Beach Culture - March 22

We took a bus to Bondi Beach to do the Bondi to Bronte Coastal Walk. This is touted as one of the best short walks in Australia. I think the praise is deserved.

This is Bondi Beach. Bon-dye, not Bon-dee. About as perfect as a beach can get. Well, perfect for surfers. The waves are a little rough for the rest of us. On a hot summer's day, this beach might be visited by 35,000 people. OMG!

The walk starts at the end of the beach and follows the shoreline. The first interesting thing is this pair of swimming pools. Waves are crashing over the large pool all the time. The extra water just comes out at the end.

Surf lifesaving is a big thing here. There are surf lifesaving clubs everywhere. One of the oldest is at Bondi Beach. (We saw a big surf life saving competition when we were in Tauranga, New Zealand.) Apparently people are often washed away in big waves and need rescuing. On one day in 1938 over 250 people were rescued after three huge waves swamped the beach and pulled swimmers out to sea.

In addition to the beautiful waves and water, there are many interesting and beautiful sandstone formations.

At Bronte Beach we turned around and headed back to Bondi. It was about 1.5 miles each way. We had lunch at a sidewalk cafe called Lamrock's at Bondi Beach.

Beach culture is a big thing , too. There are sunbathers, swimmers and surfers. There are dudes wh just drive their pickups (with roll bars and all that stuff) up and down the road parallel to the beach. There are retired guys who sit at sidewalk cafes and eat lunch or just drink coffee. There are skateboarders.

I always thought beach culture originated in Southern California. Maybe it came from Australia.

In the evening we returned to the Opera House to see a play called Arcadia, written by Tom Stoppard. It is hard to describe, and even hard to say whether I liked it. I think I probably liked it. It was quite cerebral and you had to really work hard to follow it, what with the accents, and the 

so-so acoustics, and the rapid-fire dialogue, and the complex ideas. Also, you had to pay $10 extra to get the program, and we didn't, so maybe we missed some important background information. 

One of the themes had to do with physics. Philosophy was another theme. It was also about how people interpret, and misinterpret, facts. And it was about determinism and inevitability and triviality. Stories from two different time periods were woven together in an interesting way.

The view from the Opera House at dusk