by Scott Bevan
The rotunda is a more respectable place to take in the view, which is intoxicating wherever you look. Little wonder the island was chosen as the starting point for the inaugural Sydney to Hobart yacht race in 1945. Even though the race’s start line has shifted, this little island still attracts a crowd of spectators each Boxing Day.
The symphony of grey has ended. The sky has lightened, and the water is having more blue pulled out of it, as we kayak back into Rose Bay. While paddling, we talk of our various twinges and pains, two middle-aged men who have been on quite a journey. It’s been good to catch up on the water. There’s no aphrodisiac like loneliness, as a gifted songwriter once noted, but for wiping away the years, there’s no medicine like the company of old friends.
WHEN YOU paddle on Rose Bay, you’re venturing onto an undefined runway. Single-engine seaplanes carrying passengers on scenic flights take off and land on the bay. You can hear a plane chortling as it taxis from the shore. When it is beyond moored boats, the seaplane opens its throat and roars. It is a wonderful sight to be on the water and relatively close as a plane skitters and skips across the bay, before it finally shakes off gravity, and the harbour drops from its floats. Fifteen or so minutes later, the plane will return, gliding in and ploughing across the surface like a pelican.
The invisible runways have been on this bay for many years. There used to be a base for flying boats here. In the early 1930s, Qantas shrank the world a little more by launching a flying boat service to carry mail to England, and later in the decade the planes began carrying passengers. As Trevor Dean, a private pilot and aviation historian who has researched the flying boat era, tells me, ‘Sydney’s international airport was, you could say, Rose Bay’.
Large four-engine Empire flying boats would heave themselves off the harbour, carrying fifteen passengers and a crew of five. To reach England took nine days, but the destination was only part of the reason for being in a flying boat; it was also about the journey. The passengers were not so much flown but lavished, and they paid handsomely for it. Trevor marvels that a ticket cost roughly the same as an average Sydney suburban house.
Ground – or water – crews would have to sweep the bay before a take-off or landing, to ensure there was no floating rubbish. At night, flares would be laid to create a runway across the harbour.
The Second World War brought an end to leisurely flying boat journeys. The aircraft and its pilots were called to serve. By the time the war was over, advances in aviation had made flying boats all but redundant. But they hadn’t been quite pushed out of the air and off Rose Bay. Flying boats carried passengers from the harbour into the Pacific, to destinations without a large airport but plenty of water. From 1947, there were regular flights to Lord Howe Island, the 600-kilometre journey taking three hours.
Back in about 1948, the photojournalist David Moore took a haunting shot of the flying boat base in winter fog. It was as though he had photographed ghosts. In the background, the planes sit like phantom cormorants on the water, their shapes softened by the fog, while in the foreground a crew boat motors away from the planes, leaving an era in its wake. The mood of that photo forecast the fate of the flying boats. By the early 1970s, they had just about disappeared from the bay. The last flying boat journey from Rose Bay to Lord Howe Island was in 1974.
While the flying boats have long gone, the thrill of taking off and landing on Rose Bay remains. Especially for a pilot. Trevor Dean has landed a seaplane on the bay.
‘I think there’s still a place for the seaplanes,’ he reckons, ‘even though they are very expensive with the maintenance, because of the salt water.
‘I love seeing them fly from Rose Bay.’
The bay is also used for actual boats – or small ships really. Berthed in the marina of the Royal Motor Yacht Club on the western shore, and tethered to private moorings outside the waterfront homes, are some vessels so large you could land a helicopter on their aft deck. A few probably do. As I cut around Woollahra Point, a couple more mini-cruise ships of the super-rich are motoring into the bay. I ride their wake, cast at me like pearls at swine. On a weekend, you can often see these floating palaces moored in Rose Bay, allowing their owners and friends to get away from it all, while still being in sight of their harbourfront mansions.
