Iconic ... playing volleyball on Bondi beach in Sydney. Photograph: Guido Cozzi/Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis
Bondi, Australia's most famous beach, has been added to the country's National Heritage List. The list celebrates places of exceptional natural and cultural importance to Australia's national identity and already includes the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
It's a great comeback story. In the 80s, Bondi was largely unloved and strewn with syringes left by junkies who'd scored a hit at the Bondi Astra hotel. Until a sewerage outlet was closed in the mid-1990s, bathers would often find themselves swimming with a school of blind mullet, the charming Aussie euphemism for a certain type of human waste.
As an Australian living in London, I read the report with trepidation. The Heritage Council recognised Bondi's role in developing Australian beach culture. There's already the notion here that Aussies are bronzed hedonists who spend all their time at the beach before towelling off the sand to send down a few overs at a quaking Pom taking guard at the Randwick end of the Sydney cricket ground. I'm bracing myself for the inevitable gags from my English friends - "Beach culture? More culture in my pot of yoghurt, mate!"
I was born a Sydneysider but I must confess an ambivalence to Bondi. I grew up in the western suburbs, 40km from the coast. When I visited Bondi, the surfies called me a westie. The beautiful people waltzing past the cafes and clothes shops along Campbell Parade simply ignored me. Bondi is everything the rest of Australia hates about Sydney. It's flash, pretentious and a little too in love with itself for its own good.
Does it deserve such an accolade?
Bondi beach is iconic. Of the many beaches in Sydney it's the only one a yak-herder in Mongolia would be able to name. Like it's two fellow heritage listers, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, it is an international symbol of the city. But then so is Summer Bay, the fictional beach on Home and Away.
It has played a central role in the surf-lifesaving movement. Bondi was home to Australia's (and possibly the world's) first lifesaving club. It invented the surf reel. And its members have pulled out more than their fair share of the 520,000 people Australian lifesavers have rescued in the 80 years since records began. On any weekend you'll see groups of young kids - nippers - learning how to rescue and resuscitate large English lads who think it's a good idea to go for a dip after drinking a case of VB.
Despite its flaws, Bondi is the quintessential beach. A crescent of golden sand lapped by an ocean that is the perfect shade of blue. It's egalitarian, too. When the surf is pounding from a squall somewhere out in the Pacific ocean the waves don't care who they dump.
And there, on the shore, is a bloke who looks like Brett Lee wearing a funny little red and yellow hat and budgie smugglers waiting to pull you out when you get yourself into trouble.
· Peter Moore's latest book, Vroom with a View, is available now
