As regular readers will know I am doing the City to Surf this weekend as one of my new year's resolutions, so I have been ruminating on it and thought I would share some trivia about it with you.
FACT: I was at the first ever city to surf! Not as a competitor but an observer!
It was 1971 and we were holidaying at Bondi (as you did in those days, before the trendy and beautiful people moved in), we were from the country, so a seaside holiday was the done thing then. Usually we spent the August/September school holidays ( this in the olden days where we had 3 school terms a year, not 4) at the Entrance but this year my parents pulled out all the stops and we were at the "Hotel Astra" right on Bondi Beach. My sister and I even got to have our own room, which was a bit of a hoot! My poor brother had to share with the parents!
Anyway these were the days when the sewerage was pumped out at Bondi and this particular time it was apparently very polluted, so much in fact that Channel 7 news came and filmed it for the evening news and I even made it to camera ( and the news that night!) swimming in the water which was apparently too polluted for the normal swimmers to enter, but I had no problem with it!
We did wonderful things like going to the Harold Park trots on the Friday night and I can recall having dinner in an Italian restaurant which had the fish nets and empty Chianti bottles all over. Doubtless it is some trendy cafe nowadays.
Anyway one thing I have never heard mentioned over all these years is that there was a great tragedy at the first City to Surf. I have managed to find a reference to it here, so I am not going to ruin the story, you will have to follow the link to find out!
One other item of interest is that my wedding reception was held at the Bondi Icebergs ( before it was trendy, but then I have ALWAYS been ahead of the curve!).
So I hope you all wish me well for Sunday and hopefully I will still be here to blog about it next week.
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