... on a RANT!

"Say, Em... that's not a very nice photograph, what's the go?"

I'm about to rant. Look away if you don't like that kind of thing. I've just returned from my first four-wheel-driving adventure. C and I went out onto the beach at the Noosa North Shore, up past Cooloola and Rainbow Beach, round to Inskip Point, took the ferry across to Fraser Island, and went as far north as we could past Waddy Point before an impassable track turned us around, and then we came the same way back.

Now, it's a wild place. You certainly feel remote, and it's stunningly beautiful - a real wilderness, and I feel so lucky to have been able to finally go there. Only - and here's where the rant starts. There was freaking plastic everywhere. All up that beautiful sandy coastline there was just shitty plastic everywhere. Last night C and I camped on the beach for the first time. This morning we went for a walk and after only a few steps C said "Er... I'm just going to get a plastic bag." We used all the empty bags we had to collect any plastic we could see.

It felt like such a futile gesture. We know that as soon as the tide comes back in it'll bring more, and that buried in the dunes must be stacks of it. Those bloody glow-in-the-dark sticks were everywhere. What was awful was the amount of really tiny pieces there were. It gets brittle and then breaks apart - and there's absolutely no way anyone can ever go and pick all that shit up.

Organised clean-up events are a great idea - hell, I may have even participated in a 'Clean Up Australia Day' once! but seeing this stuff has really shocked me. I just wish that everyone that goes there could take a few bags of this crap home with them before it breaks into tiny pieces. Get it off the beach and into a bin, and do it every time you go.

Rant over. Positivity will return tomorrow. GAH!