It’s no Bondi Beach, but Pondi, or Penrith Beach, has been a welcome relief to the city’s sweltering western suburbs.
Kristine Carroll plopped herself down in the only shade on the beach — a triangle cast by the makeshift lifeguard station — and slathered sunscreen all over her freckled skin.
Squinting at the scorching midday sun, she glanced over at her 8-year-old daughter, Zoe, who had already plunged into the blue-green water without hesitation. “She’s a water baby,” Ms. Carroll said.
The Pacific Ocean, which gives Sydney, Australia, its iconic coastline and some of the world’s most enviable beaches, was almost 50 miles away. A pod of pelicans cruised past and coots waded nearby, with not a sea gull in sight. A sign cheekily warned of wave heights of 2 millimeters — less than a tenth of an inch.
This is Pondi Beach.
No, not Bondi, the glistening backdrop of reality television, the stuff of backpackers’ daydreams and ground zero of the Australian church of surf and sand — but Pondi, as locals have taken to calling humble, man-made Penrith Beach.
Created on one stretch of a lagoon at a former quarry at the foot of the Blue Mountains that mark the Sydney area’s western edge, Pondi, pronounced Pond-eye, isn’t exactly postcard-worthy like the eponymous Bondi Beach. But it has become a welcome haven for those who live an hour or more inland from the coast and pay hefty tolls to get there.
