The Harbour

by Scott Bevan

  Feeling clammy and dirty, I crab my way out of the water onto a rock shelf on the edge of Delwood Beach. Two young women are crouching and peering into the rock pools. They are marine science students, and I talk to one of them about their work.

  Nina Schaefer is studying the diversity of life in rock pools, and what is needed to sustain it. For her research, she has been using thermal imaging, shots from above with drones and 360-degree cameras, along with more traditional methods, which is what I observe the pair doing, such as inserting probes into the water to measure salinity and temperature. Nina has been working at four sites around the harbour – Balmain, Berrys Bay, Bradleys Head, and here – but this one is her favourite.

  ‘I think it’s pretty diverse from my observations,’ Nina says, ‘looking at the different species of sea snails, also a lot of algae.’

  In the future, Nina’s research could be used to help with the design of artificial ‘intertidal areas’ in foreshore development projects, to try and put back, or, at least, replicate, some of what has already been lost from rocky shores.

  Delwood Beach gives me the first inkling of the substance behind the famous marketing slogan devised by a ferry company for Manly, ‘Seven Miles from Sydney, a Thousand Miles from Care’. Standing on the shore, I can see across the harbour to South Head and out to sea, but the city is out of sight, somewhere off to the right, a thousand miles away. The notion of Manly providing an escape is regularly reinforced, every time a ferry pulls into the cove, loaded with another cargo of care-worn commuters from the city. It is only a half-hour’s journey on a ferry from Circular Quay. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, there was a hydrofoil service that sliced the travel time in half. But in cutting time on the water, you’re also hacking into the pleasure of the journey. For time mixed with water somehow stretches the perception of distance. And not only does distance make the heart grow fonder, it apparently makes it healthier. Maritime historian Graeme Andrews shared a wonderful anecdote from the 1920s about a man whose doctor ordered him to take a three-month sea trip. The man made arrangements with the ferry operators for him to ride their service all day, every day, for three months, going to and from Manly. After the three months, the man’s doctor pronounced him healthy.

  Yet the appeal of Manly is not only in what is being left behind, or in the journey; it is also in what you see, and feel, as you arrive at the destination. From the harbour, Manly’s appearance still has elements of how its earliest developers imagined it; as a holiday village by the water.

  Paddling around the point from Delwood Beach, the cove is designed for relaxation. The commercial area and apartment blocks are curtained off by a row of Norfolk Island pines, a species of tree whose very appearance is botanical shorthand for ‘beachside holiday’ in Australia. In front of the trees is a promenade, where crowds stroll and jog, and below it is a band of sand leading to the harbour. A large netted pool stands guard in the water about halfway along the beach, which is flanked by two iconic structures in Manly: the wharf and the pavilion.

  Perched over the water off the western shore, the Art Deco pavilion was built in the 1930s as elaborate change sheds for an earlier, larger harbour pool in the cove. Neighbouring the pavilion is the Sea Life Sanctuary aquarium, which offers visitors the opportunity to dive with grey nurse sharks. These creatures look fierce, with a dental arcade like a sawmill, which gave them an undeserved reputation for eating humans. Their diet is fish. The grey nurse sharks were killed in such numbers that they are a critically endangered species. So chances are the closest anyone would get to a grey nurse shark in Sydney Harbour is in Manly Cove – in a tank.

  At the eastern end of the beach, stretching out like a helping hand to ferry passengers, is the wharf. The first ferry wharf was built here in 1855, but Manly Cove had been receiving boats long before then.

  On the promenade is a monument, erected in 1928, marking this as the landing place for Governor Arthur Phillip on 21 January 1788, when he and his crew had journeyed up from Botany Bay to explore Port Jackson. A later plaque on another face of the monument says he probably didn’t land on that first expedition. Still, the sight of men from the Guringai people wading out to his boats left an impression on Phillip. He later noted that the local men’s confidence and ‘manly behaviour’ prompted him to call the place Manly Cove.

