Barangaroo: a tale of two Australia Days

The prize exhibit at Barangaroo this Australia Day was the very fine 'Always' sculpture (as in "Always was, always will be: Aboriginal land") So that was my primary focus yesterday morning.

If I'd been earlier out of bed, I'd have got to see the early morning smoking ceremony, and maybe the other indigenous entertainments that had been promised. The smoking ceremony chap was still in action though, and was in much demand for photographs still. His fellow participants and entertainers seemed to have taken an early mark?

My take on what the sculpture's about: I approached from the shiny side, and saw the back-to-front version, and the shiny illusory reflections of myself and the modern city. Then from the other side it's the way it should be: very solid, a little rusty, but timeless and sustainable, the real deal.

Meanwhile on the harbour just behind me, the usual red-white-blue Australia Day waterborne festivities were going on. A huge flotilla assembled to watch the end of the traditional ferry race under the Harbour Bridge, and it was all quite exciting!

Here's the end of the race, with the Port Authority's firefighting boat clearing a path through the crowd.






















The first, second, and third ferries, I think. (I couldn't find any sort of official race result report when I did a search just then. Only ads for passengers - let's keep our money-making priorities after all!)

In fact there's a lot of middle ground going on between the two Australia Days, despite the deliberately incendiary pronouncements of partisan activists like the current (very temporary) Prime Minister, and despite the media emphasis on conflict and division. I've a feeling we'll work out an appropriate solution to our big National Day conundrum before too long.

No fire in his (red) belly!

I met my second snake of the season this morning, while doing my morning bike ride. He was there on the road looking very fierce. He was a red-bellied black snake, tenth on the list of  Australia's deadliest snakes, according to Australian Geographic. We make out that's the same as tenth deadliest in the world. Not so. Anyway, it's pretty venomous.

Mind you, they don't often chase you, or bite you. Especially when they're dead! This one had in fact been hit by a car, and he was quite lifeless.

I respectfully picked him up from the road, and put him on the footpath, so he could scare pedestrians all day! Must have worked, because when I went back this evening to photograph him, he was still in exactly the same spot. I think they'd all given him a wide berth. In fact by then his smell was considerably worse than his bite.

A Ruined Castle ramble

It's one of those classic Blue Mountains walks. I first did it during a visit to Sydney about 30 years ago. I remember looking across the Jamison Valley from Katoomba's Echo Point lookout, and thinking that yes, that collection of big rocks out there on the way to Mount Solitary really does look just a little bit like a ruined castle! I remember that it wasn't particularly busy out there, and I remember the hungry looking currawongs eyeing off my lunch.

The other day I joined the bushwalkers for a routine return visit. We started at the park at the top of Furbers Steps, checked out the Three Sisters from the lookouts on the way down, and hurried through the heavily touristed area at the bottom of the scenic railway. Then it was out over the landslide, and along the long level track below Narrowneck.

The Ruined Castle is as scenic a place as ever to have your lunch. It's a lot busier than before. Social media is responsible for that. A handful of bushwalking destinations seem to have got the five stars on Tripadvisor, and that's where they all go. One group even brought a drone with them, and were (illegally) flying it annoyingly above our heads for a while.








No currawongs any more. Wonder what happened to them. There was a very big fat skink eyeing off one person's lunch though.

"What happens in the bush........."

My fellow adventurers the other week. We were in the Blue Mountains, exploring a new way down into the Grose River Valley and then on to the fabled Wentworth Cave. I'd been half planning to get to this cave one day, though assumed it would be from downstream and from the other side of the Grose. Our leader was veteran bush explorer and off-track masochist Liam. The other two were total newbies in the off-track department. No idea what was in store for them! They made up for it with their magnificently positive attitudes though. And attitude is largely what these endeavours are about,

Going down the first steep bit

Oh no. What am I doing here?

 How the hell do you do this bit?

And what exactly is going on here?

We finally reach the calm waters of the Grose River.

