The Bondi Icebergs pool is probably the most photographed body of water in Australia. It sits at the southern end of Bondi Beach, eight lanes of it cut into the rock with the sea breaking over the wall, and on a decent southerly the sets come straight through the lanes while the swimmers carry on as though nothing has happened.
What most visitors do not know is that the club behind it started as a fitness problem.
A rule written by lifesavers
In 1929, a group of surf lifesavers wanted a way to stay in condition over winter, when the beach patrols stopped and the training with them. The solution was a winter swimming club, and the membership rule they wrote for themselves has survived almost a century largely unchanged: to stay a member, you must swim three Sundays out of four, for five years. Miss too many and you are out.
It is an absurd commitment, and it is the reason the club still has the character it does. The people swimming laps beside you on a July morning have, in many cases, been doing it every winter Sunday since the 1980s.
The pool itself
The pool fills over the wall from the ocean, which means the water temperature tracks the sea and no heater has any say in it, and the cleanliness depends on what the swell has brought in. In summer it is clear and warm enough that tourists queue for the ladder. In August it is cold enough to take your breath, and the crowd thins to people who have made a decision about the kind of winter they intend to have.
The best swimming is on a small swell at high tide. The best watching is on a big one, when waves break over the eastern wall and fill the lanes with whitewater, and everyone on the promenade above stops to see whether anyone gets moved.
Photographing it
Almost every photograph of Bondi is the same one, taken from the road on a January Saturday. The interesting frames come from being there at five in the morning in July instead, when it is cold enough that the only people about are two or three swimmers wandering down with towels.
Between December and June, the sunrise slides more than fifty degrees along the horizon. Stand on the same ledge six months apart and you come away with two completely different pictures. Icy was taken from directly above on a clear summer day, the pool a rectangle of pale blue against green water and dark reef. Secret came from a sunrise when the pool was normally inaccessible and, on that particular morning, was not.
For the beach beyond the pool, On Top looks down on the full crescent from the air, and Red Velvet catches one of the deep red sunrises that stop people mid stride along the promenade.
Two things only locals know
The rip in the southern corner, right below the Icebergs, has a nickname: the Backpackers Express. It accounts for a good share of the rescues at Bondi, because people come off the bus, walk straight down the sand toward the pool end, and swim into it without knowing it is there.
A few hundred metres further south sits Mackenzies Bay, which is a beach only sometimes. Sand arrives and departs with the swell over a scale of years, so it appears, stays for a season or two, and vanishes again.
Getting there
The Icebergs is at the southern end of Campbell Parade, at the start of the Bondi to Coogee coast walk. Buses run constantly from Bondi Junction. The pool charges a small entry fee and closes on Thursdays for cleaning, which catches out a surprising number of visitors.
The guide to Sydney's ocean pools covers the whole coast, and the Bondi print collection holds thirty five photographs of the beach, the pool and the water around them.