Did you know that Bondi Beach was once owned by one family? Or that Waverley Park was a farm? Or that Tamarama once hosted an artists’ colony?
Explore Waverley’s latest cultural heritage walk over 4km from Bondi Junction train station to Bondi Beach to reveal the area’s hidden history.
Look out for the blue dots and scan the QR codes on your journey of discovery.
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You’ve arrived at Bondi Junction Railway Station and Bus Interchange, which opened in 1979 after 100 years on the drawing board. Built on the lands of the Bidjigal, Birrabirragal and Gadigal people who traditionally occupied the Sydney Coast, today the rail line symbolises the mid- late 20th century phase of growth at Bondi Junction, gateway to the world-famous Bondi Beach.
1914 – the early Bradfield engineering scheme for electric railways across Sydney’s growing suburbs, including a station at Waverley. Image: State Library of NSW In the 1910s, a rail line to the Eastern Suburbs was included in Sydney transport plans by engineer John Bradfield, who oversaw the design and construction of the Harbour Bridge. Work on the line began in 1969 and was highly contentious due to the time it took and the compulsory acquisitions and demolition of buildings along the route. The rail line opened the area to greater development, and marked the beginning of multi-storey building construction for commercial, offices and residential space. These buildings are now the dominant feature of the skyline.
Exit the train station onto Oxford Street pedestrian mall, one of the earliest roads in colonial NSW. It was built along an ancient Aboriginal track and was noted in maps in 1803, little more than a decade after the First Fleet of convicts and colonisers sailed into Sydney Cove (today’s Circular Quay) in 1788. It was not until 1811 that the road was officially upgraded for vehicular traffic. First called the South Head Road, then Old South Head Road, it later became Oxford Street and remains historically significant as the focus for early road-side settlement of Sydney’s eastern suburbs and as the route for the famous Bondi Tram from 1881.
Circa 1860s – early view across a landscape of eastern suburbs banksia scrub in the watercolour Bondi Bay, painted by George Kilgour Ingelow. Image: State Library of NSW Indigenous history is represented in the Oxford Street Mall artwork, titled Murul, Sand, Dust and Dry Earth by Thylacine. It is a series of sculptural elements and path inserts embossed on tram tracks, reflecting early Indigenous interaction. The tram line carries the exchange of language between a young Aboriginal woman, Patyegarang, and the colony’s first Western astronomer William Dawes, detailed in his notebooks not found until the 1990s. His hut, near today’s Harbour Bridge south pylon, was a meeting place for Aboriginal people and early colonists. Patyegarang and Dawes exchanged language, humour, intellectual discussion, and respect. In the tram tracks are his translations of words and phrases taught to him across the two languages, which became the first written record of one of the many Australian Indigenous languages. Patyegarang also learned to speak and read English from Dawes. His research was recognised by his contemporaries as unequalled. The notebooks also provide insight into the personalities of some of the Aboriginal people who were among the first to engage with the new arrivals and their reactions to that contact.
2004 – Murul, Sand, Dust and Dry Earth artwork by Thylacine reflects on early Indigenous interaction and language exchange. Image: Waverley Library Dawes became an early advocate for Indigenous rights, which resulted in his request to stay in the NSW colony being denied. He returned to England in 1791 and joined William Wilberforce’s campaign to end slavery. It is not clear what happened to Patyegarang. In 2014, the Indigenous Bangarra Dance Theatre created a work for her. Artistic director Stephen Page said ‘Patyegarang was a young woman of fierce and endearing audacity … Her tremendous display of trust in Dawes resulted in a gift of cultural knowledge back to her people almost 200 years later.’
1890s – Oxford Street at Bondi Junction, where the pedestrian mall is today. Note the junction of the tram lines, which gave ‘Bondi Junction its name. Image: State Library of NSW Bondi Junction is so named because of the junction that formed when the original 1881 steam tram line running from Charing Cross to Sydney town connected with a new line to Bondi Beach in 1884 – where you are standing. Until the late 1870s, Bondi Junction was a small road-side settlement called the Tea Garden. It stood near the corner of the South Head Road and the Coogee road (now Bronte Road), close to where the Tea Gardens Hotel stands today. The original hotel was granted a licence in May 1854 and opened under the sign “Waverley Tea Gardens”. It was described as a “pleasure resort” with gardens, summer houses, quoit pitches and other games. The Waverley Tea Gardens, later known as the Tea Gardens Hotel, was remodelled in Art Deco style in 1939.
1928 – Tea Gardens Hotel marked on a land subdivision poster. The original 1850s Waverley Tea Gardens pleasure grounds occupied the entire block of land behind the modern hotel. Image: State Library of NSW The rapid growth of Sydney’s suburbs in the 1870s encouraged subdivision of the lands of the big marine villa estates that held much of the useable land in the eastern suburbs, including in the vicinity of the Waverley Tea Gardens. Construction of the tramways created a public transport-led building boom at the newly named Bondi Junction. Much evidence still exists of late 19th-early 20th century Victorian and Federation buildings in the area, including the Imperial Building in the Mall, with its façade figurines including a sphinx and its Ionic pilasters. Sydney’s tramway system was replaced by buses in 1960. Some of the original tram lines remain beneath the surface of the present road.
Here, at Waverley Mall, you are standing in this 1831 map in the area coloured in red. It is near one of early Waverley’s most significant houses, since demolished. Built in 1827, Waverley, was a two-storey Georgian-style home with expansive views to Sydney Harbour. The house gave Waverley its name when the municipality was gazetted in 1859.
1831 – Barnett Levey’s land is marked next to Mrs Elizabeth Raines’ red-coloured allotment of 5 acres on the South Head Road. Waverley Mall marks part of her land today. Image: Sketch Book 1 Folio 44, State Archives The house was built on 60 acres of land by the entrepreneurial Barnett Levey, the colony’s first Jewish free settler, who came to join his convict brother, Solomon. It faced Oxford Street, between Waverley Street Mall and Waverley Crescent, and was named after Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels.
1890s – Waverley House, which was mostly used as a school and orphanage. Image: Waverley Library Soon after completion, it was offered for lease offering a lobby, dining room, two parlours, five bedrooms, storerooms, kitchen, three cellars and an attic, with separate stables and offices. The financially stretched Levey later sold it, and from 1837-44 it was Sydney’s first Catholic orphanage.
By 1866, the house was occupied by Amelia Hall who ran a boarding house and preparatory school for boys. From 1869-78 it was a ladies’ school, but by 1884 was a private residence again. In 1894 it became a school run by the Kilburn Sisters, a Church of England teaching order. The house was demolished in 1904. More of the Levey family’s legacy at a later stop.
