Aussies have been called out for resorting to a bizarre measure to reserve a spot at the beach by using glad wrap to secure public gazebos.
Signs have been raised along Cliff Road in North Wollongong, south of Sydney, warning beachgoers not to lay claim to the facilities by wrapping them up.
‘This is a shared public space,’ they read. ‘The use of cling wrap or any material to enclose picnic shelters is prohibited.’
Lord Mayor of Wollongong Tania Brown said she was disappointed that council had to go so far as erecting the signs.
Council rangers had been ordered to ‘remove’ the wrapping if they found it, she told news.com.au.
It comes after NSW Premier Chris Minns laid down bold new ‘rules’ about the use of portable gazebos on Australia’s prime beaches.
The national debate is centred on the use of cabanas to reserve spots on the shoreline – a practice that has been deemed ‘un-Australian’.
The signs along Cliff Road, North Wollongong warned beachgoers not to lay claim to the beachside gazebos by wrapping glad wrap around them (above)
‘You can’t like, put a peg in the ground and claim the land is yours with the cabana, like Richard Nixon did with the moon,’ Mr Minns said on Thursday.
‘It doesn’t work that way. You can’t just stick a cabana up and lay claim to it.’
Mr Minns then revealed his ‘rules’ for anyone who wanted to use a cabana.
‘You have to have one of your stupid friends who agrees to go down there early in the day and have a rotation process,’ he said.
‘You can have one person, one person’s enough, and they can be sleeping or hungover or reading a crap novel.
‘They can even use the beach, you can go for a swim, but you have to be on site on the beach.’
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also dipped his toe in the cabana waters.
During an appearance on Today, Mr Albanese said the practice was ‘not on’ and that it went against the country’s egalitarian spirit.
Lord Mayor of Wollongong Tania Brown said she was disappointed that council had to go so far as erecting the signs around the gazebos
Aussies have shared images of gazebos lying empty on the sand while other beachgoers are forced to fight over what little spots are left.
Popular Instagram influencer Miss Double Bay, who has almost 64,000 followers, has shared a ‘solution to the cabana epidemic that is plaguing the beaches’ by dividing the sand into areas where they’re allowed and those where they’re banned.
Miss Double Bay proposed that councils need to set up ‘Cabana Corners’.
‘While I am all for sun safety I think we can all agree here they (cabanas) are unsightly,’ she said.
‘Especially if you are a family of two why do you need an eight-seater (popular make) CoolCabana?’
‘People come to the beach to take in the sights and sounds of mother nature… not some weird patterned tent that looks like your grandmother’s couch.’
The solution ‘everybody will get around’ is to have a ‘designated area of the beach where the CoolCabanas can live’.
‘This section would be in the back of the beach so no one could see,’ the influencer said.
The ‘Cabana Corners would have ‘parking meters where if you want to stay for longer you have to put more money in’.
To enforce this a new type of inspector would have to employed.
‘If we are seeing a cabana that is not in the Cabana Corner, immediate fine, immediate fine and you are asked to leave the beach,’ she said.
She then – a little overenthusiastically – outlined other cabana offences that could attract an ‘immediate fine’.
