For the five or six months I spend each year in Sydney, I’m happily lodged in a small but unbelievably well located flat (Americans would say apartment), right across the road from Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous strip of sand. Bondi is only a kilometer or so long, but it’s a magnet that attracts both an intensely loyal bunch of locals and a wide-eyed and never-ending stream of tourists, eager to know what the fuss is all about. It’s impossible to take a walk along Bondi without seeing something that will instantly strike you as new or beautiful or weird or crazy or talented or … well, you get the picture. Here’s a snapshot of some things I noticed during my most recent visit …
Surf Culture
OK, surf culture is kind of obvious at Bondi, but the depth of it is unreal, with many sub-genres in existence. Here’s three you might not notice unless you look for them:
1. The recently minted tourist surfer
They’ve done three lessons with “Let’s Go Surfing” and bought their own board. Unfortunately the lessons were mostly in two-foot waves, and the new board has a sharp, pointy nose. So, imagine being out there on a five-foot wave with one, no—let’s say six!—of these guys, they’ve all been out drinking the night before, they’re slightly aggressive at the best of times anyway, and they weren’t paying attention during the lesson on “sharing the waves.” You get the picture, right?
2. The clubbie
Mostly seen in the early mornings—before 7:30 a.m., say—or anytime at all on a Sunday morning, when the Surf Lifesaving Clubs literally take over the beach. Look out for well-tanned blokes in little red Speedos running down to the water with a surf ski under their arm, then disappearing for an hour as they paddle around to Bronte. On Sundays there’s all sorts of organized competitions or training, and on certain weekends clubs from other beaches visit Bondi for a full-on carnival. Expect beer consumption to peak later in the day. If you’re wondering why the clubbie is an important species, hang around at the beach long enough for a freak wave event and see what happens when two hundred tourists get washed out to sea. Very few people drown at Bondi; clubbies are the reason why.
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