Across the road from Waverley Mall, another Art Deco pub called the Eastern (originally the Bondi Junction Hotel, opened in 1942) is one of the area’s many notable Inter-War pubs. It is remarkable for retaining much of its original detailing, inside and out, including glazed tile panels and large central bay bow window framed by tiled pilasters supporting balconettes. The shopping centre was built around the pub, which remains an important streetscape element.
2018 – Interplay, designed by artist Jade Oakley, draws attention to trees in the city. Image: Jade Oakley Waverley Mall is a pocket of quiet amid Bondi Junction’s bustling commercial centre. Established trees form a leafy canopy beneath which people rest, stroll and eat. The trees create a sense of sanctuary and reprieve. The artworks, titled Interplay and designed by artist Jade Oakley, are sculptural elements wrapped around each tree base. They are symbolic rather than functional, drawing attention to the beauty of trees and the wonder and miracle of nature in the urban jungle of Bondi Junction.
2011 – The artwork Life Teeming, Life Teaming, by Terrance Plowright, reflects wind and wave motion and power. Image: Terrance Plowright Artist Terrance Plowright’s Life Teeming, Life Teaming sculpture was commissioned as a part of the 2011 Oxford Street upgrade. The artwork, near the top of Bondi Road, is made from over 2000 pieces of stainless steel, sandstone and LED lighting and pays homage to the life of the sea and the surf nearby. The design is derived from a dramatic wind-driven wave formation and a shoal of fish in motion. Plowright produced work for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and represented Australia at the 2013 Florence Biennale. His studio employs many welders, mosaic artists, stained glass professionals, painters and casters as one of Australia’s larger studios specialising in public art production.
Eora Park links this area to the original peoples of Sydney. The ‘Eora’ was the name given to the coastal Aboriginal people around Sydney. The word simply means ‘here’ or ‘from this place’. The Bidjigal, Birrabirragal and Gadigal are acknowledged as the Traditional Custodians of the Sydney coastal area now known as Waverley. The Sydney metropolitan area supported about 29 clan groups, referred to collectively as the Eora Nation.
1918 – Lands of Allen’s Estate, with his villa Hollywood, is subdivided for sale. Image: State Library of NSW Eora Park provides one of the last glimpses of Sydney Harbour from street level in Bondi Junction. The view is framed by the Art Deco spire of Holy Cross Catholic Church, built in 1939. The Eora Park area was the last big Bondi Junction subdivision to be laid out in 1918-1920 on the only land available – the grounds of larger houses, such as J.H. Newman’s house Llandaff in Botany Road, and the now-demolished home of W.B. Allen, Hollywood, both buildings remembered today in Waverley street names.
1906 – how Bondi Beach looked at a time when Federation architecture was emerging in places like Waverley Street to celebrate the colonies becoming one nation. Note the early change sheds at the beach. Image: Allen family album, State Library of NSW As you travel up Waverley Street, look out for the Federation house at No 40 for a glimpse of how Bondi Junction’s streets looked at the turn of the 20th Century. The Federation era commemorates the moment when Australia’s colonies were united into one nation on January 1, 1901, by an act of the British Parliament signed into law by Queen Victoria. The official Federation ceremony was performed at nearby Centennial Park.
Celebrations in the new nation were curtailed when the queen died three weeks after Federation, plunging the government and her loyal subjects into mourning.
Further along Waverley Street, look out for some good examples of Art Deco Inter-War apartment blocks.
1890s – Gladsmuir is one of the few remaining villas from Bondi Junction’s early period of development. Detour at the corner of Waverley Street and Botany Road to see the former grand Victorian house Gladsmuir, one of the last remaining gentlemen’s villas in Bondi Junction, on the corner of Llandaff Street. The mansion, with a grand entrance tower, was once located in large estate grounds that once occupied the land around Bondi Junction.
Gladsmuir first appeared on a subdivision plan of 1881 and was first listed in Sands Directory in 1885. It was built for J.H. Newman to a design by H.S. Thompson. Newman continued to live in his nearby house, Llandaff and it is likely Gladsmuir was built as a speculative venture. It is one of the few remaining gentlemen’s villas in the area and, with the nearby terrace houses, illustrates the diverse nature of the early suburban development of Bondi Junction. The building now houses a health centre.
Returning to Waverley Street, look out for the 1890s sandstock church hidden away behind an apartment building at 1-3 Botany Street. The Mayflower Chapel has simple Ecclesiastical Gothic styling with parapet gables, belfry and spire.
The stone and plaque put in place in 1988 commemorate Barnett Levey, mentioned earlier, and his harbour-view house Waverley, which gave the municipality its name. The stone could not be located on the site of the house, which was built in 1827. The house was located on land on the far side of the crescent-shaped park behind the tall apartment building at the traffic lights.
1859 – Barnett Levey’s Royal Hotel in George Street, Sydney. He built the Theatre Royal behind the hotel. Painting by George Roberts 1859. Image: State Library of NSW The cost of building the house and the Theatre Royal, the colony’s first permanent performing arts venue behind Levey’s hotel on George Street in Sydney, almost ruined Barnett financially and he was forced to rent the house, then sell it. His theatre performances were stopped by Governor Darling who decreed: “Our prison population [are] unfit subjects to go to plays.” Darling’s more liberal successor, Governor Bourke, later licenced the playhouse.
Waverley House was demolished in 1904 and the site redeveloped. It remains of historical significance as the focus of the area’s early development.
1832-36 – Seal of ‘B. Levey Theatre Royal Sydney’. Image: State Library of NSW 
Waverley Council Chambers in 1897 Waverley Council’s park-side Chambers building has had four significant architectural facelifts over the years. First came a quaint Victorian building opened by the NSW premier Charles Cowper in 1861 on land gifted to Council by the owner of Bondi Beach, Francis O’Brien. Next was a much more grand 1911 Federation Free Classical-style Chambers building, to which a Modernist façade was added in 1958. This was followed by its current Brutalist makeover in 1975-77. A third floor was added in the 1980s. It remains unclear how much of the fabric of those original buildings remains behind the modern façade.
Waverley Council Chambers in 1926. Images: Waverley Library The sculpture on the front façade of the Chambers building was designed and made by the Dutch émigré Gerard Havekes (1925-2011), who arrived in Australia in 1950. The self-taught painter and sculptor was active in ceramics, painting, sculpture, sculpture and tapestry and his public ceramic works adorn buildings across Australia. Havekes studied ceramics at East Sydney Technical College and worked with many noted architects on their major projects.
