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Kristine Carroll plopped herself down in the only shade on the beach — a triangle cast by the makeshift lifeguard station — and slathered sunscreen all over her freckled skin.

Squinting at the scorching midday sun, she glanced over at her 8-year-old daughter, Zoe, who had already plunged into the blue-green water without hesitation. “She’s a water baby,” Ms. Carroll said.

The Pacific Ocean, which gives Sydney, Australia, its iconic coastline and some of the world’s most enviable beaches, was almost 50 miles away. A pod of pelicans cruised past and coots waded nearby, with not a sea gull in sight. A sign cheekily warned of wave heights of 2 millimeters — less than a tenth of an inch.

This is Pondi Beach.

No, not Bondi, the glistening backdrop of reality television, the stuff of backpackers’ daydreams and ground zero of the Australian church of surf and sand — but Pondi, as locals have taken to calling humble, man-made Penrith Beach.

Created on one stretch of a lagoon at a former quarry at the foot of the Blue Mountains that mark the Sydney area’s western edge, Pondi, pronounced Pond-eye, isn’t exactly postcard-worthy like the eponymous Bondi Beach. But it has become a welcome haven for those who live an hour or more inland from the coast and pay hefty tolls to get there.

Like many cities, the fringes of Sydney’s urban sprawl are made up of working-class families, newly arrived immigrants and those pushed out further and further from downtown by rising housing prices. In Penrith and nearby areas, that also means living with temperatures that can be 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than near the coast, a disparity exacerbated by climate change. In 2020, Penrith was briefly the hottest place on earth, when the mercury topped 120 degrees.

The beach opened for a second season in December and so far has cost the state government about $2.7 million. At just over half a mile long, it is as long as Bondi Beach.

On a recent Sunday, when a heat warning was in effect with highs of 95 degrees, children gleefully splashed about at Pondi with snorkels or pool floats in the shape of crocodiles and unicorns. Some families tossed about a rugby ball, while others cooked up a feast of prawns, sausages and a whole roast chicken. A couple of girls lay out on their stomachs for a tan.

Ms. Carroll, 46, a lifelong Penrith resident who works as an education coordinator in a nearby prison, has never had air conditioning at home. The previous night, she said, she drove around in her car just for the air conditioning, because it was too hot in her house.

Having a beach close to her home for her family to cool off, rather than having to spend a full day trekking out to the coast — paying steep prices for tolls, parking and food — has been a major help, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis she said has stretched her finances. By her accounting, that day’s outing would only cost her the gas for a 12-minute drive and a 50-cent McDonald’s ice cream for her daughter on their way home.

“A lot of people turn up their noses at it, but, mate, it’s free. They think it’s the bogan knockoff of Bondi Beach,” she said, using derogatory Australian slang for an uncouth person, historically associated with Sydney’s western suburbs.

Zoe said she had been to “actual Bondi” on a recent weekend for a cousin’s swim meet. She liked it but said the saltiness of the ocean water left her with red splotches on her skin.

“I like how soft the sand is. In Bondi, the sand was too hot,” she said, burrowing her toes into the pale Pondi sand.

After playing in the water, Elhadi Dahia and his three children — ages 6, 4 and 1 ½ — had walked up a grassy slope to two food trucks. The older two polished off hot dogs and a potato snack, and began pleading for ice cream. The youngest was in a swim diaper with the words “Fish are friends” on it.

A native of Darfur in landlocked western Sudan, Mr. Dahia said he only knows how to “donkey swim,” having grown up swimming in rivers that flooded after rain. He said that he arrived in Australia more than a decade ago as a refugee and that he has enrolled his children in swimming lessons for a true Australian upbringing.

They were late for swim class that day and decided instead to go to Pondi, which his neighbor had been raving about for weeks. Mr. Dahia, 38, said he was pleasantly surprised and said he’d probably be back before long.

Diana Harvey said she was skeptical of Penrith Beach before she decided to check it out on a whim on a recent weekday afternoon.

She needed a break from her duties as a full-time caregiver for her autistic adult son, which keeps her at home most days, and hadn’t been to a beach all summer — a travesty for many Australians who consider swimming a birthright.

“I was basically brought up in the water,” said Ms. Harvey, 52, recalling that her family would spend three hours driving to and from a beach in the summers growing up. “We are all water people here.”

She had popped by Pondi in the waning days of summer thinking she would take a quick, 20-minute dip but ended up swimming for two hours, the Blue Mountains majestically stretching beyond and an expansive azure sky reflecting in the serene waters.

Some residents have wondered if a beach so far inland would essentially be a glorified swamp, and there have been brief closures over water quality concerns. Pondi’s opening week in 2023 was marred by tragedy when a man who floated on a paddle board with his young children beyond the swimming area drowned.

Still, more than 200,000 people visited the beach in its first season, according to the state government.

On a recent weekend morning, Barbara Dunn’s family was first in line before the gates for the beach opened at 10 a.m. Her 6-year-old daughter Rhythm was sticking her head out of their car’s back window in excitement.

“Where we’re from in New Zealand, we’d call this a lake,” Ms. Dunn, 45, said. “It does the job. You get wet, right?”

Rhythm bounded through the sand with her plastic pail filled with tools for building sand castles. For the next six hours, as the hot sun peaked overhead then began heading for the mountains, as the crowds filled in then thinned out, she tirelessly swam, played in the sand, rolled around in the river grass.

“She won’t want to go home,” Ms. Dunn said with a sigh.