So many interesting characters turn up to Bondi in the morning after we have our swim. At the moment it is getting as low as 6 degrees when we hop in. The water hovers between 14 and 17. It gives you that most excellent thrill as it passes over your neck as the wave crashes against you. The water is dark, not black, but very dark. A small amount of light comes from the street lamps and the homes and apartment blocks that flank the north and south headlands. It is usually quiet but for the waves and at the moment the waves have been smaller, the water further out from the shore, a bit of a hike really. You worry there are sharks of course, but to date I’ve never seen one. One thing is for sure, you are a helluva lot more confident when you have one or more friends joining you.
After we dip we rinse off and head up to Hall Street where there are two coffee shops. On the left is Gusto’s and on the right is Cali Press. Gusto’s is a small business owner operator kind of affair, Cali Press is a franchise model, or some form of it. The old wart hogs, the true morning soft sand jog and swim crowd, they go to Gusto’s. They range in age from late forties to late seventies in age. They are always there before us. There is Les, Adam, Pete, Dan, Mary, the other Peter, T and a few others I have forgotten the name of.
At our table it is less consistent. There are roughly 8 members in our group with guest appearances from time to time from a few additional friends who come in and out of the group depending on schedules and work loads. Our group is normally two strong, sometimes three and four. Only on a big morning is there 8 of us. They are all pretty motivated and hard working - I probably have the least stressful workload and the least stressful home life. Kids sport, school drops, opening up at the business, work travel, meetings, vacations and a desire to sleep in are what keep most of them away from their ritual.
But when we meet at that time in the morning you also bump into other interesting early risers who have either been for a walk, walked the dog, gone to the gym or are getting their morning coffee before they head off to work. The construction workers also arrive, there is so much going on in Bondi, especially Hall Street, and the garbage trucks with their yellow lights blocking the streets, the local detectives from Bondi Police all suited up and very official.
You might forget all these elements if you don’t stop to write it down. Otherwise, it’s just another morning when you get out bare feet from your car and cross the street for coffee. But in another one hundred years this entire landscape might have otherwise changed, barely recognisable to anyone that currently goes there each morning right now. It was once the place where an old pharmacist called Mr Spragg who used to work for my father on Sundays, a World War 2 kind of guy, who would have had a sauna at the Old Diggers club, caught up with his friends for a schooner at a classic looking pub where they used to advertise KB. He would have been born in the 1920’s. And 25 years before he was born there were no buildings around at all. It was just sand dunes and rocky crags. Now those same spots have houses that could fetch one hundred million dollars if tested, others have been offered 50 million and knocked it back, and according to Pistol Pete that was some years ago - “She said she wasn’t moving for any amount of money”.
So what we experience now is a moment in time and space which will soon be gone as Hall Street gets developed up and down, those two buildings which house our current cafes must soon be in the sights of some developer who wants a return on his money and must deploy his capital and waits and waits for the right opportunity. Which brings me to my point. As we sat down the other day there was an industrial real estate agent and a valuer there as well as a site acquisitions director for a local developer and another developer who happened to be on our table, one of whom was a distant cousin of mine, the other a cousin of one of our fellow members.
As is usual for Sydneysiders, our conversation moved to real estate - prices, the price of money, rents, construction costs. The usual. One of the men at the table said “there are only three main reasons why people sell property - they are the three D’s - Death, Divorce and Debt.” It was such an interesting thing to hear and made sense. We are in the throes of an economic downturn.
The pressures of that downturn are evident everywhere, from the price of a coffee to the rate of interest people are currently paying on debt. I rang my car finance company the other day to make to ascertain my balloon payment as well as my contract term end. They informed me that my current interest rate was from when I purchased the car in 2020. 3.2%. Even the lady at the other end of the phone scoffed. Wow, that was a good deal she said. Yes it was. What’s the current rate? You are looking at 7.5 to 11 percent depending on what you are after.
Wow. Just wow.
Debt. Divorce. Death.
A few years back a financial journalist friend of mine said “we just have to accept that low interest rates are here to stay and this is the new world we occupy where money is clearly less productive than what it once was”. That same journalist now has no comment. We are so lucky to live in this country of ours. We have our health and we have no war for the moment. Death for the most part is from natural causes. Divorce, nobody can really help that unless we fall back to having our lives overrun by religion. Debt - debt on the other hand, we have some control over. Or so we would like to think. But the more and more I look at it the more I think about just how much companies want us to take on debt, from credit cards to Afterpay, from car loans to mortgages. We have always been sold debt, we have always been asked to take on debt and it has fuelled so much of our modern era. But, as one of my favourite cinema lines goes, the words of Jock Delves in the film White Mischief, which documents the debauched Happy Valley set of Kenya, when he turns to his servant and says “when it’s sunny the the bank will always offer you an umbrella. But when it’s raining they are nowhere to be found”.
To our wonderful customers who have supported us over the past 16 years, I just wish to say thank you. I have no intention of giving up on you, but for the first time in a long time I will need to take on another job for a while to make ends meet.
That is the short of the long of it. I am always available to you and I am not going far, I am just developing new skills. It is time. Good news, I will be able to use my suits and ties. If you see me around say hi - I may, if you indulge me, practice my new sales pitch on you. With big love and have a great weekend.
Nicholas