Why: Perigian Beach in Queensland is an in-between place - five miles south of a very fashionable and expensive new resort and about five miles north of Coloundra, which is a not very pretty 1970s resort. Because it has strong rip tides and sharks, there are very few tourists. The beach itself is about 40 miles long and lined with dunes which hide the houses. It is different from anything else I've come across. I wasn't that keen on beach holidays as a kid, but going to Perigian Beach for the first time in 1990 completely transformed me. I finally understood why you might want to spend as long as you can on a beach. It looks wild but you know that within a 10-minute drive or half-an-hour walk, you can be sitting in a nice cafe drinking a coffee. It's a bit like an undeveloped version of England in the 1950s. I make sand castles with the kids, taking a big garden shovel and big buckets to build huge sand castles and then watch the tide wash them away.

What's the best thing? The scale of the beach does something to my shoulders; they seem to relax and grow wider. You can't actually see the end of the beach; it disappears into a heat haze. Then there is the simplicity of the bright blue sky, the dark blue water and the yellow strip of sand which goes on forever.

My advice: Once you have got to Queensland, you can do the rest quite cheaply. There are caravan sites where it seems families have much more fun than those staying in the posh resorts. Australians know how to enjoy themselves simply and that is often the best way to do it.

How do I get there? Austravel (0870 0550206) is offering return Qantas flights from Heathrow to Brisbane for £759pp - must be booked before August 6 for travel in September.

• Robert Llewellyn is an actor, writer and presenter of Channel 4's Scrap Heap. His latest novel, Sudden Wealth, is published by Flame at £10.