If there's one truth drilled into Australian youth, it's that the sun kills. It's true, it does. It gives you cancer, it gives you wrinkles, it makes you age prematurely and should generally be avoided. Now, if this were taken seriously I would expect sunscreen to be some serious, readily available, highly researched stuff. I'd expect sunscreen pills and aerosol sunscreen and sunscreen added to the water supply. I'd expect to find a sunscreen dispenser in the dashboard of my car (note: can be achieved with duct tape), and to see ads for new, improved forms of sunscreen sprinkled liberally through the pages of women's magazines.

And what do we get? We get white goop that feels like slightly off cream mixed with cooking oil which stays sticky for hours (so you can tell it's working!) and makes you break out into offensively greasy, pustulent zits the likes of which you haven't seen since you began experimenting with pancake makeup in year seven. You go into Priceline expecting to find a nice selection of sun protection products and all you see are four feeble bottles of Banana Boat in a sea of tanners, bronzers and after sun lotion. I mean, what kind of good is slapping a bit of aloe on your red, excoriated skin when you could have just bought a non-greasy, quickly absorbing 30+ and skipped out on the whole melanoma part?

I must admit to being a little biased. Not only am I fluorescently pale, but I had the kind of acne in my younger days that could only be treated by a paper bag and a mild case of agoraphobia. I've been through two, count 'em, two courses of roaccutane, aka chemotherapy for blackheads, and I'm still a little greasy and prone to breaking out. I'm going to burn, I'm going to get pimples; can't sunscreen make it easy?

The only sunscreen for the facialular region I found to work was Clinique City Block, which is rather expensive and works best with another expensive Clinique product with a name so long and ridiculous it does not bear repeating here. I'm contemplating trying the Ultraceuticals sunscreen, which comes in a bigger tube but may well be just as expensive, but I don't want to end up with a $40 tube of glorified margarine. There was a pretty good spray sunscreen floating around, but I can't find it anywhere, and I'm obsessive enough to have spent a fair amount of time looking.

I think there's only one solution, really. Next time you're outside enjoying the sunshine on a beautiful spring day, I'll be the one under the burqa huddled under a tree reading Margaret Atwood.