Waverley Council Chambers in 1970. Image: Waverley Library 
Waverley Council Chambers in 1981. Image: Waverley Library Waverley Park contains many interesting features, covered in the next two stops. Wander through the park and discover them.
Chinese immigration to Australia, driven by the gold rushes of the 1850s, also changed Waverley’s landscape. Many unsuccessful miners switched to vegetable growing. Waverley’s largest and longest-running market garden started in 1844 in what later became Waverley Park on Bondi Road. Three land holdings were consolidated into Flagstaff Farm, part of which was leased to Chinese growers. The sandy soils of the coastal suburbs saw market gardens established in Waverley, Rose Bay, Randwick, Botany and La Perouse.
1895 – Portrait of an unidentified Chinese fruit and vegetable hawker with baskets of produce. Image: National Library of Australia The farm’s north-east corner contained the richest, flat area of soil and from the 1860s-1887 a Chinese family worked a fruit and vegetable garden, known as ‘the cabbage patch’. It became an important source of affordable fresh produce for residents. A second garden was in the park’s south-west, opposite Henrietta Street. Water for irrigation came from a natural pond near today’s grandstand. Council Rate Books reveal the gardeners’ names as On Lee, Ah Yam and Ah Foo.
1939 – Margaret Dovey who swam the Empire Games event. She later married Gough Whitlam, who became prime minister in 1973. Image: Waverley Library One older Waverley resident remembered: ‘We used to have a Chinaman come down the back lane and he had his two baskets across his shoulder. And what he had in those baskets you wouldn’t believe … any kind of fruit of any description.’ The farm was purchased by the State Government in 1879 for £7,500, following requests by Waverley Council. Waverley Park was dedicated in 1880.
2018 – The artwork Park Life, by Graham Chalcroft, celebrates the park’s layers of history. Image: Waverley Council Near today’s cricket oval, mounted in the ceiling of the open-air sports stadium, is an artwork titled Park Life, by Graham Chalcroft. It celebrates the park’s history and is made of multi-layered laser-cut ply. Woven around a representation of the Oval’s circular form are sports and other figures evolving from tree roots to represent the Park’s dual histories of sport and nature.
The Margaret Whitlam Sports Centre stadium is named after the former Australian swimmer and “first lady”. The young Margaret Dovey grew up in Bondi and trained at the ocean pool before representing the country in the 1938 Empire Games (today’s Commonwealth Games).
1911 – Waverley cricketer Charles W. Gregory, who scored a record 383 runs in an innings for NSW. Image: Cricket Archives Another parkland feature is the sandstone fountain with ornamental pillar decorated with bands of foliate carving on top of a basin. The inscription reads: “Waverley District Cricket Club. Erected to the memory of Charles W. Gregory by his clubmates and admirers. Nov. 1911”. Gregory (1878-1910) played cricket for NSW and scored an Australian-record 383 runs in one innings against Queensland in 1906. He died of blood poisoning caused by an ear abscess, aged 32. In 1965, the fountain was rededicated to three club members, James Webb, Victor Jackson and Peter Fingleton, accidentally killed in a motor accident while travelling to Parkes to play cricket. The word “accidentally” is misspelled.
The “wedding cake” Waverley Reservoir is one of the most ornate and decorative of the reinforced concrete reservoirs in Sydney’s historic water system. It was built in the 1880s and its position high on the hill created high-pressure gravity-fed supply to households in Waverley. It can hold 1 million gallons of water and is listed on the State Heritage Register.
The sandstone War Memorial monument was erected in honour of Waverley citizens who enlisted in the World Wars and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The Anzac soldier holds a rifle to his side and stands on a pillar at the centre of four angled walls that create a cross-like shape. The memorial was dedicated in 1918 by the Governor-General His Excellency the Right Honourable Sir Ronald Ferguson. When subscriptions to pay for the memorial opened in 1917, Charles Howard Wood donated the total ₤1,400 cost. Today, services are held each Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.
1880s – An early steam tram travelling from Sydney to Bondi. The tracks did not go far down Bondi Road in this era. The tram was the main form of public transport and subdivision of land followed the advancing tram network. Image: State Library of NSW Large waiting sheds – like the original Federation-era building on Bondi Road – were erected at many tram stops in the early 1900s, especially where a crowd might gather for a sporting event or at shops. Sheds such as this one are now rare and are items of significant heritage value. Notice the little window for seated people to see if their tram was coming.
1960 – A coupled set of P-type trams climb up the cutting away from Bondi Beach. Image: Lindsay Bridge Collection The tram route to Bondi grew as Bondi Junction emerged as a commercial centre and interest grew in seaside bathing and tourism. Ocean swimming was illegal until 1902, for reasons of public modesty, fear of shark attacks and, earlier in the colony’s history, to prevent convict escapes.
Trams on Bondi Road with Waverley Park to the right. Image: Peter Sage/Lindsay Bridge Collection A steam-driven tramline was laid out along Oxford St by 1884, and was electrified just over 20 years later. Waverley Tram Depot opened to house the new trams in 1902. Because most people relied on public transport in this era, suburban development followed the tram routes. By 1960s, Sydney’s tram system had been replaced with buses, but the phrase ‘Shoot through like a Bondi Tram’ (‘to leave in haste’) keeps that era alive in the Australian idiom.
1908 – Bondi Road looking east, with Victorian architecture the predominant style. Image: Waverley Library By the late 1880s, the expanding Bondi Tram route had made the beachside suburb more accessible, fostering Victorian terrace house developments in the top half of Bondi Road, which was originally called Waverley Street. Like many eras of architecture, the style of housing was named for the reigning monarch. The very distant Queen Victoria was by this stage had been on the throne for half a century and was of great age. Loyalty to the crown remained strong in the colony even though she had never visited, sending her sons instead.
This section of the streetscape retains many original, heritage-listed Victorian terraces, most with well-preserved features of the age. Of particular note for their heritage detailing are Nos 70-98 Bondi Road.
1890s – Waverley School of Arts, once a Victorian house called Navestock. Image: Waverley Library In the year Waverley became a municipality, 1859, the Bondi-Waverley School of Arts held its first meeting at nearby Charing Cross. It was the fifth such School of Arts of 140 established in Sydney. It wasn’t until 1913 that the school found a home on Bondi Road, buying a house called Navestock, built in 1889 for £2,250.
Schools of Arts (and Mechanics’ Institutes) sprang from ideas that industry and society would benefit from a scientifically educated artisan class. The schools were a combination of public library, neighbourhood centre and places of adult and technical education.
