by Scott Bevan
Due to concerns about the stability of the bridge, it was shut to all but pedestrians in 1936. Commuters had to walk across the bridge, until the suspension cables were replaced with a reinforced concrete arch. Even so, decades after the cables were taken down, it is still called the Suspension Bridge by most locals. In 2011, even the state’s road authority officially accepted the name, after years of listing it as Long Gully Bridge.
Flowing into the bay, under the sporting fields, is Flat Rock Creek. It cuts through the valley, up to where there used to be a renowned waterfall, which was the highest in Sydney. Yet Naremburn Falls were slowly strangled as the flow was impeded by development further upstream. Then they were destroyed. The falls were filled in when the area was turned into a rubbish dump in the early 20th century. Near the ruined waterfall, a local, Edward Hallstrom, had his factory, manufacturing Silent Knight refrigerators. Hallstrom earned a fortune, allowing him to indulge his passions: zoology and ornithology. Hallstrom lived only a few kilometres away at the end of Long Bay, on Fig Tree Point, in a two-storey house. When the house was built in the 1870s by a dentist who rowed to work in the city, it was known as The Hermitage. The owner apparently thought the land on the point was suitable for only goats. But Edward Hallstrom found it suitable for many other animals. After he bought the property in the 1930s, Hallstrom renamed it Fig Tree House and crowded the grounds with creatures great and small, from kangaroos to deer, and aviaries filled with exotic birds. Hallstrom’s interest in animals was not contained by the private zoo he created around his home. He was a major contributor to, and trustee of, Taronga Park Zoo. He made Fig Tree House pleasant for the human species as well, building a ballroom on the harbour’s edge and installing a swimming pool filled with water pumped from Middle Harbour.
THE BOAT ramp at Tunks Park into Long Bay is the escape hatch for thousands of Sydney boaties. On weekends, they queue to slide their boats into the water. And it’s from where I usually set off in Pulbah Raider. Within a dozen strokes, I feel as though I’m in a different world. The land-fettered life is left on the ramp and I paddle past the sandstone clumps guarding the shoreline, as they have done for thousands of years. After rain, the sandstone darkens and seems denser, and when the sun is blazing, it seems to shed its weight and glows. The sandstone is swept by ferns and fractured by trees. Thank goodness plans in the 1850s for a dockyard to be built in this part of the bay never materialised. But boats and ships have found their way into the bay.
I pick my way through moored yachts, some of them with distant places of origin, from The Netherlands to Nuku‘alofa, tattooed on their stern. For a few craft, however, their adventures have ended in this stretch of water. In an indent off the bay is Salt Pan Cove, believed to be the site of an early salt-gathering operation in the colony. The cove has been a graveyard for ships, and the skeletons of a few can still be seen. The remains of a steamship built in Balmain and used for training during the Second World War reveal themselves at low tide. Pointing imperiously towards the shore is the rusting bow of a 19th century British barque, Itata. The sailing ship may be buried in Middle Harbour, but it died sixty nautical miles to the north. In 1906, Itata was unloading nitrate and taking on coal in Newcastle Harbour, when it caught on fire. As the newspapers reported, ‘in ten minutes waves of fire and smoke were rolling out of the vessel with such fury that nothing could save her’. Itata was reduced to a ‘gaunt and bare hull’, which was towed to Sydney and scuttled in Salt Pan Cove. Looking into the water, you can see fish flitting around the hull, and its bones are fleshed out with sea plants growing from them.
Paddling down Long Bay always brings me joy, but never more so than on the day when I heard a blast of air, like an old man harrumphing, right beside the kayak. Initially, the sound scared me; I wondered if sharks harrumphed. But I couldn’t see anything. I had taken barely a couple of strokes when I heard the harrumphing again. I swivelled to see just centimetres away from my blade – indeed, I just about hit it – a seal. Not only did the seal sound like an old man, he looked like one, with his whiskers. And it was big; about half the length of my 3.8-metre kayak. The seal eyed me off, I eyed it off, and it dived without so much as ruffling the surface. I tried to follow the seal down the bay, trying to photograph it, for it kept popping up. However, following seals is like chasing rainbows. But just as it is with rainbows, I felt invigorated by having seen a seal.
