North Narrabeen Rock Pool

Narrabeen runs more than three kilometres, from Long Reef up to the lagoon entrance, which is long enough that the two ends can be having different days, and often are. The Beach Boys put it on the map for people who've never been within ten thousand miles of it: Surfin' USA works through Del Mar and Ventura County and Santa Cruz and then, out of nowhere, Australia's Narrabeen. It's the only place in the song that isn't American. And the beach became a National Surfing Reserve in 2009, with a break at the north end that's turned out world champions at a rate you'd call unreasonable.

The pool up at North Narrabeen is fifty metres, with a timber boardwalk down the middle, splitting the lap lanes off from everybody else, and it was finished in the mid thirties after a decade of locals arguing about where to put it. That boardwalk is what makes the place photograph unlike anywhere else, because it's a straight, warm, human line laid over water that's doing nothing straight at all.

If you come down to the car park at the north end at half past five, you'll find the same dozen people in the same order, surfers sitting in their cars, checking the bank, swimmers heading for the pool with a towel and not much else, and somebody's dog who knows the route better than its owner does (there's always a dog). Nobody says much at that hour, which is part of the appeal. By seven it's a normal beach, and the ones who got there first have gone to work.

The lagoon explains the sand. When it breaks through to the sea, the whole northern corner rearranges itself inside a few days, and the bank that was there last month is gone, which is maddening if you surf, and wonderful if you're standing there with a camera. Though I'll admit I've driven up at first light for a bank that vanished a fortnight earlier, and nobody thought to tell me.

More on these pools: a guide to Sydney's ocean pools and rock baths.