It’s not yet 7am and Bondi already looks like the most contrived tourism ad ever filmed. With the backpackers still in bed, the locals have the beach to themselves, and they dress for the occasion. Girls in Lycra perform sun salutations on the sand. Designer-clad joggers pause for selfies on the steps. Old men on short boards ride the big waves at the north end, while on the south side Icebergs — Bondi’s photogenic outdoor pool — has been open to serious swimmers since 6am. All of the above, I imagine, will be at work before nine; all living the Australian dream.
I’ve come to Bondi to walk the 14 miles south to Botany Bay, and I’m not sad to be leaving. It’s a beautiful beach full of beautiful people — much changed from when the only inhabitant was Sydney hangman Nosey Bob (it’s an Aussie joke: his nose had been kicked off by a horse) — but the hum is getting to me.
Terry is fishing for bream off the ledges at MacKenzies Point. He’s at least 80, whip thin, and wearing nothing but a bucket hat and a dangerously skimpy pair of shorts. He knows about the hum but has never heard it. “They say only four per cent of people can hear it,” he says, casting into the white water. “And no one knows the cause. I worked with a bloke once who swore it sounded like approaching bombers.”
I agree that it sounds like distant engines, but coming from the ground. “Chinese tunnellers, mate,” says Terry, nodding. “No one will believe you until it’s too late.”
I walk on through a cloudless morning of sunshine, a blossom-scented breeze and the ceaseless thump and sigh of the Tasman Sea on the Australian shore. I drop down into Tamarama Bay, once known as Glamarama for all the posing that went on here, a marked change from the 1880s when it was a rural dairy farm. By 1906, the beach had become a pleasure park with an elephant called Alice providing rides along the sands. Now it’s an Aussie interpretation of the Côte d’Azur, overlooked by £4 million beach houses.
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I prefer Bronte beach, just over the headland. It’s a wave-catcher like Bondi, with a shady park in the gully behind that’s full of schoolkids being told by a teacher to be nice to each other. Dead centre of the beach is the Bronte Surf Life Saving Club, established in 1903 to counter the killer rip known as the Bronte Express and the oldest in Australia. The swell is thumping as I cross the sands, but at the far end there’s a sea of tranquillity called the Bogey Hole — a tidal pool enclosed by rocks — and just beyond, the man-made Bronte Baths, where an influencer in a teeny bikini is being told by muscular, rubber-capped swimmers to “sod off to Bondi, love”.
From here the path skirts the seaward edge of Waverley Cemetery. “Limited burial options available” says a notice, hinting at eternal sea views alongside notable Aussies such as the poet Dorothea Mackellar, the cricketer Jack Fingleton and Nosey Bob himself.
Next stop is Clovelly, the weirdest of Sydney’s beaches: a fjord-like inlet with a reef across its mouth and concrete sunbathing terraces that make it look like a submarine pen. It’s not pretty, but since the rocks on the north side are known as Shark Point, I can understand the attraction of any flat water beyond the reach of the predators.
I stop for an iced coffee at a café called Seasalt. Two septuagenarian ladies in tennis whites are smoking cigarettes and discussing an acquaintance.
“That dress!” exclaims one.
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“I know!” says the other. “She hasn’t got the legs for it.”
“Never did,” says the first.
I scramble around Gordon’s Bay — an underwater sculpture park but no beach — and down onto Coogee, a 500-yard curve of steep sand that’s being massaged by neatly spaced curves of gentle surf. Behind the beach, a busy town centre, where I collide with a girl carrying a surfboard out of a pharmacy. She works there, she explains, and is just popping out for her regular lunch-break surf. Do think of her next time you’re queueing at Pret.
Following local tradition, I buy fish and chips from Costi’s on Coogee Bay Road and eat lunch on the sand, falling in love with a suburb that’s in love with its beach. There’s a young mum in a wetsuit with a board and buggy, her ancient grandmother, dressed all in black, brought along to keep an eye on the baby while she catches a wave or two. A man in a business suit strips off for a dip and a couple of teenage goths sit in silence, holding hands and staring at the surf.
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The beach seems little changed since artists Charles Conder and Tom Roberts painted the scene in 1888. Conder’s Coogee Bay, in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, is considered an Australian classic. Roberts’s Holiday Sketch at Coogee — in Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales — is better.
I push on as the heat rises along cliffs of terraced sandstone to catch the show at Maroubra. From the northern end you can see behind the waves as they arrive from the direction of New Zealand, 1,300 miles to the east. From here the waves look like corrugated iron. The distant surfers paddle into the take-off with ease to carve scratches on the faces of the wave like keys dragged along a car.
I’m tempted to join them but I’m on a mission. Malabar beach seems like a bit of a secret: a deep inlet lapping a crescent of sand. It’s empty but for the anglers and flat enough for a swim, but I’m put off when one of the fishermen tells me the fish come to Malabar for the sewage.
So I keep walking, around Little Bay beach, past the wreck of the SS Minmi, broken on the rocks in 1937, into the shelter of Botany Bay. Just across the water is Kurnell, where Cook landed on April 30, 1770. It’s close to where you’ll land too: look out of the starboard window on your final approach into Sydney, just to the right of the big pier — that’s where he came ashore. I can almost see the spot from Little Congwong beach, a wild and rocky spot hidden at the edge of La Perouse’s woods. But for the jets, it offers a view of Australia almost unchanged since Endeavour dropped anchor.
Within minutes, though, I’ve reached Yarra Bay beach and fast-forwarded 252 years. The bulk tanks, cranes and stacked containers of Port Botany fill the skyline and I’ve reached the trail’s end. It’s a little thing, this walk, in the panoply of Antipodean attractions, but if you want to understand Australia’s relationship with the beach, grab a hat and give it a go. And don’t believe what the bus drivers tell you.
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“Some bloody navigator Cook was, landing down here,” scoffs mine, straight-faced, as I board the 309 for the ride back to the tourist zone. “If he’d taken the second left instead of the first he could have dropped anchor at the Opera House.”
Chris Haslam was a guest of Tourism Australia (australia.com). Fourteen nights’ room-only from £1,865pp, including some meals, with time in Sydney, Uluru, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef (trailfinders.com). Fly to Sydney