  After that first contact here, Manly Cove became a crucible for race relations between the Aboriginal people and the settlers. When Phillip became frustrated that his efforts to follow London’s orders to ‘open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections’ were stalling, he decided to try and improve the potential to ‘live in amity and kindness with them’ by kidnapping one. The man was Arabanoo, although until his abductors learnt his name, they called him ‘Manly’. Arabanoo had been snatched from Manly Cove in December 1788, and he was taken to Sydney Cove. Phillip hoped Arabanoo would become a conduit for spreading the word on the good intentions of the British. The Governor also wanted to learn about Aboriginal culture and some of the local language. Yet those plans were dealt a blow. Arabanoo died about six months after his capture, during a severe outbreak of smallpox. His death was mourned by the British, who admired his character and saw in him hope for improved relations. Arabanoo was one of many Aboriginal people killed by the 1789 epidemic. The First Fleet marine and diarist Watkin Tench described it as an ‘extraordinary calamity’ and painted the awful description of boat crews ‘finding bodies of the Indians in all the coves and inlets of the harbour’.

  Phillip himself almost died at Manly Cove. The Governor had continued with his practice of kidnapping locals to learn more about them, including the abduction of Bennelong from Manly. After about six months, Bennelong escaped. In September 1790, he apparently sent word, along with a lump of whale blubber, that he was back at Manly Cove. Phillip was rowed to the cove, where a beached whale was the focus of a feast. The Governor talked with Bennelong on the beach, and all was friendly until another man speared Phillip through the right shoulder. Over two excruciating hours, Phillip was rowed back to Sydney Cove with the spear still protruding from him. When he recovered, Phillip said the spearing was a case of misunderstanding and ordered that there be no reprisals.

  Manly’s distance from the main settlement and its relative inaccessibility meant it was slow to develop. But its superb position, with one side facing the harbour and the other the sea, and just a thin throat of land in between, meant that the dreamers and speculators were bound to find Manly. An English businessman, Henry Smith, both dreamed and speculated when he saw the place. He imagined Manly becoming to Sydney what Brighton was to London, a seaside escape. In the 1850s, he began buying land and built the wharf for the ferries, which were regularly running to Manly by 1856. Smith bought a large double-ended steamer ferry, Phantom, to transport more passengers to his wharf. He also planted the first Norfolk Island pines along the esplanade.

  As Manly’s popularity grew into the 20th century, so did the size of the ferries, carrying up to 1500 passengers, and the wharf kept lengthening. Around it and along the waterfront, the fun industry took hold. Restaurants and hotels sprouted, a cargo wharf beside the main ferry terminal was packed with amusement rides, and there was an aquarium, where visitors could feed their primal fear of being eaten alive by walking through the jaws of a giant fake shark at the entrance. Ferry advertisements proclaimed Manly was Australia’s premier seaside resort. The waterfront also found its way into fiction; in D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo, Manly is described as the ‘the bathing suburb of Sydney – one of them’.

  The fun pier has gone, but the ferries filled with pleasure-seekers keep arriving. About 7,000,000 people pass through the ferry terminal each year. At the eastern end of the beach, I cease paddling and keep my distance from the wharf as the ferry Freshwater approaches. The vessel froths the water into a maelstrom as it comes to a halt just before the large buffers, and hundreds of passengers pour out. Some, with surfboards tucked under their arm, hea
d towards the east and the sea, others turn left and stroll along the promenade, a few stop at the cafés on the wharf, but all seem to be sloughing off the city, in one way or another.

  The wharf that marks the point of successful escape for many is a shelter for other creatures. Manly, and some of the surrounding coves, is a home for the Little Penguin, or Fairy Penguin. Its scientific name is Eudyptula minor, which means, ‘good little diver’, its Aboriginal name is carangarang binyang, but, when first seen, the Little Penguin is most commonly called ‘oh, how cute!’

  The Manly area used to have hundreds of breeding pairs, but the encroachment of housing, with its predator residents such as dogs, the increase in the number of powerboats, pollution, and acts of unfathomable cruelty decimated the penguin population through the years. By 1990, there were only about thirty-five left. Governments, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and the Manly Environment Centre worked to halt the death dive of penguin numbers. They were listed as an Endangered Population, and, in 2002, sites around Manly were declared a critical habitat. Manly is the only breeding colony of Little Penguins on the New South Wales mainland. It is estimated there are about 150 penguins around Manly.

