Here are some photos taken at Bondi Beach on Sunday 8th August 2010. Around 80,000 people lined up for the event with the front runners starting at 8:30am.

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The weather was fine and sunny, with very little wind, a perfect day in every respect. This year the start for the front runners was at 8:30 am. The total number of entrants was 80,000 which was a huge increase over last year. There have not many people in fancy dress costume in recent years. But full marks to the Spiderman who made a welcome appearance, not to mention the regular Superman whom I did not manage to see. It was very much a picnic day and family day, with a pleasant lack of in-your-face promotions. It's a wonderful thing to have so little visual pollution at the seaside from ghastly, irrelevant sponsors. A much better result than Queensland's annual Gympie Muster (for Country Music fans) which a mobile phone company has just managed to rename by replacing the word Gympie with their company name. But this year the 80,000 City-To-Surf entrants really pushed the organisation of the event right to the limit. Firstly the handling of bags became chaotic. Those with red and green numbers were confronted with a huge crush and mountains of unsorted bags while the elite runners has their needs attended to instantly by a grossly overstaffed pick-up point. Sydney Buses reached their limit. The Bondi trams which stopped in 1958 would have done better. By 11:30am the queue for the buses extended right down through the park to the promenade. The only way I could get round the crush on the promenade was to walk on the sand. By noon, buses were bumper to bumper right up Bondi Road and going at less than walking pace. This means the trip to Bondi Junction was taking at least 30 minutes, and these buses were unable to return promptly to the beach for a second trip, thus making the situation at the beach even worse. Additional bus services from Hall Street or Curlewis Street would certainly help, and might even give some much-needed business to local shops. Surely everyone is heartily sick of walking halfway up the hill in a slow queue to catch a bus which takes 30 minutes for a 10 minute trip. Here's hoping somebody starts a Facebook page to give the organisers some customer feedback.

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