Maroubra

Maroubra is the loud one. The name is understood to come from a local word meaning something like thunder, which is a reference to the surf, and if you've ever stood on that sand on a winter morning with a big south swell running, you won't argue with the translation. So it's a long open beach, sand through the middle and reef in both corners. And when the swell swings properly south, the reef at the southern end stands up, and the whole place goes off.

In 2006 Maroubra was made the first National Surfing Reserve in Australia, and, as far as anyone can establish, the first anywhere. That wasn't a tourism prize, handed out to fill a brochure. It came from the plain fact that generations of the same families have built their lives around this beach, and it's still local in a way Bondi stopped being decades ago. So I photograph it with that in the back of my mind, rather than treating it as scenery.

Mahon Pool is up the northern end, near Mistral Point, and to my eye it's the finest rock pool on this coast (though I'd struggle to defend that in an argument). It's set into a natural shelf, so the sea washes through it constantly, instead of sitting there flat, which means you never get the same pool twice in an hour. It carries the name of Patrick Mahon, an alderman who got up the petition to have it built in the 1930s, then died in 1935 before he saw it finished.

There are three Maroubra pictures in this collection, which isn't many, and I know it. It's the hardest of these beaches to get right, because what's worth photographing here is noise and weight, and neither of those will sit still for a camera. I'd sooner show you three that carry it than fifteen that don't.

More on this beach: Mahon Pool, Sydney's wildest ocean bath.