TARA BROWN: Sizzling in the midday sun, sun reflector mats and coconut oil: two beautiful girls unashamedly cooking themselves.
TARA BROWN: For most Australians, it's a rite of passage come summer, the long lazy days at the beach and sunburnt skin. It's the sun damage done when we're young that most often leads to melanoma later in life. This year 8000 Australians will get the bad news. One thousand of us will die. But what's alarming doctors even more is that amongst teenagers there's a growing trend to ignore the sun safety message. The real problem is they continue to get sunburnt. So many now refuse to wear a hat, refuse to wear sunscreen. Because of that, doctors predict that in five to 10 years we will face a health crisis. So many more of those sun happy teenagers will get melanoma. Younger and younger people will suffer needless and painful deaths.
BENJAMIN FOLEY: I thought that I'd never get cancer, that I was invincible from the sun.
TARA BROWN: That it couldn't happen to you?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: Yeah. That it wouldn't happen to me. It'd happen to somebody else, somebody older. I thought skin cancer only happened in older people. Turns out I was wrong, though.
TARA BROWN: Last year Benjamin Foley was diagnosed with melanoma. He was 16. His brutal scars map his surgery to remove the mole and his lymph glands. But the threat isn't over. Having had one melanoma, his risk of having another is at least four times greater.
Why do you think you got the cancer?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: Because I barely ever wore sunscreen.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I do remember getting burned quite a lot, you know. Sore shoulders, peeling skin on the back and that sort of thing and, you know, it was just a part of growing up.
TARA BROWN: These days the only beach Steven Nielsen visits is the local indoor swimming pool. Even here he wears a sun safe shirt and so does his eight-month-old son Lachlan, who won't be allowed to make the mistakes Steven made.
STEVEN NIELSEN: It's a really hard thing to be told you're going to die.
TARA BROWN: Steven knows the dangers of melanoma. At 28, he's near the end of his life.
STEVEN NIELSEN: At the moment, I've got tumours in the bone in my spine, two of them. I've also got a liver that's completely full of it and they've got evidence of one in my lung. And they're all basically inoperable.
TARA BROWN: Like any other Australian kid, Steven spent most summer afternoons in the backyard in the sun. He was 20 when first diagnosed with melanoma. Since then, he's had 13 moles removed. All tests showed he was clear and then in June last year Steven felt a lump under his arm. His wife Melanie knew it wasn't good.
MELANIE NIELSEN: We just felt really ripped off, didn't we?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Yep. Like it was just was really not fair, you know. Why, why, why do we deserve this?
TARA BROWN: Steven had lymph nodes removed from under his arm and radiation treatment, but it was too little too late, the cancer had spread.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I was very angry with the whole situation and I felt ... I felt I shouldn't, you know. I worked hard. I paid my taxes and this doesn't, I don't deserve this.
TARA BROWN: And you're such a young man?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Yeah, you know. The grief I have is grief for the family that I'm going to leave behind, people that rely on me or people that love me. I hope there's a lot of them out there. But it's something you never expect is going to happen.
RENEE MARCHMENT: That's the biggest thing I'm trying to deal with is the anger for, yeah, just to think that I used to lay on the beach, thinking oh, "how lovely and brown I'm going to get".
TARA BROWN: Despite her fair skin, 24-year-old Renee Marchment has always been a beachgoer.
RENEE MARCHMENT: I've always said a face without freckles is like a sky without stars, because I have so many of them.
TARA BROWN: So you've got the scar to show what you've been through so far?
It was when one of her so-called freckles or moles changed its shape late last year that her future became uncertain.
And why is it such a big scar for such a small freckle?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Yeah, well, because I guess to make sure they got it all.
TARA BROWN: A week later she got the pathology results from her doctor.
RENEE MARCHMENT: And it was just basically, "You need to ring your husband. This is not good. Yeah. Sorry."
TARA BROWN: No, 'you're okay'. I mean, how did you react at that time?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Oh, I was a mess. I was just, I was in shock because I just said to him, "I have a 10 week-old baby. What do you mean?" And he couldn't really tell me. He just said, "You need to ring your husband. This is serious." Because I was in there by myself and, yes, it's just very I'm 24. This can't be happening.
TARA BROWN: Surgeons found the melanoma had spread to Renee's lymph gland. Now she faces another operation. For Renee and her husband Mason, there's no hiding their fear.
RENEE MARCHMENT: Well, yeah, I am feeling positive about it. It's just very scary as to I think the extent of it, of, I guess, just thinking what my life will be like.
MASON MARCHMENT: Just hoping we don't find another tumour. If we, you know, we don't find another tumour, our chances are still fairly good.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: This is Australia's national cancer.
