New Coastie – Sunscreen and sand

I have a most un-Coasty confession: I hate the sand. Not the idea of sand. The reality of it. The way it sneaks into shoes, snacks, car seats, and somehow into parts of your body that were fully clothed five minutes ago. Sand doesn’t visit. Sand moves in. Who hasn’t cringed with disgust when biting into a flaky piece of fried Hoki and felt the crunch of glassy sand between the teeth?

And yet I love the sea. Properly love it. The moment you step in at Stanmore Bay beach, and the water does that cold, clean slap to the ankles, my brain goes quiet. The sea is your calm friend. The sand is… a passive-aggressive flatmate.

So, every summer I turn up anyway, because this is the Coast, and we do summer like it’s our civic duty. It all starts with sunscreen. You buy the “big family bottle” with confidence in November and put it somewhere “obvious” to use every time you go out. But do you? By February it’s either missing, melted, or has turned into that weird separated mayonnaise. But one day you still squeeze it hopefully. A pale blob appears. You rub it in like you’re icing a cake.

Beach etiquette kicks in right after that, because the beach has rules. Nobody wrote them down, but we all know when someone breaks one.

There’s the towel treaty: claim a spot, but not a whole suburb. There’s speaker law: if your playlist is louder than the waves, your parents have not raised you well. There’s dog diplomacy: we adore your dog, but a wet-dog shake inside splash distance should come with a verbal warning. And there’s promenade manners: if you stop dead in the middle of the path, please glance behind you first, some of us are carrying a screaming toddler, three towels, and a bag that weighs as much as a boat.

But my favourite rule is the sunscreen clause. It’s the moment a parent realises they brought everything – snacks, a crime thriller, juice, a cricket set, a spare change of clothes for the spare change of clothes, but no sunscreen. A frantic bag-dig followed by a slow look around. This is where the Coast is quietly lovely, someone will offer theirs. No lecture. No judgement. Just a squirt, a nod, and the unspoken “we’ve all been there”. Sometimes, you help the local economy with a purchase of a small tube just for today. At the end of the summer, you have 23 of those small “just for today” sunscreen tubes.

Now, here’s another contradiction I can’t stop thinking about. New Zealanders chase the tan like it’s a medal. We’ll crisp ourselves up to “get a bit of colour” (and then spend two days drenched in aloe vera). Back where I’m from, Karachi, many people buy face-whitening creams to stay as fair as possible. Opposite cravings. Same human impulse. Is it a colonial hangover? Or is it simply the old story of wanting what we don’t have?

Either way, you’ll find me under a tree, aiming for sea-time, not sun-time, still losing the fight with sand, still grateful for strangers with SPF. See you at the beach.