Concrete Playground

Reasons abound to love Bondi in winter; you can park within a 10k radius of where you actually need to be and not have to queue behind a bevy of excitable tourists to grab a coffee at a cafe that boasts glimpses of the ocean, for a start. But like a Jamaican new to bobsledding, Sydney’s little beachside gem suffers in winter, and while it may be a local residents' paradise, the beach is barren and business is slow.

This year, rather than cower beneath the chill of winter's icy ocean winds, Bondi Beach is embracing the colder months like a Swiss Ski resort in peak season. As part of the Alpine Winter Festival, Bondi will transform from the sun-soaked, beachside hub of all things hot to … a Bergstation.

A bergstation is the highest spot reachable by snow transports (ski lifts, cable-car, etc) in Alpine Ski resorts in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Although the humidity's a few notches higher than the Alps and the only peaks in sight are of frothy sea salt and not of snowcapped mountains, who says Bondi can't be a bergstation? And why can't it erect a ginormous ice-rink for two weeks in July to demonstrate the fact?

Yes. you read correctly, from July 16 to 25, snow deprived Sydneysiders will have the opportunity to skate on a 600 square-metre lake of ice alongside the sprawling white sands of Bondi Beach. And to really confuse the senses, keen skaters can cap off a day on the ice with a few cocktails at the St. Moritz bar or a hot meal beside an open fire overlooking the ocean in the Alpine Ski Hut. So, in these challenging economic times, you need not choose between your winter or summer holiday; Bondi Bergstation puts the ocean on ice for an all-rolled-into-one mid-year vacation.