But we've still got to cross it somehow

Here's Wentworth Cave. It's quite an impressive series of rock overhangs, and it was a relatively easy walk down to it along the remnants of the Engineers Track. And here's the history lesson. The Engineers Track was built mid-19th century along the Grose River Valley, to enable engineers and surveyors to  plan for a railway line through the Blue Mountains. Wentworth Cave was used by them as a bush accommodation base. Eventually it was decided to build the railway over the top of the mountains instead. Far easier.


It was a great day out, but I'm not sure we'll see our bush-bashing newbies out on walks like this again. During the recovery dinner at North Kurrajong, there was a memorable quote from one of them: "What happens in the bush, stays in the bush". Well, maybe......

My first snake of the season: an endangered Broad-headed one!

I really like snakes. Don't see nearly enough of them, despite being out in the bush so often. So far this snake season (the warmer half of the year) they've just about eluded me.

But last week, on a rocky outcrop above Victoria Brook just outside Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains, there it was: the first of the season. And it wasn't a common old brown snake, a red-bellied blacksnake, or a diamond python. It was the rare and endangered broad-headed snake (Hoplocephalus bungaroides). My second ever such sighting, and both out in the western Blue Mountains area.

They used to be common throughout the Sydney Basin, though they were always endemic to the region. Now they are only found in some of these remoter areas. Click here for: Wikipedia article

It seemed oblivious to us for a while, but eventually it woke up when we started pointing our cameras at it. It reared up, looked threatening for a moment, and then slithered into a hole under a rock.

It is indeed rather venomous, I gather. I always forget to be frightened though.


(Photo credit below: Angela McArthur)

Stringybark spraypaint bridge

'Please put your rubbish, spray cans, lids & bottles etc in the bag or bin for recycling'. That was the request from the Stringybark Creek Bushcare Group, and it looks like the request has been adhered to.

I was walking the Stringybark Creek walking track in Lane Cove North, and came across one of the most tastefully graffitied bridges I've yet encountered. It's the bridge under Epping Road.









The walk itself is a serendipitous discovery too. I thought I knew most of these tracks. It's short but scenic, and it starts at Ralston St and Nundah St.

New views of North Head's old stuff

We've all been to North Head, driven out to the lookouts for the spectacular views across to South Head or up the Harbour. Or we might have strolled up by foot from Manly via Shelly Beach, and through that hole in the wall.

Well I've only recently discovered that the experience is now far richer than that. There's now a North Head Sanctuary, there's open public access to lots of historic treasures, and there's a big network of new walking tracks, lookouts, and information centres.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was part of a bushwalking group that did a 13km circuitous 'circuit' around the peninsula, and I was astonished at all the new stuff I got to see. I hadn't bothered to switch on my GPS tracker. Thought I'd have no trouble locating our route afterwards. But I became gloriously disoriented. That bugged me a lot, and so I just had to return a few days later, to explore it all a bit better, and to map  out my wanderings. I found myself going around in circles a couple of times, but eventually sorted it out, over what turned out to be a 17km course starting and finishing at Manly Wharf.

Among the highlights:

The old St Patricks seminary, now the International College of Management. The grounds of this fine old building are open to the public.

The Barracks Precinct, formerly the School  of Artillery, with its enormous parade ground.

The old Quarantine Cemetery, where 240 people are buried, presumably ones who never made it out of the Quarantine Station.


Then there's the Quarantine Station itself, with museum, and renovated or rebuilt accommodations for functions and things.



Here's the old Quarantine hospital, and its doctors' and nurses' quarters.

















There are very solid stone walls everywhere, dividing all the bits from each other.

There's Australia's Memorial Walkway, which 'honours those who have served and supported the defence of Australia in peace or in war'. And you get to explore the North Fort, and some of the old gun emplacements, which were part of the country's WW2 defences.

Below: the famous 'hole in the wall', and a very crowded Shelly Beach.

More stormy weather stop press: mammatus!

This afternoon Sydney experienced a rare and dramatic phenomenon: mammatus clouds. Also known as mammary clouds, because of their shape.

I'm in the habit of looking up, being a bit of an astronomer, plane spotter, and ornithologist! So I wasn't going to miss this.

There were fierce storms going on in the Blue Mountains and elsewhere, and mammatus clouds are apparently associated with stormy weather, though they don't necessarily mean it's about to come to your particular location.