Sydney and the Central Coast

Not only do I have lovely friends to stay with in Sydney, they live in the lovely, affluent Eastern suburbs, close to the surf beaches and the city centre.  I’m well aware that most Sydneysiders don’t inhabit this world: they live in the vast suburban expanse to the North and South, but principally to the West, stretching out to the foot of the Blue Mountains. A trip to the city or the surf beaches is a major excursion from these realms - one I imagine many of them rarely make.  I loved the suggestion that the new Western Sydney AFL (Australian Football League) team should be called The Squinters, because if you live in the Western suburbs and commute to the city, you’re driving into the sun in the morning, and again in the afternoon.

Me with that famous coathanger thing in the background.

I have a love/hate relationship with Sydney. I lived here 40 - something years ago, as a young man, having emigrated from my own suburban wilderness in Melbourne’s outer East. For me, Sydney was the Big Smoke: a scary, exciting, cosmopolitan place with unlimited possibilities and many pitfalls for an over-confident 18 year-old who was far from street-wise.

If you're lucky enough to live in Sydney's inner East, this is your front yard.

Walking the streets of inner Eastern Sydney today, my 60 year-old perspective is very different. Yes; there’s plenty going on here, but you need plenty of money to enjoy it. I’m oppressed by a pervasive griminess and tawdriness - more litter than I remember; more grim, red brick blocks of flats; more, much more traffic. I get a strong sense of the struggle to survive and thrive that is life in any big city.

I guess you know where this is.

There’s no denying the spectacular beauty of Sydney Harbour, especially on a bright, sunny day in what’s humorously called winter around here. Photographs of the iconic Bridge and Opera House are mandatory, of course, but there’s much more.  A leisurely walk through the Botanical Gardens, which stretch out around the Eastern shore, rewards with sudden vistas of gleaming skyscrapers framed by lush vegetation.  Giant Port Jackson and Moreton Bay Figs add a tropical grandeur.  (I know they’re both there but I couldn’t actually tell you which is which.)  On the water itself, there’s always something happening.  The colours are vibrant, almost surreal.

Sydney's CBD from the Botanical Gardens

My bicycle journey out of Sydney, on a still, sunny winter’s day, was a joy. I cycled from Randwick, through Centennial Park and along Oxford Street through the trendy suburbs of Paddington and Darlinghurst (known in a less genteel era as “Darling it Hurts”) and down to Circular Quay, where I caught the self-styled “famous Manly Ferry”. (I’m reminded of the adage that if you have to tell people you’re famous, you’re not.) A gentle half-hour cruise along the sparkling Harbour delivered me into the lee of its Northern headland, where I began a pleasant two-hour ride past beach after beach to Palm Beach (of course) on the edge of Pittwater. At almost every beach I sighted Humpback Whales on their Northward migration, sounding and breaching just a few hundred metres off these busy city foreshores.

Palm Beach - sans palms

I arrived at Palm Beach just in time to watch the 12:00 noon Ettalong Ferry disappearing around the point. That forced me to relax in the winter sunshine, read, drink coffee and enjoy the surroundings until the next ferry at 1:00 pm.

View of  Pittwater from the Palm Beach - Ettalong ferry

This ferry journey is a treat (although I was disappointed that the big, powerful aluminium catamaran was doing the run, rather than the quaint old wooden boat moored next to it). Rounding majestic Barranjoey Head, with its 1881 lighthouse at the top of the cliff, the ferry cuts across Pittwater, which is surrounded by the dense and rugged bushland of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

From Ettalong, the ride North passed through the formerly quaint (and quaintly named) Central Coast towns of Budgewoi and Woy Woy - now heavily trafficked dormitory suburbs of Sydney. Bypassing Gosford (thankfully), I slogged North towards Newcastle, the second-largest city in New South Wales, resembling its English namesake in being a coal mining and heavy industrial centre, but mocking the resemblance with its glorious surf beaches and forested mountain backdrops.

