Living on the edge in Sydney

Or in this case, about 100km west of Sydney, at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains.

Sydney was a bit on edge this week, after the events in Martin Place, but I'm still reliving my edge-of-the-world experiences at Lincoln Rock with my Thursday walking group the other day, and plotting the next one.

Funny, I actually don't feel that I take risks on clifftops or elsewhere, but we do look closer to the edge than it seemed at the time! But we stay calm, focussed, and stoic. And it generally works out fine.

Picture courtesy Saf Barbour

Once were islands

Bennelong Point used to be Bennelong Island, in the days when Sydney Harbour had 14 islands, or 13 or 12 or whatever the correct number is. Today it's got eight, and most of the rest have been joined to the mainland.

I went on a tour of the other islands that used to be. They are Garden Island, Berry Island, Darling Island, and Glebe Island.

And here are the pics:




Garden







Berry










Darling

Glebe

Ninth Island

A trivia quiz question that crops up now and again is: "How many islands are there in Sydney Harbour?" Then:  "Name them".

I distinctly remember being at one such quiz where the answer for the number was given as nine. The names were, in west to east order, given as: Rodd, Spectacle, Snapper, Cockatoo, Goat, Fort Denison, Garden, Clark, and Shark.

There's a problem or two here. Garden Island is no longer an island. It was joined to the mainland during World War 2. And if you're going to count other islands that are no longer islands, then you've got Berry Island too, Darling and Glebe Islands, and there's Bennelong Point of course, which became the site of a tram depot and later an opera house of some renown. And it seems that Spectacle Island used to be two islands, but got joined into one. Plus near Middle Head, there's Sow and Pigs Reef, which becomes an island during low tide.

Ninth Island, by the way, is the name of a rather good brand of wines from Northern Tasmania. I particularly recommend the pinot noir. I'd had an idea the name may have been somehow linked to my nine (or eight, or 12, or 13, or 14 or whatever) islands in Sydney Harbour. But no, it's

named after Ninth Island, in the Waterhouse Group in Bass Strait, not far from the vineyard.

So here's my Sydney Harbour Island quiz: name the seven that are pictured in this post, in the order that they're pictured.


A useful little guide to the islands, and how to get to them, is put out by the Australian Society for History and Technology. See here: http://ashet.org.au/images/All-islands.pdf

Life's a beach

And if you live in Sydney's Northern Beaches area, you've got lots of beaches to choose from. There are 22 in fact in the stretch Palm Beach to Manly. I know because I counted them as I walked the 33km walk recently.

Here's the list:  Palm, Whale, Avalon, Bilgola, Newport, Bungan, Basin (aka Bongin Bongin Bay), Mona Vale, Warriewood, Turimetta, North Narabeen, Narabeen, Collaroy, Fishermans, Long Reef, Dee Why, North Curl Curl, Curl Curl, Freshwater, Queenscliff, North Steyne, Manly.