On Sydney Harbour

On any first time tourist's wish list when they come to Sydney is to go sailing on the harbour. A quite sedate way of enjoying the harbour is to do a harbour cruise, my personal preference is to catch a harbour ferry. I like to have a destination, all part of the pretending to belong in the place you're visiting. The locals catch ferries, therefore so will I.

One of the longest ferry trips you can do is to go across the harbour to Manly. This particular day there weren't very many sail boats out, but I managed to grab a photo of a few looking back into Rushcutters Bay.

Ferry rides across the harbour are always very smooth, but with the Manly ferry when it crosses The Heads (the opening of the harbour out to the sea) the ferry bobs up and down as the open sea comes into the harbour.

Manly beach looking north, it was a reasonably hot day so the beach was busy.

From Manly Beach it's possible to stroll along Cabbage Palm Bay to Shelley Beach. Cabbage Palm Bay, named for the palm trees found along the shore, is an aquatic reserve. It's rocky but still popular with people on the rocks, and more noticeably snorkelling in the water. There were numerous groups of people snorkelling I just managed to capture these two with the kayaker.

From Shelley Beach, you can head into the bush. Behind the beach is a set of stairs that lead to a carpark and from that carpark you can enter a national park which will lead you to the North Head. I was up for the challenge and off I went!

Got to the top, well kind of! Not at North Head but along the top with a view over the water looking north. Continued in the direction of North Head but it was a VERY hot day! Hiking in full sun, in 34 degree heat even with water and a hat wasn't exactly pleasurable so I waved to North Head in the distance and made my way down again. Meeting quite a few people on their way up!

The rocky outcrop in the foreground isn't North Head, the landform in the background is! This picture was taken from the lookout in the carpark above Shelley Beach, so basically once I was down. The thing that stuns me most about this scene is the colour of the ocean, that's the Pacific Ocean and it's the most glorious shade of blue. Colour sensory overload with the lighter shade of blue of the sky.