  What has also helped the Little Penguins survive is the engagement of the community. One of the first locals to become a penguin protector was Angelika Treichler.

  Her first encounter with a penguin was a couple of coves to the east, on Collins Beach, in 2003. National Parks had asked her to help count penguin numbers. So one night she was on the beach, peering into the darkness, looking for penguins, when one waddled up and stood on her foot. It was love at first touch.

  Angelika learnt it wasn’t just in the more remote coves that the penguins made their nests; they mated and incubated their eggs right under the noses of humans, beneath Manly Wharf. Yet she became more than a penguin observer and counter, when she found out that one of the young females from the Manly Wharf colony had been killed by a dog.

  ‘That was it!’ she recalls. ‘I was off!’ Angelika talked to local dog owners about keeping their pets away from the penguins. Word spread, and so did the desire to help. The National Parks and Wildlife Service set up a penguin warden scheme, training volunteers to help protect the birds. Many more locals just kept an eye out. These days, she says, ‘half of Manly is looking out for the penguins’.

  As for official wardens, there are about sixty volunteers, aged between eight and eighty-five. They stand on lonely beaches around Spring Cove, and amid the hubbub of Manly Wharf, keeping a protective eye from about May, when the nest-building and mating begins, and remaining on duty every night until about February, when the chicks have hatched and the penguins head out to sea for a few months.

  I arrange to meet a group of wardens at the wharf. It is just before 5pm, and the sun is setting on a clear but cold winter’s day. A wind sneaking off the water rifles through my clothes, looking for a way to pinch my skin. A few hardy backpackers are walking on the beach, while the flow of ferry passengers thickens.

  At a gate on the western side of the ferry terminal, just near a beer café, are three wildlife wardens, identifiable by their jackets. The co-ordinator is Tony Garman. He and his wife Sally have been penguin wardens since 2012. He had been looking for something that combined his interest in the environment with a desire to volunteer. He found what he was looking for on the harbour’s edge.

  Tony is scanning the shoreline and the sand, which hardens as the light creeps off the beach.

  ‘Around sunset is when the penguins come back out of the water,’ he explains, saying the birds spend the day fishing in the harbour and out to sea.

  Tonight Tony is joined by two other wardens, Kimberley, a local high school student who has been volunteering for a couple of seasons, and Brad Klose, a hospital scientist. Brad is holding an iPad linked to a remote camera mounted under the boardwalk.

  As he looks at his colleagues, Tony mentions how the volunteer numbers are heartening. The penguin numbers aren’t. ‘We’ve had more volunteers, and less penguins,’ murmurs Tony. He thinks there is one mating pair under the wharf. A penguin has been spotted in recent days.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s Lucky we’ve seen,’ says Tony.

  Somewhat of a legend among the volunteers, Lucky was born here about five years earlier. He earned his name as a chick, after being photographed.

  ‘When the photo was blown up, we saw all this fishing line around his leg,’ Tony says. ‘If we hadn’t caught him and taken the line off, he wouldn’t have survived.’ Lucky left the nest under the wharf and ‘went travelling for two to three years, as all good Australians do’, then, like most male penguins do, returned to where he was born. He paired up with a female penguin the volunteers named Bella. The wardens have helped Bella as well. About two years earlier, they noticed she was limping. She had a gash on her foot, probably from glass, and was treated.

  Brad, who has been intently watching his iPad screen, calls Tony over. He has seen a dark shape seemingly making its way out of the water. They watch for a few moments before concluding, ‘No, that’s a bottle, a plastic bottle’.

  Suddenly we hear something, a trill in the cold sharp air. It’s a penguin calling. ‘Family-planning noises,’ explains Tony. ‘He’s in the nest-building phase, sort of like “Come up and see my etchings”.’

  The previous year, there were two pairs, including Lucky and Bella, under the wharf. But there have been up to five pairs, Tony says, ‘so if we get more than two pairs [this season], we’ll be really happy’.

