People's attitude to protecting themselves from skin damage and cancer though is nothing like back in the 1970s and '80s.

Take a look at one-day cricket internationals from those days and most of the (drunken) blokes in the stands are shirtless, and if they've got a hat it's odd-on they've donned a terry towelling number.

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It was a time when the prevailing view was that to have a suntan was to be healthy.

If you didn't have skin that even turned slightly, you risked being on the outer, most especially among young people.

The message about the risks taken within the context of the health consequences began to spread in the years that followed.

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It's to the stage where hats are required parts of many - though not all - school uniforms during first and fourth terms when the UV index is at its highest.

People generally try to keep out of the sun in the middle of the day, too, something that has become a habit in our different way of life on the driest, hottest continent on Earth.

But despite the substantial improvement from when to be golden brown and, more pointedly, red-skinned and flaky was the expectation, the sun-safe messaging remains just as important as ever.

That's borne-out by the most barest of statistics.

For one, skin cancer is still the most common cancer diagnosed in Australia, which has the dubious distinction of recording the highest incidence of melanoma in the world.

And then there's the fact that two in every three Australians are expected to be diagnosed with skin cancer by the age of 70.

What is especially important to realise is that a skin cancer isn't just some tiny lesion that your GP can, under a local anaesthetic, slice away for it to never again be a problem.

That's because so many people die of the disease due to how easily such a cancer can spread to other parts of the body.

It truly is a frighteningly life-shortening illness if you are in that category of "don't really think about it, don't really care".

Our skin-cancer risk is not about to go away, so vigilance and common sense must always hold sway.