TARA BROWN: And melanoma specialist Dr Jonathan Stretch says the statistics are only going to get worse.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: I think there's a difference of enjoying activity out in the sun and wilfully just lying around and going down and deliberately baking. I mean, I think that's the thing that's perhaps the hardest to reconcile when you look at the consequences of it.
TARA BROWN: Today Dr Stretch and the team at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital will remove the lymph nodes from the left side of Renee's groin.
I just wonder how many people lying on a beach ever consider that this could be one of the results?
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: Probably not many.
TARA BROWN: It's a delicate one-and-a-half hour procedure to take out the gland and any cancer that may have spread there without damaging surrounding arteries and veins.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: And that's what all that surgery was about.
TARA BROWN: Wow. And the best news will be that the pathologist can't find anything in that specimen.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: Yeah, let's hope.
TARA BROWN: How soon will you be able to tell her?
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: It will take the pathologist about a week.
TARA BROWN: But for so many young Australians, ignorance is bliss. Six months ago, Ben Foley was one of them. Now he's back trying to save lives. Showing strangers his scars, Ben has no trouble getting the message across.
FRIEND: I mean, I know what can happen. But it's just, oh, I think I'm young and don't think I'm vulnerable because I'm young.
TARA BROWN: How old are you?
FRIEND: Sixteen.
TARA BROWN: How old were you, Ben, when you got diagnosed?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: When I was diagnosed, I was 16.
TARA BROWN: Incredibly, convincing Ben's closest mates is harder. They've watched him fight for his life. They're articulate and intelligent. They just not sun smart.
Are you wearing sunscreen?
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMSPON: We see so many people who are totally unaware of the risks they're taking by seeking to become the perfect bronzed Aussie.
Let's have a look at your back.
TARA BROWN: Professor John Thompson from the Sydney Melanoma Unit is Ben Foley's doctor. He agreed to meet Ben's friends and put their sun-exposed skin under the spotlight.
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: How often would you get sunburnt, do you think?
GIRL: In summer, probably weekly.
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: It's not so much getting a little bit of sun from time to time but actually getting sunburnt that does the damage.
TARA BROWN: Professor Thompson's ultraviolet light reveals these young beachgoers have prematurely aged skin and suspect moles.
And what does that mean in terms of their future prognosis the damage that you saw there under that blue light?
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: In five or 10 or 15 or 20 years they are at very high risk of developing skin cancers of all sorts, including melanoma, which is potentially fatal.
GIRL: I didn't think I'd have that much damage, but knowing that there is something, I am really genuinely scared for myself.
TARA BROWN: If you're still not convinced this is serious, then, as difficult as it is, meet John Oughton. Eighteen months ago, he had a small but suspect mole checked. Since then, the melanoma has multiplied so aggressively that 10 weeks ago his arm was amputated.
Were you a sungoer in your youth?
JOHN OUGHTON: Well, like everybody who lives in Sydney, I went out in the sun.
TARA BROWN: The tumours you see on John's chest and back are what most melanoma sufferers have inside their body as the cancer spreads, out of sight but just as deadly.
I think it's brave of you to sit here and show us what you're going through. Why are you doing it?
JOHN OUGHTON: If somebody can see this and realise the power of the sun, then it's done some good.
TARA BROWN: Now you don't have to answer this question, but what have doctors told you about your future?
JOHN OUGHTON: Basically I'm in it's up to me and my maker now. Medically and so forth there's no treatment that they've got at this stage that will stop it.
TARA BROWN: It's three weeks since Renee Marchment's operation. It's been an anxious time. She's still recovering, but more nerve wracking has been the wait for her results to see if the cancer has spread to see if, at 24, she has a future.
What have you been told in terms of your results?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Fifteen more lymph nodes were taken and they've all come back clear.
TARA BROWN: Yeah, so when you got that news...
RENEE MARCHMENT: Oh, ecstatic. Oh, I didn't know what to do. I started to cry, actually.
TARA BROWN: Are you completely in the clear now?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Not necessarily, no. There is still that chance that it's in my bloodstream and so we have to keep an eye out whether it shows up anywhere else.
TARA BROWN: For Steven Nielsen, his only chance lies in chemotherapy. But he's already planned a goodbye to his son.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I'm supposed to get myself organised and do a bit of a video diary and that sort of thing, record some things that I possibly won't get to say to him.
TARA BROWN: What sort of things do you think you might like to say?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Oh, that's why I haven't started yetm because I don't know where to start. The things I want say to him are just that, you know, I'm sorry I can't be there and that I hope that me not being there hasn't affected him too much. Sorry.
