When a country beach is spoilt, it’s spoilt in one way. A single intruder is all it takes, and the feeling is mutual. You’ve done to their splendid isolation what they’ve done to yours.

A city beach comes pre-spoilt, and that’s a beautiful thing. You bring no illusions about having it to yourself. You have to surrender to the ‘beachopolis’. I don’t know if my local, Manly Beach, is my favourite beach in the world but it forces you to take it as it comes. I submit to it.

Before dawn there’s the countdown shouted by the head trainer of the surfboat crew from inside the club gym. “Four, three, two, one!” from five-something am. He’s turned up his music so loud he needs to throw open the doors so his voice can be heard. We all hear you, champ.

By sunrise, the boardwalk is a Pitt Street of striders solo and paired, dog walkers, the Lululemon army. The bike path is a gauntlet of homicidal e-riders. If you want a slower and safer stroll you need to go on the grass strip and negotiate Pilates groups, boxercisers, stretchercisers and loose-rope artists, hangover merchants and yogis, baby-strollers up all night and already dying for a nap.

Walk on the sand? Sure. But: volleyball, beach sprint practice, the VIP who needs to get their steps up while multitasking with maxed-out speakerphone, dogs off-leash early to beat the rangers. In the water the Bold & Beautiful now have to go in shifts, too popular for their own good.

It’s not yet 6.30am. Business before business.

The surfers aren’t in the water, they’re on the land, an unhappy eye of the storm with arms crossed, jaws chewing to wish waves into existence. It doesn’t make the headlines but a lot of Sydney’s waves stopped breaking in 2025. The sand got pushed up against the sea walls and didn’t return to the water. It slides down steep against whatever swell comes in. No sandbanks, no surfable waves, just an energetic shore dump and backwash.

Manly being Manly, beginners and loggers are out in the water, catching nothing. The bench of broken dreams at North Steyne is forlorn with thousand-mile stares. When are the waves coming back? Don’t know. Some time. Maybe never? AI-driven surf websites churn out fool’s gold and draw the blow-ins down in their cars. More sad surfer faces: Manly has become Coogee.

But a lack of waves can’t spoil a city beach. There’s too much to see. Down towards South Steyne, coffee queues twist around corners and the morning traffic makes the 30 km/h speed limit a moot point. Someone tries to pull out of a beachfront parking space, throwing themselves on the mercy of the next one who wants to take it. Everything’s in motion while at a standstill.

The sun keeps rising, though, and so do the building sites. Attractive young visa workers operate the stop-go lollipops. The beach flags go up and the sirens start: cops, ambos, shark alarms triggered by tags and drones. The lifeguards drone over loudspeakers with inbuilt muffle. The sun gets high enough for tourists and uni students to take over the Manly end.

Slip, slop, slap optional. Put a hat on!

From Manly to Shelly, the dotted line down the middle of the path controls traffic busier than a road. Keep left, overtake with care. Shelly Beach snorkellers and divers back into the water in their flippers, getting away from getting away from it all.

Turn and go back. Stop – you’ve bumped into a friend. A city beach like Manly is a main street in a small town: you walk up one way and walk back the other. You encounter society. It’s always and never quite the same but you’re kind of invisible in the mass, and that makes for a happy place in its very own way.

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