  In the summer months, as more people head to the beach in the early evening, more wardens are on duty to ensure the penguins can land freely and are not disturbed. Almost everyone is receptive to a warden’s request.

  ‘There’s a magic word starting with “p”, and it’s not “please” but “penguins”,’ Tony says.

  All the while we’re talking, more commuters scurry off the ferries. A few stop and ask questions about the penguins. Some seem to know little and are curious, others have a great deal of knowledge and have clearly been tracking the penguins’ progress. They hush when the penguin calls, but still there’s nothing to be seen on the screen or from under the boardwalk.

  ‘It’s a very strange place to do this,’ Tony says, of the nesting place, adding that the penguins were first detected under the boardwalk in the 1990s.

  A British tourist has his camera trained on the darkness, but warden Kimberley reckons penguins don’t like the lens.

  ‘They seem very aware when a camera is pointed at them,’ the 17-year-old says. Still, not all penguins are shy. In what sounds like the start of a joke – ‘A penguin walks into a bar . . .’ – Lucky’s father, Stickybeak, waddled into a nightclub across the road, before he was brought back to the beach.

  Kimberley remains hopeful of seeing Lucky tonight.

  ‘Lucky was the first penguin I saw here a couple of years ago,’ she says. ‘And he was so cute.’

  To this teenager, volunteering on a Friday night is ‘definitely worth it, especially when you see a penguin’.

  For Brad, this is his second year of volunteering. In some ways, becoming a warden was a calling for him. He and his wife lived in Kilburn Towers, the distinctive rounded block of apartments on Manly Point, overlooking the harbour. His wife would wake him in the pre-dawn hours, saying she heard penguins calling out. Subsequently, they both volunteered. All the while we’re talking, Brad keeps glancing at the iPad, which attracts interest.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asks a passer-by.

  ‘Waiting to look at penguins,’ Brad replies.

  ‘What’s the best time to see them?’ she asks.

  ‘Ah, the number one question,’ Brad says.

  ‘November,’ Tony replies. It’s early July. The passer-by smiles and walks on.

  No sooner has she left than Brad excitedly whispers, ‘There he is!’

  A penguin, small but nuggety, pokes his head out from under the wharf and looks around. He
takes a couple of tentative steps, grabs a piece of debris, then disappears back under the wharf.

  ‘That’s crazy!’ a young tourist utters excitedly.

  The penguin pops out again. Tony is fairly sure it’s Lucky. The penguin has a white strip along his belly. And he is tiny, maybe 30 centimetres tall, if that. He waddles a little further this time, picking at debris with his beak and being selective about what he grabs. He picks up a feather then discards it in favour of another piece of debris.

  ‘He’s collecting for his nest, looking for materials to make it,’ says Tony.

  A commuter striding purposefully along the promenade stops to watch Lucky at work. She looks enthralled. ‘I’ll be late home every day, I think.’

  In all, Lucky pops in and out from under the wharf seven times, collecting materials for a nest, probably hoping to mate. The wardens share Lucky’s hope, so the local penguin population increases. And while they can do little more than watch and wait, the wardens believe they’re doing their bit to help nature take its course.

  ‘We have to do the best we can to protect them,’ shrugs Tony.

  The wardens’ hopes were realised later in the season. Lucky and Bella had a chick, which was first seen in October. That little one was named Shadow. Then, on Christmas Day, there was a joy-filled present, with the arrival of a second chick, which the volunteers named Summer.

  DODGING A ferry powering away from the wharf, I begin the paddle towards Quarantine Beach. I track along Manly Cove’s north-eastern shore. In the bend of the cove, a bunch of older buildings is clustered, as though each of them has been carried in by a southerly. They are the homes of the Manly Cove Launch Club and the Manly Rowing and Sailing Club.

  If the buildings haven’t been carried in by the winds, just about everything else has been, according to a fellow named Phil, who is climbing into his rowboat at the Launch Club slip.

  ‘When it blows a southerly, it all ends up in Manly,’ says Phil. ‘Rubbish from everywhere.’