When you reach the end of Long Bay and round Fig Tree Point, you see for kilometres up Middle Harbour. The water may be constrained by the steep land on either shore, but I always feel unconstrained when I see that view. When land in these parts was first auctioned, the deep water frontage was emphasised, as the agents pointed out it would be good for shipping. Instead, ship-sized yachts can be seen moored here. The northern nodule along this stretch was saved for recreation in the 1880s. The length of time this has been used as a picnic spot hasn’t quite rubbed out initials and a date carved into a rock near the water:
R.M H.M
E.N. B.M.
A.D. B.N. 1905
Time, in concert with the water, has been more successful at dismantling an old harbour pool here. The pool was built at the end of the Second World War from rock and concrete by the Northbridge Volunteer Defence Corps Association. It was one of the smallest tidal rock pools in the Sydney area. Now all that remains are concrete piers and sections of the rock wall.
Near the mouth to Sailors Bay is an old shipwright’s shed. At first glance from the water, Northside Shipwrights looks out of place. It is a small green weatherboard shed on piers over the water, with its paint peeling and corrugated roof rusting, the odd one out in this land of meticulous mansions. But then, on second glance, I’m utterly beguiled and think it is the one building that looks just right for the surroundings.
I paddle in beside one of the two small slipways, and I’m greeted, or confronted, by a black dog. Then I meet his owner, Andrew Hay, who introduces me to the dog, named Halvo, after the Halvorsen boats.
Andrew has been the tenant here since 1988. He had just earned his shipwright’s ticket, at the age of 20, when he took over the place. The years have been kind to Andrew. Working in an old shed by the water must help keep you looking young. Or perhaps the unhurried air he exudes has helped him age slowly. That unhurried air seems to extend to his workplace. I tell him I love the look and feel of his shed.
He smiles and replies, ‘We’re in a time warp here.’
Inside the shed, sawdust whorls, conjuring up the scents and ghosts of trees, whenever the breeze skips across the bay and through the door, which is gloriously open to the water. Along the walls are workbenches, including a stack of old hand tools. The shed is full of history, including Andrew’s. A tool box under a bench holds the hammers, planes and chisels he’s had since he was an apprentice shipwright and boatbuilder at Cockatoo Island. ‘You still see hand tools in this trade,’ Andrew says proudly.
Hanging from the rafters is a little wooden canoe, wearing the name Mintie, because ‘it used to be painted green on the inside’. The canoe was built by his father when Andrew was seven. He used to convert it into a sailing boat by holding up a paddle with a shower curtain attached to it. So, in a way, Mintie was Andrew’s first sailing boat. He has sailed a lot of boats all over the globe since, and has even helped build a few yachts here by the water.
‘My life has been an evolution of build it, sail it, and travel around the world with it,’ he says. ‘But this place has been my grounding. I’ve always come back to here.’
Little wonder, when you see the view out of the doors. He has observed the harbour changing through those doors, for worse and for better.
‘When I first got here, there were no oysters on the rocks,’ he explains, ‘but now you have to wear shoes when you walk along the shore to the east, and that has to be due to the cleaning up; that’s changed the environment.’
Suddenly there’s turbulence in the water and the surface looks as though it is boiling.
‘There’s another sign that the harbour’s healthy’, Andrew says. It’s a school of kingfish – juveniles, but still up to half a metre long – herding baitfish towards the shore.
Andrew has seen a lot of creatures in and out of the water; a seal on the pontoon out the front, little penguins, and in winter 2015, a whale swam within a couple of metres of the shed – and breached. Andrew reckons probably every day of the three decades he has been here, he has pinched himself at how special the location is. ‘It is a pretty unique place.’
Plonked in the midst of some scarily imposing architecture, there’s something about this little boatshed that invites people to stop and yarn.
