People of Bondi | Stuart Spence

People of Bondi | Stuart Spence

Stu Spence is an artful photographer. We’ve known him for a very long time. He’s also very Bondi … and in fact maintains his own Bondicentric facebook group called Only in Bondi.

Stu has a way with a camera, and a way with words. Here’s his homage to Ben Buckler, lifted from aforementioned facebook page:

“Benny Buckler, you were my home for, what was it? 11 years? More, maybe.

I can almost hear your early spring skinny dippers squealing in the night… your soft north swells calling the sleep up and in from the rocks below my window. I can feel the vicious summer sun stinging our headland right the way down till she mercifully dipped away, only to get us again the next day. The smell of sosso’s being murdered on barbies down on the grassy knoll (and the accompanying first merciful wash of VB…like gulping for life, isn’t it?), often as a longboarder slices the last wave before pitch sets in.

The touro’s, the sneaky lovers, the daredevil rock fisherman, the self harmers, the looks on the old one’s faces as the Ferrari’s and Hugo Boss suits slowly but surely skulked their way in, eventually pushing us out.To the surfers, the musicians, actors, writers, fine artists, bull artists, the R-y crew, the fisho’s down on the ramp…my pals that made that time pure, uncut bliss…to Benny Buckler herself…thanks for the ride you beautiful mental mob!”