Bondi to Bronte Clifftop Trail

Bondi to Bronte Clifftop Trail

October 28 2008

Today I decided to explore the beaches on the east side of Sydney. Luckily for the locals the famous Bondi beach is only approximately a 20min bus/subway ride outside of the core of Sydney.

It’s a cloudy gloomy day with threats of rain, but I’m not going to complain. Most of Australia is in a drought and really need the water. Luckily for me though I didn’t get rained on. It was around 25 degrees without any humidity and sun, so it was a comfortable day to explore the coast. I decided to do the Bondi to Bronte Clifftop Trail walk that was advertised in my Sydney tourist book. It’s a 4km walk and the suggested time it takes is 2hr and 45min. It took me 3 hours because I went a little photo crazy ;)

I arrived at the north end of Bondi beach and made my way to the Bondi Beach Golf club, which is where I was supposed to see some Aboriginal rock engravings. Instead all that I saw were beautiful cliffs, a nice golf course and swarms of flies. The flies were crazy and the would try to land on my face, try to go up my nose, they were relentless! But I wasn’t surprised to encounter them. I had read about how bad the flies can get from Bill Bryson’s experience in “A Sunburnt Country”. My experience was nearly the same as his. Until one point when I was finished taking photos of the cliffs and tired of swatting at flies and I decided to make my way down to Bondi’s beach. I had been walking for about 5 minutes and realized that there were not any flies around me. I was so excited and had arrived at the north end of the beach, so I decided to take my camera out of my backpack. As I reached for the zipper on my bag I realized that around 20 of those stupid flies were sitting and waiting on my backpack! Gah! I felt better when I reached the main Bondi shopping strip and saw that nearly everyone else was being plagued by the pesky flies.

After stopping to get a bite to eat in Bondi I continued my walk, down past the Bondi Icebergs, which is a restaurant and pool area where you can swim right beside the ocean. From there I stepped onto the cliff path at the end of Notts Ave where the ocean crashes against the sandstone cliffs. I was lucky to see the “Sculptures By The Sea” exhibit that takes place between october and november. There were lots of interesting sculptures. Some of them were in your face and hard to miss and some of them were so subtle that many people just walked right past. I spent a good chunk of time there taking photos of both the art and the environment.

I continued my walk through the cute and secluded feeling Tamarama beach. The beach and park area was littered with giant sculptures. Everything from a trail of farm animal looking sculptures walking towards the water, to a giant red, blue and yellow motorcycle in the park area.  It was a nice beach and park area with a bunch of locals braving the cloudy and rain threatening skies and hitting the waves on their surfboards.

I concluded my walk at Bronte Beach.  It was a nothing special type of place.  Certainly not as nice looking as Tamarama or Bondi, but a fairly large beach.  From here I caught the bus back to the subway which was about a 20 minute ride.

I arrived back at my hotel around 5pm, just in time to take a quick shower and meet my friend Linda for some drinks and a bite to eat.  I haven’t seen Linda in 4 years and it was great fun to catch up with her.  She  was super kind and drove me around the Sydney burbs so I could see what life outside of the city center was like.  We crossed the bridge to Many beach, we ate at a nice little rest in italian town, had drinks looking at the harbour bridge.  It was a nice night.

Tomorrow is my last day in Australis and I’m off to see the Blue Mountains.

– Bonnie