by Susan Duncan
‘There’s got to be an easier way,’ he replies in despair, and his eyes light up at the thought of … a bridge.
That night he dreams of this bridge. The ease of commuting stretches out in front of him. The swoosh of traffic is like music. He jogs along this magical, mythical bridge, sees the exits marked Bell and Carol (for Scotland Island wharves). Then he pauses and looks back the way he has come. High-rise buildings are crammed all over the island. There are no trees. Just building after building. Brick, hard-edged, and not a square inch of soil is left uncovered. The community association, SIRA (Scotland Island Residents Association) is a massive, ugly squat building on the foreshore with as much character as an RSL club. Island life is suddenly city life. And it’s a nightmare, not a dream.
He wakes to birds, decks, trees, houses lightly imprinting the shore, then climbs into his boat with his toddler daughter and scoots across the water to The Point. No traffic, no crowds. Just a blue stretch of open waterway and a friendly wave from a passing neighbour. He’s a happy man. ‘There’s no bridge!’ he exults. ‘No bridge.’
I ONCE MET A WOMAN on one of the bush tracks that wind from Lovett Bay to Towlers Bay. She wore a lipstick red swimsuit covered by even brighter red shorts and she’d stepped off the ferry to look around.
‘So you have cars here,’ she said, indicating the rough roadway.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Only fire trucks or vehicles from the National Parks and Wildlife.’
‘So everyone travels by boat?’
‘Yep.’ It was a thought that puzzled her deeply. Did she think we were all mad? Or that I must be lying because roads were sensible and boats, at best, whimsical.
‘But this is not an island. It is mainland, yes?’
‘Yes, but road access would have to be through the national park.’
‘Oh, but it would be easier then, yes? Not so hard to live here.’
‘Maybe. But we don’t mind the effort if it means keeping cars away, preserving what we like to think of as our wild tranquillity.’
I could see my reply didn’t suit her concept of a practical universe.
‘But trucks are allowed if you are building a house.’ She said it like an irrefutable fact.
‘No. Materials are shipped by barge from Cargo Dock on Pittwater Road.’
‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ she said, horrified. ‘Terrible. What a terrible way to live.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t terrible. It’s magic.’ But she didn’t get it and I’m not sure she ever would.
To be fair, when I first bought the Tin Shed and decided to do renovations, the instinct to save a few dollars wiped out the desire to preserve what I most prized, what had survived so exquisitely because of its logistical difficulties, what had brought me here in the first place. I muttered darkly about the inconvenience and added expense of water transport. I quickly embraced the idea of changing the rules even though it would inevitably open a floodgate and turn our quietly charming, isolated little bays into just another crowded suburb.
The thing is, though, the community would never have let me get away with it. The community keeps us honest.
The Pledge
Many of the quaint little holiday shacks from the mid-1950s onwards remain around Pittwater, their rears perched on the shore, their front rooms built on piles so they hover over the water like a ship’s stateroom. They are ramshackle and today, no council would ever approve their construction. Yet they are utterly gorgeous with their uneven floorboards, doors without locks and windows so warped they refuse to open. Or close. Perhaps because they are exquisite reminders of the days when holiday houses were for … well, holidays! Letting kids run wild and come in filthy from the beach without being yelled at, and not bothering to make beds or clean the bathroom until the last day. Or perhaps their appeal is their closeness to the water where – if you look closely enough – a fish, a turtle or a gimlet-eyed stingray might stare back.
Despite the difficulties of building offshore, the area has not escaped the usual number of large new houses, with two or three bathrooms, tall glass walls and sweeping timber decks. I must confess that I, too, hungered for more space in my Tin Shed and extended it until it slotted into my idea of what was necessary. Now I know it’s not the size of a house that gives you quality of life. It’s community, environment, and learning wisdom from wonder.