‘It’s like if they see an antique shop, or a vintage car,’ muses Andrew. ‘And that reaction says something about what we really value, and what we’re on the verge of losing.
‘People feel attracted to this place, because it makes them feel better about themselves, and they worry what it says about them if these little old buildings disappear.’
Around the harbour, shipwrights’ workplaces have been bought and knocked down for residential development, but Andrew is confident this shed will survive. Its heritage significance has been recognised, he explains, and the leasing arrangement attached to the building helps protect it. He looks around the shed, squints out at the light and view washing through the doors, and smiles at Halvo scampering along the deck, tracking a fish.
‘This is a lifestyle. I’ve got to keep my head above water and pay the bills, but my expectation out of this is enjoyment and life experience. If I was seeking money, I’d sell up and look for something else.’
I tell him his attitude is refreshingly non-Sydneyised. He laughs. ‘You’ve got to be non-Sydneyised to do this. We’re boatbuilders, and that’s what we love to do.’
ON THE northern shore of Sailors Bay, the land rears up dramatically, as though nature had built itself a fortress. Little wonder the suburb sprinkled through the bush across the top of it is called Castlecrag. The name was devised by the American architect couple, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. He may be best known for his work in designing Canberra, but Walter Burley Griffin and his wife were smitten with Middle Harbour. He compared the grandeur of the terrain with the Norwegian fiords and the Riviera. He saw the possibility of creating something world-class, yet unlike anything else around the globe. Griffin set up a company, the Greater Sydney Development Association. He plotted his battle plans against the ugliness of suburbia. He wanted people who bought into his vision to escape the streets full of red roofs and paling fences that had infected other arms of the harbour and to be part of nature at Castlecrag, along with Covecrag, which was the estate he planned for the next peninsula to the north, and Castle Cove. Griffin essentially saw the bush as the biggest design feature. The design of the houses, the absence of fences, and the controls protecting the native flora and fauna meant the homes were to blend into the environment and, as Griffin said, each resident could feel as though the whole landscape was theirs. What’s more, the houses were like bush fortresses, hunkered along roads that followed the contours of the landscape and were equipped with battle-ready names, such as The Rampart and The Barricade. These bush fortresses were poised to fight off the brick and tile armies inexorably marching over the headlands. Griffin also wanted to stop the alienation of the waterfront, offering reserves and walking tracks.
The Griffins made Castlecrag their home for about a decade, before leaving for India in 1935. While other eminent architects have worked on the peninsula, and the Griffins’ ideals have drifted away on some blocks, their mark is still firmly embedded in Castlecrag. Their vision may not have been fully realised, but their legacy is one of the most beautiful and intriguing suburbs by the harbour, and beyond.
The precedent of building bush fortresses, or, at least, of crafting homes from the sandstone, along Middle Harbour had been well and truly set before the Griffins arrived at Castlecrag. For thousands of years, the Cammeraygal people had sheltered in caves scraped out of the escarpments by the elements. In colonial times, the caves had been home to escaped convicts, and in more recent times, they offered refuge to those seeking shelter from the demands of modern life, or the terror of a previous one. A Lithuanian couple, who had arrived in Sydney in the early 1950s, lived in a cave on Middle Harbour for twenty-eight years. Apparently haunted by life under Soviet rule, they were self-sufficient and relied on the bush to keep them out of officialdom’s sight and mind. Paddling past the great swathes of bush, and seeing caves and shelters gouged out of the faces of sandstone, I have often wondered how many people still live along here, trying to find what they’re looking for, or losing themselves. For this terrain is not only rugged, it also emits in places a forbidding character. It looks like hidey-hole territory.
Whenever I paddle past the peninsula named Castle Cove, I look up at its ridge – at a castle. With its parapets and turrets and a tower, the building looks as though a relic of medieval England has grown among the gums. The home’s original owner was a businessman and politician, Henry Willis. After being elected to the new Federal Parliament, Willis had his home built using sandstone quarried on site. Just about everything else had to be brought in by water. When it was completed in 1905, Willis named his home Innisfallen Castle. For many years, the home would have looked spookily Gothic at night from the water; it had no electricity connection until the 1960s.
