Here at North Coaster, we don’t aim to diminish our cousins further down the coastline.
I mean, who could disparage the sight of 200 random strangers salsa dancing at Scarborough’s amphitheatre on a warm summer evening?
Who would ever question driving endlessly up and down the Cottesloe foreshore, in search of a mythical free parking space?
And who would dare poke fun at the reefy, skinny, rocky beaches and the endless hipsters lined up for decaffeinated slow-pressed soy Portuguese lattes along North Beach’s West Coast Highway?
Surely not North Coasters. We would never.
The thing about space
It’s just that North Coasters tend to do it with a little more space.
Take the original. Mindarie. Sure, it’s different from Hillarys, not as commercial, fewer shops, less tourism. But Mindarie has space. Space for the boaties to launch. Space for the cafes, like Sisters and the Indian Ocean Brewing Company, to actually breathe.
And Clayton’s Beach to Mindarie’s south is virtually Broome’s Cable Beach in width, with the bonus of some unpacked waves carrying enough shape that the Trigg boardriders would travel to Bali for, if they ever found out.
Then the Burns Beach cafe strip, and the OG, Portofino’s itself. A throwback to a golden era of beach life, but with, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, space. Even Portofino’s has a vast expanse of it, with wonderful people-watching and beach views included at no extra charge.
The new guard
The Beachhouse in the Eden Beach estate is bold, modern, stunning architecture, and yes, you guessed it, spacious. No waiting 35 minutes for a coffee in this place. (Or an hour, if you’re comparing it to City Beach. Which we would never do. Ignore paragraph one).
Oceans 27 is a space like the name suggests…vast. The Amberton sits perched on top of a 40,000-year-old sand dune with 180-degree views north and south along the coast, big and bold. Yanchep’s Orion sits like an old local legend over the lagoon, the Yanchep Beachhouse at Capricorn Beach, it’s all big, and people-friendly.
You be you
And the vibe. It’s not judgey. Nobody’s checking what you’re wearing or what you’re driving. It doesn’t feel like keeping up with the Joneses, because half the Joneses up here are still building their house.
It’s modern and contemporary without the pretension.
Maybe it won’t be this way forever. Coasts grow up, crowds find things, and one day there may well be a 45 minute queue at The Amberton and a salsa class in the amphitheatre at Shorehaven.
But that’s how it feels these days…all the coffee, all the ocean, none of the elbows.
Our cafes don’t have to be Perth’s. They just have to be ours, for as long as it lasts.