When Marty Cowen and her husband, George, bought their weekender on the south-facing shores of Elvina Bay in 1989, the outgoing owners left a two-page document. Not about where to find the fuse box, or the tank switch or anything practical at all. It was about passing on the legacy of the Bays from one generation to the next.
Dear George and Marty,
This is a story of a love affair with the Bays and a quality of life that has lasted for five generations. Yesterday, I was privileged to listen to two gentle ladies share their memories of a lifetime on Pittwater. Their grandfather began the association by staying in a boarding house in Towler’s Bay [now the youth Hostel]. Then their parents, in their courting days, continued by going to house partied at Ventnor’ and Trincomalea’(sic), which at the time belonged to Madame Stephanie, who had a stage built into her lounge and held small theatricals there. Later, the draw of the Bays was such that they purchased their own block and a house was built about 1910.
Now began their own weekends on Pittwater, characterised by epic journeys by coach from Woolahra and them the long now across from Church Point. Ah, but what weekends and holidays they were, and as children were born and grew, they shared with their parents the long rambling walks, the picnics at the lookouts, fishing for leather jacket and whiting and the magnificent oysters from the rocks. These were the days of no electricity; of parties of gay young people dressed in long organdie dresses and creams and dancing to the light of candles and magic lanterns. When their boat was the only one in the bay, and a trip up Pittwater to Broken Bay, could produce the sight of a school of sharks so thick, you could almost walk across them.
The Bays were always a haven, from the gregarious to the recluse. From Tilly Devine who kept a house of ill fame in the City; (but still had time to give parties for orphan children) to Dorothea Mackellar, who wrote ‘My Country,’ possibly our most loved Australian poem.
These gentle ladies have lived to see a great parade of wonderful characters that have etched their mark on this unique place. They saw the musicale weekends at Ventnor’ and Wyuna’ and they even formed a small orchestra with Joan Hammond (who kept her boat [Pankina] in Lovett Bay) to play at charity occasions. They have seen great fires; and the war years, when all boats were confiscated and boatsheds pulled down for fear of Japanese invasion.
In time, another generation was born to spend their summers in the Bay. Long, hot summer holidays, fishing with grandparents, swimming off the beach and oyster cuts from the same rocks; but you still dressed for dinner. Now the fifth generation is here, rambling the same bush paths and sailing across the bay.
Many things have changed, and now there are more of us to share this bit of paradise. Can we fulfil these ladies’ fervent hopes? Retain this tranquility … in perpetuity? I believe we can. I believe we must.
May The Pittwater bear each new crop of her sons and daughters just as buoyantly on her shining waters, their sailing boats leaning to the same stiff nor’easters. May there be always; soft wet mornings, with the distant roar of the waterfall and drifts of mist caught in the elbows of the hills. And forever, crisp winter evenings with the smell of wood smoke on the still air, the sound of currawongs on the hill and a flock of white cockatoos flying home.
Each of us while we live here, help to give this place the unique character it has. But without a doubt, however long or short a time we stay, the Bays give us all a precious gift. We are changed somehow, a little larger perhaps for having lived here.
… And here’s to the next five generations, and our beloved Bays. A legacy.
Love – Cherish – Protect
Jennifer
Judson.
The ‘gentle ladies’ were Dorothy Witt and her sister, Hazel Thomson, whose father, Charles, built the house where those generations laughed and played. Now called Orana, it was a holiday house until Dorothy, a music teacher who taught piano and never married, and Charles moved there permanently in 1965.
‘Despite the transport challenges, my grandfather never gave up going to the opera,’ recalled his granddaughter, Prue Sky. ‘In those days Lenny Duck was the ferry driver. It was nothing for him to climb back into the ferry at midnight to pick up my aunt and grandfather, who was always dressed in a suit and wearing a hat, when they returned to Church Point.’
Lenny, who was much loved by the community, drove the ferry for more than thirty years. His kindness, compassion, his willingness to do a favour or bend the rules was legendary. He retired after refusing to bow to new regulations demanding he sit for a coxswain’s ticket. What would he learn from an exam that three decades of experience hadn’t already taught him?