The water that often carried Willis to and from his castle had also played a part in creating his job in the Federal Parliament. On Easter Sunday in 1891, the Queensland Government’s vessel Lucinda cruised Middle Harbour, while in its elegant wood-panelled saloons and smoking room, politicians and lawyers worked on the draft Constitution for what would be a new nation. The federation of the colonies of Australia was still a decade away, but it is delicious to think how the debates over the wording of the Constitution may have been smoothed by the harbour waters – and by the contents of the extensive wine racks on board the 52-metre-long paddlewheeler.
Near the entrance to Sugarloaf Bay, a middle-aged couple in their shiny kayaks weave towards me, stitching a messy pattern in the water. They are wearing lifejackets that gleam like tropical fish. Everything looks new – and it is.
‘It’s our first time out in these,’ the man says, before asking, ‘Where is the marina?’
He means the marina towards Roseville Bridge. ‘Not far away, just around this headland and up a bit,’ I reply. ‘Maybe half an hour’s paddle.’
Figuring they’re not locals, I ask where they’re from. He replies they have paddled from where they live, along Sugarloaf Bay. The encounter makes me realise how if we remain tethered to the land, we know so little, and see even less, of what’s around the next cove. The sum of bays and coves can seem so inhibiting to explore, when viewed from the land. Yet from the water, it just adds to the possibility of accessible adventure.
Around the next point is a spectacular view. Gazing up the water-filled valley, with its high steep walls covered in bush and some tenacious houses, I reckon Middle Harbour has become Middle Earth. Take away the houses, and it could be a scene out of The Lord of the Rings. There is not even a breath of wind, and the water is so still, the valley turns upside down in the reflection. Looking at the jagged ridgeline in the water, it looks like a caldera. I gaze at the reflections of the homes along the lip of the ridge. I look behind my kayak to watch the reflected real estate wobble in the wake. Suddenly the houses are invaded by a cloud of psychedelic ghosts. I have paddled into an enormous swarm of jellyfish, which pulsate and seem to radiate an ethereal pinkish light. For a few moments, staring into the water is a simultaneously beautiful and weird experience.
I approach Roseville Bridge, yet another of the structures built across the harbour in the 1960s. The bridge arches over the tightening arm of water. Before the bridge and heading upstream is the last chance to grasp one of the staples of Sydney existence – a good coffee – from a café at the marina tuck
ed in behind Echo Point. In the 1800s, there was a farm on Echo Point, with orchards and mulberries for silk production. By the end of the century, the farm had been converted by the Sydney Temperance Organisation into a centre for recovering alcoholic men. One of its clients was Henry Lawson. He turned his experience into a short story, ‘The Boozer’s Home’, which is a raw observation of the effect of alcoholism on loved ones.
Just before I reach the bridge, I paddle under a pipeline. Along the pipe is a row of black waterbirds, intermittently pooing into the water. I’m running the gauntlet of bomber command. I escape a splattering.
In all the times I had driven over Roseville Bridge, I had never noticed the deck is not straight. But paddling under it, I can see there is a slight curve. Beyond the bridge, the mangroves are crowding the left shore, while a park has been grafted onto the right. A lone trumpeter is sitting there, close to the shore, practising his scales. He waves at me with one hand while still holding and playing the trumpet with the other.
The trumpet notes gradually mute and fall into the water, the traffic on the bridge lowers to a hum, then nothing. Where a few moments ago there were city noises suddenly there is only the music of the bush, with birdsong and water guzzling at the blades’ touch. It sounds like I’m a long way from anywhere. That is just how the bloke in the kayak, sitting in the middle of the waterway and waiting for me, likes it. His name is Adrian Tosolini, and I had met him a few months earlier when he was fishing from his kayak further down Middle Harbour in Long Bay.
