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I have always regarded myself as a city girl. I grew up in Balgowlah Heights and went to school in Kirribilli and my first share house was in Darlinghurst, where I designed jewellery and danced my nights away at the Exchange Hotel in Oxford Street.
I didn’t discover Avalon Beach and the “insular peninsula” until my early 20s, when a colleague asked me to house-sit his place while he was overseas. It was a house perched on a cliff, with competing views over the Pacific and Pittwater, where cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets strutted and hopped along the verandas, expecting to be fed.
My boyfriend at the time – now my husband – already had dreams of being a novelist.
“If that ever happens, I want to live in a place like this,” he said, and we laughed because how many dreams like that come true?
Jump forward 12 years. Married and with a two-year-old, I was pregnant with our second. For 10 years we had lived in London but had finally decided to come home. We were living with my mother and looking for a house to buy. Michael was writing and I was suffering from morning sickness and wrangling a toddler.
We drove north one Saturday morning, looking at open-house opportunities. Bilgola Bends was too much for my delicate constitution, and I was sick opposite Avalon Golf Course. That’s one way to introduce yourself to the locals.
Afterwards, we sat in a cafe in the sunshine, drinking lemonade to settle my stomach. We remembered the house-sitting and the promises we made in our 20s.
“I want to live here,” Michael said.
“It’s a long way to commute,” I said.
“I’m going to be a writer.”
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
“We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”
Eight weeks later, we moved into a modest house in Cannes Drive, set high in the treetops, looking across Careel Bay. It came with rainbow lorikeets, cockatoos, kookaburras and a resident family of owls. That was 28 years ago.
Our address has changed twice since then, but we still live in Avalon Beach. We have raised three children, Michael has written 19 novels and I have worked to get an independent, Dr Sophie Scamps, elected as our federal member of parliament.
Avalon is still a village and I love its sense of community. There is no such thing as a quick trip to the shops. I meet people I know every time I walk into town, or queue at the post office, or pick up a coffee at any one of the many cafes.
When the kids were little, I’d say to Michael, “They’re asleep. I’m popping out for 10 minutes,” only to arrive home an hour later, having been waylaid by friends.
Finding a tradesman is never a problem because I have connections. Invariably, my plumber, electrician or builder will be the husband or son or brother of a friend, and if their work isn’t perfect, they know I’ll be on the phone to their mother/wife/sister.
People often make fun of the “insular peninsula”, suggesting that we’re isolationists or somehow snobby. There might be something to that. We do get inundated by visitors every summer weekend and at Christmas and Easter. They choke the streets and erect massive sun shelters on the beaches and drive the wrong way in the supermarket car park.
I don’t mind the influx because we get this place to ourselves for most of the year: the cafes and restaurants and a local cinema and one of the best bookshops in Australia, Bookoccino.
Ten years ago, a web-based series called Avalon Now dissected and lampooned life on the northern beaches. It gently mocked our love of hot yoga, kale and cronuts from La Banette, but we happily laughed at ourselves because all satire has an element of truth.
There are, however, downsides to living in Avalon. Like most areas of Sydney, property prices and rents have soared, making it harder for our children and frontline workers to live locally. And public transport has always been an issue, particularly for those who work in the city and commute.
But once you’re here, there’s nowhere else you’d want to be, which is why I love showing off Avalon to our overseas friends. They arrive jet-lagged and take the longish drive from the airport, but when they come around the bends and see the rocky headlands and waves exploding on the rocks and the long stretches of sand, you can see them instantly understand why we came back to Australia and why we chose to live here.
We took one friend for a walk over Bangalley Headland. He saw a pod of dolphins close to shore and whales breaching and surfers carving up the waves. He shook his head in disbelief and asked, “Did you organise this?”
“No, it’s just another day in paradise.”
Vivien Robotham is a community volunteer and book lover.
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