Harbour walks: Milsons Point to Woolwich - Leg 1

I don’t think my skin has been this brown since primary school, when we were made to go to swimming classes each morning in the summer. Being from Scotland, it was Ben’s parents’ prerogative to spend as much time soaking up vitamin D as possible while they were here. But it made me tired. Embarrassingly so. But thank goodness for them, otherwise this harbour thing was going to get away from me, I think. 30 km in 2 days – 14.5 in the first, and 15.5 in the second – was far more than I would ever have done on my own. High fives for playing tourist in your own town.

The first trick was to get a multi-trip pass that allowed us to get on and off all trains, buses and ferries for a week. The walks were organised as such that we would be trekking between ferry terminals, a short distance by water, considerably longer by foot as the shoreline meandered in tentacle-like shapes away from the middle of the harbour. Day 1 started from Luna Park, went around Lavender Bay and McMahons Point, Berrys Bay and Balls Head, Berry Island and Gore Cove to finish at Greenwich Point.

The boarded walk from Luna Park to Lavender Bay is rather nice – gardens hiding funny little sculptures, including Blinky Bill and Nutsy who along with Enid Blyton were pretty much solely responsible for my childhood devouring of books. Wendy Whiteley’s garden is also worth a visit. Views of the harbour from the top of the stairs were exquisite, although views of thousands of spiders perching atop gnarly webs, not so much. From McMahons Point, we followed the water around to Blues Point. Did you know that this is the only part of the whole city where you can stand directly opposite from the centre of the Harbour Bridge? Me neither.



After a while, I must admit I started to get Bridge fatigue. It’s hard to get sick of the sight of it normally, but taking new photos at every slight variation in height from sea level and angle from shore slowly became more tiresome. Except it is such a lovely dang bridge. You want to get the shot. But you also remember you’ve got 12 more kms to go before you can go to the pub. It’s a mental wrestling point.

The path winds through grassy parklands, an old timber yard, and a disused industrial site which used to be the BP Oil Terminal. It’s landscaped now, with the bare sandstone walls left where they were once curved to fit around the shapes of oil tanks. The steel walkways above the site allow for more elevated sightseeing and lead down to Balls Head Reserve, where we took the scenic route along the bottom of the cliffs for a while.

Our route right around was blocked due to a closed path, but the reserve isn’t very big anyway. We retraced our steps and met up with it on the other side before heading back up towards Waverton. The Pasks recommend The Coffee Shop Pats on Bay Road for lunch. The French toast was alright for $5.50 and the croissants are huge.

A couple of coves later and we took the low tide route along to Berry Island. It's almost tropical in there, lush and cool and beautiful along Ballasters Track. This turned into the Gore Cove track and finally down towards Greenwich Point where we could catch the ferry back to Circular Quay. Ben had a dip in the Greenwich Baths while we were waiting; I sat on the shore and meditated to the sound of shells being lapped onto the sand. Then it rained.

And that was Day One.

Hello!

--where they found everyone taking pictures of each other dressed as sea lions! Yeah, I know! What were they even-- oh hey. Sorry, I didn't see you there. I have kind of been ignoring you lately, haven't I. I really... I'm really sorry about that. It doesn't mean I don't care. Honestly. I'll make it up to you.

This is intended to just be a quick one to re-establish myself in the blogosphere, since I have been holidaying in my own city for the last couple of weeks trying to keep up with my husband's parents who are visiting from Scotland. They are machines (wonderful, lovely machines). Machines of walking. We knocked out an "official" 30km of Harbour Walk coastline over two days, and an unknown number of other, smaller scenic walks around the city. I will elaborate in a separate post, but wow, did we chew up that harbour. Save for one relatively short leg on the north-east side of the Bridge, I have now completed the whole of the northern harbour. Just the west and the south to go, then... is that trepidation I smell?

Shut up, cicadas!

I'm taking a break from the job hunt today. It has been getting me down this week, and it feels like pointless hours wasted away in front of the computer. I like to believe that being super positive can bring good karma or whatever, but the fact is I'm still unemployed with no prospects and no money and that whole mindset is wearing thin. Whenever I feel low I just remember that if I had not quit, I'd be enrolling grotty and complacent students by now. It makes me feel a lot better.