As a child, Prue recalls her mother’s tales of holidays and house and tennis parties. Of rowing miles to Clareville for picnics; of long conversations over simple afternoon teas. She remembers the wonder in people’s voices as they talked about the birds, the fish, the wallabies; their joy in the physical world.
‘I was still expected to wear a skirt to dinner,’ Prue says, ‘but no-one knew what kind of car you drove. And it didn’t matter whether you were a lawyer or a bricklayer; we all communicated with each other because we met on the ferry.’
When she was an adult, Prue and her husband built their home on the block of land next to her grandfather’s and raised their children there.
‘It was a magical way to live,’ she says. ‘There was such a sense of community – and security because we all looked out for each other. If your kids disappeared for a while, you never worried about them.’
Charles Witt died in 1971 aged ninety-one. His daughter, Dorothy, or Dorrie as she was known to family (although locally, she was always respectfully referred to as Miss Witt), stayed on until she was eighty-five years old. The house was sold in 1987. Prue and her husband, Greg, left Elvina Bay in 1997 and now have a property near Mudgee in NSW. ‘We had a wonderful twenty years of married life there and I have so many memories. Great memories. You know, I still think of the house as “our place”. I always will.’
The Boats
Slender yachts, banged-up tinnies, cruisers, putt putts and rowboats are a wonderful and energetic parade in the Bays and there’s always a friendly wave as you pass by.
I was completely ignorant about boats when I came to Pittwater and hesitated to buy one of my own. I thought I would commute by the local ferry or call on the 24-hour water taxi service if I was in a rush or travelling outside the ferry timetable. Riding the ferry was a great way to meet the locals, exchange information or just feel the stress of the day peel off. The baby-pink water taxis, such a delicate colour for their grunty job, were convenient but expensive if over-used. I soon realised that having my own boat would give me flexibility and freedom.
Nearly everyone on Pittwater has a commuter boat. Either a banged-up tinny, a fibreglass hull or one of the new, very stable plastic boats which come in so many fantastically lurid colours they are known as ‘jellybean boats’. There are still rowboats around too, which were the very first commuter boats on Pittwater. They suit anyone who wants to stay fit or who isn’t in a hurry and can afford to wait for calm days before setting off. Sometimes I see my neighbour rowing his skiff on a blastingly beautiful, still day. His partner lolls near the bow, a straw hat on her head, her hand trailing in the water. He rows so steadily that to watch him is like meditating. If you wave, he lifts a long skinny leg in greeting so he doesn’t break the rhythm.
Most boats hang off private jetties at the foot of the garden, others find space at the ferry wharf closest to their homes. To go ashore, boats are tied up at a long, skinny floating public pontoon called Commuter Dock, a short stroll from the car park. If it’s a weekday, they can hang three or even four deep, which means jumping – or crawling, depending on your shoes, the chop or the wind – from boat to boat to reach solid ground. It’s always wise to choose to tie up close to stable boats.
Stories of falling overboard are so common, unless you sink with your life’s savings, all the family photo albums and your mother-in-law, they rarely get told.
To ease gently into a world of gunnels, sterns and bows, rudders, props and tillers, of outboard motors, pull starts and remembering to say dock instead of park, I borrowed a friend’s boat to give it a trial go. Nothing about boats resembles driving a car except they are both motor driven. Tillers work in reverse from steering wheels. When you turn off the engine, the boat doesn’t stop moving. There are no brakes, clutches or speed indicators. No windscreen wipers to help you see through pouring rain. No headlights to show the way on pitch-black nights. And you are always at the mercy of the wind. It whips seas until you feel the boat might capsize. It hurls waves over the bow. Turns into a chop worse than the corrugations on an outback road. If the engine breaks down, even a light wind can whizz you off course so fast that if you’re not quickly rescued, you might find yourself scooting out towards the vast Pacific Ocean. Or more likely, perhaps, crashing up against oyster-encrusted rocks big enough to rip the guts from your hull.
