NSW's Mid North Coast beaches - part 1

 I had no idea there were so many terrific picturesque beaches up there. It's a matter of heading off away from the highway, and exploring all the nooks and crannies of the coastline.

The stretch of coastline from Seal Rocks up to Crowdy Head is all part of the region informally known as the Mid North Coast of NSW (although in the usual muddled Australian way, several organisations and government departments define the regions differently!)

Anyway, it's got good beaches.I've lost track of all that were visited, but they included beaches at Crowdy Head, Harrington, Old Bar (where they give the best ever olde world cafe service), Diamond Beach, North Diamond Beach, Hallidays Point, Black Head, Tuncurry, several at Forster, Seven Mile Beach, Booti Booti, Elizabeth Beach, Green Point, Smiths Lake, and last but not least, Seal Rocks.











Seal Rocks was fabulous. What a discovery! Must get back there, maybe away from the holiday season, so there's more room on the narrow road in and out.

Sunset in Forster

Forster, on the NSW mid north coast, turned out to be a beautiful little place, and made an excellent base to explore the dozens of terrific beaches and hideaway beauty spots lurking everywhere, just off the Pacific Highway. I'd had no idea it could be this good.

Part of the reason it was this good was of course the perfect weather, the first occurence of this over the Easter break in anyone's living memory, I suspect.

Strolling along the waterfront around the bridge which connects Forster with sister town Tuncurry, I witnessed a very scenic sunset.

Illuminating stroll through Ultimo

I heard there was an amazing piece of installation art on show for a few days, in a disused railway tunnel in Ultimo. I headed into town and checked it out. The most amazing thing about it was that neither I nor any of the other visitors there at the time seemed to have a clue what it was about or what message, if any, the artist was attempting to convey.

There were lots of old style sideboard cabinets and glass boxes on tables, with various odd things in them. As you walked around, lights and sounds might or might not come on. I'm very patient with my art. I give it every possible benefit of the doubt. But New York based Australian artist, Ian Burns, was stretching it to the limit with his 'Extended Stage'.

There again, the explanatory pamphlet probably knows what it's talking about. The exhibition's a piece of magic, and it intertwines unexpected phenomena with a wry mix of new media and nostalgia. It draws on the atmosphere and history of this overlooked site, and it creates moments of small spectacle around a rare opportunity for the viewer to explore an unusual space, in the end creating a spectacle of the process of investigation itself. He has a sense of the sublime, and he is preoccupied with exploring that revealing moment when we experience the beautiful and the
ridiculous at the same time. I'd obviously missed all this somehow. See http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2014/04/artist-creates-illuminating-experience-old-tunnel

I spent a couple of hours exploring Ultimo a little further, and found there's lots more than this going on. There was the Hanging Gardens building, there was the ABC, and there was Ultimo TAFE. There was UTS (the University of Technology), with one of the candidates for ugliest building in Sydney (the original UTS tower building), and what may soon be the most interesting building in the country (the Frank Gehrey designed Business School building, called the Dr Chau Chak Wing building, and resembling a giant crumpled cardboard box treehouse thing). I've included a picture, stolen from the UTS website, of what it'll look like when it's finished.


There was the refurbished site of the old Carlton United brewery, with a sparkling new shopping centre, brave bold sculptures, and the completely-new-to-me Central Park (also seemingly called Chippendale Green). One of the Broadway buildings alongside Central Park - the Hanging Gardens building in fact - has a strange horizontal platform sticking out at the the top, with a bunch of mirror reflectors presumably doing something useful somewhere below. I must look this up. I just did. It's a 'cantilevered heliostat, directing light into the complex and becoming a digital artwork at night'. Wow! The Sydney Architecture Archive blog ( http://sydneyarchitecturearchive.wordpress.com/category/buildings/contemporary/uts-gehry/ ) tells me that there are in fact three buildings in this area that are Pritzker Prize winners.

I don't really understand my architecture much better than my art installations, but I often like it a lot more. I decided I rather like Ultimo.

I was going to tell you the story of how Ultimo got its name. Must look it up again. Here it is, lifted straight out of Wikipedia. It's a good story.
           'Ultimo' was originally the name of the estate of Dr John Harris, on 34 acres (140,000 m²) granted to him by Governor King in 1803. It was named for a clerical error in a legal case against Harris that had prevented him being court-martialled. His offence was listed as 'ultimo' (having occurred in the previous month) when it should have been cited as 'instant' (having occurred in the same month). Harris Street is named in his honour.

Artarmon

I had my morning coffee in Artarmon today. It's a pleasant little suburb, with leafy green parks and bike tracks, several nice cafes, and an unusual collection of TV towers to look at. I guess the TV reception's pretty good around here.

It's clearly considered a desirable place to live. This 3-bedroom house just sold for about $1.5 million.
 

Getting back to those TV towers, only the Channel 7 / Channel 10 Hampden Rd one is actually within Artarmon proper, but they've got good views too of the nearby Channel 9 transmitter in Willoughby, and the ABC / SBS / TVS tower at Gore Hill. I guess the relatively high ground just north-west of Sydney's historical centre made the area the natural choice for this sort of infrastructure.

The suburb's unusual name derives from the Irish castle, Ardtermon, on the family estate of William Gore, who was a high military official in the early colonial government, and after whom Gore Hill was named.






Re that morning coffee, it tasted rather odd, and the whole experience was tainted a little by the smelly diesel fumes from the delivery trucks that kept pulling up alongside me while I was perched there on the footpath beside the Hampden Rd main drag.

 So a mixture of experiences, but I'll probably get back there one day to explore a little more. (And I'll try a different cafe.)

Hop on

'Hop on' says the pamphlet they hand out. 'Discover all 23 light rail stops'. So I did. It made for a nice little morning out.

Sydney's currently sole tram route (light rail? tram? I think we can say either) was extended last week. It's been running for a few years now along what used to be a goods only line, from Central to Lilyfield, and now you can go on further through the inner west to Dulwich Hill. You get to pass through the suburbs of Leichhardt, Lewisham, Summer Hill, and 'Arlington' (not really a suburb, but maybe it should be - there's a nice little park there).

There seemed to be a tram every ten minutes or so, they're roomy and comfortable, they have (friendly) conductors, and it's altogether quite a positive experience. As before, the busiest section of the route is the short hop between Central and the Star City casino. After that the customers thin out somewhat, and towards the end of the line most of them seemed to be sightseers and investigative reporters like me, with their backpacks and their $2.50 excursion tickets (without which it would be a bit on the expensive side).

Most of the sightseers stayed on the tram for the ride straight back, but they missed out on the delights of Dulwich Hill. I remember there used to be an Egyptian restaurant there with a bellydancer. That's disappeared, but dozens of dining establishments have arrived to take its place, establishments of Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Lebanese provenance. And there are lots of very pleasant street cafes. I also stumbled upon the Jack Shanahan Park, with an advertised mountain bike track. The park was closed for renovation, but I'll get back there with my bike one day for a closer inspection.

The Inner West extension only happened after years of campaigning by EcoTransitSydney and the Greens. Eventually the then state Labor government took it up, and the incoming Liberal one decided not to sabotage it (unlike the new federal Liberal government, which is evangelically sabotaging anything progressive or ecologically sustainable. Here's a nice little video about the opening day, which tells the story well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Zeq1iKOVM  


We're promised a tram service down George St to Circular Quay next, one to the south east, through Surry Hills to UNSW, and maybe even one to Sydney Uni. Nowadays these sorts of projects tend to take decades rather than months (like they would have done first time round, a century or so back). So don't hold your breath, but I do look forward to reviewing these other lines for you one day too!