Five minutes from the beach

Photo: Elise Hassey

Whether you swim, surf or just flop about, Bondi is one of the best beaches in the world. Framed by rocky headlands, its crescent of pale sand and rolling waves is magnetic, with the ocean stretching like a giant infinity pool to an ever-changing sky.

Bondi has been especially agreeable of late because of the lack of tourists. In the calm you notice simple family things, such as swings hanging from trees in backyards.

Pre-COVID, Sydney attracted about 16 million visitors a year with Bondi in the top 10 attractions. Add to that the usual suburban day-trippers and it's not surprising the 20,000 actual residents in the beach and North Bondi area feel invaded.

I landed here in the late 1970s. It was still a working-class suburb, a bit louche after dark and rents were cheap. Eating options were limited but funsters in the know could buy hashish with their Bankcard at a dimly lit Tiki bar on the strip. 

Bondi has form when it comes to illicit entertainments, but it's dirtiest little secret emerged during the 1980s. An unsavoury brown sludge floating beyond the shore break made it clear the sewerage treatment plant built in 1960 wasn't coping. We were swimming in waste.

Response to community outrage, aided by a star-studded Turn Back the Tide concert that drew more than 200,000 supporters, saw a deep ocean outfall completed in the early 90s. Water quality improved and Bondi became even more popular.

Today, Bondi is just as expensive as everywhere else in Sydney. Developers clip together pre-fab panels and pump them full of concrete to knock up boxy apartments with all the panache of a Soviet research institute. 

But other new buildings are more convincing and there are still charming original bungalows and blocks of flats, notably with Art Deco styling. It's an architectural jumble, particularly on Campbell Parade where the heritage-listed Bondi Hotel presides like a wacky brown wedding-cake. The real achievement is that we haven't turned into a high-rise Surfers Paradise.   

Local clubs have traditionally been unpretentious and blokey. It wasn't until 1996 that women were allowed to join the Icebergs winter swimmers. In the old ramshackle social facilities, replaced in 2002, much of the space was the defended preserve of long-time male members. 

Attitudes and amenities have evolved and the streets are friendlier. As for the so-called hipsters? Well, we were probably just as irritating at that age, though at least we didn't have man buns. Fortunately, they can make a decent coffee.

Bondi remains pleasantly daggy, cheerfully casual. But living here is about the beach. If your toes are in the water, or you're staring out to sea, there's no better place to be.