Bondi Beach

I’m back in Sydney and have almost completed my great loop of eastern Australia. It’s been a fantastic trip so far and I’m looking forward to the rest of it. I haven’t quite gone all the way around seeing as I’m just outside of Central Sydney at Bondi Beach. I’m curious to get back to Manly and downtown Sydney to see what it’s like. I’ve been to a couple places on the trip more than once but this will be the longest time in between visits for any of those places. I spent the first week of my trip in a backpackers in Manly and while I’m definitely not going back to that hostel, I’d like to visit Manly and see how it feels to come back to something familiar.

Already I’ve hit the oceanside paths for a good run in the breeze. The first point I came to heaps of people were snapping off shots of something in the water. Curious, I thought, there’s nothing there. Just then 2 whales breached right in the bay. They aren’t the first whales I’ve seen on the trip but definitely the closest. They came to the surface 2 more times before dropping out of sight.

After only climbing up and down a million stairs the day before I figured I’d be in fine form for a good long run. I managed 11k before the lead weights at the end of my legs slowed to a crawl and I knew it was time to call it quits for the day.

Enjoying a relaxing day near the beach was in order for the next day, perusing through a New Zealand guide book picked up at the hostel book exchange. Note for traveller’s frequenting hostels, check out the book exchanges for guide books and interesting things to read. A lot of the time it’s some German romantic novels but you might get lucky.

The next day I headed out for another run aiming only to do small trip around the close headlands. Apparently small now means 20k. I made it all the way out to South Head and could see North Head and right into Sydney. It was fun to see North Head from the other side. When I first got the car back in May, North Head was the first place I went to get a good view of the city. It was windy as all hell that day for the walk around the cliffs. The weather was a little nicer this time.

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Lennox head is a little surf town 10 meters away from the water 20 minutes south of Byron Bay. I stayed at a friends here, which is the only reason I had heard of the place. It’s known for little else than the good surf and another place to stay that’s close to Byron.

It sits right on 7 mile beach which is a gorgeous pile of sand. At the south end is a headland which frequently launches hang-gliders over the water, floating around for 25 minutes or more in the warm air. Gromfest was on while I was there so we watched a bit of the surfing. Groms or Grommets are little surfers so the competition was all kids under 18.

I had the pleasure of running a few kilometers across the wet sand while the sun was going down and there is no better place to relax and catch your breath.

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Surfers is a beautiful city from the outside but I’ve heard unless you want to drink or shop there isn’t much to do. There is of course the incredible beach to sit on. A lot of the beach has been washed into the water recently though with the storms that came through. The water now buts up against a small sand cliff for most of the beach during high tide and is not the gentle slope from the streets that it once was. My fondest memories of the city are actually the views from further down the coast looking north at the skyscrapers in the afternoon sun. I didn’t spend too much time there but it was very pretty while I was!

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