Tag Archives: Botanic Garden

Watson for today, then?

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Friday 20 September 2024 – Acting on a suggestion from the friends we met last night, we decided that Watsons Bay would be a good destination for an excursion, particularly since the weather outlook was so good – sunshine and temperatures in the mid-20s.

So we headed for the ferry and queued up

to get on to F9 on the B side of Wharf 2. I’ve been pretty impressed with the way the public transport available around Sydney is organised. There’s no need to buy tickets; one can simply “tap on” and “tap off” using a credit card or, in my case, my phone. The trains are double-decker, the ferries seem to be very competently operated and the services have suited us very well on our short stay here. The ferry ride out of Circular Quay offers, unsurprisingly, some great views of the Sydney skyline

North Sydney

and, of course, its iconic structures.

Jane noticed that there were people climbing the bridge,

something that she and I did when we were here last, in 2001. Nice to see it’s still going; and they’ve added the aboriginal flag at the top of the bridge since our last visit, unless I’m mistaken.
Many ships leaving Circular Quay will pass a Martello Tower built on a small island:

Fort Denison, a former military site which is the most complete Martello Tower in the world and has been a museum, tourist attraction, restaurant, and popular location for wedding receptions and corporate events. It’s now closed for conservation work, apparently.
Watsons Bay is an attractive place

with a great view back of the Sydney skyline.

One of Sydney’s great attractions is a restaurant, Doyles, known for its seafood generally and its fish’n’chips specifically. The Watsons Bay location

is the original one, dating from 1885. Another attraction is the heritage trail which starts at Camp Cove (a place, not an over-theatrical chap) and leads up to South Head, the southern jaw of the mouth of Sydney Harbour. It’s a walk. So we went for it. Obviously. It takes you past some of the nice houses there,

and behind a cannon, which is pointing, for some reason, back at Sydney.

The furthest point of the trail, about a kilometre from the start, is Hornby Lighthouse

with the old lighthouse keeper’s cottages beside it.

One can also see how narrow the gap is that leads into Sydney Harbour. North Head – the upper jaw – is really quite close.

The lighthouse is a good, photogenic location. It’s therefore catnip for today’s generations of phone camera wielders (mainly, today, from the far east),

who seem to find it intolerable should a photo not include themselves. In many cases, quite an inordinate amount of time is spent organising poses (e.g. staring (nautically? pretentiously?) into the distance or pointing at the top of the lighthouse as if surprised to see that it has one). This specific posing seems to be a cultural thing among oriental tourists, and I wonder what will become of all of these images. Instagram, I suppose; the idea is that other people should see the photos. I doubt that, once posted online, the images will ever be seen again by their originators.

Grumpy? Me? Bloody right.

We had wanted to continue our walk down the other side of South Head rather than just completing the heritage trail loop. Trouble is, there’s a fucking great military establishment in the way, HMAS Watson,

and they clearly take a dim view of people wandering past their buildings. So, back towards Camp Cove it was,

which at least gave us the chance to take a coffee stop. From there, we cut across to the other side of the head. There’s clearly a military link here, since (as well as the naval base there) the road passed an armoury, an “Officers Quarters” building

and what we think were once gun emplacements.

There was some wildlife action along the way: Jane spotted a kookaburra

which really was sitting in an old gum tree; a couple of remarkable ants nests;

an engaging pair of blue wrens (male and female)

and a bunch of sulphur-crested cockatoos,

who were pretending to be sea birds perching on the cliffs and

inspecting tourists for food value.

We also spotted this dove

which, coincidentally, is a Spotted Dove.

The wrens and the cockatoos were at Gap Bluff, which has a small National Park area and also provides a couple of great cliff views.

There’s a historical memorial there, too;

the anchor belonged to a ship, the Dunbar which was wrecked on nearby rocks

in August 1857. Only one of the 122 aboard survived and the anchor was recovered some 50 years later and placed as a memorial to the others. The wreck was the catalyst for the creation of the Hornby Lighthouse and its survivor, one John James, went on to become the lighthouse keeper there.

Further along from Gap Bluff is the Watsons Bay Signal Station,

first established in1790; a permanent guard would watch out for arriving ships, raising a flag both to give them a sign of the new location of the settlement, and to notify the colony of the imminent arrival of the long awaited ships. Amazingly, the station has remained in permanent use from that date and has thus maintained its role for over two centuries, and from the same building for most of that time.

Near it is a lighthouse, the South Head Upper Light, also called the Macquarie Lighthouse.