After paddling around the point, I’m in Felix Bay. This feels like a scooped out serve of the cream of society, with beautiful homes – some historic, some gleaming new – down to its shores, and the Royal Prince Edward Yacht Club resting on the fringe of Lady Martins Beach. The club is in a historic white building with a flagstaff and deep veranda on the first floor. Even without the name, the club looks so proper and upper-class British. Lady Martins Beach may be public, but it seems the only access to the sand is down a narrow path over a stormwater drain.
Beyond the beach and following the western shore of Point Piper is perhaps the most exclusive street in Australia, Wolseley Road. From a kayak, you can see the houses in a way that you could only dream of from the road. Paddling past, I feel like a voyeur spying on obscene wealth. The estates claim everything down to the waterline. Many of the homes have multiple levels. They are escarpments of money. Residing along this stretch is the man representing all of us, Malcolm Turnbull. When he became the Prime Minister of Australia in 2015, Mr Turnbull had access to Kirribilli House as his Sydney residence. But he chose to stay put in his Point Piper mansion. From one of his verandas or even the jetty, Mr Turnbull can probably see Kirribilli House across the harbour. When I paddle past, however, there’s no sign of Mr Turnbull. Perhaps he is also out kayaking, which he is fond of doing. He has even practised kayak diplomacy. Mr Turnbull took John Key, when he was New Zealand’s Prime Minister, for a paddle on the harbour.
The pattern of big homes on Point Piper was set by the man after whom the headland is named. Captain John Piper piled the money he earned on the harbour onto the point. For more than a decade from 1814, he was the Naval Officer of the Port of Sydney, which, among his many duties, allowed him to be the collector of customs and harbour dues. As he earned a commission from collecting that money, and shipping into the harbour was growing, Captain Piper became a very rich man. He helped implant the Sydney obsession of a home with a harbour view by spending a fortune building a neo-classical mansion, Henrietta Villa, on his land grant on the point.
When artists wanted to depict a romantic view of the budding colony, as though Utopia were rising among the eucalypts, Henrietta Villa would often feature in their dreamy landscape. As the historian Marjorie Barnard noted of the mansion, ‘It marked the spot in the whole Colony that was furthest from reality; its foundations were mirage.’ It all turned into a mirage for Piper. He was removed from his post, lost his fortune, and he tried to drown himself before being hauled back into the boat by his crew.
A little further south, the terrain settles into Blackburn Cove, whose shoreline has perhaps the most outrageously inaccurate name in Sydney: Seven Shillings Beach. I land on the sand that hisses at the imposition of my kayak, and I admire the beachfront property before me. I can see a grand old building with a steep pitched roof. A man is tending to the grounds, which lead down to a security wall with a gate and a Woollahra Council sign on it. I presume it is a public park and a council building, the chambers perhaps, which makes sense, since the property is so large. But an older lady resting against the wall puts me straight when I rattle the gate to enter the grounds.
‘That’s private,’ she softly tells me.
‘Oh, it’s not the council chambers?’
‘No, it’s Lady Fairfax’s house.’
I trudge back to safe territory at the water’s edge. The public is granted a little more space just beyond Seven Million Dollars Beach, with the Redleaf Pool, or the Murray Rose Pool, named after the Olympic swimming legend.
In this part of the world, even the kayaks are envy-arousing. A group of older paddlers have arrived on Seven Billion Dollars Beach. They have paddled from Clontarf in Middle Harbour. In the f
lotilla is a sheeny, sleek kayak created from timber. Its owner, Hans Schmidt, built the kayak from a beam of old cedar, slicing off strips to craft his vessel. It took him 500 hours. Hans points out a few nail holes remaining from the timber’s former life. It was once a supporting beam for a pergola. Quite fittingly, he has named his kayak Reborn. The kayak has the weight of a log, about 22 kilograms, but it looks as light as a dream. I wait on the beach to watch the paddlers set off, simply to see Reborn in the water. To watch that varnished streak of cedar gleaming under the noonday sun while cutting across the turquoise is a beautiful experience.
