I’ve just come back from a week-and-a-half stint with two of my teenage grandsons, while their parents were overseas. It’s definitely not hard work for me to leave the traffic and noise of my suburb and decamp to the beaches of Port Phillip Bay.

Port Phillip Bay covers 1930 square kilometres. The shoreline stretches for 264 kilometres, and is rimmed with wide, white, sandy beaches to the north, east and south, and swampy wetlands and marshes to the west. The Port of Melbourne is at its head.

Edithvale Beach, halfway down the eastern side, is quiet (except for Sundays when dogs are allowed off the leash till 10am; avoid Sundays if your’re not besotted with dogs), and at times I had the place almost entirely to myself.

Most days I walked along to Chelsea Yacht Club and back, not an enormous distance, maybe a couple of kilometres, but a good workout for me all the same through the often wet sand.

On my last morning I headed down at about 7am to discover the full moon, hanging ethereally over the ocean. Luckily, as a novice travel writer, I’m learning to keep the camera in the car for opportunities such as this.