TARA BROWN: For most Australians, it's a rite of passage come summer, the long lazy days at the beach and sunburnt skin. It's the sun damage done when we're young that most often leads to melanoma later in life. This year 8000 Australians will get the bad news. One thousand of us will die. But what's alarming doctors even more is that amongst teenagers there's a growing trend to ignore the sun safety message. The real problem is they continue to get sunburnt. So many now refuse to wear a hat, refuse to wear sunscreen. Because of that, doctors predict that in five to 10 years we will face a health crisis. So many more of those sun happy teenagers will get melanoma. Younger and younger people will suffer needless and painful deaths.
BENJAMIN FOLEY: I thought that I'd never get cancer, that I was invincible from the sun.
TARA BROWN: That it couldn't happen to you?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: Yeah. That it wouldn't happen to me. It'd happen to somebody else, somebody older. I thought skin cancer only happened in older people. Turns out I was wrong, though.
TARA BROWN: Last year Benjamin Foley was diagnosed with melanoma. He was 16. His brutal scars map his surgery to remove the mole and his lymph glands. But the threat isn't over. Having had one melanoma, his risk of having another is at least four times greater.
Why do you think you got the cancer?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: Because I barely ever wore sunscreen.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I do remember getting burned quite a lot, you know. Sore shoulders, peeling skin on the back and that sort of thing and, you know, it was just a part of growing up.
TARA BROWN: These days the only beach Steven Nielsen visits is the local indoor swimming pool. Even here he wears a sun safe shirt and so does his eight-month-old son Lachlan, who won't be allowed to make the mistakes Steven made.
STEVEN NIELSEN: It's a really hard thing to be told you're going to die.
TARA BROWN: Steven knows the dangers of melanoma. At 28, he's near the end of his life.
STEVEN NIELSEN: At the moment, I've got tumours in the bone in my spine, two of them. I've also got a liver that's completely full of it and they've got evidence of one in my lung. And they're all basically inoperable.
TARA BROWN: Like any other Australian kid, Steven spent most summer afternoons in the backyard in the sun. He was 20 when first diagnosed with melanoma. Since then, he's had 13 moles removed. All tests showed he was clear and then in June last year Steven felt a lump under his arm. His wife Melanie knew it wasn't good.
MELANIE NIELSEN: We just felt really ripped off, didn't we?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Yep. Like it was just was really not fair, you know. Why, why, why do we deserve this?
TARA BROWN: Steven had lymph nodes removed from under his arm and radiation treatment, but it was too little too late, the cancer had spread.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I was very angry with the whole situation and I felt ... I felt I shouldn't, you know. I worked hard. I paid my taxes and this doesn't, I don't deserve this.
TARA BROWN: And you're such a young man?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Yeah, you know. The grief I have is grief for the family that I'm going to leave behind, people that rely on me or people that love me. I hope there's a lot of them out there. But it's something you never expect is going to happen.
RENEE MARCHMENT: That's the biggest thing I'm trying to deal with is the anger for, yeah, just to think that I used to lay on the beach, thinking oh, "how lovely and brown I'm going to get".
TARA BROWN: Despite her fair skin, 24-year-old Renee Marchment has always been a beachgoer.
RENEE MARCHMENT: I've always said a face without freckles is like a sky without stars, because I have so many of them.
TARA BROWN: So you've got the scar to show what you've been through so far?
It was when one of her so-called freckles or moles changed its shape late last year that her future became uncertain.
And why is it such a big scar for such a small freckle?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Yeah, well, because I guess to make sure they got it all.
TARA BROWN: A week later she got the pathology results from her doctor.
RENEE MARCHMENT: And it was just basically, "You need to ring your husband. This is not good. Yeah. Sorry."
TARA BROWN: No, 'you're okay'. I mean, how did you react at that time?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Oh, I was a mess. I was just, I was in shock because I just said to him, "I have a 10 week-old baby. What do you mean?" And he couldn't really tell me. He just said, "You need to ring your husband. This is serious." Because I was in there by myself and, yes, it's just very I'm 24. This can't be happening.
TARA BROWN: Surgeons found the melanoma had spread to Renee's lymph gland. Now she faces another operation. For Renee and her husband Mason, there's no hiding their fear.
RENEE MARCHMENT: Well, yeah, I am feeling positive about it. It's just very scary as to I think the extent of it, of, I guess, just thinking what my life will be like.
MASON MARCHMENT: Just hoping we don't find another tumour. If we, you know, we don't find another tumour, our chances are still fairly good.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: This is Australia's national cancer.