While paddling across Double Bay, I notice the place name seems true to the appearance. It looks like two bays in one.About halfway along the shoreline, where a wharf juts into the water, there is a change from beach to seawall. And to the west there are more flats along the water’s edge. Yet behind them, on Darling Point, are some historic mansions. On the north-east tip of the promontory is a Gothic revival creation in sandstone, Carthona. It seems fitting that the home teetering at the land’s limit was built by an explorer and surveyor, Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell. The home looks like an aged sandcastle, with cathedral-like windows and the stolid demeanour of a fortress. For more than seven decades, the home has been owned by members of the Bushell family, who are synonymous with tea. A few years ago, I was invited to a dinner in Carthona. While inside the home, I wouldn’t have known the harbour was only metres away. I couldn’t hear even the slap of a wave against the seawall. But stepping out onto the lawn, looking at the lights of ferries drizzled across the water, and the twinkling from distant lives on the northern shore, I felt I was on Sydney Harbour. Not by the harbour, but on it. The water was so close that, in the darkness, Carthona could well have been a ship cruising towards the Heads, and I was standing on her deck, breathing salt air and great fortune.
A few hundred metres off Darling Point is Clark Island. This nuggety little piece of land was named after Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who was a marine in the First Fleet. He attempted to grow vegetables and grains on the island with little success, but not due to Mother Nature. As he bemoaned, it was impossible to grow anything before it was stolen. Through the years, the island has been a picnic spot, a spectators’ area for skiff races, a storage depot during the Second World War, and an open-air theatre. And it apparently has toilets with an extraordinary outlook. National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Mel Tyas has told me the toilets are one of the island’s highlights, having been carved into the rock. They’re like a grotto, which makes for a refreshing change from most public toilets, which are just grotty. The Sydney Morning Herald went so far as to say the island had the urinal with the best view in the world. I think that is debatable, having stared out from Shark Island’s toilet, but I can’t step on shore to refute the newspaper’s assertion. The island wears a corset of rocks, and there is no beach for me to land Pulbah Raider. And so, having circumnavigated the island, I turn the prow south and paddle away, knowing I may have missed out on using the world’s finest toilet. Life is about learning to cope with disappointment – and with holding your bladder.
12
RUSHCUTTERS BAY TO THE OPERA HOUSE
ENTERING RUSHCUTTERS Bay, I’m expecting to be overwhelmed by fabulous maxis and the scent of the ‘Blue Water Classic’. After all, this is the home of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which hosts the Sydney to Hobart race.
Instead my introduction in the bay to maritime splendours is a little more modest. An older couple on a yacht call at me to retrieve a dinghy, water-logged and half-submerged in the lane where boats come and go.
‘There are also two oars. Grab them too!’ the bloke commands.
I know yacht skippers are used to barking orders, but I wonder if he has noticed I’m sitting in a kayak, not on a barge. Still, I get behind the dinghy and push it towards the yacht.
‘There’s a line at the bow – pull it!’ the skipper roars.
‘I can’t! The dinghy’s full of water!’ I reply, with lash and mutiny in my tone.
As much as I want to paddle off in protest, I nudge the dinghy towards their yacht, retrieve the oars, and tell them they owe me a beer. The skipper says it’s not their dinghy. They presume it has either come loose or been ‘borrowed’ from the club on the shore, the Royal Australian Navy Sailing Association. But they assure me I’d be welcome to come to the club for a drink.
‘Just say you’re the man who helped retrieve the dinghy,’ the skipper says, a lightness entering his voice.
I have drunk at the RANSA clubhouse before, and I didn’t even have to retrieve a dinghy to gain entry. A friend, David Pettett, invited me. David is a club member. We had just competed in a Friday twilight race in his 28-footer, Pandora. At least, David had competed; I mostly marvelled. If you want to experience the beauty of not just Sydney but life itself, go twilight sailing on the harbour.