WHEN I WAS STILL LIVING ALONE IN THE TIN SHED, Bob told me he was selling one of his two tinnies to design and build a new one. So I decided to take the plunge and make an offer. Barbara insisted part of the package included some driving lessons. We set off, me in the driver’s seat, Bob alongside, ready to grab the wheel. I was not an ideal learner. But I didn’t understand quite how bad I was until he screamed at me to slow down, his face scrunched up in excruciating pain, his hands cupped around his groin.
‘You’re … breaking … my … balls,’ he yelled as we hooned over a rutted sea. I pulled back the throttle, aghast. He fell forward so suddenly, he whacked his head hard on the side windscreen.
‘Think I need a bit of practice,’ I apologised.
A while later, after a few frightening solo forays, I realised being a dumb mug on the water was dangerous. Just like the roads, there are rules. Do you give way to port or starboard? Who has right of way when there’s a boat under sail or the ferry is hurtling towards you? How fast can you travel through moorings? What do red and green marker lights indicate? There are many, many more rules that are listed in a little handbook given to you when you apply for a boat licence.
Tinny commuting is pure joy, even in stinging rain. Perhaps because every trip is a physical achievement. Tying and untying, climbing aboard, negotiating swells or rough seas, docking in bad weather. But the water also gives an incredible sense of freedom, a feeling that if you wanted to, you could keep going and circumnavigate the world in your own time, dropping into exotic tropical islands for coconut juice cocktails, reaching out to touch passing icebergs. Pure fantasy, of course. Half the time, tinnies break down, run out of petrol or spring a leak on the way from your jetty to Church Point.
When neighbours are away, we keep a watchful eye on their boats. If a stern looks low, we race around to check the bilge pump is working or to bail water. Although a storm exploding out of nothing at the end of a scorching day or in the middle of the night can catch us off-guard. That’s when most tinnies sink to a watery grave, their engines often knackered for good.
On days when the water is table-smooth, the woody hills threaded with early morning mist, which is the time the kayakers paddle silently around the bay, and you’re slowly chugging to The Point because it’s too damn beautiful to rush, you don’t mind running out of petrol at all. And, anyway, someone always stops to help you.
Once, I was ferrying a friend to The Point when I ran out of fuel at Rocky Point. A neighbour going the other way pulled over to check out the problem.
‘Caro’s late for the airport,’ I told him. ‘Can you get her to The Point?’
‘C
limb aboard!’ he said.
Caro gathered her luggage and we held the tinnies together while she swung a leg into his boat. ‘Thanks,’ she said, smiling at him. He grinned back. A hero.
‘I’ll give you a tow on the way back,’ yelled my neighbour.
Within a few minutes, though, someone else had come to my rescue.
The ferry drivers are unfailingly generous-spirited and set the mood for the day for commuters.
THE FERRY SERVICE IS RUN BY PENNY GLEEN, a kind, calm young woman with a beautiful smile, unflagging spirit and a passion for Pittwater. I met her for the first time on a stinking-hot day when she coolly emerged from under the water like a mermaid at our little beach. She’d swum from her home on the other side of Lovett Bay.
‘Don’t you worry about sharks?’ I asked, concerned, because Bob has caught a few metre-long bronze whalers from our pontoon.
She grinned. ‘Nah. The sharks around here are all vegetarians.’ She and her husband, Simon, a pilot, bought the almost century-old ferry service in February 2008. ‘We’d been talking about running our own business for a while but we knew we wouldn’t be good in sales and we couldn’t think of what else to do.’ Penny, an industrial chemist and former logistics manager, had two goals. She didn’t want to sit in traffic anymore, and she and Simon, who planned to continue to work as a pilot, also wanted a business that matched their ethics.
