Kristine Carroll fell herself in the only shadow on the beach (a triangle cast by a temporary lifesaving station) and applied sunscreen to her freckled skin.
She glanced at the hot noon sun and glanced at her 8-year-old daughter Zoe, who had fallen into the turquoise water without hesitation. Ms. Carroll said: “She is a baby on the water.”
The Pacific Ocean offers almost 50 miles of distance to Sydney, Australia, its iconic coastline and some of the world’s most enviable beaches. A group of pelicans cruised through the pods of the past, while fools wading nearby, unable to see the seagulls. A screaming sign warns the 2mm wave height, less than a tenth of an inch.
This is Pondy Beach.
No, not Bondi, is the glittering backdrop of reality TV, the daydream of backpackers and the zero ground zero of Australian surfing and beach church, but Pondie, Pondie, as locals have summoned the modest artificial Penrith Beach.
Created on a lagoon in the former quarry at the foot of the Blue Mountains, marking the western edge of the Sydney region, Pondi, pronounced Pond-Eye, is not as postcard as the Bondi Beach of the same name. But for those who live inland for an hour or more from the coast and pay a lot of people to get there, it has become a welcome haven.
Like many cities, Sydney’s urban sprawl is at the edge of a working-class family, new immigrants, and immigrants who are increasingly moving away from the city through rising housing prices. In Penrith and nearby areas, this also means living with the temperature of 30 degrees Fahrenheit near the coast, climate change will exacerbate the gap. Penrith briefly became the hottest place on the planet in 2020, when mercury was 120 degrees higher.
The beach opened for its second season in December, and so far the state government has lost about $2.7 million. It was only half a mile long, just as long as Bondi Beach.
On a recent Sunday, when the height warning was 95 degrees, the kids cheered on Pondi, snorkeling or the pool surfaced in the shape of a crocodile and unicorn. Some families threw a rugby, while others cooked a feast of prawns, sausages and whole grilled chicken. Several girls lying on their stomachs and tanning.
Ms. Carroll, 46, is a lifelong Penrith resident who works as an education coordinator in a nearby prison but never has air conditioning at home. She said that the night before, she just drove to the car for the air conditioner because the house was too hot.
There is a beach near her home to calm the family down without having to spend a whole day hiking to the coast – paying high prices for tolls, parking and food – especially in the crisis of cost of living, she says her financial situation has expanded. Through her accounting, the outing that day would only take a 12-minute drive and 50 cents McDonald’s ice cream for her daughter on her way home.
“A lot of people are on their noses, but, companion, it’s free. They think it’s OG Nanoknov from Bondi Beach,” she said.
Zoe said she had been to “Real Bundy” for her cousin’s swimming party the most recent weekend. She liked it, but said the saltiness of the sea water gave her skin a red spot.
“I like how soft the sand is. In Bondi, the sand is too hot,” she said, burning her toes into the pale Ponda beach.
After playing in the water, Elhadi Dahia and his three children (6, 4 and 1½ years old) walked onto the grassland of two food trucks. Two older polished hot dogs and a potato snack, started begging for ice cream. The youngest was on a swimming diaper that said “Fish is Friend.”
Dahia, a man from Darfur, inland West Suster, said he only knew how to “donkey swim” and grew up in rivers flooded after the rain. He said he arrived in Australia as a refugee more than a decade ago and he had recruited his children to take swimming lessons for real Australian growth.
They were late for swimming lessons that day and decided to go to Pondie, whose neighbors were reveling for weeks. Mr Dahia, 38, said he was pleasantly surprised and said he might be back soon.
Diana Harvey said she was skeptical about Penrith Beach and then decided to check it out on a whim on the afternoon of the most recent weekday.
She needs to take responsibilities for her full-time caregiver for her autistic son, which keeps her home most of her time and hasn’t been to the beach all summer – a peculiar fanaticism for many Australians who think of the right to swim.
“I basically grew up in the water,” recalled Ms. Harvey, 52. “We are all water here.”
She popped up Pondi on her tired summer days, thinking she would swim for 20 minutes, but ended up swimming for two hours, with the Blue Mountains stretching majestic and spacious sky reflecting in the quiet waters.
Some residents wonder if the beaches inland will essentially become a marsh of glory so far, and a brief closure about water quality issues. Pondi was wrecked by a tragedy during the opening week of 2023, when a small child drowned outside the swimming area floated on the paddle board.
According to the state government, 200,000 people still visited the beach.
On a recent weekend morning, the door opened at 10 a.m. on the beach, her 6-year-old daughter’s rhythm made her head stick out from the rear window.
“We’re from New Zealand, we call it the lake,” said Ms. Dunn, 45. “This job. You’re wet, right?”
The rhythm surrounded her plastic buckets in the sand, filled with tools to build sand castles. For the next six hours, when the scorching sun peaked overhead, she then began to head to the mountains, and when the crowds filled and then sparse, she swam relentlessly, playing on the beach and rolling in the river grass.
Ms. Dunn sighed and said, “She doesn’t want to go home.”
