Saturday 21 September – Today marked a change in pattern of our holiday travels, as we left our hotel room so that we could stay with friends for a few days, first in the Sydney environs, before then moving on to Brisbane.  But I had a photo project first, which meant going out before breakfast so I could catch the morning light. I suppose the photo I was after is something of a cliché, but my first attempt, from yesterday’s wanderings, was less than satisfactory

because the light was all wrong, and if I’m going to perpetrate a cliché, I might as well do it properly.  In the morning light, the scene looks much better to my eyes.

The journey to get to the photo location was pleasant – the temperature was lovely and the sun was shining. Because it was reasonably early, the sun was low and I found myself at one point casting no fewer than three shadows – one behind me from the real sun and two others from reflections from buildings in Sydney’s CBD.

The lovely light gave me a second chance to capture some scenes I‘d tried yesterday, but which looked better today,

as well as one that I hadn’t.

My vantage point for the Opera House shot was also a good one to construct a panorama of the city

which looks a bit skinny on the web page, but I think might be a good candidate for the wall at home.

After this very satisfactory start (and the usual rather chaotic breakfast at the Intercontinental), we checked out and headed for Circular Quay, and caught the 11 o’clock ferry to Mosman. Jane prowled the decks checking out the view on the 20-minute journey across the water.

At Mosman Bay, we met our friends Lorraine and Paul, with whom we would be staying for the next couple of days. They live in Belrose, a northern suburb of Sydney, and under normal crcumstances it would have been more logical to connect at Manly; but this weekend was the Manly Jazz Festival, rendering parking and other such practicalities out of the question, so Mosman Bay (lower circle below) it was.

The plan for the day was to get towards North Head and stroll down into Manly to see what entertainment the Jazz Festival might offer, so Paul found a suitable parking spot, at North Head Sanctuary, where there was immediately a fantastic view back towards the city.

This photo really demonstrates the popularity of boats around the harbour – with an environment like Sydney Harbour and the sort of weather we were enjoying, then why wouldn’t you?

Of course, being at North Head, we could see across to South Head, and the landmarks we’d passed yesterday – the Hornby Lighthouse

and the Macquarie Lighthouse.

You can just about make out the radar mast in front of the signal station.

North Head clearly had an important military role to play in days past, possibly fuelled by fears at one stage of Japanese aggression. In an enlightened move, the military area has been turned into National Park rather than being sold for development. It features a number of military installations, some of which are used as educational installations, such as a gun emplacement, which has information boards describing how it was used.

Other military buildings are now used as a quarantine station, down by the shore, and there were barracks

parts of which are now used as an entertainment venue

and parts of which are now home to small businesses.

There are also reminders about Australia’s involvement in so many theatres of war.

The path back to Manly led through bush

and past some wildlife, such as this Burton’s legless lizard

and a pair of brush turkeys, which are common enough to be a nuisance to the locals but which were new to our eyes.

They’re called brush turkeys (not bush turkeys) for a reason.

When we saw Manly Beach on the descent (the leftmost beach in the photo below), it was clear that smoke we’d seen earlier was actually quite a significant bush fire.

As we headed down towards Shelly Beach, the path continued along the cliff tops overlooking these beaches, and there was a sombre message among the lovely views.

Shelly Beach presented a rather dissonant juxtaposition:

people having fun on the beach in the foreground whilst a bush fire raged in the background. (We learned later that it was a controlled burn that went somewhat out of control, but no-one was injured.)

On the walk past Shelly Beach, there’s an interesting little art installation built into the rocks,

and then we reached Manly, where the market had been displaced to beachside

by the clearly very popular Manly Jazz Festival.

Manly was very crowded

so (having queued for quite a while to get some splendid ice cream at Gelato Messina) we found a taxi to take us back to the car and headed over to Lorraine and Paul’s house in Belrose for the evening.

Sunday 22 September 2024.

The next day was a chance for us to catch up with more friends who lived in the area – something of a “small world” story.  Two years ago we were exploring Canada on a major trip, one segment of which was spent based in Churchill, on the Hudson Bay, looking for polar bears. Whilst there, we met two delightful Australian ladies, Vicki and Kris, who were pretty much at the start of a fantastically impressive world tour over the space of a whole year. It turned out that they live in Mona Vale, which is near to Belrose and so we arranged to meet them to catch up with them. Vicki picked us up, and took us for a tour of the local beaches.

and Palm Beach proper, where I got a nice close-up of a kookaburra.

Whilst we were with Vicki and Kris, we were visited by a flock of rainbow lorikeets, which are beautifully coloured and really quite noisy.

Kris cooked a wonderful lunch for us and their friends Rosie and Astley, who were great company and whose extensive travel history enlarged our already-daunting list of possible travel destinations before Vicki took us back to Belrose where we could reflect on a lovely occasion. It’s quite common to agree to keep in contact with people met on holiday whilst travelling, but actually rare to find that the connection is deep and enduring. We had met Vicki and Kris on the UK leg of their world trip, and it was clear that they were grand people to stay in touch with; that it was so close to Belrose and such a good opportunity to meet again was a large slice of luck; similar to the slice of luck that enabled us to get back in touch with Sharon and David when we were in Melbourne*.

We have one more day staying in Belrose with Lorraine and Paul.  I wonder what plan they’ve hatched for our final day in the Sydney area?

 

* I’m embarrassed to find out that I didn’t write this day up; it was filled with Melbourne murals and a lovely lunch with David and Sharon, whom we met on a walking holiday in Slovenia back in 2016 and formed a connection similar to the one which kept us in touch with Vicki and Kris. With apologies to them, I will rectify this omission as soon as our schedule permits.