1884 - 1957

In 1884, as part of Sydney’s tram network, a line was extended from central Sydney to the Bondi Aquarium, located in Fletcher Street. Bondi’s culture radically changed as a result, because residents of Greater Sydney were much better able to get to the beach to enjoy bathing and other forms of outdoor recreation.

The tram’s early-morning trips were especially popular among Bondi-bound bathers till 1902, when swimming became permitted between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Daytime bathing at any beach in the Sydney Cove area had been criminalised in 1833, under the Sydney Police Act.

Although the Bondi route was only a single line, it was especially popular, and thousands of people used it every day. In 1894, Waverley Council decided to build an extension that included a loop, or turning circle, at South Bondi, to help the line cope with the demand.

Sydney’s first trams were steam driven and comprised two passenger cars. On wet days, a third car was attached to cater for extra passengers.

In 1905, the New South Wales Government chose Bondi to be a destination for a new tram service for tourists, and the beach became even more popular when the first of a number of moonlight excursions were added to the timetable. The Bondi and North Bondi surf-lifesaving clubs were established in 1906, four years after legalisation of daytime bathing, and the popularity of surf bathing led to an improved tram service for summer Sundays.

On Friday, 15 May 1925, the Bondi tram loop was demolished to make way for the Bondi Park section of the Bondi Beach and Park Improvement Scheme. Thereafter the trams we re-routed along Campbell Parade, to a new terminus located at North Bondi, where they connected with the Bellevue Hill line. The site is still used as a bus interchange today. Electrification of Sydney’s trams started in 1898, and most of the vehicles’ motors had been converted from steam driven to electric by 1910. The first of the popular O-class trams entered service on the Bondi and Waverley lines in March 1908. Nicknamed rattlers and toast-rack trams, Sydney’s various classes of tram successfully carried passengers for the decades up to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sydneysiders who remember the Bondi tram are very nostalgic about it, and one way its memory lives on is in the Australian slang expression “He [She] shot through like a Bondi tram!” In 1981, award-winning author Libby Hathorn, aided by illustrator Julie Vivas, first published the classic Australian children’s book The Tram to Bondi Beach, which in 2021 came out as a 40th-anniversary edition. Older Sydneysiders fondly remember the tram’s segregated smoking carriages, canvas blinds for keeping the rain out, ‘paper boys’ and charismatic conductors. The last Bondi tram “shot through” in the early hours of Sunday, 18 February 1960. The R-class ‘corridor tram’ was crammed with last-tram riders, who reportedly had a boisterous journey.

Courtesy David R. Keenan and Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.