Navestock was originally a Victorian house that was extensively renovated by the architecture firm Hassall and Stockham in the early 1900s. They designed a new front balcony and portico and rear extension for a billiards room, which became the school’s largest money-spinner. The school was opened by the premier William Holman in 1914. The building remains a good example of the persistence of Victorian Classical influences in architecture.
1990s – Waverley-Woollahra School of Arts, which was given a new façade in the Federation era. Image: Waverley Library Membership of the school fell significantly after World War I and it became debt-ridden. Waverley Council helped fund its rescue, and a surf carnival held at Bondi in 1922 raised £2,154. Social change brought competition from other entertainment venues including the Bondi Pavilion, which opened in 1929. In the 1950s, changing tastes in entertainment, the lifting of 6pm closing in hotels and television’s arrival further affected the school. In 1964, the Waverley Municipal Library opened next door and absorbed the school’s book collection. In 1968, the Waverley Woollahra Art School was formed with the goal of providing high-quality art education by practicing artists. The school now provides a program of talks, workshops, classes and runs the prestigious Waverley Art Prize.
1920s – Federation architecture is a defining feature of the commercial built heritage along Bondi Road. Image: Waverley Council Extension of the tram route down as far as the cliff-top Bondi Aquarium at Tamarama drove a Federation-era building boom. Land from large gentlemen’s marine villas overlooking Bondi Beach and the coast was subdivided as the area became a more accessible and desirable place to live. Outstanding architectural examples of Victorian, then Federation commercial terraces emerged in the new century. Architecture of that era remains along the lower half of Bondi Road, including Nos 59-63, Nos 65-73 and Nos 75-68.
Note the “gingerbread” houses at 59-63 Bondi Road, which are heritage listed as an outstanding row of turn-of-the-century, transitional houses. They have an uncommon combination of Victorian Gothic styling and Federation face-brick and timber decoration, which makes an excellent streetscape contribution to the historical character of the street.
The 1980s rock band Dragon is believed to have lived and recorded their Bondi Road album while living in a Bondi Road terrace in the 1980s. Lead singer Todd Hunter later helped organise the 1989 “Turn Back the Tide” protest concert to end water pollution at Bondi caused by the sewage outfall.
1908 – Bondi Post Office, built when Bondi Road was still unsealed and was still being used by horse and cart. Image: State Archives Bondi Road’s heritage-listed post office, circa 1910, is a fine early 20th-century example of Federation architecture with Arts and Crafts and Queen Anne influences. When Bondi’s first postman Albert Foster Gooch retired in 1932 after 40 years on his route, he reflected on the enormous changes at Bondi and in mail delivery. In the early days, Gooch completed his mail run on horseback, delivering to homes hidden in the sandhills. He remembered canoeing down Campbell Parade after the beach hinterland lagoons flooded. One of his regular customers was the last hangman in NSW, the outcast ‘Nosey Bob’, who live in a cottage at overlooking the beach at North Bondi.
1890 – A rare Arts and Crafts building in Waverley graces Bondi Road. Image: Waverley Council Look back up Bondi Road to the corner building with the octagonal tower. The little architectural gem was built in the style known as Federation Arts and Crafts. It is an impressive and unusual double-storey building with shops on the ground floor, residences above and frontages to two streets. The commercial building is heritage-listed for its considerable aesthetic quality and for its rare features. These include the prominent tower gable, its projecting bay windows and original shopfront.
The Federation Arts and Crafts style aimed to integrate art into everyday life through the medium of craftsmanship, and this building is an example of the social movement championed by the British textile designer, poet, artist, conservationist, printer, and socialist activist William Morris.
2022 – The achievements of unsung Bondi surfing trailblazer Pauline Menczer are celebrated with a mural on the Bondi Sea Wall, painted by Canberra artist Megan Hales. Image: Waverley Council Imagine a young girl running with a surfboard under her arm, turning into Bondi Road from her home at 101 Ocean Street. That girl was Pauline Menczer (born 1970), the only world champion surfer and resident Bondi has produced. She competed on the world circuit for 20 years, winning 28 world surfing events.
Menczer grew up and learned to surf at the birthplace of Australian beach culture. She perfected her craft at a time when few girls took on the male-dominated sport. Menczer overcame family tragedy and chronic illness to become world No 1, winning the 1988 Women’s Amateur World Title and the 1993 Women’s World Championship in Hawaii, aged 23. She received a broken trophy and no prize money for her victory, because the women’s money was used to boost the male prize pool.
1988 – Pauline Menczer took up the surfing when few women engaged with the sport. Image: Waverley Council Menczer went on to shake-up the pro tour, leading female surfers in a ‘strike’ at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, in 1999 for equal prizemoney and wave time at world events. Parity was finally achieved a decade later in 2019. Menczer’s role in the battle to achieve equality for female surfers is documented in the 2020 movie Girls Can’t Surf. Her portrait, by Canberra visual artist Megan Hales, now features among Bondi’s seawall murals. Fittingly, her latest surfboard design is called the Equalizer.
1890s – Mary MacKillop photographed around the time she was establishing a St Patrick’s school at Bondi. Image: University of Wollongong Archives Australia’s first and only saint, Mother Mary MacKillop, first purchased the land on which St Patrick’s Catholic Church stands today. The order of nuns she founded, the Sisters of St Joseph, known as the Josephites or Brown Joeys, dedicated their lives to the health, welfare and education of the poor. They have a long association with the Bondi parish dating from 1896, teaching at St Patrick’s primary school, which adjoined the church until 2001.
MacKillop, the first of the eight children born to Scottish immigrants, was born in Melbourne in 1842. Her vocation to aid the poor often saw her clash with the church hierarchy, leading to her excommunication from the Catholic faith in 1871. It was rescinded a year later. MacKillop then began establishing schools, convents and charities across Australia and New Zealand, including at Bondi.
St Patrick’s Church is of Romanesque style, with a stained glass rose window, and has been a much-loved feature of Bondi Road since 1929. Its patron saint reflects the Irish heritage of many parishioners, a connection that is ongoing. It was jokingly said that this is the 33rd County of Ireland: County Bondi.
Continue along Wellington Street to view the restored Victorian-era villa, Scarba House.
1917 – Official opening of Scarba House with guests enjoying the celebrations on the lawn and verandah. Image: Waverley Library Scarba House, an 1880s “Boom-style” Italianate mansion, is one of Waverley’s best surviving and most outstanding Victorian villas. The original building was a four-room cottage called Craignish built in 1858 on land owned by Benjamin Pillans Campbell, a Waverley alderman from 1861-1863. He was the first of three Campbells linked to Bondi and credited with having the Bondi beach-front roadway Campbell Parade named after them.
