ride is my neighbour R, a former life-saver hijabi. We are a well-oiled machine, carpooling for toll and petrol costs. In the quiet morning, Canterbury-Bankstown’s Palestinian flags on cars, manoush bakeries and bro-gyms give way to the skin-cancer clinics, juice bars and women in athleisure of Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
We arrive in Bondi 40 minutes later, zeroing in on the free parking spots closest to Sydney’s famous east coast beach.
Six years on from learning to finish a lap of a swimming pool, I have become one of the “serious” ocean swimmers I used to watch with awe.
Australia’s iconic beach culture used to feel off-limits to me, as a person of colour in a post-Cronulla riots world. But after years of building up my confidence and skills with women’s swim groups like Swim Sisters and Bondi Surf life-saving club volunteer trainers, coming in to last summer I began to feel as if I had shrugged off the outsider identity that had kept me from my city’s coastline.
- I joined a community. I felt at ease going solo to Bondi; it had started to feel like a second home. Claiming the beach as my own place felt radical.
Leave a Reply