Northern Beaches Photography Prints

This is the stretch I've spent more mornings on than any other, and I still get excited driving north on the peninsula road, which after all these years probably isn't a good sign. It runs from Manly up to Palm Beach: sixteen or so beaches strung between headlands, each with its own crowd and its own rules about where you park. Freshwater, Curl Curl, Dee Why, Long Reef, Collaroy, Narrabeen, Turimetta, Warriewood, Mona Vale, Avalon and Palm. And right at the top, Barrenjoey Lighthouse has stood since 1881, cut from the sandstone of the headland it sits on.

But the pools are what keep bringing me back. New South Wales holds around seventy of the world's known ocean pools, close to half the total, and a lot of them are on this peninsula, though nobody who lives here thinks that's remarkable. They were built between the wars by councils, surf clubs and residents putting their own money in, and they're still free, still open at four in the morning and still full of people who've swum the same lap for decades.

What I'm waiting for is the twenty minutes before the sun appears, when the sky has colour and the water hasn't caught up. On this coast that light arrives over the ocean, so it hits the pools and the rock shelves first, and I'll be down low in it, standing in the water and regretting my footwear (every time).

These beaches also feed the coastal wall art collection, and everything I have made sits in Australian wall art.