There we were, a gorgeous afternoon on the rock shelf at a local beach, sitting as pretty as a mob celebrating a 41st can sit.
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Kids playing happily on the sand, adults cooking meat happily on a stick.
Then someone spotted the drone hovering about 5m above us, filming. It hovered over a few of the kids, then came back to the adults. Despite several people gesticulating at the thing, its made no signs of going away.
I searched the beach but the pilot could not be spotted. There was no way to know who was behind it or why, or tell them to leave us alone. If the right stone was nearby I may have considered taking pot shots and I wasn’t alone feeling that way.
It wasn’t the first unwelcome encounter. Last year there was one hovering over us (myself and my two sons) and other swimmers as we had a swim at Sandon Point.
More recently there were two loud buzzing drones bugging Garie Beach in the Royal National Park, operated by some guys who had taken over a lookout.
Another time I interrupted some real estate photographers near our house. When confronted, they vowed they weren’t filming our house – then quickly packed up and left. A few days later an aerial photo popped up on a “for sale” sign out front of a neighbour’s house, prominently displaying our house and yard for all to see.
There are rules governing drone use in public. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority says they include: you have to keep the drone 30m away from other people, and must not fly over “any populous areas” – which can include “beaches, parks and sporting ovals”.
The problem is enforcement. Who takes reports, how quickly do they respond, and how do they catch the pilot? These conflicts will only increase in frequency. I wonder if one could claim self-defence against trespass, if one’s aim was good enough to knock one of these perves out of the sky.