While possessed of a physique which at the beach should be cocooned from neck to knee in a kaftan, I was fond of the Speedos for the sense of freedom they bestowed in the surf. It was a freedom leavened with just the right degree of support, the sort of constrained freedom only a man can fully appreciate.

The one problem with the Speedos was that when you dived through a wave, you were never sure whether you would emerge on the other side in a state of undress, white bot-bot bobbing in the water like twin buoys with said Speedos decorating your ankles.

This didn't bother me as much as it bothered other people and I could also just as easily live with the cheap references to "budgie smugglers". Secretly, I longed for someone to accuse me of attempting to smuggle budgerigars out of the country in my swimwear, but this has never happened.

Accused of being out of tune with contemporary beach culture, I reluctantly abandoned the Speedos and, to celebrate the New Year and a week to be spent at Rainbow Beach, I went shopping for a new pair of swimmers. I tried on a white pair and my image in the mirror all but disappeared as my white skin and boardies blended with the white walls, leaving my apparently disconnected head floating around the changing room.

Trying on clothing is a tedious task at best and after struggling in and out of various pairs, some large enough to power a Sydney-to-Hobart yacht, others sporting colours and patterns reminiscent of recycled pizza, I settled for the first pair, recalling someone once saying to me that you could never go too far wrong with white. (Or was that black?)

And so it was that, resplendent in my new white boardies and confident that I was marching to the beat of the contemporary fashion drum, I sucked in my stomach, puffed out my chest and charged down the beach to the surf.

Seconds later, I came charging back up again as the beach umbrella my fiancée and I had just spent several minutes drilling into the sand inexplicably became airborne. I've sometimes wondered what one's legal position would be if, as one's beach umbrella cartwheeled down the sand, it skewered half a dozen fellow beachgoers. Precarious, I imagine.

I managed to retrieve it before it inflicted any fatal injuries and headed back to the surf and my fiancée with whom I endured the usual ritual of dumping, wiping out, near-drowning and the ingestion of large amounts of seawater as we celebrated the great tradition of surf-loving bronzed Aussies.

Deposited on the sand by a particularly ferocious wave, I decided I had suffered sufficiently in the name of perpetuating the national macho image and crawled from the water. Obviously, I had chosen my new boardies wisely, for they were attracting looks of admiration from any number of my fellow Australians as I headed along the sand.

I did notice a few mothers covering their children's heads with towels as I staggered up the beach. All the better, I guessed, to shield their sensitive young faces from the sun.

The first indication that all was not well came when my fiancée took one look at me and screamed, not an uncommon reaction from people when confronted by the sight of me in swimming attire. Apparently lost for words she was pointing at my boardies.

I think it outrageous that swimwear manufacturers are not required to warn potential customers that white boardshorts, when wet, become glass-like in their transparency. My apologies to my fellow beachgoers and I would like to point out that the water was unseasonably cold on the day in question.