by Scott Bevan
While Henry Lawson feared the spirit of the past would be killed by the coal loader, it wasn’t. That spirit has prevailed, and it is etched into Balls Head. On a rock platform near the centre for sustainability is the engraving of a whale. That this open-air work of art has survived is remarkable, because it has defied the ravages of the years and industrial activity. The engraving is more than a symbol of survival. It is a celebration of the animal and the importance it held to the Cammeraygal people, who carved the image. The Cammeraygal, who lived on the lower North Shore and Northern Beaches, occupied this headland for thousands of years. It is awesome to stand near the rock and look down at the engraving, which must be five metres long, tracing the tail and fins of this creature swimming across the sandstone. Inside the whale, near the tail, is the outline of a man.
‘No, he’s not inside the whale,’ corrects Professor Dennis Foley. ‘He’s on top of it. He’s riding the whale.’
Dennis is a lecturer at the University of Newcastle and a Cammeraygal (Gai-maraigal) descendant. This engraving, explains Dennis, is not telling some imagined story. This is what young men did as part of their passage in life.
The water off Balls Head is some of the deepest in the harbour, and whales would gather in that area and calve. Even though large sharks were also lurking, young men would swim out from the headland to the whales. Dennis says the figure on the whale is depicted with his feet wrapped. ‘That’s seal skin or penguin skin,’ he explains, and that gave the young men grip to climb on to the whales.
The engraving, and the ritual it records, explains not only the close relationship the Cammeraygal had with the whales, but also with the harbour itself.
‘Sydney was the Venice of Australia,’ Dennis says of the number of canoes on the water, as people fished from them and paddled from one location to another. They canoed where their ancestors once walked, before the valleys were flooded. The Cammeraygal continued to carry the knowledge of the terrain at the bottom of the harbour. It is knowledge that has flowed through to the present-day, to Dennis. He can’t see it, but Dennis can give directions on how to make your way along the hills and valleys below the water. His heritage is his guide map of the harbour and its foreshores. It is different to the maps I have looked at.
On those maps, the name of Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball is attached to the headland that holds the whale engraving. Ball commanded HMS Supply in the First Fleet and was part of the early surveys of the harbour. He was also involved in the abduction of a local man, Arabanoo, from Manly in 1788, as part of Governor Phillip’s desire to learn more about the Aboriginal people and their culture. When Ball returned to England in 1791, he took with him a live kangaroo, the first to be exported.
Standing on a rocky lip protruding from the southern face of the headland that holds his name, I don’t think of Lieutenant Ball. Rather, I think of the Cammeraygal. For I’m standing on the ground that they did. They called this landmark Yerroulbine. And I’m doing what I imagine they did: absorbing the view. From this rock shelf high above the water, and with no safety fence or warning signs pushing you back, you can look west, south, and east. What I take in along the shoreline and on the harbour is vastly different to what the Cammeraygal would have seen, but what connects us over the millennia is the water itself. To my right, I look at Parramatta River, just as they would have done. Ahead of me, over Goat Island is Darling Harbour, and turning to my left, there’s the harbour reaching for the sea. In Sydney, values are often determined by the views. But how can you value this? For it’s not what you see – as spectacular as it is – but how you feel when you stand here on Yerroulbine. It’s the feeling of not just the spirit of the past, but the spirit of the land, and of the harbour.
Out of respect for the original inhabitants, Dennis Foley believes we should use Aboriginal place names, either in conjunction with, or in place of, the names they were given after the British arrived.
‘It’s like if you go into someone’s house, and you start speaking French or German,’ he says. What’s more, Dennis argues, using Aboriginal place names would help all of us to better understand the significance of the harbour and the land.
From the harbour itself, Yerroulbine has the look and feel of a resilient character, like an old boxer. Little wonder artists such as Lloyd Rees returned time and again, sketching and painting that beautiful, compelling face, with its pock-marked sandstone skin and scrabbling thatch of angophoras and gums. Rees loved what he called the sculptural quality of the harbour foreshores. In one of his pencil on paper works, titled Balls Head, Sydney Harbour (1931), the great gnarled knob of rock and bush dominates the image. Passing the headland is a tiny figure, little more than a squiggle in the shaded graphite water. It’s a rower. At least we who hold a paddle have a place, no matter how small, in the art of Lloyd Rees.
