It takes less than 48 hours for me to understand what Sydneysiders mean by the 6am club. I’ve never been one to rise early on holiday — aren’t long, slow lie-ins under crisp linen sheets pretty much the sole purpose of turning on that OOO? — but there’s something about the Northern Beaches suburb of Manly and its weirdly addictive pre-breakfast wellness routine that quickly turns me into That Person Who Sets An Alarm On Holiday.
Mercifully, the sight of the number five on my home screen takes surprisingly little time to adjust to, since the reward — sunrise, Sydney’s glittering skyline in the distance, depending on which of Manly’s eight world-beating beaches you decide to view it from (TripAdvisor has just listed Manly Beach at number seven in the world) — is worth every single lost second of shut-eye. “You can send all the extras home now,” I joke to a friend during a Thursday morning snorkel safari, convinced that the 6am crowd of runners, surfers, sea swimmers and impossibly chiselled volleyball players could only be here on some kind of commission.
