Good times at the seaside

Countless tides have ebbed and flowed since the older photo was taken at Collaroy Beach, probably in the 1950s.

Good times at the seaside

• Hats all folks, as fashions change at Church Point
• The little church that has stood the test of time
• High-speed features of the packed lagoon have been slowed
• When Condamine St was a dirt track through the bush

Countless tides have ebbed and flowed since the older photo was taken at Collaroy Beach, probably in the 1950s.

As is not uncommon at the southern end of the Collaroy, there is kelp on the shore.

What’s changed dramatically are the buildings along the beachfront, stretching as far as the eye can see.

In the old photo, the tallest buildings are of two storeys and they are dwarfed by the norfolk island pine trees.

Collaroy Beach as it is today

These days the beachfront is dominated by three high-rise apartment blocks, Flight Deck and Shipmates at Collaroy and Marquesas at Narrabeen.

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the first occupation of Flight Deck, while Shipmates was built before it and Marquesas was built after it.

Since then many of the old single-storey beachside houses have been replaced by two-storey homes of increasingly higher value and some three- and four-storey unit blocks.

But living so close to the waterline has its risks, with the Collaroy-Narrabeen beachfront among the top three coastal hotspots in Australia, along with the Gold Coast and the Adelaide coastline.