Tourist season was in full swing. The pub was groaning with people for lunch and dinner and for drinks at every hour in between. Traffic on the esplanade felt like Adelaide’s peak hour, all day. The beach below was filled with life and people and summertime. Sandcastles were being constructed with precision by groups of young children, their noses smeared with sunscreen like tribal markings. Teenage boys sauntered the beach with bodyboards under their arms, their boardshorts so low-slung that the brand of their jocks were visible on their flat, tanned stomachs. Teenage girls in wetsuits took to the waves too, their long hair pulled back in high ponytails, while others in bikinis lay on the sand, topping up their honey tans and sending text messages. Surf schools plied their trade every day in the peak season, their advertising flags staked into the sand and perpetually fluttering in the breeze. Anxious parents crowded the waterline with cameras and little kids with low centres of gravity sprung up on their feet on rented boards in shallow swells, converted to the sport in one wave.
