Let me tell you a funny story.
Rest assured, living at the beach means we have a WHOLE LOT of these ‘funny’ stories.
It’s the story of ‘how-the-shit-hit-the-fan-before-we-made-it-to-the-beach.’ 🤣🤦♀️
This story might almost trump the time Hubbie brought tuna, salad and feta to the beach and thought it’d be a good idea to make a sandwich there… true story. 😂
First, I wanted to be there nice and early for the good car park. The ‘good’ car park is a dirt car park with no lines, second closest to the beach. We park there because more often than not the spots are more spacious, and the cars aren’t squeezing into each other because of the no lines – it’s a free for all for parking.
We don’t park in the closer car park. Or really, Hubbie hates us to. This one HAS lines, and in peak conditions (aka beach weather) it can get really busy, and Hubbie is REALLY into his cars. He doesn’t want scratches, issues, NADA.
I thought being a cooler morning, that we’d be fine. So, we aimed for 10am to be at the beach. I wanted to make the most out of our beach visit, and so I was bringing the famed beach trolley.
It’s a $50 trolley from Kmart, and it’s awesome because it collapses flat when you’re not using it, but then when you want it to be used you just pull it out, and pack EVERYTHING in there, and just pull it… and it follows you. We were bringing the boogie board, the beach tent, beach chairs, towels, two bags, and even a bucket and spade.
We NEEDED the second dirt car park because of the trolley. It has a nice little boardwalk type path that leads right to the beach, and I had to have it. I was bringing the house after all.
First fail: We got there 10:30am.
No, I lie. I drove past the dirt car park at 10:30… to see it was completely packed. Full to the rafters. There was no point even glancing into the closer car park, though I did… it was also like a tin of sardines. No go.
So I drove into the street we head into when our dirt car park is packed, which is near the beach, but a bit of a walk away from the entrance to the beach 😬😬😬 and I kept driving, and driving, and driving…
Nearly three blocks in! It was also PACKED.
But, I persevered. We were going to have a great beach day, damn it!
So we got out. Packed the trolley. There’s no footpath on that street, so I walked alongside the parked cars on the road with the trolley, baby girl on the grass on the other side, safer.
Randomly, she fell! Lucky it was on the grass. Be careful, I said!
Almost at the end of the street… “ouch!” she cried.
She had just stubbed her toe on the concrete as she was wearing thongs.
“Ouch ouch ouch, quick there’s blood!”
Sure enough there was. She had hit the top of her toe so hard, she had scraped the skin and it was hanging a bit, but there was blood underneath as it was more than just a surface scab, it was deep.
SHIT.
She had a decent open wound and we were headed into sand and surf?
THE STINGING!
I was straight with her and told her it may just stuff up the whole day, but this time she was determined to persevere. We chucked on a band-aid and kept going.
So we walked… we had to cross the busy Esplanade road, and that was a feat with every Tom, Dick and Nancy trying to park and make their way there too.
We crossed the road, and again, NO FOOTPATH, I had to use the steep driveway down into the beach car park to pull the trolley down…
And I really thought my problems were over once we got there. The far away car parking, the long walk, toe stubbing and blood, steep driveways… surely the roadblocks were past us, right?
WRONG.
There were like 100 kids in fluoro orange on the beach, on top of the normal holiday summer visitors, and there were all these sectioned off areas where you couldn’t sit because they were doing training, drills, swimming…
Basically, the most accessible section of the beach, the first bit, with the access to taps and kiosk and toilets, were all taken away because of some Nippers holiday swim program.
So we had to walk.
No sorry, pull the trolley over sand… for ages.
And ages, and ages, and ages.
Sure the trolley is good in slightly wet sand, but drag it over dry sand and it is a NIGHTMARE.
And then finally…
After packed car parks, parking super far, baby girl falling, then hitting her toe, then managing traffic as we crossed a main road, then being ambushed by a trillion extra people and activities which made us have to go so much further than we had to, we GOT THERE.
I set up a beach spot, and when I was done I decided we weren’t leaving for at least 3 hours just so I could take advantage of all our prior turmoil in getting there. 🤦♀️🤣
Sure, these are first world beach problems, but I like to let people know, behind the pretty beach photos…
Lies something else! A very amusing story. 🤣😉
And baby girl’s foot? Amazingly, she was FINE. The sand and sea apparently helped her sore and she played happily for 3 hours. 🙏
carcrashgratitude 