Around the time Rees sketched that image, a lot of the bush had been hacked off Balls Head. The vegetation was battered during the Great Depression, when desperate job-seekers cut down the trees to sell for firewood. In the caves and overhangs, where the Cammeraygal once sheltered, the homeless fashioned shacks. From the 1930s, residents and conservationists worked at regenerating the bush on Balls Head. But when fireworks are involved, people can still find a viewing platform. On New Year’s Eve and Australia Day, tarps and tents sprout on the southern and eastern faces of Balls Head, and this motley camp clinging to the rocks provides a fleeting glimpse of how this landmark must have looked during the Depression.
Paddling close to the shoreline around Balls Head, you can see where the harbour has been incessantly scratching away at the sandstone, scooping out a string of caves and shells. The water is sucked into the caverns and swilled around until it echoes. It is a delicious sound.
The water off Balls Head presented me with a chance to bring an end to a torment perpetrated by my fellow Gentleman Kayakers, Bruce Beresford and George Ellis. We three members usually convene our meetings just out of Balls Head Bay. One autumn morning, as I paddled towards the gentlemen, Bruce hollered, ‘Did you see the dolphins?!’ No, I didn’t. Bruce and George then tripped over each other’s words, excitedly recounting how one, then two, then, ultimately, five dolphins dipped and gambolled right in front of them! And then they followed the dolphins all the way to here!
‘They were so graceful,’ George cooed.
With eyes sparkling even brighter than the water, Bruce declared that in all the years he’d been paddling on the harbour, he had never seen dolphins before. He punctuated his sentence by declaring, ‘And I can’t believe you missed them!’
‘And you just missed them,’ said George, feigning bitter disappointment for me.
After that episode, whenever and wherever we paddled, no matter what the topic of conversation was, George and Bruce would somehow weave into our chats, ‘Hey, remember the time we saw the dolphins . . . Oh, that’s right! Sorry, Scott, you didn’t see them, did you?’ I’m not sure what caused me greater distress; that I had never seen a dolphin in Sydney Harbour, or that I was a member of the Gentleman Kayakers’ Club.
And so it was, until one late winter morning. The air was still and crisp and the water an unblemished mirror reflecting a flawless sky. Suddenly a beautiful day became even better. Bruce and I were going for a paddle and we had just met at the foot of Balls Head. No sooner had we set off than I thought I saw a fin. Before saying anything, I waited and watched. Just in case I had to yell, ‘Shark!’ Then the great sheeny curve of a dolphin’s body broke out of the mirror before sliding back into it.
‘Did you see that?!’
No, Bruce hadn’t. I was preparing to rib him about missing the perfect moment, when two dolphins appeared. They were synchronised as they slowly curled out of the water. We paddled towards the pair, as they continued their loping journey towards Parramatta River. Then a speedboat passed too close, and we didn’t see the dolphins again. But the curse on me had been broken. The torrent of torment had been dried up. Never again could Bruce and George pr
oclaim, ‘You haven’t seen a dolphin in the harbour’.
Others have seen even more impressive creatures in this part of the harbour. In 1889, a ‘Resident in Elizabeth Street’ wrote how he was in a skiff near Blues Point (the next peninsula east of Balls Head) when he saw three whales coming down Parramatta River. The writer recounted how the whales, which he estimated were between 20 feet (6 metres) and 80 feet (24 metres) long, dived under his boat and resurfaced just beyond it. So that I can tease my fellow club members, I live in hope of seeing a whale off Balls Head – as long as it doesn’t swim under the kayak. Or over it.
THE ENDURING influence of Alexander Berry hurdles Balls Head, which was part of his estate, and lands in the very name of the waterway on the other side. It is called Berrys Bay.
