The Beach

Steve and I had our first proper beach trip in Adelaide Saturday. We chose Semaphore, which of the few beaches I've seen since arriving here, is my favourite. Glenelg is nice though trendy and touristy and Henley was just a bit dull and uninspiring. When I say it was our first proper trip to the beach, I say so because we were both actually suited up, laid out on towels, and at least one of us got into the water. We have entirely different attitudes towards all aspects of beach-going. I don't go in the water, for the most part, and if I do decide to step in, I rarely get in past my waist. There are a few reasons for this, all of which are related to a healthy fear of those things which might kill me;) Over the past few weeks, we've had more than a few reports of shark sightings nearby, and if that isn't enough to keep you out of the water, rips and currents (actually, I think they're the same thing) should finalise the decision to stay warm and dry. There are plenty of advertisements, both on the television and at the beach, to swim between the flags. It's a fairly narrow area on a huge expanse of beach which is actually monitored by life guards. The day we were there, said life guards were all sitting in a group under a tent quite a ways from the beach, and I didn't see any of them watching through binoculaurs, or even keeping a close watch on the swimmers at all, to tell the truth. It took an effort to get Steve to move from where we had originally located ourselves down to the flagged area in the first place, so I hope it actually would have made a difference if he did get into trouble. Typical Aussie, he insisted he didn't need to swim between the flags, or worry about sharks and rips. And when he got out of the water, he refused to re-apply his suntan lotion for our last 20 minutes or so before leaving. When he got in the shower Sunday morning and saw the slightly blotchy, red patches on his back, I had to read the directions on the lotion bottle to him about re-applications after swimming before he would let up on his insistence that he couldn't possibly be burnt as the suntan lotion was waterproof. No such thing. Slip slop slap....