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Travel writer Brian Johnston, an immigrant to Australia, says Manly is better than Bondi and remains his happy place, praising its beaches, ferries, history and ability to make him feel young.
Travel writer Brian Johnston has declared Manly his happy place and argued it is better than the more famous Bondi. Writing for the My Happy Place series, the immigrant turned Australian asked why Bondi is more famous when Manly is surely better.
He said Manly is Australia to him. When Johnston first arrived permanently in Australia, he lived in Manly and worked there too. He taught English to Japanese surfers and bedazzled Europeans. Later he worked in the city and described commuting home by ferry as a sheer glory.
He said it was like shuffling off unwanted snakeskin at the end of each day and disembarking into a never-ending seaside holiday. He praised the lovely South Steyne end of Manly Beach in Sydney. Johnston said he is far from the only person to equate beaches with holidays. He asked who works on a beach and noted beaches are about downtime, sunbathing, swims, simple snacks and toe-squishing sunset walks.
They might be the only travel destination everyone agrees upon, he wrote, asking who does not like a beach. Before Australia, Johnston had lived mostly in a chilly landlocked city, Geneva, a grey landlocked city, Chengdu, and a grey rainy one, Edinburgh. Manly had an especially fevered effect on him. He marvelled at how it is spectacularly wedged on a peninsula between harbour and ocean.
It was an explosion of sun and colour, he wrote. Lifesavers wore yellow and red, heritage buildings were pink and ferries were green. Everything smelled of beer, sunscreen and gum trees. Cloudless skies and blue seas made walking to the bank or post office, as people had to do in those days, feel like a special excursion.
A Perennial Summer Among Surfers
Living in Manly felt like a perennial summer among toned surfers, bouncy Brazilians and lizard-skinned retirees. The Norfolk pines looked like Lego trees, lorikeets screeched blue murder and seagulls swooped. He eventually abandoned Manly for other suburbs because inner-city life was the lure for a while. But he never stopped visiting for a regular dose of sea and sand.
Eventually he returned to live just along the Middle Harbour, only a seven-minute drive from his favourite place. Now Manly is a 40-minute brisk walk from his home, direct via suburban streets across humpy hills pretty with frangipani and jacarandas. He can also take a longer coastal journey on the Manly Scenic Walkway. Anywhere else, he wrote, this splendid trail would have entrance fees, turnstiles and crowds, and be famous on Instagram.
Instead he can be halfway along it and imagine he is lost in the bush, if not for the skyscrapers glittering in the distance. No week goes by when he is not in Manly, if he is at home at all. It remains his slice of otherness, as if it has nothing to do with real life.
He dodges joggers along the waterfront, watches the jiggle of volleyball players, talks to old folk on benches and spots English-language students who now, disconcertingly, look improbably young. He admitted Manly can seem like a tourist trap to casual visitors, with its ice-cream parlours and surf-wear boutiques. During the school holidays, ferries disgorge kids whose ceaseless shrieks outdo the lorikeets. Barely-clothed day-trippers wobble along the Corso, and Asian visitors nibble cautiously at fish and chips, as well they might.
Hidden Beaches And Heritage Sites
He noted that cherished cultural emblems, viewed from an outsider perspective, are often odd and unappetising. But Manly is much more than its Corso and two strips of waterfront frequented by day-trippers and tourists. It has a dozen plump beaches, some so well hidden in tiny coves they are known only to local residents. It has parcels of almost-original landscapes and giant ferns hidden in gullies.
Manly also has the historic Q Station, a former quarantine facility turned coastal heritage retreat on Sydney Harbour. The Old Quarantine Station provides curious insights into Sydney immigration history and features abandoned sandstone ruins behind white picket fences. On North Head visitors find Indigenous rock carvings, World War II gun emplacements and a view straight down what he called the world most magnificent harbour, a view that deserves a brass-band fanfare.
Johnston asked whether Manly is his happy place from nostalgia alone. He was young when he first arrived, but noted that beaches always make you feel young. They seduce you into light-heartedness, he wrote. They seem pure and simple and carefree.
The ever-swooshing surf washes your problems away against the perspective of eternal time. He does not often think of his young self when he is in Manly. Another great thing about beachy places, he wrote, is that they encourage living in the moment. If anything, he thinks ahead more.
Living In The Moment And Nostalgia
One day he hopes to be a leathery old bloke sitting under a Norfolk pine, wrinkled as a basset hound, unabashed in his Speedos and grinning at his good fortune. Although he is Australian now, he was a foreigner once. He suggested it might take an outsider to remind Australians of their good luck, and how special this place and many other Australian beachside suburbs are.
He concluded that whether you stay for a day or a decade, if you are not happy in Manly, you cannot be happy anywhere. Johnston seemed destined to become a travel writer. He is an Irishman born in Nigeria and raised in Switzerland, who has lived in Britain and China and now calls Australia home.
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brisbanetimes:As an immigrant, I quickly fell in love with this famous Aussie suburb 
theage:As an immigrant, I quickly fell in love with this famous Aussie suburbThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
Bondi Sydney Beaches Immigrant Travel Writer My Happy Place Brian Johnston
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