but she does – and you’ll generally find one on every beach once the mercury’s gone past 30.
At least well into her fifth decade, long grey or bottle-blonde hair tied back in a neat ponytail, The Handbag will strut on to the sand either in a gaudy summer dress or one of those strange towel-cum-poncho hybrids. She’ll then head off to an isolated part of the beach where she’ll pull it off to reveal her bikini-clad physique. And you’ll find it hard not to stare.
The Handbag isn’t just tanned, she’s cooked. Cured. A deep mahogany brown, her skin looks as tough as rhino hide – and probably is. Her blue, beady eyes look eerily out of place set in deep sockets surrounded by taught, brown skin.
For her, however, tanning is a way of life, not a pastime. Laying down a beach towel, she’ll settle in for a good couple of hours, motionless on her front, before rolling over for the same amount of time on her back.
A solitary creature, The Handbag won’t cause you any grief. It’s best though to position yourself so that she’s not in your line of sight.
The Overdressed
When I was a lad, they were Goths. That, apparently, is passé now and they go by the name Emo. Still, they’re the same breed – moody, generally intelligent teenagers clad head to toe in black, dyed black hair and, for the hardcores, black make-up. They’re a group that have been studied long and hard by people watchers and much has been said about the irony of stressing one’s individuality – for that is one of the key issues for the Emo about town – while dressing the same as all your mates. But, today, we’re not here to examine that, we’re here to point out that your average Emo is the most likely beach-goer to proudly parade the status of Overdressed.
Even with the sun beating down and temperatures pushing past 40, you’ll generally see a couple of them there, ambling along the beach, not smiling behind their mirror shades. Other beachgoers will feel vicariously uncomfortable as they pass, wonder just how they’re managing to fend off the heat exhaustion as they pad along in tight black jeans, mohair jumpers, tight shirts and big boots.
Emos are the most obvious example of The Overdressed but they do come in other flavours too – ranging from the embarrassed fat bloke who can’t get the courage together to wear shorts or a T-shirt in public, to the gentile pensioner, more than likely a grandparent visiting from the UK, who thinks they can get away with slacks and pullover as long as they pair them up with a pair of sandals.
Whatever breed they are, however, The Overdressed will always make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t fret, however, about steering clear of them – with all the best intentions it’s unlikely they’ll be able to stay out of the shade for more than 10 minutes.
The Get A Rooms
OK, we’ve all been nipped by Cupid’s arrow at some point, but the good news is that most of us know how to behave when it happens. The bad news is that most beaches will play host to a couple who simply don’t get the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t want to witness them celebrating their love for each other.
As a rule, Get A Rooms are not an attractive bunch, which may explain why they get it so wrong - perhaps basic inexperience and general elation on finally pairing up drains the decency out of them. They’ll be mid 20s, both a bit overweight, he in boardies, she in the kind of bikini her new-found passion has finally given her the confidence to wear.
They’ll lay their towels, not as you’d expect in a remote part of the beach where they can suck each others faces unnoticed, but smack bang in the middle of the beachgoing throng. Then comes the putting on of the sunscreen – an exhibition of tactility that will have all around them desperately looking for some spot in the far off distance to focus on.
Once oiled up, they’ll then settle down for a half-hour of hugging and heavy petting until it all gets – literally and metaphorical – too hot and they chase each other into the sea. Once they both get waist deep, it’s probably best to pick now as the best time to call it a day and leave. Especially if you’ve got kids.
The Expletist
Australians like a good swear. The f-word, for instance, is much more ubiquitous here than back home and every now and then you’ll hear a radio DJ drop in the word ‘wanker’ without batting an eyelid. Many Australians refer to booze as ‘piss’, and ‘bloody’ and ‘arse’ simply don’t register on the taboo-o-metre.
Still, though, there are some who take the swearing to its extremes and, sadly, it’s a rare day on the beach when there isn’t one close to hand.
The Expletist’s problem, you see, is that they have no concept of situation. The WP office can often be a hotbed of bad language but only when the only people there are the kind of un-PC coves who still childishly cling on to the belief that swearing is big and clever (normally the editor and the bookkeeper). We’d never, however, dream of dropping the C-word into conversation if we’re in earshot of someone who may be offended.
Not so The Expletist, who is inexplicably drawn to family groups, the well-heeled or conservative pensioners when they’re out in public. As such, if you’re at the beach with your two under-fives and their blue-rinsed grandmother, within minutes The Expletist will have walked past your windbreaker loudly proclaiming: “And then the c--- said it’d be fifteen f---ing hundred bucks to f---ing fix the c--- and looked at me like I was a f---ing c---ing c--- or some f---ing thing. What the f--- was the c--- f---ing thinking, eh?”
Cue seething embarrassment from the adults and a car journey home in which little Chloe happily calls her grandmother a ‘c---ing c---’. Obviously my advice is to try to avoid The Expletist at all costs. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to. This is f---ing Australia, after all.
