Bondi beach (eastern beach coastal walk)

Bondi beach
Originally uploaded by timbo262

On the weekend Mel and I wanted something fun and free to do, having purchased a 'Coastal Walks of Sydney' book a while back (getting old aren’t we!) we decided to head for Bondi to do the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk which takes around 2 hours. On a typical Sydney winters day (fine, sunny and 20 degrees) there were plenty of surfers out and it brought back memories of South Beach in Wanganui, NZ where I grew up – it was a ‘those were the days’ moment to watch them catching waves and wiping out, I may look at getting a surf board in the near future but will concentrate on the camera, guitar and my soon-to-arrive body board for the time being.

Lunch for me was fish and chips (well we're by the seaside) then we began the walk from the southern end of Bondi beach near the Bondi Icebergs Club (which opened in 1929 and requires full members to swim 3 out of 4 Sundays for 5 years!). Of course the walk is memorable mainly for the stunning scenery of the eastern coast but little bits of history like an old cemetery along the way make it all the more interesting - Australia is truly blessed with some of the best coast line you'll ever see and when the sky is so blue and so many people are out and about enjoying the lifestyle a weekend in Sydney often seems more like a holiday away from home.

We rewarded ourselves with coffee and smoothies on the Coogee water front – still plenty warm enough in the afternoon for kids to be playing on the beach in the sand. We then headed back to Balmain so I could catch the NZ v SA rugby test with friends in our local The London Hotel (we live 160 paces from it, I counted!) – NZ lost that one in the dying minutes having beaten SA convincingly last weekend. Looks like the tri-nations is to be a close fought competition this year which makes it all the more exciting Aussie are yet to kick their campaign off and do so against SA this weekend! Mel and I have tickets to the NZ v Aus match in Sydney on 26th July - cant wait for my first live test back in the southern hemisphere!

Cheers
Tim