At five o'clock, the towel you dry off with has no sand in it.

Ten metres apart on the same beach, two people are packing up. He is on his fourth towel, shaking each one out while the wind throws the sand back at him. The towels go into the boot heavy and gritty, and the sand turns up in the footwell for weeks.

She lifts one edge of the Driftaway and shakes it, and the dry sand runs off the coating. Her towels spent the afternoon on top of the mat, never on the beach, so the one she dries off with is clean. She is walking to the car park while he is still shaking.

Why the sand lets go

A towel is made to grab. Its cotton loops soak up water, and the wet sand goes in with it and stays. The Driftaway's surface is 210T polyester with a water-repellent coating: a flat face with no loops for sand to work into. The sand sits on top, and it slides off when you lift an edge.

That makes the mat the floor of your whole spot. The towels, the esky, the bags and the boogie board all go on it, and the only thing touching the beach is the mat.

Wet sand and wind

Wet sand that gets walked into the mat is a job for the hose. Rinse it at home, hang it over the fence, and it dries quickly.

Wind gets under anything light. Peg the two corners facing the wind first, then the other two, and push each peg in on an angle, leaning away from the mat. There are four ABS pegs in the bag, one for every corner.

One piece, 200 x 210 cm

Enough for four to six people sitting, or two stretched out at full length. Four towels laid edge to edge leave gaps that fill with sand by lunchtime. One mat has no gaps.

Nothing to inflate, nothing to put together: out of the bag, four pegs in, and you are set up. At the end of the day it shakes clean, folds into its drawstring bag, and the carabiner clips it to the outside of your backpack, so it takes up no room inside.

A$39.95, with free shipping anywhere in Australia.