An Insider’s View of Bondi by Daniel Scott

6.30am on a spring morning and I pull back the duvet in my North Bondi flat. Quickly, I throw on my running gear and am out of the door before my body can protest too loudly.

Outside the dark of night is tinged with a milky grey. My breath billows in the chill air like steam from a kettle. In a minute, I am onto the coast road and following its curl as it descends toward probably the most famous beach in the world.

I pound the pavement toward it and when I turn a corner above the North Bondi shops get my first full view of the elongated “c”-shape kilometre of sand. In the half-light it is dull and beige - hardly the stuff of postcards – but by the end of my run, much of it will be gleaming yellow in the early morning sun.

I reach the beach and pad along the edge of the surf on the hard, wet sand. There are no more than a handful of souls in the whole vicinity. A young couple is waking in a tangle of bodies. A few brave swimmers are wading hardily into the Pacific Ocean. The first and most dedicated of the pre-work surfers is paddling out through the white-crested waves.

It’s at times like these that I feel that Bondi belongs to me, and such moments remind me why I made the seaside suburb home ever since immigrating from London many years ago. Having grown up nearly a hundred kilometres from the sea, it’s still a thrill to be twenty minutes away from the centre of one of the world’s most desirable cities and have this glorious patch of golden sand right on my doorstep.

Granted, it is not always like this. Take a sunny Sunday afternoon in the summer, for instance. Then, the whole of Sydney and much of the rest of the world seems to descend on Bondi. It’s a carnival of skin and color on days like that and probably best avoided if you like your space. Row upon irregular row of bodies lie glistening on the beach – upwards of ten thousand of them sometimes. Gaggles of fair-skinned English and Irish backpackers – getting over Saturday night - practice sun-insanity in the strong Southern Hemisphere sun. Lifesavers in yellow and red keep a watchful eye on the bubbling surf. Virtually naked would-be models stretch out on designer towels. Muscle men jog in the soft sand at the back of the beach in skimpy speedos.

On the boardwalk, rollerbladers weave at speed through the crowds, over-clad tour-groups click their cameras and cackle, old boys with skin like shrivelled brazil nuts take it all in from their grandstand seats. On the grass behind the beach families munch on fish and chips, chasing off the chubby seagulls. Behind that, the curve of Campbell Parade has been occupied over by the massed ranks of a colorful international army. Nearly all the tables outside Bondi’s many cafes are taken, the sidewalk is teeming with ice-cream-wielding children and young male Westies – as the youths of the western Sydney are irreverently nicknamed by us Eastern-suburb types – rev the engines of their souped-up jalopies in the hope of impressing the chicks. As the sun wanes – and the families head home – the focus turns to the terrace of the Bondi Hotel, where the happily-roasted toast the day with cold beer before heading inside for endless games of pool and eventually, to celebrate some more on a heaving dance-floor.

Yup, summer afternoons in Bondi are as different from those quiet, solitary dawns as it is possible to get. But, even as a die-hard resident, I don’t resent these temporary invasions. In fact, as often as not, I’ll be down there among the hordes, revelling in the fact that people from all types of ethnic and economic backgrounds have come to my suburb to enjoy themselves. Of course, since Bondi spells “holiday” to many, it can be a difficult place to live and, above all, to work, especially on a cloudless summer’s day. But you need only step a few streets away from the beach for the cacophony to subside and for peace to be restored.

Bondi is relatively glitzy these days. But it hasn’t always been that way. In the 1940s it was as working class a suburb as any in Sydney. Nor, in spite of the beach and the ocean, has it ever been an especially attractive neighbourhood – one-eyed developers and architects saw to that by throwing up hundreds of breezeblock and brown-brick nightmares in the 60s and 70s. But over the last few years it has become one of Sydney’s most “in” suburbs, with house prices and rents rising at mercurial rates. What was, until recently, chiefly a haven for Kiwis, Brits on working holidays, and long-term post-war settlers, is now all the rage with those who dabble in real estate. Even the phenomenally-wealthy Packer dynasty – in the form of young James and his model-wife Jodie – is represented here, with a pad right in the thick of the action on Campbell Parade.

If Bondi has more than its fair share of Sydney’s rich, successful and beautiful people then it is also seriously over-endowed with aspirant creative types. Spend a few weekday hours hanging out in the local cafes and you’ll find every second person in deep conversation about their next casting/exhibition/filmscript (and that’s just the waiters and waitresses). You can’t blame them, when you’re struggling to make it life seems easier by the beach and, after all, the surf is free. Just ask any of the surfers, out there in all weathers, like permanent black dots drifting on the Bondi landscape, awaiting that big wave which will make their spirits soar.

At weekends, Bondi people tend to go out for at least one lingering breakfast and everybody has their favorite beachside café. Wherever we find ourselves the recipe always includes ploughing through the newspapers and a couple of cups of good, strong coffee. On Sundays, we’ll often also take in the market outside Bondi public school and if we are feeling energetic, we’ll set off on the scenic walk along the coast to Bronte and Coogee. If you pause on the clifftops along the walk here, it is easy to imagine what this area must have looked like to the First Fleet.

At night Bondi’s eateries can be even busier than during the day. Being a creature of habit I keep returning to two or three: to Nina’s Ploy Thai (on the corner of Wairoa Avenue) for some of Sydney’s most consistently delicious and reasonable Thai food; to Gelbison on Lamrock Avenue for family-style Italian, and to Ravesis for special occasions, when the balcony overlooking Campbell Parade comes into its own.

But as much as I love to dip into the hubbub of Bondi, the best thing about living here is those times when I feel I have it to myself. Such as when I amble home, on a warm night, along the now near-deserted beach. Or, later, when I am lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves of the Pacific crashing on the sand.

At times like these Bondi isn’t just one of the world’s most renowned beaches, it’s home.