I keep taking the bus through Bondi with my children. Approaching the stop on Campbell Parade, I want to get off the bus, walk across the road past the pavilion, soak up the air, feel sand under my feet, feel my sadness – but my hand stays put in my daughter’s, my arm around my son on my lap. The bus rolls on.

I can’t explain how beautiful Bondi beach is on a Sunday summer afternoon. You have to be there to believe it. There are no words for how golden it is as the heat seeps out from the sun and sinks into the sea.

Bondi has been just down the road for most of my Australian life. I had been talking about taking my British friend there for fish and chips that Sunday night three weeks ago and only decided against it because I thought the day was too nice. It’ll be crowded; I’m feeling curmudgeonly. Let’s leave the happy crowds to enjoy it. We’ll just stay here at my dad’s house. Have a quiet night in. Then we heard a chopper and then another, and then my phone started buzzing.

I want to talk about how existentially joyful Bondi makes me feel on a pretty summer afternoon; truly astonishing to see all the people in this beautiful place, just hanging out in peace, sand blowing at their legs. The great wall, the pyramids, the moon with rocket ships have nothing on this monument built of safe people in the sun, in peace, together, different, sharing the golden light. What a colossal thing to have constructed out of will.

I cannot comprehend anyone seeing that and not seeing it. I can’t get my head around any ideology that wants to destroy it. Isn’t this just too nice to pin crazy hate on? Why not just get a gelato, maybe? Watch the sun go down?

When I was at law school, there was a concept we were taught, which was the idea of “the reasonable man”. The best legal minds in Australia have pondered the question of who the reasonable man is, and – the answer, embedded in our laws, is that the reasonable man is “the man on the bus to Bondi”. It makes me laugh a little bit, every time I get on the bus to Bondi, wondering, which of us here is “the reasonable........

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