I had been lying on the beach for only 30 minutes when my bikini-clad form set off sirens all over the Australian Sunshine Coast.

"What are you doing?!" screamed a fully clothed, middle-aged woman as she stormed toward me. "Are you completely mad?"

There was no escape. It was my first run-in with the Australian Sun Police, a self-appointed brigade of busybodies who patrol the shores in search of UV-ray offenders. The woman kept me under towel arrest until reinforcements arrived.

"Haven't you heard of skin cancer?" demanded a second woman, shielding her eyes from the glare of my lily-white limbs. "Don't you know that the sun kills?"

Fortunately, I was practicing safe sun. I produced as evidence a whole pharmacy of sunscreens, total block and sunburn relief. The ultraviolet vigilantes, whose leathery faces betrayed them as reformed sun junkies themselves, let me off with a caution and an order never to leave home without a wide-brimmed hat again.

It was a scary moment. But during the 10 days I spent in Noosa, a trendy resort in Queensland, I saw further signs that Australia's famously relaxed sand-and-surf culture was changing. Thanks to the yawning hole in the ozone layer, the Australian sun has become fiercer than ever. Now the population is struggling to cope with the fact that their national pastime is almost as hazardous as lying in the middle of a six-lane freeway. Alarmingly, one in 20 Australians is likely to develop skin cancer in their lifetime.

Almost everyone over 30 has a me-and-my-melanoma story to tell. An unofficial beach curfew operates during the most intense sunlight hours of 11am to 3pm, and only from late afternoon until dusk do the shores fill up. One magazine chart showed the degree of UV protection offered by different items of clothing; a thin white T-shirt, it warned, is simply not worth the space in your suitcase.

The consequences of this sun phobia, I quickly discovered, can devastate your expectations. Surrounded by breathtaking surf beaches and a magnificent national park, Noosa is a popular destination for city types. But according to Bruce, my Sydney hairdresser, Noosa's natural beauty isn't the only attraction. "The Queensland surfer boys obviously put something extra-special in their breakfast cereal," he swooned. And so I'd imagined bronzed examples of Australian manhood with chiseled pectorals and abdominals you could grate cheese on.

What I found was that Noosa's finest male figures were obscured by heavy-duty, chin-to-ankle wetsuits. And there is only so long you can watch a rubber-encased torso riding the waves. (Frankly, after the 578th wave, I was bored.)

The remaining lone male nudists were no compensation; they were the ones the sun police should have been arresting. These perennial losers would court your attention by peeling off their shorts nearby. Then they would flash you a full frontal before trotting, their parts a-jiggle, into the waves. Once, I awoke on the beach to find a man standing over my girlfriend, who was dozing a few meters away. With the sun in my eyes I couldn't see what he was doing at first, but then I realized he had his hand down his shorts and he was . . . well, the linguistically inventive Australians might call it "tenderizing the old barbie sausage." Whatever he was doing, this kind of thing never happens on Baywatch.

Nor does being run over in the dunes by a 4WD, which is what happened to one woman during my stay in Queensland. And if you think that was unlucky, the same week a surfer was struck by lightning and killed instantly--ironically, on the famous beach called "Surfers' Paradise."

It's perhaps not surprising that instead of risking the great outdoors, many resort-goers were choosing to spend the taboo daylight hours in Noosa's abundant coffee shops. Bruce the hairdresser had given me some invaluable fashion tips before venturing out into this burgeoning café society. "Darling," he implored, "think beige." He explained that people wore this color to match their cups of café latte. But Bruce was a touch out of date. The truly chic had donned black to offset their new, mortuary-slab complexions.

The local market was also an interesting alternative to the beach. There I found proof that even when the surfers are out of action, a fireman will always come to your rescue. One market stall, run by the Queensland Fire Service, was selling a calendar to raise funds for the Royal Childrens' Hospital Burn Unit. But the cause turned out to be rather more noble than the calendar itself.

Each month features a topless fireman in a dramatic muscle-flexing pose, usually with an inferno glinting off his moist chest. The firefighters have manly, no-shit, step-aside-madam names like John King and Brett Ford, and hold their nozzles in ways that are enough to make a girl start playing with matches. (Nozzles, hoses, telescopic ladders--the opportunities for cheap innuendo abound.) Each month also bears a homily offering faintly ambiguous advice like, "If your clothes catch fire, stop, drop and roll." Phew.

I bought four of the calendars as bad taste souvenirs. It was good knowing my money was going to a worthy cause. It was equally inspiring to know that at least some Australian beefcakes are still braving the hot zone and taking their kit off for the girls.