MANLY ISLAND

Ferries constantly run back and forth from downtown Sydney to Manly Island all day long. It takes about 45 minutes and costs $9 each way. It’s quite popular with the business commuters who work in Sydney. And the tourons love it for day trips from the mainland.

Manly is primarily a laid-back retirement beach town of about 20,000, sitting ten miles northeast of Sydney proper on the Tasman Sea. There are highway bridges out to the island, and it is technically considered a suburb of Sydney. It’s definitely uptown.

Manly was named by Captain Arthur Phillip, who was appointed by Lord Sydney in 1786 to command the first fleet of eleven ships to Australia, whose mission was to establish a penal colony and a settlement at Botany Bay, New South Wales. Phillip found the site not to his liking and searched for a more habitable place to settle, which he found in Port Jackson, where Sydney is located today. While exploring the surrounding area, he got speared in the shoulder by one of the local natives who thought he was going to try and steal some of the villagers’ fresh whale meat. Captain Phillip was impressed by such a manly display of character and christened the place Manly in their honor. The truth is often stranger than fiction Down Under.

We caught the 11 o’clock ferry to Manly from the main ferry terminal at Circular Quay and were strolling the lovely pedestrian byway from the ferry wharf to the beach by the crack of noon on a warm and sunny Sunday at the end of Australia’s summer. Temperatures were nearing ninety, and we were living the dream.

There were all sorts of interesting stores and eateries, and the place reminded me of Sausalito in the eighties. There were big evergreen trees lining Manly Beach, and it was the reincarnation of “Surf City”. Hundreds of people of all ages, shapes, and sizes were riding the blue, serious business waves on brightly-colored surf boards.

If you are doing anything in the water in Australia—surfing, sailing, paddling, swimming, scuba diving—you best know what you’re about, because the conditions are usually pretty extreme and it’s the real deal. This undoubtedly explains why Australians excel at water sports.

After a yummy breakfast at the Bluewater Cafe on the busy beach strand, we began hiking the island’s eastern loop trail, known as the North Head Circuit Track. The hike took about four hours and rang all the bells.

The trail started right along the shady edge of Manly Beach and then wound along a lovely stone pathway above the ocean that resembled the trails on Santorini in the Greek islands, occasionally working its way to picturesque half-moon beaches. First, there was Fairy Bower Beach. Located along Marine Parade is the lovely Fairy Bower Rockpool. It is triangular in shape and several sculptures—“The Sea Nymphs” and “The Oceanides”—stand along the rock edge overlooking the shimmering sea.

Built by local residents in 1929, Fairy Bower rockpool is one of a number of historic pools cut and blasted along the New South Wales coast as saltwater bathing became popular.

At Shelly Beach, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to go swimming. The water was a delightful 70 degrees. And while I know it’s silly, I kept looking for box jellyfish and sharks. Australia can do that to you.

The trail then began to climb in earnest, leading out to a series of magnificent cliffside overlooks above a churning blue green ocean that looked slightly pissed off. Several brave (crazy) surfers had ventured a mile from shore just to catch the pounding point break.

We then made our way through the bush to a summit, where there was an empty complex of concrete military barracks, complete with a huge, red gravel parade ground in the middle of a large abandoned compound. During World War II, this place served as the first line of defense for nearby Sydney. It never saw action, but I imagine it was probably a good duty station to snag while the war in the Pacific spiraled out of control. The only thing to beat was the heat.

The whole place seemed almost haunted, and I half-expected Rod Serling’s deadpan voice to suddenly come alive, “The year is 1946. The Japanese are about to attack this isolated position at the world’s end. And you have accidentally stumbled into another episode of the Twilight Zone.”

Next, we came to Australia’s Memorial Walk and WWII gun emplacements that were painted in weird camouflage designs that supposedly disguised them from Japanese spotter planes. The only time the guns were ever fired was on a floundering Portuguese merchant ship that had been blown off course.

We continued through the strange and slightly spooky “Newnes Plateau Hanging Swamp”, a barren swamp like no other I had ever seen. Swamps are usually located in low-lying places, but this one occupied a vast ridgetop formed in the Triassic Period over 200 million years ago, where groundwater travelling through the sandstone had been forced outwards by impermeable shale layers. The wet peaty soils of the swamp are home to a wide range of swamp heath plants, some quite rare. But what took our breath away was the setting. In the midst of a sweeping coastal bushland, the swamp was draped atop a dramatic mile-long line of fortress cliffs that were battling the Tasman Sea to a standstill. This was a holy place to the local Aborigines, and the wind whispered a dinosaur lullaby.

Our destination, and the far end of the 6-mile loop, was the spectacular Fairfax Lookout on North Head, jutting into the Tasman Sea like a fist. The next point of land to the south was Mount Minto in Antarctica.

From the lookout, we headed back to Manly via Cliff Drive, where there were breathtaking views of hundreds of colorful sailboats racing around Watson Bay and Sydney Harbour. It reminded Inna and me of a Monet painting.

About halfway back into town, we passed the Q Station, an enduring part of Sydney’s history, which once served as the Quarantine Station for migrants arriving in Australia. These days, it’s a unique boutique hotel that has maintained the original buildings. And its “after-dark tours” are supposedly world-renowned.