I took these photos at Tamarama (above) and North Bondi rock platform (below) on the 20th June 2004. The pictures were taken fairly early in the morning, around 10am, with the sun behind my left shoulder, only a little way above the horizon. The wind was fairly brisk and came from the west. The rainbow effect is caused when spray from the breaking whitewater is blown in a fine mist back behind the wave, but the sun needs to be at the right angle.

I moved around the cliffs near Tama, looking for the best position. I took the above picture near Macenzies, a popular surfing spot near Bondi.... I can't call it a surfing beach... as all the sand washed away a few years back, making it an adventure getting back to shore on a heavy day!

After Tama I walked along the coastal path all the way around to North Bondi, a couple of kilometres away. Last year around this time I had taken a great photo of a rainbow wave out on the rock platform a little way around the headland... so I was confident I could take another as the conditions were similar.
It was tough getting out to platform. The tide was high and the heavy swell sometimes swept up over the rocky ledge, cutting access. I tried to stay up high, climbing from boulder to boulder as best I could, but I ended up getting wet feet anyhow, ironically when a wave washed behind the raised rock I was standing on, hit a larger ledge someway back, then flowed like a river back over my rock!

The edge of a rock platform is not like a soft sandy beach where a wave has plenty of time to first form then curl over and break as the water shallows. A ledge like the one in the picture below drops rapidly into deep water. The waves, with little time to lose any of their energy gained on the long trip across the Pacific, collide into the rock wall with an explosive boom, shooting spray and white foam into the air. The sun, once again low behind my left shoulder, causes a rainbow to appear in the fine mist.
This ledge is around the corner from North Bondi... the end of the sandy beach you can see in the top left hand corner is the end of South Bond. The 2nd cliff along from there, around the top middle of the picture is close to where the first picture was taken.