Eight thousand or so people are about to descend on our village. You can hear the engines starting in Sydney, the traffic will already be building up on the Princes Highway southbound. Utes, 4WDs, soft-roaders and battered family station wagons crammed full of tents, boogie boards, bikes and fishing gear will be nose to tail in all the usual traffic hotspots.

And down on our beach here in Barefoot Bay, you’ll find us volunteer surf lifesavers staring fixedly at the swimmers by the rip. And we’ll be doing head-counts and watching that Indian family who quite obviously can’t swim and have decided to go paddling fully-clothed. And someone will get stung by a blue bottle and, if the surf’s up, we might even have to swim or paddle out to them and return them safely to shore.

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