Bondi Beach

Ok, I am in Australia right now… cannot miss a beautiful “pop” experience, going to the Continent’s most popular beach!
Bondi Beach – everyone – at least in Italy – spells it wrong: you have to spell “Bondai Beach”! – is just 7 km from Sydney (see previous post), you get there with an easy 333-bus race (see here for details and route). “You will find a lot of Italians there!”, people warned me. I have to tell you: it’s true, but… most of the Italians I have found there were dead! (suspence here… you will understand at the end of the story)

The name Bondi, that sounds so “fashionable”, actually comes from an ancient Aboriginal word, meaning “the sound of breaking waves”. Maybe less trendy but much more poetic.
The beach is a stunning 1km-stretch of white & fine sand, closed between two rocky promontories, popular for surfing. After a lot of selfies, I see a funny scene: a group of “vintage” ladies stalk an handsome curly surfist, and force him to take a pic with them. 🙂 What should they have told to their husbands after… who knows!. I am not here to waste my time btw, so I prepare my reflex and try my new long-focus lens to take pics of the surfers

On the northern side of the beach – on a danger scale for surfers from 1 to 10 this area is 4 – you find the trainees, on the southern side, marked 7, the expert guys. In addition to surfing, Bondi is popular for its scandalous swimwear: between 1935 and 1961 the City issued an ordinance to ensure a “decency code”. It was very strict, with even inspections and fines. Now of course Bondi is completely free and you can see everything from chador to topless…

The Coastal Walk

From Bondi I start the Coastal Walk. This is a beautiful 6-km path, overhanging the ocean, that carries you from Bondi to Cogee, another beautiful sandy shore. During the walk, other beaches – such as Tamarama Beach and Bronte – and breathtaking cliffs. You see only relaxed smiles around here: people walking, running, jogging, carrying the dog for a walk and sitting on the benches, staring at the amazing ocean. Actually, I found a kind of sadness on the faces of some Asians (no blacks here): being an immigrant in Australia must not be very easy, considering the Australian model “No Way“, so praised also by our Italy’s right-wing. In the event of migrants’ ships interception, in fact, people are actually imprisoned on Nauru and Manus, two islands in the middle of the Pacific.

And people resting in the nearby Waverley cemetery, halfway through the Coastal Walk, what should think about that? Here you find dozens of Abbruizzese, Barone, Bertuccio, Lo Schiavo, side by side with the Callaghan’s from Cork County. All of them came to Australia to seek for a better living for their Anita and their Tony, who, maybe, do not even know that on those rocks waves are breaking, but also their own possibility of existing risked to break forever…