the beach

I'm a beach girl hands down.  If you ask me if I'd prefer beach or mountains, I'd take the beach any day, even if I'm on my period.  In fact, I first learned to use tampons at the beach, but that's a different story.

I grew up going to the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey.  We went for a week every summer and it was the biggest treat of the year.   The year I was 13 my parents took us out west for three weeks instead.  We saw the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, the Tetons, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands and Devil's Tower.  I miserable and let everyone know it:  I was supposed to be at the beach.

The beach was full of tradition.  Jumping waves, building drip castles, walking to the Pier, walking to the Point, taking pictures in the lifeguard stand, smelling like Coppertone, taking outdoor showers, big family dinners, ice cream sundaes, going to the Boardwalk, Shriver's salt water taffy, Brown's freshly baked donuts, riding bikes, renting surreys, sitting on the porch, going to the chapel by the sea, listening for its 6 pm bells, playing canasta, playing perquaky, sleeping in the attic on hot summer nights, getting up and jumping waves the next day.

When I moved to Australia, I found several differences immediately.

First, the water was clear!  I had never seen clear ocean water before (I assumed that only happened in lakes, and pristine ones at that) and loved it, though suddenly realized I had a heretofore unknown dilemma:  a wave-tossed bikini posed significantly greater problems in Sydney.  In my Atlantic, all I to do was hover under the water until the necessary readjustments were complete; here, I suddenly had to make them -- well, immediately.  And with an audience.

Second, the beaches were entirely more glamorous.  Ocean City has always and will always be my favorite beach in the world, but I must say the Australian beaches are absolutely gorgeous.  The scenery is stunning and the views spectacular.  They're sheer beauty and I'm continually blown away by them.  That said, their sand is distinctly worse for making drip castles.

Third, the beach is a day trip for most Sydneysiders.  And not even a day trip -- an afternoon excursion will suffice!  To me, the beach was a week-long affair, but it was all the beach time I got for an entire year.  Living 14 hours inland does that.  In Sydney, though, people can quite easily pop over to the beach for an hour or two if they feel like it, and they mosey on, not feeling like they've lost out at all.  If I didn't stay at the beach from dawn till dusk in New Jersey, I felt sure I was missing out.  Now, I too can hop over for an afternoon and be satisfied.

Fourth, I gained an entirely new vocabulary.  Now I wore "sunnies" with my "cozzie" and checked out "surf" beaches.  (They made ocean beaches without waves?  Again, this struck me as suspiciously lake-like behavior.)  "Nippers" learned to "life save" at "life saving clubs."  Surfers wore "boardies" or "wetties," depending on the season.  Men of all ages wore "budgie smugglers," the likes of which would never be seen on American beaches, where all men's swim attire comes at least to the knees.

Fifth, I have to say, Americans, or at least North Atlantic swimming Americans, are a bit tougher when it comes to non-lethal ocean life.  Lethal ocean life, I grant the Australians win hands down.  But as for the rest -- the murk and the benign jellies and the shells and the clams and the crabs and the seaweed and driftwood and rocks and pebbles and such -- I'm much more adept at.  Most Australian bathers I know would be squeamish about jumping in to such mysterious depths, but they're perfectly normal for me.  Sure, your feet get a little scraped up, but where's the fun in actually being able to see what you're stepping on?

Finally, I've got a category of miscellanea.  Here goes:  Australians have better sunscreen.  It's stronger, and it isn't as oily.  There are no beach tags on Australian beaches.  The "swim-between-the-green-flags" are actually yellow and red.  The lifeguards have different sorts of areas at different beaches, but I haven't seen any stands like the Jersey ones.  There are ocean pools!  Of all the oxymorons! -- but they actually exist in quite strong form.  The beaches here tend to be smaller coves of areas, instead of the entire length of, say, the island Ocean City is on.  The waves are roughly the same.

And so -- yes, I love the beaches, here, there, everywhere.  Especially here.  But most of all there.  How can you not love the beach that first drove you to tampons the best?