Kristine Carroll fell down the only shadow on the beach – a triangle molded by the improvised lifeguard – and the Slathered sunscreen throughout its lensy skin.
Looking at the hot noon sun, she looked at her 8-year-old daughter, Life, who had already plunged into blue-green water without hesitation. “It’s a water of water,” said Ms Carroll.
The Pacific Ocean, who gives Sydney, Australia, his iconic coastline and some of the most enviable beaches in the world, was almost 50 miles away. A pod of Pelicans traveled in the past and Coots sank near, with not a sea of ​​the sea. A sign warned the heights of 2mm waves – less than a tenth of an inch.
This is Pondi beach.
No, not Bondi, the glamorous backdrop of reality television, the things of backpackers’ dreamers, and the ground of zero of the Surf and Sand Church-but Pondi, as the locals have taken the humble, anthropogenic beach of Penrith.
Created in a stretch of a lagoon in a former quarry at the foot of Blue Mountains that mark the western edge of Sydney’s area, Pondi, pronounced Pond-Eye, is not exactly the postcard such as Bondi’s surname beach. But it has become a welcome refuge for those who live an hour or more internally from the coast and pay heavy tolls to get there.
Like many cities, the margins of Sydney’s urban expansion consist of working class families, recently arrived and they have been pushed more and more from the center of the city by raising housing prices. In Penrith and nearby areas, this also means that you live with temperatures that can be 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than near the coast, an inequality aggravated by climate change. In 2020, Penrith was for a while the warmest place on Earth, when mercury exceeded 120 degrees.
The beach opened for a second season in December and has so far cost the state government about $ 2.7 million. Above half a mile, it’s as much as Bondi Beach.
On a recent Sunday, when a heat warning is valid at 95 degrees, the children were happy to throw Pondi with respiles or pool floats in the form of crocodiles and unicorns. Some families threw about a rugby ball, while others were looking for a shrimp, sausage and a whole roasted chicken. Some girls are in their stomachs for a tan.
Mrs Carroll, 46, a resident of Penrith, working as a training coordinator in a nearby prison, never had air conditioning at home. The night before, she said, she drove around her car only for air conditioning because she was too hot in her home.
Having a beach near her home for her family to cool off, instead of having to go through a whole day of hiking to the shore-with abrupt prices for toll, parking and food-she had a great deal of help, especially at a life cost crisis, she said she had stretched her finances. With her accounting, the day’s excursion will only cost her gas for a 12 -minute drive and a 50cm McDonald’s ice cream for her daughter at home.
“Many people show their noses on it. But, a companion, they are free. They believe it is Bogan Knockoff on Bondi Beach,” he said, using derogatory Australian Slang for an unknown person, historically linked to the western suburbs of Sydney.
Life said she was in the “real bondi” on a recent weekend to swim a cousin. She liked it, but said that the saltyness of the ocean of water left her with red houses on her skin.
“I like how soft the sand is. In Bondi, the sand was very hot,” she said, unfolding her toes in the open sand Pondi.
After playing in the water, Elhadi Dahia and his three children – aged 6, 4 and 1 ½ – had passed a grassy slope on two food trucks. The older two polished hot dogs and a potato snack and began to begged for ice cream. The youngest was on a swimming diaper with the words “fish are friends” in it.
A Darfur local in West Sudan, Mr. Dahia said he only knows how to “swim donkey”, having grown up swimming in rivers flooding after the rain. He said he arrived in Australia more than a decade ago as a refugee and that he was registered with his children in swimming lessons for a real Australian upbringing.
It was late for swimming that day and decided to go to Pondi, which his neighbor had spent for weeks. Mr Dahia, 38, said he was pleasantly surprised and said he would probably have returned for a long time.
Diana Harvey said she was skeptical of Penrith beach before deciding to control it in a whim in a recent afternoon afternoon.
She needed a break from her duties as a full-time caregiver for her autistic adult son, who holds her home most days and had not gone to a beach all summer-a tragedy for many Australians who consider swimming in a genetic right.
“I was basically brought up in the water,” said Ms Harvey, 52, recalling that her family would spend three hours of driving from and from a beach in the growing summers. “We are all water people here.”
He had passed from Pondi on the downward days of summer thought that he would take a quick, 20 -minute dive, but ended up swimming for two hours, the blue mountains growing up and an expansive blue sky reflecting in the tranquil waters.
Some residents have wondered if a beach would so far would be essentially a glorious swamp and there was a short closure over the water quality concerns. The Pondi start week in 2023 was running through a tragedy when a man who fell on a board with his young children beyond the drowning area.
Still, more than 200,000 people visited the beach in the first season, according to the state government.
In a recent weekend, Barbara Dunn’s family was the first in a row before the beach gates opened at 10am. Her 6 -year -old daughter pulled her head out of the back window of their car with excitement.
“Where are we in New Zealand, we would call it a lake,” said Ms. Dunn, 45. “He’s doing the job. You’re wet, right?”
The rhythm is bordered through the sand with its plastic container filled with tools for the construction of sand castles. For the next six hours, as the hot sun peaked over the head, then began to head to the mountains, as the crowds were filled and then diluted out, tirelessly swam, played in the sand, wrapped around the river grass.
“He won’t want to go home,” Ms Dunn said with a sigh.
