Clovelly

Only five Clovelly pictures in here, and I'd rather tell you why. It's the hardest place on this coast for me, because everything that makes it lovely to swim in makes it stubborn to photograph. It's a narrow bay with concrete down both sides, calm on days when the rest of the coast is unswimmable, so there's no surf to give a picture its shape, and no sweep of sand to give it a line. So you either wait for the light to do all the work, or you go home with nothing. I've gone home with nothing plenty of times.

The concrete, though, is the part I find fascinating. Those platforms were poured through the Depression as public works, largely to keep local men employed and their families fed, and the plan was grander than what's there today. A causeway was to run right across the mouth of the bay, wide enough to drive over, until a storm in 1938 pulled it to bits. And at low tide you can still see what's left of it near the entrance.

Then there are the gropers, the real reason half of Sydney swims here. The eastern blue groper is the state fish of New South Wales, a wrasse rather than a groper (if you're being pedantic), and the big blue ones are all males that began life as females. At Clovelly they'll come over, settle in beside you, and stay there like a dog. They've been protected from spearfishing since 1969, and since March 2024 you can't take one on a line either, which seems the least we can do for a fish that friendly.

The surf club dates from 1906, and there's a small saltwater pool cut into the lowest platform, on the south side. Most days it's lap swimmers, snorkellers, and kids launching off the steps. But a few times a year a big south swell finds the mouth of the bay and turns the whole thing into a washing machine, and that's when I carry the camera down.