12:00a.m. 12th October 2008

| By Rebecca Marshall

Ross McKinnon – better known as an expert on all things gardening – visited Sunshine, Peregian and Golden beaches last week to check up on their cleanliness, environmental programs and the level of community involvement in their maintenance.

A Sunshine Coast beach has a very good chance of winning a Clean Beach Challenge award, especially as one of the judges seems to have fallen in love with our little patch of sand and sea.

Ross McKinnon – better known as an expert on all things gardening – visited Sunshine, Peregian and Golden beaches last week to check up on their cleanliness, environmental programs and the level of community involvement in their maintenance.

“People in Brisbane have an allegiance to either the Sunshine or the Gold Coast, but I would suggest that most people have an allegiance to the Sunshine Coast because of the pristine beauty of its beaches,” the curator of the Brisbane Botanical Gardens said.

“They are some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and that’s why tourists go there.

“I stood on Sunshine Beach last week and looked south and I thought ‘Can it get any better than this?’

“I am overseas about four months a year and every time I come home, I say that we are the luckiest people in the world.”

But Mr McKinnon said it wasn’t the lack of litter or sparkling ocean water that impressed him the most about local beaches.

“The most outstanding impression I got was the sense of community in each of those places,” he said.

“We’ve holidayed at Buderim and Mooloolaba since my children were small, so I knew that was there.

“But it’s very strong: if you’re a Peregian person, you are a Peregian person through and through, and the Sunshine people better not tell you their beach is the best!

“All these beaches have a large local population who collect litter daily, they perform storm watch duties to monitor water outflow onto the beach for debris, they have whale watch and turtle watch programs and there is a very good partnership between the local community and council – probably the strongest I’ve ever seen.

“Most of these communities also have a nippers program and apparently, the people at Golden Beach were telling me that quite often kids will yell at people who flick a cigarette butt or throw rubbish.

“It really struck me and really surprised me. There is such a sense of identity with their beach and their community.”

It’s a spirit he said he grew up with, but one that rarely exists in cities.

“In 36 years of living in Brisbane, that spirit is totally lost and my kids sadly don’t have that level of identity with their local suburb.

“It extends to the lifesaving club, the football club, the businesses and it’s a very good thing for a child to grow up with a sense of security that is tremendously enveloping.”

Mr McKinnon may seem an odd choice to judge beaches, given he is a renowned gardening expert and curator of the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.

“I have judged the Tidy Towns awards on a number of occasions before and there is a very strong marriage between gardening and the environment,” he said.

“All gardening people garden to be sustainable, to lower the carbon footprint, to use less water or grow their own vegies.

“And this judging is really about the environmental fitness of the beach.”

The regional Clean Beach Challenge winners will be announced in November, the state winners in December and the national winner next September.

The nation’s tidiest beach is currently Townsville’s The Strand.