Walking for Action on Climate

The clouds part and there's a patch of blue in the sky as we step onto a very windy beach. The sea is all chop and hurling green. Immediately I see that a pretty pink umbrella isn't going to work, so it gets furled. The balloons will have to do it.

Friends arrive to big hugs all round. 

We're looking up the beach, watching out for the relay mob who should be coming over Point Arkwright by now, down onto the beach.

And yes, there they are off in the distance.

More people arrive, some with young children who take great delight in gathering long trails of the slimy green "thing" that inhabits the little creek that empties into the sea here.

We take some friendly pics while we wait.

We're joining the beach relay organised by Sunshine Coast Environment Council to participate in a day of global events calling for Action on Climate Change. The organisations GetUp and Avaaz have played a huge role in calling up the people.

Aboriginal ceremony at sunrise on Sunshine Beach opened the walk and marked a global beginning for the events across the world.

The walkers draw nearer. Flag bearers lead on.

We're a tuneful bunch so we welcome the walkers with song.

"There is so much magnificence, near the ocean.

Waves are coming in, waves are coming in"

We live in a truly magnificent place.

The section that we will walk now is earmarked for a huge development, right on the foreshore, with around 2,500 apartments and townhouses, proposing twelve story buildings.

We are appalled at the blatant bullying of the residents of the community who are adamant in their objection.

This situation seems to epitomise the attitudes of denial displayed by government bodies. It's business as usual while the seas keep rising.

We're off ! People of all ages are walking the sands together for the love of the Earth, and for just plain good common sense.

My gaze falls on the three young boys walking with us. I hope they'll remember this walk when they are older. We're only too well aware that in their mid-life the sea will have risen half a metre and will be consuming the dunes and flooding the vast areas of low-lying coastal suburbia with every storm surge. That's going to happen, whether we take action or not. So what do we want to see happen that's worse than that?

The brahminy kite has long patrolled this beach and glides in now to a vantage point atop a large pandanus. The boys pick out the white head and ginger wings straight up. Wonderful!

We've walked our section of 1.4ks and reached the next stage so there's some fooling around crossing a line in the sand.

The flag bearers and walkers go on. The relay will see them and others who join them leaving footprints in the sand all the way to King's Beach Caloundra at sunset.

It's been thirty-seven years now, of walking, marching, singing, talking, signing petitions, writing letters. We just keep on. We must. These are the blatant times.