Bold and the Beautiful
Sydney’s Northern Beaches, famous for its vast coastline and world-class surf, recently served as the backdrop for this month’s cover shoot. But beneath its glittering surface lies the area’s true heart, a thriving culture of creativity that’s inspired by the beauty of the land and sea and fostered by passionate locals.
Sydney’s Northern Beaches, famous for its vast coastline and worldclass surf, recently served as the backdrop for this month’s cover shoot. But beneath its glittering surface lies the area’s true heart, a thriving culture of creativity that’s inspired by the beauty of the land and sea and fostered by passionate locals. By Amy Campbell.
The first time I visited the Northern Beaches, I didn’t get it. I was 19 and from country Victoria, and in what struck me as an arbitrary choice, my mum had selected Narrabeen as my family’s summer holiday destination that year. As we drove past the windswept, suburban-style condos and impervious warehouses that hem Pittwater Road, the main artery that runs from Manly in the south and Palm Beach in the north, I remember half-wishing we’d taken a wrong turn. We ended up having a great time – we always did on holiday – but I wasn’t heartbroken when it came time to leave.
In 2018, I moved from New York to Manly, via my home state of Victoria. This decision was slightly less arbitrary – I’d just landed a job at GQ magazine, and my boyfriend (also from Victoria) had taken a job in Sydney and moved up with a friend of ours six months prior. They’d settled in Manly, so I did too, on the assumption that as soon as the lease on their flat by the ferry wharf was up, we’d hightail it to the east or the inner west. I’d heard those areas were ‘cool’.
One frantic weekend of apartment hunting in the east was all it took for us to realise we were probably better suited to the relaxed pace of Manly. We signed the lease on a small unit with no exhaust fan in the bathroom and no rangehood in the kitchen, blinkered by the snippet of harbourage we could see from the sunroom. Part of me still believed that after one year, we’d move to the other side of the bridge. My commute to work took more than an hour and most of the friends I’d made through my job lived over that way. But the longer I stayed, the more I came under the spell of the district known simply as the Beaches. When it came time to re-sign our lease, I realised I wasn’t ready to leave. The pink caps of the Bold and Beautiful swimming group bobbing in the waves; the unofficial dog show that descends on the promenade every weekend; the sunset drinks at “the office” – it had won me over. So we chose to stay.
The thing about the Northern Beaches and many of its residents, I’ve now realised, is that you have to scratch the surface to discover its soul. The surface is objectively impressive – the surf is great, the beaches are postcard-worthy, dining institutions like Jonah’s in Whale Beach and Pilu at Freshwater are world-renowned – but most people tend to stop there. Like I did, they take it on face value, because it’s got such a pretty face. I’d even wager a fair few locals like it this way. It keeps the touristy spots touristed and the local spots hidden in plain sight.
But hidden in plain sight is exactly where the heartbeat of the Northern Beaches exists. That heartbeat is the area’s creative culture. Expressive and humble, it takes a backseat to the coastal walks, not-so-secret surf breaks and waterfront real estate. It is this culture of creativity and the people who move within it, that this story is about.
Bruce Goold understands the gravitational pull of the Northern Beaches. The artist, whose iconic linocut prints featured on early ‘loud shirts’ by cult Aussie surf brand Mambo, first visited Palm Beach in 1969 with his friend, the late artist Martin Sharp AM.
“Brett and Wendy Whiteley had also rented the house next door. We visited them, and Brett did drawings of the Angophora Reserve and the Barrenjoey Headland when not swimming and entertaining,” recalls Goold. Years later, inspired by a trip around Asia (“we developed such a taste for the tropics”), the artist and his late wife Katie found their way back to Whale Beach, where they rented a home “with a big banksia tree in the garden” for $40 a week.
The flowers on that banksia tree, followed by a friendly kookaburra and magpie, would become the subjects of Goold’s first lino prints. “They’re still images I use,” he reminisces.
Goold has lived and created art in the area ever since, and relays stories of inspired movie nights and rambunctious gallery shows held at the
Palladium dance hall in Palm Beach.
Today, the artist lives on a quiet street in Careel Bay. “I have a beautiful garden with diverse birdlife that continues to inspire me,” Goold says. “I don’t drive, but the bus service is excellent. To-andfro every 10 minutes.”
Musician Oli Leimbach is a few decades Goold’s junior. But having chatted to them both, it’s easy to see the cultural through-line that connects Goold’s days at the dance hall to the years Leimbach spent playing pub shows in the area alongside his brother Louis – the pair make up the Beaches born-and-bred surf-rock duo Lime Cordiale.
