"A beautiful day at Hervey Bay in Queensland, with the walk from Toan Toan Creek through Pialba and Scarness Beach my highlight. Hervey Bay is a huge, growing regional city now - the growth since when I was kid has been staggering, let alone when my mother used to stay here for holidays with her grandmother. Everyone wants to live here now, and you can see why with beaches like Pialba.

Walking out into an open expanse of calm waters, the beach gave me flashes of the Mediterranean and of Lyme Regis, a beachside town in England where dinosaurs were first discovered and fossils just wash up onto the shore in a daily primeval amble witnessed by ancient stone abodes. Excitedly, my son explored everything it offered, wading into the waters and picking up the strange objects that littered the ground to find treasures for his sand castle.

And what finds, worthy of secreting into the haphazard collections of a six year old kid. Beautiful shells of different varieties, shapes and colours, the sort you don't find anywhere; petrified coral of such abundance and striking shapes that it recalled the death of many reefs; rocks shaped like sponges; glass and rocks liquified into odd echoes of something formerly existing: striking combinations of rock and coral that made underwater tapestries mirroring the layers of the earth; and parts of trees and plants, seeds, buds, that had been shaped by the pressures of the ocean tides into random artisanal objects, porcupines, and pens of the sea.

I wrote words into the sand with my pen of the sea, the most satisfying pen I have ever used. My mother ambled around and visited her childhood memories. My child built his sand castle, layering it with more shells and finds we salvaged from the shore.

After hours of play and swimming, tragedy struck. The tides came in, and the sand castle was no more. My son saved his collection in a frantic hurry, racing to place them on the rocks on the outer edge of the shore.

One ragged run after another, and they were saved. He celebrated, and then promptly abandoned his collection as soon as fish and chips was our next stop."

Beornn McCarthy

"Great off-leash dog beach. Our dogs loved chasing the small fish in the shallows. Can also watch the sunset."

Calvin Tromp

"Beautiful Creek to waddle around in. Highly recommend. Not more than ankle deep in most spots (depending on the rain). Public bathrooms and drinking fountains nearby."

Ameya Tidke