Campbell sold the land in 1874 and, after several tenancies, Malcolm Campbell (1835-1905) purchased it in 1881. The Scotsman from Argyleshire arrived in the colony in the 1850s to prospect for gold, then became a merchant at Muswellbrook, NSW. His business became one of the colony’s largest trading companies, Campbell and Co, and his wealth allowed his family much leisure time at their Bondi mansion, which they built into the grand villa of today in the 1880s. Over a century later, when the house was sold and redeveloped, he was named as the man who gave Bondi’s Campbell Parade its name.
The beneficiaries of his will sold the house in 1907 to Charles Jacob Loewenthal, a Bondi commercial agent who served as a Waverly alderman in 1914-15. In 1916, ownership of Scarba was transferred to the Crown for post-war migrant housing, but the prolonged nature of the Great War thwarted the plan. In 1917, the Benevolent Society took over the house and established Scarba Welfare House for Women and Children. Later, aged care and childcare services were added. It provided short-term residential crisis care for 30,000 to 40,000 children (0-8 years) between 1917 and 1986.
Back to 1920 – enter the third Campbell: the Bondi beach-front carriageway was once called Military Road, but in 1920 was renamed Campbell Parade, supposedly after Waverley’s mayor of the day, John Campbell. Each of the three Campbells has some claim to the title, however. Today, the stately Scarba House villa, framed by 100-year-old Moreton Bay fig trees, is a private residence retaining many original features.
1900 – Braylesford villa, on the south side of Bondi Road between Avoca Street and Imperial Avenue. Image: Waverley Library A large villa called Braylesford once stood on the southern side of Bondi Road on what is now Imperial Avenue. Artist Florence Turner Blake (1873-1959) lived there in her childhood. Her life proved to be as colourful as her paintings. She attended art school in London in 1925, befriending the Impressionist painter Lucien Pissarro. She is remembered today in portraits painted by Tom Roberts, of the Heidelberg School (known as the Australian Impressionists). Turner Blake also left a large bequest to the Art Gallery of NSW, which including a landscape by Pissarro.
Turner Blake was born at Armidale, in northern NSW, the sixth surviving child of the English surveyor William Albert Braylesford Greaves, who was brought to Australia by the colonial surveyor-general Sir Thomas Mitchell.
1925 – Land subdivision poster for the sale of the Braylesford estate, where the artist Florence Turner Blake grew up. Image: State Library of NSW Near her in Bondi lived Julian Ashton, founder of the famous art school bearing his name. Turner Blake was one of his first students. She reportedly sold puppies from her pet pug to pay for her lessons. She later exhibited paintings in Ashton’s Society of Artists exhibitions.
In 1902, he married William Mofflin, a wool and skin merchants, divorcing him in 1915 and changing her surname in reference to her great-grandparents on her father’s side and to the artists she greatly admired, J.M.W. Turner and William Blake. Over the next decade, Turner Blake painted her best-known watercolours on silk fans, some now held in the Art Gallery of NSW.
In 1925, she left for London’s Slade School of Fine Art and travelled widely in Europe. When she returned to Sydney in 1929, she continued painting until blindness affected her work. When she died in 1959, she left an estate valued at £54,214 and a large art collection to the Art Gallery of NSW. It remains one of the largest bequests yet received.
1909 – Castlefield subdivision of the Merewether Estate. Note the location of the Bondi Tram line on the locator map. Image: State Library of NSW One of Bondi’s now-demolished grand villas was Castlefield, set in manicured gardens between Imperial Avenue and Castlefield Street on the north side of Bondi Road. The house had a significant architectural pedigree and breathtaking views over the beach. The grand marine villa was built in the 1860s by the acclaimed Canadian-born architect John Horbury Hunt.
Revival of the colony’s economy after severe recession in the 1840s saw prosperous citizens viewing Bondi as a place ‘admirably adapted to villas’ as retreats from the pollution of Sydney town. When it became clear the colony was economically viable, social status began to be expressed through villa estates.
Castlefield, originally named Glendarrah, was first home to Charles K. Moore, a Waverley councillor in 1865-66 and chairman in 1867. He sold it in 1882, with much of its furniture to Edward Christopher Merewether (1820-1893) for £12,000. Merewether’s correspondence reveals some of the building’s history:
‘We heard from one friend that he had a good house on about 10 acres of land at Bondi for sale. [The house] is … unusually good and the stables. It has not quite bedrooms enough for [nine children] and … we shall build 3 or 4 more [and] a billiard room … The house … overlooks Bondi Bay.’Merewether changed its name to Castlefield after an estate in Wiltshire, England, where he was born. His letters refer to the original plans for Glendarrah as being drawn by Horbury Hunt (1838- 1904), a renowned and eccentric architect notorious for his attention to detail, close supervision of work and the extravagant cost of his domestic buildings.
On his death in 1893, Merewether’s estate was valued at £235,000. The fate of Castlefield estate was sealed by the first subdivision of its grounds in February 1907. The villa was demolished circa 1912.
1890s – Francis O’Brien and family pose for a photographer outside the family’s sandstone mausoleum at Bondi. Image: State Library of NSW The downhill section of Denham Street once formed the carriageway to the O’Brien family’s Bondi estate, known as The Homestead. From its earliest land grant in 1810, 200 acres of the Bondi Valley – including the beach – had been owned by a single family.
From 1850, the inter-related Smith Hall and O’Brien clans were the second family to own Bondi. The first was that of the emancipated convict William Roberts, who was granted the land by Governor Lachlan Macquarie as a reward for building roads in the early colony, including the South Head Road (today’s Oxford Street and Old South Head Road).
Circa 1860s – Drawing of the O’Brien family Homestead at Bondi, probably by Georgiana Sophia Ormond O’Brien. Note the girl in the left corner of the picture. Image: State Library of NSW The O’Brien Homestead was located opposite the intersection of today’s Lucius Street and Sir Thomas Mitchell Road. The 200 acres, together with a house known as Bondi Lodge or The Homestead, was purchased in 1850 for £300 by the newspaper proprietor Edward Smith “Monitor” Hall in trust for his daughter, Georgiana. She was the second wife of Francis O’Brien, whose first wife, Sophia, was Georgiana’s sister. Like many colonial families, the Smith Halls and O’Briens were interconnected by friendship, business and marriage.
Early in 1851, the clan took up residence at the Bondi Homestead. In 1852, Smith Hall and O’Brien tried to subdivide the land, but mountainous sand hills and poor public transport deterred buyers. In the mid-1850s, Hall discussed selling the beach for public use with the surveyor-general, Sir Thomas Mitchell, but both men died before a deal was struck. From 1855, O’Brien allowed public use of the beach as a picnic ground, but by 1877 he had had enough “public rowdyism” and wrote to Council asking for extra policing.
