Why a photo of Bondi beach at 6am has shocked the entire world
A seemingly innocent picture of Bondi Beach at 6am has sent shockwaves around the world for one simple reason.
You’ve heard of the It bag, It watches, jeans, toast (avocado), water bottles (Stanley), chocolate (Dubai) and bum-bum creams but do you have an It alarm clock?
Not an actual bring, bring metal number that shrilly jingles and rattles like something out of Steamboat Willie but what is the number that you set on your (let’s be honest) phone?
The latest status symbol is not some four figure purse handcrafted by gnarled Parisian hands that have been stitching leather since de Gaulle was in charge but what time you get up.
Not just mornings but ultra-early mornings are in.
Once the 4 or 5am wake-up was the stuff of hardcore, black coffee-drinking, hard-charging CEOs who were all bullish testosterone and earnings calls. Maybe there were a few yogis devoted to that hour, keen to meet the first rays of day while balanced on one leg and chanting their heart sutra, but they were the exception.
But now, for what feels like an increasing number of Australians, this is now the rule. It’s the dawning of the age of the dawn, and pre-dawn, tribe.
It goes far beyond just those intent on getting some huffy-puffy exercise in. (Though Sydney’s 1440 Running Club has more than 25,000 followers on Instagram.)
Unwritten, a Sydney dating club, now hosts – and sells out – singles events which begin at 7am.
Walk into pretty much any cafe at that time and you can generally now find business meetings being done too.
As we go to the polls and as a nation decide what sort of future we want, the rise of Mornings as a bona fide thing tells us a hell of a lot about where Australia is today and what you need to do to be one of the in crowd. Seeing the sunrise, from this side, has become officially cool.
In March, a video from British Love Island celebrity Molly-Mae Hughes racked up more than 700,000 views showing what a downright pumping scene Bondi is at 6am, showing huge throngs of people doing exercise and wholesome things, all powered by oat milk lattes and virtuousness. “I swear Australia is a different planet,” she wrote while we as a nation preened.
Then in April, investor and adviser Ivan Power went viral on LinkedIn, which is apparently a real thing, about the powerhouse ascendancy of our daybreak ways. “If global rankings existed, Sydney would already be the world champion of the Morning Economy,” Power wrote.
Part of this can be put down to a few really boring, practical things the infiltration of wellness culture everywhere in our lives from the milk aisle to the toothpaste section to the fact sticking tape your mouth to sleep no longer reads like some BDSM-y kink for those who don’t want to shell out for a ball gag but sage sleep advice.
Also, there’s no denying that The Kids are just more clean-living than those of who still remember when Y2K was a dastardly bug that was going to bring the world’s computers grinding to a halt and planes falling out the sky.
In 2025, rates of alcohol and drug consumption are wobbling faster than a first year on their fourth Midori. Slugging back enough booze to pickle even one of Yeltsin’s cronies is no longer the badge of youthful pride it once might have been.
You have to also wonder what part money plays in this. Even a $6 or $7 latte hardly compares in terms of hip pocket pain to a night out on even the cheapest house wine of turps. We are at a point when historically high numbers of 20 and 30 somethings are stuck living at home, less out of familial yearnings and more because even a tiny shoebox where you can scramble eggs in the kitchen with one foot in the shower costs high six figures and a pact with the devil at the crossroads.
However, the swing towards there being an obvious pre-dawn cool crowd (the PDCC anyone?) is not just a reflection of habits born out of necessity but that being part of the morning gang brings with it a hell of a lot of social and cultural caché.
To rise in the dark to work, date, hustle, do self-care or all of the above has become more than a badge of honour in 2025 – it’s become a source of identity. On Instagram alone, there are 125,000 posts using #4amclub and more than 690,000 using #5amclub. On TikTok? Samesies.
The PDCC have fully embraced their bragging rights, a sentence I write at 5.57am being one of this very smug number. And probably horrible smug we are, a self-satisfied lot adamant that going to bed when a lot of preschoolers are still having num nums and bouncing out of bed to get a jump on the day is just the ticket. (Are we insufferable? Bien sur.)
There is a very clear downside to all this and let me issue a staunch warning. To travel overseas, especially to Europe and Asia, as an inveterate pre-dawner is to now pound the streets of a city at 7.27am plaintively bleating about coffee and only finding locked doors and bemused garbos. The rest of the world is indifferent to our needs.
For now anyway.
As Ivan Power pointed out in his LinkedIn post, “we already reinvented the world’s mornings through coffee, smashed avo, and scrambled eggs”. Again people, it’s time to do it again.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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