On the bay’s western shores, Berry built a wharf and warehouse for the ships bringing produce from his property further down the coast. Berry’s buildings are long gone. But the commercial empire-builder would have been pleased to know that, since his time, a succession of entrepreneurs have sailed into this bay and turned the water into money. Yet it’s not all business in Berrys Bay.
The time-sculpted northern shoreline burrows into Balls Head to form a narrow cove, all but tucked out of sight. It would be an ideal site for a getaway, to forget about the rest of the world and its cares. But for three-quarters of a century from 1912, this was a base for those watching out and keeping at bay some of those cares of the world. This was a quarantine depot. From here, Commonwealth Government launches would chug out to meet arriving ships and fumigate their cargo. The depot has shut, but what remains on the site are a collection of old buildings and a well-ordered, almost old-world atmosphere, straight from a Somerset Maugham story. The buildings, including an old coal bunker, sit on manicured lawns and recline under a pine tree and aged palms. The grounds strike a contrast to the unruly bush tumbling off Balls Head to the property’s back fence. In recent years, the former depot has been providing quarantine from the everyday for those with money; it has been home to a luxury yacht charter business.
Neighbouring the old depot, but worlds apart in atmosphere, is a sliver of sand, which is given the rather dry title of North Sydney Council Beach. A 2012 study of Berrys Bay for the State Government noted there was no formal maritime facility on the beach. However, there is a wonderfully eccentric informal maritime facility. In other words, a shack. If the neighbour sips on the spirit of Somerset Maugham, then this structure has drifted in from Robinson Crusoe. The shack is garlanded in the flotsam and jetsam of harbour life: thick ropes, mooring buoys, a life-ring, and a bizarre collection of caps and thongs. On the shack’s door is the image of a pirate. It looks as though a castaway or beachcomber should live here. But the barbecue, a wonky table and a couple of chairs, along with the overturned dinghies lying around the shack, indicate this is actually a retreat for local boaties. For the shack’s decor, the designer wouldn’t have had to go far. Rubbish is washed up at the shack’s door. The tideline is a noose of wood and plastic; toys and bottle tops, bags, even a section of barricading tape that reads ‘Danger’. It is an indication of just how much rubbish is funnelled into Berrys Bay, or dropped along its edges.
The shack may look like it is from Robinson Crusoe, but local resident Michael Stevens must feel like he is Robinson Crusoe when he walks along a small stretch of beach at the head of Berrys Bay, picking up rubbish and trying to get the message out to Sydneysiders to clean up after themselves. Yet each time, the message in a bottle he gets back is that too many people are either careless or lazy. He is left to pick up the bottle, and the plastic, and every other kind of garbage imaginable.
‘I got into this by accident,’ Michael, who is retired, explains of his passion for cleaning up the shoreline. ‘In September 2011, I was walking on Waverton Oval then decided to go down and walk on the sand.’
Michael was disturbed by how much broken glass was along the little beach. So he picked up a piece, then another, and another. He returned the next day and did the same. And still there was more glass and other rubbish. He began noting what he collected. His first recorded entry in his journal, on 6 September 2011, showed he picked up 60 litres of rubbish and dug out a boat cover half buried in the sand.
His pattern was set. He kept returning to that strip of sand, barely 100 metres long, picked up the rubbish in 20-litre buckets and noted what he collected. By the end of that year – just four months – he had collected 2403 litres of rubbish.
By early 2017, Michael’s tally had reached 16,517 litres – ‘I’ve calculated that as two garbage trucks full’. He has mostly collected it at that same little strip. Occasionally, he wanders further around the bay’s western shore, picking rubbish out of the rocks.
‘I get an awful lot of plastic, in all shapes and sizes,’ he says. ‘Fishermen are big offenders, because the bags they buy their bait in ends up in the water, where it is a danger to the fish they’re trying to catch.’
From what he picks up, Michael is convinced a lot of rubbish is blown – or tossed – off boats, or it has come down the stormwater drains on the other side of the harbour and is carried across into Berrys Bay, particularly when the southerly winds are strong.
‘I find a lot of City of Sydney parking tickets,’ he says. ‘Perhaps the strangest thing I’ve picked up is a packet of sausages.’