1888 – O’Brien’s carriageway, mausoleum, and lagoon visible on subdivision map for the Bondi Ocean View estate. Image: State Library of NSW Five years later, 25 acres of the beachfront was resumed for public recreation. This established Bondi as a public beach, though it was still surrounded by sand hills and bush. Housed in the bushland was a sandstone mausoleum. It contained the remains of the two Smith Hall sisters, both of whom died young, and two of O’Brien’s children who drowned in the hinterland sandhill lagoon near where Bondi Beach’s old post office stands today. The mausoleum was demolished in 1928 and 17 bodies were reinterred at Waverley Cemetery. About the same time, the Homestead estate was subdivided and sold, providing land for Bondi’s Inter-War building boom.
Only the last half of David Hunter’s name remains on the building at Hunter’s Corner, where the Bondi Tram turned for its final descent to the beach – via the less-steep Denham and Fletcher streets and a tunnel under Bondi Road.
1910s – The tram to Bondi navigates the turn at Hunter’s Corner. Image: Waverley Library Hunter (1872-1939) served as a Waverley councillor from 1917 and was mayor for five years. In the early 1920s he travelled overseas to the great seaside tourist towns emerging across the world. Hunter returned, planning similar improvements at Bondi.
As mayor, the Scotsman was a driving force behind the Bondi Beach and Park Improvement Scheme and, in 1929, cut the ribbon at the Bondi Pavilion’s opening celebrations with his daughter Mary, known as the ‘Little Mayoress’. His wife, Margaret, had died in 1928.
In the early Depression years, Hunter was instrumental in Council hiring hundreds of unemployed men to build parks and roads, including around Tamarama Beach. He championed the Bondi-to-Bronte cliff walk and surf club construction. In 1939 Hunter received an MBE, his investiture taking place hours before he died, aged 67.
The Buena Vista apartment block on Glen Street’s corner is one of Waverley’s earliest flat buildings and the best surviving example from the 1920s. Glen Street is a gateway to a significant early feature of Waverley: Fletcher’s Glen (once known as Fairlight Glen and today as Tamarama Park and Gully).
1889 – Julian Ashton’s painting The Prospector was completed at Tamarama Gully. A local Waverley gardener was model. Original painting: Art Gallery of NSW It was named after David Fletcher, Waverley’s first mayor who owned 10 acres of land including Tamarama’s beachfront. The glen was identified on an early colonial military map as Gamma Gamma, an Indigenous word reported to mean storm. Coastal rock shelters, rock carvings of whales and fish (estimated to be up to 2000 years old) and plentiful food and water make it unsurprising there is clear evidence of Indigenous occupation of Tamarama before European settlement.
From 1887-1891, the Royal Aquarium occupied Tamarama’s north headland. When it was replaced, Tamarama beach, park and gully became Wonderland pleasure grounds.
The glen was also home to the noted British artist and teacher Julian Rossi Ashton (1851-1942), who arrived in Melbourne from the UK in 1878. While in Sydney in 1883 illustrating The Picturesque Atlas of Australia, he made an etching of Fletcher’s Glen and fell in love with it. He quickly relocated his family and remained for life.
In 1889, Ashton’s painting The Prospector was completed at Tamarama Gully, with a local gardener, Joe, posing with gold pan, shovel and pick on a sandstone rock ledge. Joe carried the artist’s canvas to the glen each day. Ashton portrays the prospector as a hard-working, strong and self-reliant character, virtues central to the notion of the Australian identity emerging at the time. The artists’ colony also including Elioth Gruner, Raynor Hoff, D. H. Souter, Henry King and Phyllis Shillito, all of whom lived around Ashton’s home.
1899 – Bondi Points found at the beachfront after a severe storm that year. The find revealed that Bondi was once an Indigenous toolmaking workshop. Image: Bondi Story Room From here, watch for glimpses of Bondi Beach emerging. Extensive evidence exists of an Aboriginal tool workshop and camp in Bondi’s sand dune before European arrival. The tools have become known as “Bondi Points” and were collected by scientists from the Australian Museum in 1899 after a fierce storm revealed thousands of them.
The tools were made using various types of wood, bone, shell and stone. Similar workshops have been found in Curl Curl, Dee Why, Cronulla and Botany, but Bondi’s was recorded as the most extensive. Tools found at Bondi and collected buy the sack full included flaked spearpoints made of ancient river cobbles; axe heads made from stone not found in Coastal Sydney (confirming extensive trade networks) and tools for engraving wood like boomerangs.
The tools were shaped to make them easy to grip. Some of those collected in 1899 are on display at the museum.
2021 – the Marks Park cliff-edge Rise memorial honours and commemorates those who lost their lives in a dark chapter of homophobic and transphobic violence at Bondi and other suburbs. Images: Waverley Council The Bondi memorial Rise, with breathtaking views from Marks Park across the Pacific Ocean at Tamarama, is dedicated to victims and survivors of a wave of homophobic and transphobic violence that began in Sydney in the 1970s and continued for almost three decades. It is estimated as many as 88 gay men were murdered and more LGBTQ community were assaulted, but the real number will never be known. Many of the murders took place in Marks Park and the clifftops at Bondi; others the northern beaches, the inner-city, northern suburbs and inner west.
The early years of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras played a key role in decriminalising homosexuality in NSW in 1984. It led to a shift in attitudes, but violence continued. Many attacks occurred at gay beat areas, including the coastal path to Tamarama. Despite the rising death toll, there was no comprehensive police investigation. Many cases remain unsolved.
Rise, by Brisbane-based Urban Art Projects, was the artwork selected after Waverley Council commissioned a memorial in 2016. It was inspired by the topography of the Marks Park cliffs and features a six-level stone terrace representing the bands in the Pride flag. The cliffs that descend to the ocean are reimagined as a staircase to the sky; the act of climbing up inverts the act of falling and creates a path forward, away violence towards remembrance, diversity, inclusion, justice and acceptance.
The artwork’s light pink stone is a subtle tribute to the gay community and the sandstone of the cliffs. It was installed in October 2021 and honours and commemorates those who lost their lives in this dark chapter and pays tribute to the courage and resilience of survivors, their families and loved ones. The memorial seeks to help heal the grief and trauma that continues to be felt today.
