Bluebottle beach

Our sunny day arrived as promised. Great drying weather, so Kirsten did a final load of washing and hung it on the line to dry. The girls were delighted to catch an episode of An Vrombaut’s charming ’64 Zoo Lane’ on Australian TV, despite being ‘too grown up’ most of the time to watch it on their Zen players; must be the warm memories with seeing it at home. We then popped into Huskisson Bakery for some bread rolls (our sliced loaf had gone mouldy in the warm, humid air) and some treats for tea.

A nice healthy lunch at home (salad and tuna on fresh rolls) and then we mad-dogged it down to the beach in the noon-day sun. Now, which beach? We drove past a pleasant spot on the way to Vincentia, then tried to find Greenfields Beach (which features in tourist brochures), but it must be one of these places with no road access – we couldn’t see how to get there. So we returned to Hyams Beach only to find it packed with cars and no room to park in the shade. Much too busy.

Our Booderee Park ticket was still valid for today so we went back to Iluka (where we had our damp picnic lunch yesterday). The car park was empty but for us, and we had a vast stretch of beach to ourselves; just a few campers a long way down to our right. Yes, this would do nicely. Not too much in the way of shade, but there was a gentle breeze and we had our hats, sun cream and UV tops for the girls. The waves were not too rough, the shore shelved gently and the sand was beautifully soft (and slightly squeaky) under foot. A perfect spot.

We spread out our towels, left our bags and ran into the water. An ideal temperature, pleasantly warm whether in or out of the waves. I floated on my back, bobbing with the swell; the girls splashed around in the shallows squealing as the gentle breakers caught them.

We emerged for some cubes of refreshingly cold watermelon before having a quick sunbathe. Then back into the sea again to cool off. Ellen pointed out the occasional blob of jelly washed up on the shore, the size of a large coin with dark blue strands squiggled over the sand. We weren’t quite sure what damage they’d do to us so we kept our distance. However, there were no warning notices around these beaches and we understood that all the really dangerous jellyfish were to be found further up the coast in the tropical waters off Queensland.

So when Ellen suddenly started screaming in pain we felt sick with worry and concern for her, but at least we had some idea what might be the matter. A couple of blue strands were stuck to the side of her foot, so we removed these with a towel and washed the area with one of our bottles of drinking water. Ellen is a tough cookie – a fall with scraped knees does not bring many tears from her – but this time she carried on crying and was obviously in excruciating pain. We felt so helpless as parents; you wish you could take the injury upon yourself instead and spare your child. So we packed everything up, Kirsten carried Ellen to the car and we drove to the nearest chemist’s in Vincentia.

We had great faith that they’d know exactly what to do; this must be a common problem around here. But the girl who came to help us confessed that she’d only just moved to the coast, so was it warm water or cold water you’re supposed to treat the injury with? Her colleagues came to the conclusion that it was probably warm water and that the offending creature was a Bluebottle. Meanwhile, Ellen could have a dose of antihistamine syrup (we later read the label and it’s intended for hayfever and allergies) and we could give her ordinary painkillers. We returned to the car, gave her ibuprofen and applied some antihistamine cream from our first aid kit.

We stopped in Huskisson for a second opinion from the pharmacist there. He said that warm/hot water denatures the proteins causing the sting, but that it only really helps if applied immediately (tricky if you don’t have a Thermos flask with you on the beach). Fortunately Ellen’s pain was starting to subside and we all went for a therapeutic (and messy) ice cream.

Back in Woollamia Ellen rested on the sofa for the remainder of the day and started to feel a lot better; she stayed up with Hannah to watch the latest instalment of the addictive ‘My Kitchen Rules’, a sort of souped-up ‘Come Dine With Me’ in which five Australian couples take it in turns to prepare a three-course meal for each other, with the added pressure of two renowned chefs who contribute the major share of the points when voting.

Ellen will have some blisters but should recover in two or three days; at least tomorrow is a travelling day so she can take it easy. When she came to write her diary she was clear that she didn’t want to mention anything about today’s incident – she simply wants to forget about it.

The power of the Internet reveals that our Bluebottle jellyfish is another name for the Portuguese Man o’ War (I’ve certainly heard of that) and that strictly speaking, it’s not a jellyfish at all but four coexisting colonies of creatures that all depend on each other for survival. But mainly that the sting is extremely painful. Poor Ellen.