I did a decade of my growing up in a beachside suburb

We swam, floated on various inflatables, boogie-boarded, paddled surf skis, snorkelled and fished off the rocks more times than I could count. The beach was where the community gathered for a big bonfire and the lighting of fireworks on Cracker Night. Catch the parachute! Cricket could be played if conditions were favourable - plenty of firm sand for the pitch, and, ideally, with the tide going out rather than coming in. Bucket sandcastles evolved into the painstaking process of letting wet sand gradually trickle through our cupped hands to form "drippy castles". Later, friends and I would use proper shovels/spades to construct channels and dams, relishing our power over the water...however temporary. Later still, the beach became a place for sly cigarettes or trysts far from adult supervision. (Though I didn't appreciate either thing 'til I'd moved away.) Another innocent activity was collecting seashells. Also driftwood swords and clubs. We once discovered a 40-gallon drum leaking blue goo. You could scrape messages in the sand or form them from the ever-present dried seaweed: "EMERGENCY - SEND HELP." Imagine if a plane sees this! In winter, when the swimmers and sunbathers were but a memory, you had the whole beach to kick a footy, throw a Frisbee, try flying a makeshift kite, etc. We weren't supposed to ride our BMX bikes there (risk of rust), but we did. We weren't supposed to walk our dogs there (signposted law), but we did. My mate MG found a $20 note. That was a fortune then. My buddy BP found a Midnight Oil T-shirt. None of us ever found a message in a bottle. You had to know where/when to look to spot the various fish, rays, crabs and eels. There must have been seagulls, too, although I can't picture 'em. The soft sand was perfect for practising long jump and triple jump for the school athletics carnival. If only you'd recalled this fact sooner. I did a little sunny-day reading on a towel underneath an umbrella. Truth be told, it wasn't as comfy as reading on the trampoline in our backyard. When the mullet ran, we assisted the weather-beaten fishermen in pulling their bulging net to shore - and went home with Friday dinners for a month. Irreversibly bogged tourist 4WDs were reported to the tractor-owning old fella on the hill, who'd tell us how much they'd need to pay for his services. Wild seas. Sailing boats. Coal ships. On the headland once, a rock band. This is by The Radiators! And filming for 1985's "The Lancaster Miller Affair". Avoiding stinging bluebottles in the water. Popping stranded ones with sticks. Mass-producing sand bombs (compress ball of wet, dust with dry, leave to bake). What'd life be like if I was growing up in that beachside suburb now? No Cracker Night. Drone-flying a possibility. Y'now, I think it'd be much the same. I think it'd be wonderful.