Its site is the longest serving lighthouse site in Australia, with some kind of navigational aid in place since 1791 (sadly not sufficiently effective to save the Dunbar, though). The lighthouse shown above was completed in 1883 and is still fully operational. Next to it is the lighthouse keeper’s cottage

and in front of it, complementing the formal informational plaque on the lawns, is a much more informal tribute.

One could have carried on walking the cliff path, but we turned back to the bay to catch the ferry

back to Circular Quay, whence we walked towards the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden. On Circular Quay there are some plaques in the ground celebrating well-known Australians; we recognised a couple

and I suppose this one

must be the one originally dedicated to Rolf Harris.

The Botanic Garden is a large, pleasant park

with some remarkable trees

The tallest palm tree I’ve ever seen

and a few quirky sculptures.

My main objective was to get Mrs. Macquarie point and something called Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. This Macquarie name keeps cropping up. Major General Lachlan Macquarie (born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic, and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century, hence the ubiquity of the Macquarie name.

He was married, as we can infer from the naming of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair,

an exposed sandstone rock cut (by convicts in 1810) into the shape of a bench. Folklore has it that Elizabeth Macquarie used to sit on the rock and watch for ships from Great Britain sailing into the harbour. She was known to visit the area and sit enjoying the panoramic views of the harbour. Above the chair is a stone inscription referring to Mrs Macquarie’s Road. That road was built, on the instruction of Governor Macquarie, between 1813 and 1818, and ran from the original Government House to Mrs Macquarie’s Point.

By this stage we were getting a trifle foot- and back-sore, so decided to return to the hotel. We diverted for a quick look into The Calyx,

to see if it would sell us some beer. Sadly, the café is just a café, and coffee wasn’t going to cut it for us, so I took a couple of valedictory photos

and we headed back to the hotel, past the Conservatorium of Music, which has the least music-related architecture I think I’ve ever seen.

Thus ended a very pleasant day’s outing; ample justification for a glass of something cold and a bite to eat. Before we retired for the night, for amusement, I set a timelapse going to cover the comings and goings of the ferries at Circular Quay, which we can see from our hotel room. I hope you find it as engaging as I do.

Tomorrow we leave the city proper to spend a few days with friends who live to the north of Sydney. I have no idea what this means in terms of photos and verbiage on these pages; you’ll just have to keep an eye out to see for yourself, won’t you?

Our last day in Perth

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Tuesday 6 August 2024 – The day started with us missing out on things.  We had no formal items on the schedule, so had a bit of a lie-in, to such an extent that when we went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, they’d stopped serving.  “Ah, well” we thought, “at least there’s the lobby café.”  We went back to the room, and I got distracted by writing this ‘ere blog, to such an extent that when we went down to get a coffee and pastry, it had closed for the day. “Ah, well” we thought, “we’re bound to be able to find coffee and pastry out somewhere.”  So we went for a walk. Obviously.

Our first stop was the Bell Tower, which is so named because it has bells in it.

One could be forgiven for wondering what the hell could be interesting about bells, but it was an interesting diversion, covering the making of bells, the ringing of bells and the displaying of bells.  Having paid the entrance fee, one is faced with six flights of stairs or a lift, so we opted for the latter for the way up and the former for the way down.

As one exits the lift, there is a carillon. If you put a coin in, you can get it to play a tune, selected from a bewildering variety of possibilities; or, for those interested in the deep mathematics and patterns of bell ringing, you could get it to “ring the changes”.  Here is a video of a set of changes happening, which is very, very dull, unless you’re heavily into campanology.

Inside the building at the top is the Anzac Bell, the largest swinging bell in Australia, cast from copper, tin and gold, and weighing in at 6½ tons.

Ceremonially rung daily at midday, it is a lasting memorial to Australian and New Zealand servicemen and women involved in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations around the world.

One level down, and just visible in the photo above, is a set of 18 bells, a dozen of which are the historically significant bells (made in 1725) from the Saint Martin in the Fields Church in London, which had to be removed from that church because their shaking was destroying the church tower.

To this day, these bells are actually rung regularly by a team of bell ringers, who ring the changes twice a week; one can book a ticket to watch them, and also book a “Bell Ringing Experience” which gives a chance for punters to have a go on the ropes. This makes the Bell Tower, custom built to house these bells, one of the largest musical instruments in the world.

Forgive the reflections, by the way; the bells are behind two layers of glass, presumably so that punters who are watching don’t get deafened.

Outside the Bell Tower is something that demonstrates one aspect of modern life in which Perth lags the zeitgeist.