TARA BROWN: And melanoma specialist Dr Jonathan Stretch says the statistics are only going to get worse.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: I think there's a difference of enjoying activity out in the sun and wilfully just lying around and going down and deliberately baking. I mean, I think that's the thing that's perhaps the hardest to reconcile when you look at the consequences of it.
TARA BROWN: Today Dr Stretch and the team at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital will remove the lymph nodes from the left side of Renee's groin.
I just wonder how many people lying on a beach ever consider that this could be one of the results?
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: Probably not many.
TARA BROWN: It's a delicate one-and-a-half hour procedure to take out the gland and any cancer that may have spread there without damaging surrounding arteries and veins.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: And that's what all that surgery was about.
TARA BROWN: Wow. And the best news will be that the pathologist can't find anything in that specimen.
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: Yeah, let's hope.
TARA BROWN: How soon will you be able to tell her?
DR JONATHAN STRETCH: It will take the pathologist about a week.
TARA BROWN: But for so many young Australians, ignorance is bliss. Six months ago, Ben Foley was one of them. Now he's back trying to save lives. Showing strangers his scars, Ben has no trouble getting the message across.
FRIEND: I mean, I know what can happen. But it's just, oh, I think I'm young and don't think I'm vulnerable because I'm young.
TARA BROWN: How old are you?
FRIEND: Sixteen.
TARA BROWN: How old were you, Ben, when you got diagnosed?
BENJAMIN FOLEY: When I was diagnosed, I was 16.
TARA BROWN: Incredibly, convincing Ben's closest mates is harder. They've watched him fight for his life. They're articulate and intelligent. They just not sun smart.
Are you wearing sunscreen?
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMSPON: We see so many people who are totally unaware of the risks they're taking by seeking to become the perfect bronzed Aussie.
Let's have a look at your back.
TARA BROWN: Professor John Thompson from the Sydney Melanoma Unit is Ben Foley's doctor. He agreed to meet Ben's friends and put their sun-exposed skin under the spotlight.
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: How often would you get sunburnt, do you think?
GIRL: In summer, probably weekly.
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: It's not so much getting a little bit of sun from time to time but actually getting sunburnt that does the damage.
TARA BROWN: Professor Thompson's ultraviolet light reveals these young beachgoers have prematurely aged skin and suspect moles.
And what does that mean in terms of their future prognosis the damage that you saw there under that blue light?
PROFESSOR JOHN THOMPSON: In five or 10 or 15 or 20 years they are at very high risk of developing skin cancers of all sorts, including melanoma, which is potentially fatal.
GIRL: I didn't think I'd have that much damage, but knowing that there is something, I am really genuinely scared for myself.
TARA BROWN: If you're still not convinced this is serious, then, as difficult as it is, meet John Oughton. Eighteen months ago, he had a small but suspect mole checked. Since then, the melanoma has multiplied so aggressively that 10 weeks ago his arm was amputated.
Were you a sungoer in your youth?
JOHN OUGHTON: Well, like everybody who lives in Sydney, I went out in the sun.
TARA BROWN: The tumours you see on John's chest and back are what most melanoma sufferers have inside their body as the cancer spreads, out of sight but just as deadly.
I think it's brave of you to sit here and show us what you're going through. Why are you doing it?
JOHN OUGHTON: If somebody can see this and realise the power of the sun, then it's done some good.
TARA BROWN: Now you don't have to answer this question, but what have doctors told you about your future?
JOHN OUGHTON: Basically I'm in it's up to me and my maker now. Medically and so forth there's no treatment that they've got at this stage that will stop it.
TARA BROWN: It's three weeks since Renee Marchment's operation. It's been an anxious time. She's still recovering, but more nerve wracking has been the wait for her results to see if the cancer has spread to see if, at 24, she has a future.
What have you been told in terms of your results?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Fifteen more lymph nodes were taken and they've all come back clear.
TARA BROWN: Yeah, so when you got that news...
RENEE MARCHMENT: Oh, ecstatic. Oh, I didn't know what to do. I started to cry, actually.
TARA BROWN: Are you completely in the clear now?
RENEE MARCHMENT: Not necessarily, no. There is still that chance that it's in my bloodstream and so we have to keep an eye out whether it shows up anywhere else.
TARA BROWN: For Steven Nielsen, his only chance lies in chemotherapy. But he's already planned a goodbye to his son.
STEVEN NIELSEN: I'm supposed to get myself organised and do a bit of a video diary and that sort of thing, record some things that I possibly won't get to say to him.
TARA BROWN: What sort of things do you think you might like to say?
STEVEN NIELSEN: Oh, that's why I haven't started yetm because I don't know where to start. The things I want say to him are just that, you know, I'm sorry I can't be there and that I hope that me not being there hasn't affected him too much. Sorry.