Last week our family enjoyed a beautiful sunny breakfast at Wategos. There’s nothing quite like a freshly cooked bacon-and-egg roll after a swim in the rolling waves of one of Australia’s most beautiful beaches, followed by a leisurely relax contemplating the majesty of our coastline. Until it was interrupted by a busload of 200 young people dressed in shorts and t-shirts. There was something slightly unusual about the crowd – they carried cameras, they cart-wheeled, some even clutched skateboards and wore shoes and socks which seemed a little out of kilter with the surrounds. Not one of them rushed into the surf, which was glorious.

I whispered to my daughter, ‘What do you think is going on there?’ She swallowed a mouthful of her roll and mumbled ‘Christians’. I was like ‘really? How can you tell?’ Zoe pointed at one of the girls with a bit of bacon and chewed, ‘the girls are wearing boardshorts’. My bacon-munching daughter was more astute than me. All of a sudden the group launched into song, performing a spectacularly public prayer of evangelical worship.

Great, I got up early to bring the kids down to the beach for breakfast, and now I can’t see the bloody ocean because of an annoying clump of fricking Christians. I was tempted to gather a group of pagan goat worshippers like myself to assemble farther down the beach to perform some satanic rituals. Hands were waving in the air in Jesus-enthused ecstasy, others dropped to their knees and started reading their bibles. Zoe was mildly amused and whispered in my ear ‘they must have waterproof bibles’.

It’s not like they don’t have ample time to read the the Word of the Lord. Surely in the time other young people are taking drugs, having sex or masturbating, they’re tucked up in bed with the good book. Why the sudden urge to read the bible on the beach at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday morning? Oh, I get it, because other people can see them. In fact, what is the point in praying unless you get to inflict it on the whole fricking beach?

Christians with cameras start taking photos of Christians reading bibles. What for? Are they going to upload it on their version of Facebook? Prayerbook? Imagine the status updates: ‘Read Isaiah at Wategos! POL! (That means Pray Out Loud). Then they start the baptisms. Weddings have to apply to council and pay a fee, but this busload of bible bashers just start inflicting their religious choices on the whole beach.

Groovy young tattooed ministers duck fully clothed initiates under the Wategos waves to cleanse them of their sins. I’m hoping that the evil that’s washed off our family infects them. Now I can’t swim because I don’t want to get stinky born-again christian all over me.

If you want to baptise your followers at the beach, then don’t choose peak tourist time on the world’s smallest and most popular beach. Go to Tallow. Try Lennox. There’s plenty of remote beaches where the only people you’ll see are surfers, a few fishermen, and some escaped psycho killer jerking off in the bushes. There’s a colossal amount of arrogance thinking it’s okay for 200 people to land in the middle of a crowded public beach and start performing their religious ritual.

Clearly we are a country that practises religious tolerance but I can’t help but wonder what the public reaction would be if 200 Muslims turned up, laid out their prayer mats and started praying to Allah. There is nothing wrong with prayer to the god of your choosing. Just don’t do it in my face. Most religions respect the beliefs of others by being discreet. That’s why people have churches, or temples or mosques.

I am aware that this ministry of hug-giving, creepy crepe-making youngsters worship publicly so as to seduce other young people into their midst. These people are just like drug dealers, except they deal Jesus. If you are depressed, or lost, or feeling alienated, these large anomalous groups of Jesus Junkies will swallow you up. You never have to think or feel independently again.

While I am strictly agnostic, I have immense respect for all religions, Christians included, but I hate evangelical Christians with a passion. They frighten me. When my father died a group of born-agains moved in on my mother and I spent three years living in the clutches of hands-on healing, tongue-talking Jesus freaks. They gathered in large groups with acoustic guitars and sang songs of praise. They collapsed, they shrieked, they wept. I now know this is the behaviour of brain-washed cult members. Even as a small child I knew that they were the stupidest people on the planet.

I once watched a group pray on someone’s broken leg for about three hours, then they cut off the cast to see if he could walk, but the silly dickhead just collapsed and had to be taken back to Emergency who clearly weren’t impressed. It was the second one he’d had on that day. I am convinced that if Jesus were alive today he wouldn’t hang with born-again Christians. He’d be sitting behind me playing the bongos eating a bacon sandwich yelling ‘fuck off’ to the 200 spiritual exhibitionists blocking his view of the ocean.