BONDI

The Icebergs pool was cut into the rock in 1929 for an unglamorous reason: the surf lifesavers needed somewhere to keep training through winter. Club rule was three Sundays in four, through the cold, for five years. Seven hundred people still swim it on winter mornings.

Bondi faces east, so the sun comes up out of the Pacific and the light by mid-morning is the hardest in this collection. The usual rule inverts — the sky bleaches out and the sea goes dark. That is why the sky here is yellow and the ocean is nearly black.

The lane markings are painted on the floor of the pool, not floating on it, and you read them through clear water. Getting that right mattered more than anything else on this one. The first surf lifesaving club in the world was founded on this beach in 1907.