“The Beaches has a legendary history. Any old dog down at the beach car park can tell you how he saw David Bowie or Prince play an unannounced show somewhere in Whale Beach all those years ago,” says Leimbach.
Nowadays, the peninsula is known for producing its own cohort of talent; like Lime Cordiale, many acts who strummed guitars in front of sweaty crowds at the local RSL have gone on to headline national and international shows, and collaborate with some of the biggest names in the music business. “Angus and Julia Stone were blowing up as we were doing the pub grind alongside bands like Ocean Alley and Winston Surfshirt,” says Leimbach, nodding to a few of his band’s contemporaries.
“The music people listen to here has to match the scenery, so that’s what all Northern Beaches bands try to do. You start off making music that you think your friends will listen to. There’s a carefree attitude to living on the beach and so there’s a carefree attitude to our music.
“We’ve never properly left the Northern Beaches,” adds Leimbach, who currently lives with Louis in Elanora Heights. “We’ve spent a lot of time overseas, or away touring, but we can’t seem to help but gravitate back home.”
Like the Leimbachs, who grew up on Scotland Island just off Church Point, Christelle Scifo, the florist and founder of event and set-styling business Fleurette, also spent much of her childhood here. She traded the area for her father’s native France while in her 20s, but has recently returned. “The small-town feel here means that life operates at a slower pace,” observes Scifo. “Its proximity to the harbour and sea on both sides keeps me connected to nature, which is a driving force in my practice.”
That connection to the natural environment comes up in conversations with creatives frequently. The modern-day Northern Beaches sits on Guringai country, the land of the Garigal or Caregal peoples and, from Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in the north to Grotto Point, just off Clontarf, in the south, the area is full of First Nations history, and awareness of this is growing.
“Most people who live here have a deep appreciation for nature, creativity and community,” notes fashion designer Heidi Middleton, who has called a rambling 1940s Italian-style villa on Pittwater home for the past 16 years. “It feels gentle and inclusive. The natural environment seems to fuel my creativity on so many levels.”
“The smalltown feel here means that life operates at a slower pace. Its proximity to the harbour and sea on both sides keeps me connected to nature”
“Everyone is an outdoors person,” adds model Helena Vestergaard, who lives on a headland near Narrabeen with her partner, pro surfer Nathan Webster, and their two children. “And don’t get me started on the surf culture – surf is life here, almost everyone I know surfs!” she says, laughing.
It’s true. Living here seems to transform even the most stubborn land mammals into ocean enthusiasts (myself included), and surfing is a total rite of passage. So too, then, is having an action shot of yourself riding a wave posted to the Instagram account Sprout Daily, which is run by photographer and “local legend” Murray Fraser.
Yatu Widders Hunt, a descendent of the Dunghutti and Anaiwan peoples of the Northern NSW Tablelands, is another person who found herself getting acquainted with a surfboard shortly after moving to Queenscliff, on the northern end of Manly Beach, about nine years ago.
“I’m very proud to say I now own many wetsuits, and can manoeuvre a ‘mini mal’ [surfboard] around small surf,” laughs the founder and curator of Australian Indigenous Fashion, a social platform dedicated to showcasing Australia’s thriving Indigenous fashion community. “I am not a very good surfer, but I’ve definitely learnt a lot through the sport,” she adds. “You really have to surrender to nature, and be completely present and focused because every experience is unpredictable.”
Embed yourself in the Beaches surfing community for long enough and you’ll begin to hear the name Haydenshapes everywhere. The surfboard brand is run by Hayden Cox, a shaper and creative entrepreneur (Cox invented FutureFlex, a maximum speed, minimum twist surfboard technology that’s seen his boards compared to Ferraris) who began his career in Mona Vale in 1997, shaping boards as a work experience kid. He spent some time living in California, where he still has a showroom, but now houses his custom manufacturing studio and office space a few streets away from where it all began. It’s from here that Cox collaborates with renowned artists like American sculptor Daniel Arsham, and global brands like Audi and IWC Schaffhausen, with whom Cox holds ambassador roles.
He says being surrounded by the natural beauty inspires him to design and make more sustainably.
“Surfers are generally pretty vocal about keeping the ocean clean and, through Haydenshapes, I’ve spent the last year and a half working on ways to upcycle our manufacturing waste – stuff like foam, fibreglass and carbon fibre – into new products and materials,” says the shaper. He admits that while surf culture tends to dominate the discourse here, the area is humming with creatives from all walks of life.
