The Other Palm Beach

The day after our Wollongong adventure, John and I still had possession of our rental car.  So we decided to make the most out of it by heading all the way to Palm Beach!  That’s right!  A 10,000 mile adventure!  We’ll get to go shopping at CityPlace and ogle Donald Trump’s massive beachside mansion!  I hear Oprah and Tom Selleck have homes on Palm Beach too!  Woohoo!

Oh wait.

No, no.  Not Palm Beach, Florida.  Sorry.  The other Palm Beach.  Just like with London and Paris and Athens:  there is more than one Palm Beach in the world.

Palm Beach, New South Wales, is located approximately one hour north of Sydney.  It sits on the very tip of a narrow peninsula that separates the Pacific Ocean from Broken Bay.  And to all you Americans and Canadians reading this right now:  Be jealous.

Be very jealous.

It’s winter in North America and you all are sitting inside drinking hot cocoa by the fireplace… because you know that the moment you step outside will be the moment your nose and ears automatically turn blue and your testicles shrivel up and take cover as close to your body as they possibly can.  And your car is frozen in the driveway.  And me?  I’m here:

We went to Palm Beach on a Monday and it was virtually empty.  There was minimal traffic getting up there (it’s a long and somewhat winding drive up the peninsula) and the café we ate at featured only one other table of patrons.  No pesky tourists.  No children screaming or laughing heinously.  Just the waves and the beach all to myself.

And John too, of course.  I laid my towel out and went straight for the water.  I splashed around like a little kid while John read his book up on the beach under a nice tree.  He was sick of the sun.  These Seattle people just can’t handle it.

And the best part?  The best part was… there weren’t really any birds!  Usually, Sydney beaches are plagued by those little shit seagulls.  But not Palm Beach.  Maybe they stayed away because there weren’t enough beach-goers out to feed them on a Monday, but my housemate conjectured that they probably are exterminated regularly because Palm Beach is one of the filming locations for Home and Away – one of Australia’s biggest soap operas.  We can’t have those pesky seagulls flying into shots and pooping on actors’ heads mid-scene and stealing French fries from that guy behind the camera.  Hellz no!

Whatever the reason, the point is there weren’t any birds and it was the absolute best beach ever.  Seriously.  (But I sort of hope that Channel 7 kills the seagulls because that would just be awesome and I would implore them to start filming scenes at Bondi as well.  And Coogee.  And Manly.  And Tamarama.  And all around Circular Quay.  And, Channel 7, while you’re at it, can you get rid of all the pigeons on Bourke Street?  Thanks!)

So yeah.  The whole point of this blog is to make you jealous that we’ve got Palm Beach and you’ve got blizzards and snow chains and bunches of cars and buses sliding down iced-over hills in Seattle or Washington or Chicago or New York or Toronto or wherever you may reside.

Oh, wait.  That’s mean.  Sorry!  The whole point of the blog is to inform you that there is more than one Palm Beach in the world.  In fact, there are seven.  In addition to Palm Beach, Florida and Palm Beach, New South Wales, there is also another Palm Beach in Australia – up in Queensland – and Palm Beaches in Aruba, South Africa, and the French Riviera.  That makes six.  And the seventh?

It’s in Illinois.  And that’s fucking ridiculous.