1870s – Untamed sandhills at Bondi Beach, photographed by the American and Australasian Photographic Company. Image: State Library of NSW Bondi was once covered in towering sand dunes that stretched from the middle of the beach all the way to Rose Bay. The sand dunes bore testimony to the ancient waterways and prevailing ocean currents that deposited the fine grains of quartz and feldspar, year after year, layer upon layer, creating mobile sand hills. Several creeks and their tributaries fed freshwater lagoons with native fauna in wind-protected ‘sweet’ spots among the dunes. Traditional owners of the land at Bondi traversed the dunes and knew these oases as a place of refuge and a source of fresh water and food.
1907 – Summer at Bondi with uncleared sandhills photographed by the Allen family. Image: State Library of NSW Sand dunes in the northern part of Bondi remained in place until 1900, when an engineering scheme was put in place to tame the sandhills. Marram grass was planted and wicker fences built to control the sand blow from the ocean. Horses were used to drag the sand away for use in construction at Bondi and other areas of Sydney. By 1920, land was finally available at Bondi for the building booms that has left a legacy of original Inter-War buildings in the beach suburb.
Circa 1890s – the Cliff House Hotel at Bondi, demolished in 1926 to build the Hotel Astra. The Cliff House Hotel’s liquor licence was transferred to the newly built Hotel Bondi around 1920. Image: Tooths Archives/Australian National University The Bondi beachfront building with the big ‘A’ on top has been a landmark on Campbell Parade for nearly 100 years. The Hotel Astra had a wild history and was built on the site of the Cliff House Hotel (circa 1880-1925).
The Commercial Palazzo-style hotel, built in 1926, was first called the Hotel International. Advertisements declared it ‘a veritable palace of luxury and delight’; its ‘sumptuously fitted dining room with … rich pile carpets seated 200 guests’ and ‘each of the 100 bedrooms had its own hot- and cold-water service’ and a telephone. It offered ‘class’ and attracted city and country people.
1949 – the sumptuous Hotel Astra, on Campbell Parade, Bondi. Image: Noel Butlin Archive/Australian National University During the Depression the hotel was sold to the newspaper owner and Sydney councillor Sir James Joynton Smith, who renamed it the Astra before selling in 1937. During World War II, the Astra was taken over by the military. In 1959, scenes for the film Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, starring Ernest Borgnine, John Mills and Angela Lansbury, were filmed in the bar, with actors enjoying panoramic beach views.
In the 1970s-80s, it became known for rowdy behaviour. The local community petitioned for its closure and in 1982 Waverley Council approved the Astra’s conversion to a 50-unit retirement village, which it remains today.
1907 – Bondi ocean pool, photographed by the Allen family. Image: State Library of NSW From this lookout, it’s easy to see why Bondi was declared a National Surfing Reserve in 2017, acknowledging the beach’s history of surf life-saving innovation, its position in the history of Australian leisure and its long history and value as a surf break.
Luckily for visitors, Bondi’s lifesavers are world-renowned given the south end of the beach has a dangerous rip known as the ‘Backpackers’ Express’. It is one of several rip currents at Bondi and its name reflects its proximity to backpackers’ hostels and the many tourists who get swept out in it each year.
1928 – The ocean pool is developed further before the Bondi Icebergs swimming club is formed in 1929. Image: Samuel Wood, State Library of NSW A rip is a strong and narrow current of water which flows away from the shore. Rips often appear as dark-coloured, relatively calm channels between white breaking waves. To the untrained eye they can look like the safest place to swim. Bondi’s south end is more dangerous than the north because it is more exposed to the wider ocean. It is generally reserved for surfing.
The Bondi Icebergs swimming club, built into the cliff, was formed in 1929. To be a member, swimmers must brave the chilly Bondi Baths at least three out of every four Sundays during the winter months, for five years.
1920s – and aerial photograph of Bondi reveals the beachfront park beautification scheme well underway. Image: State Library of NSW Bondi’s Beach and Parkland – with its Pavilion, surf lifesaving clubs and landscape elements including Norfolk Island pine trees – form a remarkable cultural landscape of national significance. Better than any other, it has long typified the Australian beach-going experience, is home to Australia’s first surf bathers lifesaving club and the largest beach improvement scheme to be carried out in the Inter-War years. The place reflects the rapid popularity of beachgoing once surf bathing was made legal in 1902. The Bondi Pavilion’s aesthetic appeal and landmark qualities and its associated facilities have made it the symbol of Australia’s popular beach culture and place of high social significance.
1884 – Map of land resumed at Bondi from the O’Brien family for a beachfront public park. Note the different street names from today. Image: State Library of NSW Although the Pavilion and its uses have been modified over time, its relationship to the beach, its promenade and Campbell Parade, retains the essential integrity of the 1928 beach improvement design. When the Pavilion was opened in 1929, a crowd of up to 200,000 was reported.
Bondi’s popularity grew in the 1930s, drawing people from all over Australia and overseas. Advertising literature referred to Bondi as the “Playground of the Pacific”.
Most of the early building on Bondi’s beachfront road, Campbell Parade, was at the southern end, but the Inter-War years (1920-1940) brought a building boom of architectural styles that, 100 years later, still remains remarkably intact. Its mix of Art Deco, Spanish Mission, Georgian Revival, Free Classical and early Functionalist designs give the original beachside streetscape an attractive and distinctive character that is of high aesthetic importance to the local community.The buildings provide a architecturally significant backdrop to a beachscape of national heritage significance. From the mid-19th century, the beach, although privately owned, began attracting daytrippers. The Cliff House Hotel, built circa 1880 began the pattern of beach-orientated buildings along the landward side of Campbell Parade.
Inter-War buildings often display features from more than one architectural style. Those at the southern end of Campbell Parade were generally built between 1915 and 1928, earlier than the buildings to the north, which were generally built in the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of the earlier buildings, such as Grenfell Mansions, built in 1916, are more typical of the Arts and Crafts styles continuing from the Federation period.
1928 – Hotel Bondi was one of the earliest beach hotels and helped foster tourism. Image: Samuel Wood, State Library of NSW Bondi in 1920 was still quite isolated, with beachfront development scattered and of a small scale. The tram to the beach, beginning in the early 1900s, fostered development along Campbell Parade and, later, up to North Bondi, as did the engineering feat that saw more than 150 acres of hinterland sand removed between 1900 and 1920. This freed up land for the Inter-War building boom.
1951 – Hotel Bondi saloon bar at lunchtime on a Saturday. Image: Tooths Archives, Australian National University Two buildings were particularly important to the Bondi’s transformation from sandhills to suburb: the Hotel Bondi and Bondi Beach Public School. Construction of Hotel Bondi in 1920 represented the first major development in the Bondi Beach area post-World War I. The architect E. Lindsay Thompson designed the original section of the hotel in the Free Classical style for the brewery Resch’s Limited.
