Manly Beach

I didn’t  have any advanced plans for today.  I expected to be a bit jet lagged and I was vaguely thinking I’d just spend the day exploring Sydney.  A couple of conversations changed my plans, however.  Nick, one of the blokes in the B&B, suggested that a day in Manly and a walk around the Sydney Harbour National Park at North Head Sanctuary would be a good use of a day.  Both Nick and Scott had mentioned that today was the day of the Melbourne Cup, which would be a big event here, and suggested that virtually the whole country would be watching the race (apparently even the national government stops for the Cup!) and that bars would be packed for the event.

When I woke this morning (at 5.30am, so the jet lag is there) I decided that I would kill two birds with one stone: get the ferry to Manly from Circular Quay, the ferry terminal in the CBD (Central Business District), walk out to North Head and get back to Manly to catch the Cup in a bar there.  After dozing for a while I got up in a leisurely fashion and set off on foot for Circular Quay.  The walk was an opportunity to get a better feel for the architecture of Sydney.  Although the city is dominated by tall, modern buildings (one of the reasons it is sometimes, wrongly in my view, compared to new York) it does have many older and quite striking buildings which appear, to my uneducated eye, to be Victorian.  As I walked down the West side of the Botanical Gardens, I stumbled upon an outdoor cafe, offering smashed avocado on toast.

In my preparation for this journey, I had become aware that smashed avocado on toast was the subject of some controversy:The BBC’s take.  I stopped for a coffee and breakfast and very nice it was too.  Sydney is a city that takes coffee very seriously and, so far, does it very well indeed.

The ferry trip was an opportunity to see more of Sydney Harbour and very spectacular it was too, offering views not only of the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and CBD but also of the cliffs and land surrounding the harbour waters.

Opera House and Harbour Bridge from the ferry

Arriving in Manly I was struck immediately by the number of people waiting to take the ferry back to Sydney dressed for the races.  The Melbourne Cup was in Melbourne and we were in Sydney but clearly the locals were going to dress for the occasion.  This theme continued throughout the day.  Both in the town of Manly and later in Sydney people were dressed as if for Royal Ascot.

My only previous knowledge of Manly was its rugby league team.  I was also entertained to read that it had been named by Captain Arthur Phillip, who discovered it, because of the comportment of the Guringai people who were its indiginous inhabitants. I had, for some reason, expected a slightly downbeat suburb (the town is 7 miles from Sydney).  The ferry terminal at Manly is in Manly Cove and it was immediately clear that Manly was far nicer than that, as I headed south along the beach of the cove towards North Head.  Manly Cove had a small but attractive beach and the ferry terminal and surrounding area was full of bars and restaurants.  My advance research had identified microbrewery 4 Pines as a suitable place for a stop but it was closed until 5pm for a private function, almost certainly a corporate Melbourne Cup event.  I headed south on the North Head path.  This passed by a couple of beautiful secluded beaches only a short walk from the town.

Store Beach

The walk was relatively easy dropping down on to a couple of beaches but the surroundings were obviously foreign.  The trees and flowers were species I didn’t recognise, the birds thoroughly different (a white bird looking like a cockatoo with a rather fine yellow crown just one) and although I didn’t see a live one I did pass a rather large dead lizard.

North Head had an interesting history.  In the 1930s it had housed a garrison and formed part of the coastal defences of Australia, before then it had been home to Sydney’s quarantine station (and a couple of cemeteries were evidence of that).  The walk passed through the parade square of the barracks before heading out towards the cliffs.  Viewpoints offered spectacular sights of Sydney Harbour and the landforms forming the natural, very large harbour.

Sydney Harbour from North Head

As I rounded the Head the view were of the Pacific Ocean and the cliffs.

Cliffs at Fairfax Lookout

At this point I bumped into a couple, Peter and Jenny visiting from Melbourne, doing the walk for the third time.  We agreed to continue the walk together.  As we headed back towards Manly we stopped for a drink at a bar at Shelly Beach, which offerred views of the East side of Manly and its beach.