Michael is no longer alone picking up rubbish on the local harbour beaches. He began a volunteer group called HarbourCare in 2013 and used his daily collection records to convince North Sydney Council to support it. He’s hopeful more councils will join the HarbourCare campaign, for he argues that while there are clean-up events, one day a year is not enough to deal with the ceaseless tides of rubbish; it has to be every day.
Some days Michael finds staggering volumes of junk. On 27 December 2011, his records show, Michael picked up 200 litres of rubbish, including 120 litres in bottles. As a result, that Robinson Crusoe feeling can be overwhelming.
‘Sometimes I think, “I should give up, I’m getting nowhere”. But I’m getting somewhere. The message gets out that someone is taking care, and that rubs off. We get more people doing it.’
‘But there’s no future in picking up rubbish; we’ve got to stop dropping rubbish.’
Yet while ever there is rubbish on the beach, he will continue to walk with his buckets along the little harbour beach in Berrys Bay. He has received awards and recognition for his harbour care work, but that is not what motivates Michael Stevens. In his gentle voice, he simply concludes, ‘I’m just someone who likes to leave the place tidy for the next person.’
MOORED ON the bay is a pleasure armada, from yachts and cruisers to former tourist boats. Historic vessels that once helped move a city also rest in these waters, including the steam tug Lena, with its name and year of construction – 1898 – carved in wood and attached to the stern, and the beautiful Manly ferry turned floating function centre, South Steyne. There’s something about old work vessels that suggests they have an A-type, high-achiever personality. Even when they’re just gently rocking in the water, they don’t seem as though they’ve been retired; they’re just waiting for the next job, the next voyage. They may be going nowhere, but these unreformed workaholics give the impression they’re about to set off to – somewhere.
Helping give vessels, and their owners, hope that the journey continues is a shipyard along the bay’s north-eastern shore. Actually, the Noakes yard helps give hope that there’s life yet in Sydney as a working harbour. In a cradle in one of the yard’s sheds, a wooden ferry is being caressed back to good health. A couple of sleek yachts are out of the water, sitting haughtily in the yard and showing off their lines, as they wait for a little cosmetic surgery. Squatting near the yachts are navy landing barges about to be repaired. Out the front in the water are more vessels waiting for their moment with the dozens of tradesmen and engineers working in the boatyard.
The boss is Sean Langman. Not that he is dressed like a boss when we meet. H
e is wearing safety glasses and a helmet, and he is a high-vis blur as he dashes in. He has just been down in the yard. Sean takes off his helmet and glasses, unharnessing a nest of sandy hair and sun-reddened skin. Now he looks like the sailor he has always been. Only a few days before, he had brought a yacht across Bass Strait and up the coast.
Sean is all energy, like the gusts of wind he captures in sails whenever he can. Yet he also knows how to slow down, by accepting you can’t really control the elements; just learn from them. When I tell him I’m paddling around the harbour to slowly see Sydney from the water, he recounts how for months prior to the 2006 Sydney to Hobart race, he would row a 12-foot clinker dinghy from Woolwich to this yard.
‘I was at a dinner party, and someone said, “There’s this crazy guy who is rowing every day from Woolwich to Berrys Bay”, and I had to say that I was that crazy guy,’ he says.
But there was method to Sean’s craziness. He was preparing not just for the gruelling race but also accruing knowledge of water and an even greater appreciation of the harbour.
‘You understand the tidal flow, and the timelessness of the outcrops, the eddies swirling just as they have probably done for thousands of years,’ Sean says. ‘It was a case of taking my watch off. The rowing made me appreciate what’s around us.’
Sean Langman was born for the water – ‘I’m a Piscean’ – and he was born on the water. Home for the first two years of his life was an old gaff rigged boat moored in Rushcutters Bay, further down the harbour, and his mother would row them to shore for showers. As a teenager, he lived up Parramatta River at Rhodes. Whenever he could, he’d be sailing either model boats or the real thing. He didn’t fulfil his ambition to join the navy, but nothing could keep him off the water.