As we sailed away from the clubhouse and out of Rushcutters Bay, a north-easterly puffed far more gently than I was, working the winch and pulling on the sheet. The late afternoon sun turned the water to pewter and the shells of the Opera House into the set of a shadow play. Yachts cut like lasers across the pewter, incising the harbour. At 1800 precisely, the starter’s gun popped, and we were off.
I didn’t know what the course was. I didn’t need to know. I just enjoyed the tilted view, in between working the winch. We avoided a Manly ferry barging through the fleets, and we watched a large cruise ship heading in, which at one point blew its horn quickly five times to warn the pleasure craft to get out of its way. I was amazed by how many boats were on the harbour. If productivity slumps on a Friday afternoon in the city, don’t blame the pubs; look to the water. Crowds wash away the cares of the week, some on boats, others along the foreshores. The harbour provides the demarcation between the end of the week and the start of the weekend.
As we wove our way across the harbour, the sun had slunk below the cityscape. The shapes of the CBD buildings and the sails of the yachts ahead of us merged in the wash of the last light. Firm architectural statements shimmered and then darkened, so they looked as though they could be sails; and the sails developed a solidity, their creases ironed out by the twilight. When night arrives, Sydney becomes truly a harbour town, as the delineation between the land and the water fades. It all becomes one.
I had no idea when we finished the race. Except that we did, in a time of one hour, sixteen minutes – apparently. We returned to the RANSA wharf as the water bruised into something dark and mysterious. It was a still evening in the bay. There was no rigging singing and clanging, just the sounds of crews packing up for the night and heading to the clubhouse.
The navy has had a presence on this shore since the 1880s, before the words ‘Royal Australian’ were attached to it. In colonial days, the New South Wales Navy had a maintenance depot in the bay. During the Second World War, HMAS Rushcutter, as it became known, was a recruitment and training centre, and home to some of the RAN’s smaller vessels. While the site was handed over to the public in the 1970s, the former drill hall, which looks like a homestead with its second-storey wraparound veranda, remains by the water. And so does RANSA.
The clubhouse is an unpretentious building, with a ramp that leads into a storage area. The bar is housed in a small room, and there are a few tables and chairs in an adjoining area. But on the night I was at the club, everyone headed outside, sitting on plastic chairs, having a drink, and looking at the view to the Bridge, as the lights of North Sydney spattered colour onto the water. A few rowboats and dinghies brought in the last of the sailors from their moorings.
For a facility with the military attached to its name, the club felt very relaxed, almost Rabelaisian, as though it had just turned up and parked itself by the harbour, like some devil-may-care backpacker in a campervan, at the feet of multi-million-dollar apartments and houses on Darling Point. And that feeling only enriched the experience of having a drink at RANSA.
IN RENAMING the coves and
bays of Sydney Harbour, the British rarely paid respect to those who were here before them by retaining the Aboriginal words. Instead, many were plastered with the names of those who had ‘discovered’ or colonised the particular bay in some way. Others were named after some distant personage who had to be honoured. And some bays received something more utilitarian, being named after what they were used for. Rushcutters Bay is one of them. In the swamp at its head, convicts cut reeds for thatching. The bay was also the scene of one of the earliest conflicts between two cultures, as one increasingly encroached on the other. Just a few months after the First Fleet had arrived, two ‘rush cutters’ were killed by Aboriginal people. Governor Phillip called it ‘a very unfortunate circumstance’ and noted his doubts that the locals were the aggressors, as the convicts had been seen in one of their canoes. As a result, Phillip later recorded, ‘I did not mean to punish any of the natives for killing these people, which it is more than probable they did in their own defence, or in defending their canoes.’
Where there were once rushes and killing in the marshes there is now parkland buttressed by a seawall. But out on the water, just beyond the RANSA club, is a thicket of masts at the marina outside the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. Money may not grow on trees, but this forest has been grown on money – huge piles of it. Many millions of dollars are berthed in the marina. These are vessels built not just to be stunning in a harbour but to be thrown to the elements. Many of them have competed in the Sydney to Hobart race, considered one of the most demanding yachting events on the globe.