A Scribbly Gum 

As I climbed yet another steep hill on the increasingly busy highway, a car suddenly pulled over in front of me. A psychopathic hater of cyclists about to bash me? A plain-clothes policeman about to book me for some bizarre local riding offence? No; a considerate local named Darrell Stone - a veteran cycle tourer - offering information about a bike path (in fact, another rail trail) that would keep me out of the traffic almost all the way to the city centre. The Coastline Bike Trail turned out to be a beautiful ride, climbing gradually over forested hills for 20 kilometres to Adamstown, from where a signposted cycle route through quiet backstreets took me to the foreshore. A ten minute ferry trip across the harbour landed me in Stockton - a quiet village within sight of bustling Newcastle, with a pleasant, cheap and secluded beachfront campground.


Overnight, a strong Westerly wind drove up a wall of black cloud, rattling my tent and threatening rain. By morning, the sky was clear again, but the wind remained fierce, hammering my left shoulder for the entire fifty kilometre ride to Nelson Bay, and threatening to shove me out into the traffic. Equally unnerving were the groups (squadrons? flights? flocks? mobs? gangs?) of military jets from the Williamtown RAAF base screaming across the landscape every few minutes a little above head-height. Those who know me will recall how much I adore these displays by machines of death, and how safe and secure they make me feel.

Camped in the Myall River National Patk

 Buffeted and harassed, I arrived at Nelson Bay to find that the ferry across Port Stephens to Hawk’s Nest had been cancelled because of the strong winds. The local caravan park in this upmarket, resorty place wanted to charge me $30 to put up my tiny tent, so I started checking out the options for stealth-camping along the foreshore. On impulse, I stopped in at the tourist information centre, where a smart, lateral-thinking young woman remembered that a Hawk’s Nest - based tour boat operator would be docking in about an hour, and would be crossing Port Stephens again to go home. A quick phone call and I was on. The crossing was rough, but not scary on the solid old wooden boat, and the skipper’s local knowledge was a big help for my onward journey.


It was already dark when the ferry docked at Hawk’s Nest, but the skipper’s directions made it easy for me to find the Myall River Campground in the National Park about two kilometres out of town. Completely alone in a beautiful riverside setting, I put up my tent, lit a campfire, and settled down for a peaceful night. The wind was still gusty, but gradually subsiding, and the stars were spectacular. I crawled into my sleeping bag early and ......


In the early hours of the morning I woke to what I thought was the wind rattling the tent. Half awake, I gradually became aware that something was invading my space - an animal of some sort. I grabbed my headlight and struggled out of the tent in time to see a dingo loping off with with my tucker bag - it had managed to extract the bag from my bicycle pannier inside the vestibule of the tent without waking me. I only woke as it dragged the bag, containing all my food, under the flap of the tent and made off. I stumbled across the grass, yelling and swearing at it, and it dropped its prize and slunk away, leaving a trail of half-chewed bread and pasta behind it, having managed to swallow a foil pack of tuna - including the foil. I wished it a serious bellyache as I repacked my supplies and discarded the torn waterproof bag.

Eying off my breakfast

At first light, I rekindled the campfire, brewed some tea, and started assessing the wreckage, when the second wildlife invasion began. First, a pair of magpies, then several crows, then some butcher birds, then a pair of blue-eyes attacked from all quarters, snatching the remains of the pasta and bread with uncanny efficiency. It didn’t help that I was laughing so hard as I tried to shoo away each invading wave. After breakfasting on what was left (they’d even stolen the small carton of milk for my tea), I set out on the Myall River Road - towards the next disaster.

A line-up of breakfast thieves

Five or six kilometres along the road, a car coming from the other direction slowed and the driver flagged me down. The Bombah ferry, my only way across the channel between Bombah Broadwater and Boolambayte Lake, was out of commission and not running. There was no choice but to backtrack to Hawk’s Nest, cross the bridge to Tea Gardens, and make for the Pacific Highway - the hideously busy main artery between Sydney and Brisbane. Trucks, trucks and more trucks, coming up!

Rule number one for an iconic Australian place-name: use lots of oooos.