Love padlocks. In France and Italy they are a curse, destroying bridges with their weight and being a general menace. In the Bell Tower, they’ll sell you a heart-shaped padlock for AUs$5.

Going to the Bell Tower put us near Elizabeth Quay, and so we went there in search of that coffee and pastry that we’d missed out on earlier.  We found the coffee at The Island Brewhouse, but they only did proper meals, and not pastry.  We weren’t yet ready for proper food, so satisfied ourselves with just the coffee before continuing our peregrination.

This led us across the very ritzy Elizabeth Quay Bridge

and past a bizarre statue.

It’s called “First Contact” and is a representation, created by indigenous artist Laurel Nannup, of what the original Noongar people must have thought on seeing the sails of an arriving European ship, looking like a big white bird, and crewed by white people whom they thought were the souls of their ancestors returning from the sea.

Our eventual destination was Kings Park, a cultural heritage site and home to the Western Australia Botanic Garden. We allowed Google Maps to tell us the best way to walk there and followed its directions. These led us along beside the river, where we saw an Australasian Darter.

We also saw, high on a hilltop, an obelisk, which seemed to be in the general direction we were headed. At one point, we had to scamper across a four-lane highway, with traffic lights only controlling two of them, but we made it OK. Then we had to scramble up a bank to a path which led us along and back down to the main road we’d just crossed, at the foot of the Kokoda Track; this would lead us up into the Park. The space at the bottom of the Track looked a bit unkempt and scruffy, and furthermore didn’t seem to have a formal way of access from the major highway running past this start point; but, hey, what the hell, we thought, and started up it.

Up was the operative word, here.

The track passed several plaques, such as these.

I wasn’t quite sure of the significance of these, because I hadn’t yet found out what the Kokoda Track was about.  It carried on up and up

for some 161 steps. Only at the top did a couple of things become apparent. The first was an information board explaining that the Kokoda Track Memorial Walk is a tribute to the bravery of Australian troops who fought in Papua New Guinea in WWII. The fighting on The Kokoda Track was one of the vital elements of the Australian efforts in World War II. The Papua New Guinea campaign, including The Kokoda Track, Milne Bay, Buna, Gona and Sanananda resulted in a total of 8,546 Australian and United States casualties. Australian soldiers fought through atrocious conditions and against vastly superior numbers in this campaign between July 1942 and January 1943.

This was the second.

We had walked up this closed path; this went some way towards explaining its unkempt state! Anyway, having ascended some 70 metres vertical, the view was pretty good.

There were various paths available, and we pottered on in search of our first main objective within the park,

the Giant Baobab (or Boab as they call it here), Gija Jumulu. Estimated at 750 years old, the tree is a special gift to all Western Australians from the northern Indigenous people, the Gija, who are the traditional land owners. They performed a farewell ceremony to the tree on Monday, 14 July 2008 and it then travelled over 3200 km by long haul truck from Warmun down to Perth.  It’s the longest known land journey of a living tree this size: 37 tonnes and 18 metres tall.

But “giant”? Hah! We saw baobabs far larger (and older) than this one when we were in Madagascar.

Jane had visited the Botanic Garden when she was last in Perth, longer ago than it would be delicate to expound, and was interested to see the wild flowers; there was a wild flower pavilion signposted and so we hied ourselves thither. To be honest, it was a bit of a let down,

so we pottered on along various paths taking in the general ambience, which was delightful.

We left the garden by its very stylish main entrance

past the War memorial, which was the obelisk we’d seen earlier,

and headed back towards the city, past sights both large

and small.

Australian Magpie (not related to the UK version, and not, surprisingly, a corvid)

A Magpie-Lark

We had the option of going down the Jacob’s Ladder stairs

but decided against that and walked down a more gentle gradient to St. Georges Terrace in the city, where there was a further selection of fine colonial-style buildings crouched between huge modern steel-and-glass carbuncles.

We ended up back at the Island Brewhouse, since we were by now ready for a proper meal. We sat outside to eat our meal, because it was still reasonably warm, and it actually came on to rain, which surprised us somewhat. Having eaten, we waited for a gap between showers and hastily made our way back to the hotel (via restocking the Twinings at Woollies) to prepare for the next segment of this trip.

We’ve had a lovely time in Perth and its environs, but tomorrow, Qantas being willing, we must leave. We fly North! to Alas… Learmonth and travel thence to Exmouth; for what purpose, you’ll have to keep an eye on these pages to discover.