Well we had beach volleyball at the 2000 Olympic Games and the ice skating rink in winter for last few years. Now Waverley Council has said it will host the International Beach Polo Tournament at Bondi Beach on 9th May 2015. This one day event is expected to attract around 4000 people and will involve bringing in polo ponies to Bondi Beach and the building of infrastructure to support such an event.

The Council has approved the event “in principle” subject to a few conditions, including the satisfactory submission of a final Event Management Plan (which meets traffic, parking and complying regulatory requirements) at least 16 weeks prior to the event occupation period.

It’s worth noting that this event was not unanimously approved. Four councillors opposed the motion to approve this proposal at the Council’s Operations Committee Meeting held on 1 July 2014.

There has been little press about this proposal, but here is an article written by Emily Contador-Kelsall.

Of course such an idea is completely ludicrous to me – and I suspect to many other locals also. Aren’t there already healthy numbers of tourists in Bondi Beach? Aren’t people all around the world already aware of Brand Bondi?

Yet, for Waverley Council, having Bondi host the International Beach Polo Tournament, [such] a prestigious international sporting event, “will help promote and showcase Bondi Beach to the rest of the world and could bring social, physical and economic benefits to Bondi.”

Really?

I think Sally Betts might need to knock on a few residents’ doors and really gauge how many locals think that attracting another 4000 people to Bondi in one day (together with all the other repercussions that such an event would have on the area) is going to bring them social, physical and economic benefits!

car sandwich

I was across the road, about to drive off, when the driver got into her car, accompanied by a passenger. I called out to her through my car window that it looked unlikely that she’d be able to get out of that spot.

She was quite relaxed about the whole thing, and smiling, she said she would just go forward and back inch by inch until she could get out. I didn’t know what she was thinking and was sure one of the cars was going to get hit.

Anyway, I drove off to run a quick errand and returned as quickly as I could to re-claim the parking spot that I had just left. I must have been gone for no more than 4 minutes or so.

When I returned, I couldn’t believe that the woman’s car had gone. She had somehow managed to get her car out of that spot in less than 5 minutes.

Although it seemed like the only plausible explanation was that her car wheels could turn to a 90 degree angle, I don’t think her car had the ability to be driven sideways. Perhaps she was a reincarnation of Harry Houdini!

I wished I had stayed to watch her get out of the spot – though watching her might have made her nervous, which may have caused her to hit one of the cars that wedged her in.

In any case, she deserves a medal for getting her car out of what was possibly the tightest parked car situation that I’ve ever seen!

Bondi has become very congested with traffic in recent times.

So I am a little perplexed as to why there seems to be endless “intrusive” roadworks going on in the Bondi area. It has been going on for months and tonight several streets I drove along in a very small part of Bondi, had roadworks and traffic jams etc going on.

Why is the decision made to do roadworks in several neighbouring streets at the SAME time in one of the country’s most densely populated suburbs?

Can anybody pleeyze explain this decision-making by Waverley Council or the RTA or whoever?