Bondi Beach Public School was built in 1923 and is an example of the Inter-War Georgian Revival style. It has a symmetrical design around a classical central portico, which has stone Tuscan style columns supporting the entablature above. It was an important facility for the rapidly growing Bondi community and helped reduce crowded at the nearby Bondi Public School, which saw student numbers rise from 1207 in 1913 to 1942 in 1919.
1920-1940 – the architecture of the Inter-War period has helped create Bondi’s distinctive character. Images: Waverley Council Art Deco played a unique role in Bondi’s emerging cultural identity. The Art Deco style and its self-consciously “modern” aesthetic was very influential in the architecture of the Inter-War years.
First emerging from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern and Industrial Decorative Arts) in Paris in 1925 – later be abbreviated to Art Deco – the label captured the enormous range of decorative arts and architecture created between the first and second world wars. The enormous commercial success of Art Deco ensured that promotion of the style until well into later decades. Art Deco emphasized the functionality of furniture and buildings and was characterised by strong, clean geometric shapes, elegant lines, vertical articulation or horizontal emphasis and streamline effects.
The style made an important contribution to the beach’s distinctive character and setting and provided a unique streetscape backdrop to the beach. The iconography of Australian beach culture still draws heavily on the motifs of Art Deco. Its influence can be seen in the design for No. 246-248 Campbell Parade built c.1934, and in No. 270 Campbell Parade.
1960s – Bondi Mermaids, who graced the big rock at North Bondi until the weather and waves wore them away. Image: Waverley Library At the bottom of the staircase down to the beach, near today’s Biddigal Park, once stood the homes of two of Bondi’s most interesting early residents.
Wally Weekes (1872-1948) lived among the sandhills at the northern end of the beach. In 1907, he was a founding member and first club captain of the Bondi Surf & Social Lifesaving Club. Weekes owned a large piece of land, which was not incorporated into Bondi Park until 1929. Today, the nearby rock pool is named after Weekes, who led the team that carved it out of foreshore sandstone as a safe swimming hole for children.
His nearby neighbour was Robert Howard (1832-1906), known by his nickname ‘Nosey Bob’. His face was disfigured – his nose kicked by a horse, he said – which ended his career as a cab driver. Unemployed with a wife and six children, he accepted the role of the first salaried hangman in NSW and, social shunned, lived in an cottage at North Bondi.
Two later, more ethereal residents included two Bondi Mermaids. The sculptures were installed on the large rock at Ben Bucker in 1960 by artist Lyall Randolph Williams. The bronze-coloured fibreglass, around a cement base, were modelled on Jan Carmody, who in 1959 had been crowned Miss Australia Surf, and swimmer Lynette Whillier. Harsh surf conditions put an end to the mermaids. The remains of one is on display at Waverley Library.
1936 – Lifesavers in action during a competition at Bondi, using the rescue reel, line and belt. Image: State Library of NSW Bondi Surf & Social Lifesaving Club was the nation’s – and the world’s – first, set up in 1907 in a tent on Wally Weekes’s land. The tent was replaced by a simple one-room shed in 1911, until a new timber clubhouse and lookout tower was constructed on the beach promenade in 1920, still on Wally’s property. That year, the club was renamed the North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club (NBSLSC).
1956 – Bondi Ladies Surf Blub members practising resuscitation drills. Image: State Library of NSW The surf-lifesaving reel was invented in 1906 by a founding member of the club. Countless lives have been saved by volunteer lifesavers equipped with a reel, line and belt. The equipment is still used in lifesaving competitions, but it was phased out of active rescue service in 1994. Nowadays, lifeguards and volunteer lifesavers use jet skis, rubber ducky boats and rescue boards.
Rescue methods pioneered in Australia continue to be used throughout the world. Many lives have been saved due to the volunteer surf lifesaving service begun at Bondi Beach, and now an integral part of Australia’s beach scene.
1930s – Bondi Pavilion and beachfront carpark quickly became a tourist attraction. Image: State Archives In initiating the Bondi Beach and Park Improvement Scheme in 1923, Waverley Council laid the foundation for Bondi Beach as we know it today. The scheme was the result of a world-wide design competition for a kiosk, dressing sheds, three toilet blocks, bandstand and the layout for a surrounding park. The Surf Pavilion, opened in 1929, was Sydney’s largest.
Visitors can still take in the panoramic view of the crescent-shaped sand, the breakers and the blue ocean from the recently restored building that once housed a restaurant-cabaret, ballroom, auditorium and Turkish and hot-water baths and the tunnels that led from two courtyards and passed under Marine Parade – later renamed Queen Elizabeth Drive – to a pair of concrete ‘groynes’ that opened on to the blue waters.
1956 – Bondi Ladies Surf Club in prepare to train in one of the Pavilion tunnels. Image: State Library of NSW One newspaper reported that the new building added to the ‘Full Glory of Its Seaside Splendour’ – and Bondi quickly became known as the Playground of the Pacific.
1921 – D.H. Souter’s final mural panel depicts a life returned to normal after the heroics of the Diggers in World War 1 and the emerging national image of the rugged lifesaver in the egalitarian world of the beach. Souter was a member of the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Lifesaving Club. Image: Australian National Maritime Museum Framed by its sandstone headlands, Bondi Beach is today internationally famous for its embodiment of Australian surf culture and leisured way of life. This one-kilometre stretch of white sand close to Sydney’s CBD is central to Australia’s sense of self. Bondi is where Australians meet nature’s challenge in the surf, part of the Bronzed Aussie myth. Egalitarian in nature, the beach and surfing has had a profound role in developing a sense of national identity.
The beach and the surf lifesaving movement established the beach as an acceptable place of healthy pleasure. During the Depression, the Australian notion of beaches as egalitarian playgrounds took root and Bondi, with its working-class residents, became the epitome of that idea.
1930s Art Deco poster promoting Bondi as the ‘Playground of the Pacific’. Image: State Library of NSW Sea bathing’s growing popularity raised concerns about public safety, so the world’s first life-saving movement was formed and quickly spread through Australia. Beaches became places of exhilaration rather than potential tragedy. Today, Surf Life Saving is one of the largest and most successful nationwide associations of volunteers dedicated to protecting beach goers.
Along with the WWI Digger and the pioneering bushman, the surf lifesaver holds an iconic place in Australia’s cultural imagery. The central role of beach culture is reinforced in the use of the beach as a setting and an inspiration for Australian artists. Bondi features frequently.
Modern Bondi is a reflection of multicultural Australia, its sands inhabited by all nationalities. It offers a power of recognition unmatched by any other beach nationally and, probably, internationally.