“There are brand founders, designers, film-makers, musicians, artists … It’s a pretty incredible backdrop to drown out the noise when you need to.”
Elli Walsh, a writer and co-owner of Winona, a bottle shop that specialises in natural wines, craft beers and artisan spirits in Manly, also notices the dissonance between how the Beaches are perceived and what’s actively happening on the ground. “Some people describe the Beaches as a kind of cultural vacuum that’s impervious to the creative avant-garde. I’ve thought this from time to time, too,” she admits, “but you just have to look a little closer. Everything, culture included, is more spread out in these parts.
“The cultural zeitgeist of the Beaches is burgeoning, but not in an immature or stunted sense; in the sense that it’s young and full of vitality, brimming with potential. While the creative scene ‘over the bridge’ is rich, established and condensed, the Beaches foster a spirit that’s more laid-back and natural,” Walsh adds.
The fact that the Beaches can be a little “slow to the party” is part of the charm. “Living here inspired me, my husband Cam and our friend Luke to open Winona, because a few years ago natural wine and progressive booze was impossible to get here.”
Where Walsh trades in wine and words, Claire Perini deals in objects, artefacts, furniture and prints, through her Avalon showroom Composition by Office Elias. But both women – and many already mentioned – are part of what Perini calls “a strong current of businesses run by women” that courses through the Northern Beaches.
“Living and working here, you are constantly in conversation about exciting projects and collaborations with others,” says Perini, who purchased a mid-20th century home in Avalon at the beginning of 2020 while expecting her first child.
“I love that there are so many different approaches to design, in particular the architectural vernacular. I am never short of inspiration here. Also, everyone wants to see you succeed. There is this knowledge that the more we encourage others, the more diverse and interesting the Beaches become.”
Similar to Perini, it was a charming fixer-upper that caught the eye of Elise Pioch Balzac, the founder of glassware and fragrance brand Maison Balzac.
“We fell in love with this charming waterfront property in Elvina Bay while looking for a renovation project,” Balzac says. “We’ve lived here for six months now but have done very little to the house because we can’t stop looking at the view and getting distracted by it,” she says, chuckling. I can relate – on a much smaller scale. For months I’ve wanted to paint my kitchen splashback. But when the
weekend comes around and the sun begins to dance on the water, I simply do not have (nor do I desire to have) the discipline to pass up a front-row seat to the show.
When I set about contacting the people whose stories are contained here, I was overwhelmed by just how receptive everyone was to being involved. “What a beautiful part of the world we live in, right?” commented Pioch Balzac. “It’s a very special area, that’s for sure,” mused Scifo. While I’ve met some people with love-hate relationships with the area, I’m yet to find a person who lives in the Northern Beaches who actively dislikes it.
“I think generationally, it’s pretty interesting, too,” remarks Danielle Cox, who is the director of marketing and communications at Haydenshapes (and Hayden’s partner in life). “We walk a lot around our neighbourhood as a family, and we get to meet all the locals who have lived in the area for 40-plus years. Many of them have lived very creative lives; they’ve travelled the world, built and sold businesses, and have come back to settle down and retire.”
Without necessarily intending to, her observation chimes with the stories on these pages. Maybe, like Scifo and Cox, you grew up here, moved away and then returned. Perhaps, like Walsh and the Lime
Cordiale boys, your centre of gravity has always been fixed here, but you’ve left to gather experiences then found yourself drawn back.
Or maybe, like Goold, Widders Hunt, Vestergaard, Perini and Middleton, you blew in from afar, only to find yourself under the Northern Beaches’ spell and unable or unwilling to leave. Because, as it is in most communities, everyone here has a story. Unlike as it is in most communities, though, the geography, environment and sense of place here tends to play a starring role, whether it falls at the beginning, the middle or the end of the tale.
I’m still not sure what category I fit into. I’m a blow-in by design, but as I finish this story, I’m preparing to do what I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to do: leave. My boyfriend and I recently decided to go our separate ways, and I figure now’s a good time to try on another part of Sydney for size.
Writing this has helped me to realise that even if another neighbourhood doesn’t fit, there will always be a home for me here.
“If the Beaches was a person, I’d call it down-to-earth and friendly,” says Elli Walsh. “Simple, too – not unintelligent, but easy-going and casual.”
I’m going to end on Walsh’s personification, because it strikes me as being so true. The only quality I might add is beguiling. Be open to the Northern Beaches’ charms and you’ll be swept up in its magic.