The in-laws are in town, all the way from bonnie Scotland! We've not seen them since the wedding fifteen months ago, so it is awesome to lay eyes on some family again without Skype playing middle man and garbling everything up. They plan to do a massive harbour walk and I am very excited about this prospect. Their map runs from the north side of the bridge right around the west side of the harbour and back to the south side of the bridge in the city. The tourist information centre told them it should take around four days depending on how far you want to walk each day. This makes my heart go doki-doki (Japanese onomatopoeia for a fast-beating heart), 100%! The walks are a huge metaphorical thorn in my time frame, so if I could knock out the majority of it in a week it would pretty much be the best thing ever. It also means saving money on the travel costs as we can get a travel multi-pass and jump on and off everything for that week - this has been an awkward hidden factor of this particular challenge.

As usual, other micromovements towards implementing some other challenges has brought a deafening silence, an aural space immediately occupied by the screech of cicadas having a rave party outside my window. Loudest. Insects. Ever. (no really.) I'm going to try and drown them out with my guitar. Wish me luck.

The Great Walk continues: Balmoral to Taronga

My companion on Leg 3 of the Harbour Walk was the delectable Miss Caroline.

The day proved too hot for the equally delectable Sir Benjamin who was forced to stay home or face the wrath of Australian humidity on Scottish flesh. And so began an impromptu girls own adventure.

Having learnt the importance of following the guidebook, we decided to do the walk 'backwards' and start at Taronga, working our way back to Balmoral. Inner west trackwork was conveniently taking place, so we chose a leisurely ferry option: drive to Balmain, ferry to Circular Quay, change ferries to Taronga Zoo. This is the kind of time I could get used to consuming.

The ferry wharf is at the Zoo Entrance and we caught a glimpse of Miya the sea-lion swimming gleefully around her enclosure (I know her name because I've visited her before). For every dirty great spider and deadly snake, Australia also graces us with some beautiful bush friends. A cooing juvenile kookaburra, and a charming lolloping goanna were two of the first we met.

The views of the harbour along this route are a little bit divine to say the least.

Bradley's Head was quite a find - one of those places you think, wow, why didn't I know this was here before? It's an amazing lookout point with some bizarre memorials, such as a Doric stone column they decided to drag out there for no real reason. There were six of them but they somehow managed to lose four (How do you lose a Doric stone column? It's not like it's going to fall behind the couch). There's also a crazy ampitheatre that goes right down into the harbour.

Most of the walk goes through Sydney Harbour National Park; speckled shade, unseen creatures scurrying in nearby bushes, fragrant flowers and almost tropical greenery.

Some people are alarmingly wealthy enough to own properties along this stretch. Who are these people? We admired the stunning, vine-laden houses from our plebs view in the vegetation, discussing whether we would really appreciate everything so much if we were to view it from a balcony every day (the answer was probably still yes).

Shoes and bags were abandoned at Chowder Bay while we took a much deserved ocean frolic. Kids were leaping from the wharf here so we joined in. Somehow, the thrill of jumping from high places never seems to get old.

The home stretch took us down a long wooden staircase through the national park to pop out the other side at Balmoral. Totally stunning, and a joyous way to spend a Sunday.

Fact of the day

Most Sydneysiders probably already knew this, but I just learnt that Sydney Harbour is actually called Port Jackson. We just call it Sydney Harbour because we’re lazy, which is ironic because it has a whole extra syllable in it. How about that, eh?

As per Mel’s challenge, I am trying to grasp exactly how far it is from the North Head in Manly to Watsons Bay. It looks kind of like this:

(sorry I don't know how to make the picture bigger)

Since there is not one route that seems to go the whole length around, the best I can muster is that the whole thing is probably around 100kms, dependant on where you count Parramatta River as starting from. Mel’s original request states that I start at Watsons Bay and work my way around, but I think I might do it backwards and start from the furthest away point. As long as I resume my travels from the same place as I finished previously, it all still counts. I’ve never actually walked the Manly to Spit Bridge route and I know that it is stunning, so I’m keen to try it out. Watsons Bay is glorious as well – Ben and I spent the day after our wedding there scoffing ourselves stupid on seafood paella - so it will make a fine finish line. I’d like to find out what parts of the coastline are able to be navigated by bike, so that I can cycle as much as possible. I have already established that Manly to The Spit is not one of those parts. So! A leisurely Sunday walk will see the initiation of this particular challenge. I’m planning a ferry ride across, walk up to the North Head, walk back and have lunch, then the rest of the track round to the Bridge, bus home. Any takers?

Of course, I may just sleep all weekend instead. That seems incredibly appealing just now...

Oh and my band is playing at the Lansdowne on City Road tonight, in case anyone reads this at the last minute and is in the area. We're on at 8pm.