Shelly Beach, looking towards Manly Beach

Peter and Jenny headed back to Sydney and I continued to explore Manly.  The long beach at Manly was, apparently, hugely significant in the development of surfing and held the first ever world surfing championships.  The town of Manly had a lovely feel to it.  Georgian architecture mixed with more modern buildings, a street (The Corso) connecting the beach (on the Pacific coast) and the Cove (facing the Harbour) could have been in any seaside resort, with its souvenir shops, surf clothing retailers, bars and restaurants, except for its distinctive architecture and pine trees.

I had a glass of Semillon in a wine bar still packed with Melbourne Cup celebrants, before buying a takeaway coffee and walking along the beach.  Then down the Corso to 4 Pines for dinner and a couple of beers and the ferry trip back as the sun set.

An Aussie take on Bouillabaise

As my last flight approached Sydney I had 40 minutes to kill.  NOt long enough to watch a film, or even an episode of a TV programme on the in-flight system.  I chose instead to listen to music and settled on a best of collection of Joy Division tracks.  I like Joy Division and own a couple of albums at home but I wouldn’t say that they made it onto a list of my top 20 bands.  I made the choice, as much as anything, on the back of watching a BBC 3 series on Indie music, which described how Martin Hannett, their producer, had played a pivotal role in developing their distinctive sound.  Listening to this collection I was struck by the relatively crude sound, typical of an Indie label in the ’80s.  How good would they have sounded with today’s production values, or even the budget that at the time the major labels were able to dedicate to mainstream bands?  I think the answer is bloody brilliant but we’ll never know.

Yesterday afternoon I caught up with Scott, who I met 8 years ago when he was living in London.  He’s an Aussie and a keen golfer, who I knew through golfing mates.  We became pretty good mates while he was in England, playing together several times as he explored golf in the UK.  I guess we’re quite similar in many ways, not least in that we can both be pretty outspoken.  He worked as a tabloid journalist in the Uk but now he’s in PR for a government entity.  His wife Kerry and he returned to Sydney some 6 years ago and now have two young daughters, the younger of who only arrived three weeks ago.  Since he returned to Australia we’ve kept in touch electronically but we haven’t seen each other since.

I’m always amazed how easily you can slip back into talking to someone you haven’t seen for years.  The idea was to get a few holes in to help me stay awake.  We played 14 at Bonnie Doon, the course he belongs to.  I took my camera but as we chatted and played simply forgot to take any photos.  I’ll blame the jet lag.  Bonnie Doon is undergoing a pretty substantial remodelling, led by Mike Cocking and Mike Clayton, with some input from Geoff Ogilvy.  Scott has been a pretty strong advocate of their work and in the flesh it is easy to see why.  Although not long, it feels a big course.  Lots of trees have gone and there’s plenty of width.  For an English golfer, the most striking thing is the use of substantial sandy waste areas but there’s some really clever use of contours and lots of shots where considering your options is essential.  Clearly, as the work approaches completion, this is a course with some serious potential.  I’m going to have to plan a return when all 18 are complete.

After the golf, we sat on the clubhouse balcony and drank a couple of beers.  A great introduction to Australian golf, though after a decent start my game showed the affects of the journey, or at least that’s what I’d like to put it down to.  I’m looking forward to catching up with Scott again a couple of times before I leave Sydney.After being dropped off back at the AirBnB I’m staying in, I chatted with Nick, one of the hosts and a friend of his.  Both had visited the UK recently and we talked for an hour about the differences between our countries, Brexit (that always comes up in conversations with foreigners, I find) and politics more generally.  Nice guys, and I enjoyed the conversation, but having felt fine all day, tiredness it liked wall at 9pm and I called it a day.

My first day in Australia was a long one but really enjoyable.  It feels as if I have been here much longer than one day already.  On Nick’s suggestion, I’m going to visit Manly today.  I’m going to need to find a bar to watch the Melbourne Cup, which everyone here is anticipating.  It seems the whole country stops to watch the race, and everyone I have spoken to suggests that no work gets done today, as Australians spend the morning betting and then retire to a bar to watch the race.  Apparently even the Australian Parliament stops work to watch.  Sounds like fun.