All about the tan

I was lucky, I suppose, that I never spent an entire summer in Australia until I was 15,  growing up as I did in the country where only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the midday sun, and fair skin was considered beautiful. Otherwise I might have been like my husband, who maintains that every summer holiday of his childhood he sunburnt till he blistered. No slip slop slap back then.

At 15, though, at the start of 1975, it was all about the tan, and I took to this tanning business like a lizard to a hot patch of rock.

It was a competitive sport. The girls most envied at school were those dusky beauties who coloured smooth and even and deep brown. Long before the flawless porcelain of Nicole Kidman’s skin became desirable we felt sorry for the redheads and freckle-faced among us. I was somewhere in the middle – a mix between my olive-skinned Melbourne-bred Mum and a ginger-haired, fair-skinned Dad from Belfast.

As soon as I hit the beach each year, I dedicated serious hours each day prostrating myself before the sun. On overcast days, I fantasised about having a giant spatula to scrape every skerrick of cloud from the sky. At one point, I used to smear myself with baby oil (yes, really) until I saw sense and invested in a dark brown bottle of Coppertone SPF 4, which made me feel like the soul of caution.

The last summer I donned a two-piece was, when I was expecting my first baby. My big belly tanned a deep brown: after our daughter was born, the stretched skin shrank back to normal and looked like dark chocolate.

By the time we had our own tribe of kids, of course, the application of gallons of sunscreen was de rigeur. I estimate I have spent months of my life slathering small bodies in sun protection, trying not to miss a millimetre of vulnerable skin; I used to wish there was a kind of sheep dip at the beach where you could dunk your kids.

Now, happily, all colours of skin are acceptable, and I am older and more sensible than I was at seventeen. But I admit I still buy sneaky bottles of SPF 15, when 30 or even 50 would be wiser. Because I still love to come back from my summer holiday with a bit of colour. It takes me back to when summers were endless. And it was all about the tan.

First published in The Age on 18 January 2017