There are many ways to cross Sydney Harbour, but the latest, a 26km circular walk, is not for the faint-hearted. Nick Squires put his feet and friendship to the test when he attempted to do it in one day.
KEY POINTS:
It seemed like a splendid idea: to tackle a brand new circular walk of Sydney Harbour in one day. Never mind that the official guide recommended that the 26km-long trek should be divided up into two days, or even three or four bite-sized expeditions.
"We'll blitz it," said my carefully chosen companion and old university chum, Ivan. "It'll be a breeze." It would also be the furthest either of us had ever walked in a day and a test of our friendship - and feet.
There are as many ways to see Sydney Harbour as there are bays and inlets indenting its foreshore. You can swim in it, dive beneath it, sail or kayak across it or roar around it in a high-speed jet boat. You can take to the skies in a helicopter or a sea plane for a bird's-eye view.
And of course you can clamber to the top of the Harbour Bridge and gaze down on it while wrestling with vertigo and feeling self-conscious about the grey boiler suit the Bridgeclimb people have made you wear.
Now, for the first time, the city has marked out a walking trail which starts and ends at the Coathanger and takes in bays, headlands and historic streets.
The map produced by the New South Wales Government bears the less than catchy slogan: "It's exhilarating and healthy".
Still, it promised the ghosts of early Aboriginal civilisation, colonial history, fragments of virgin bushland and constantly changing views of one of the world's most beautiful cities. And unlike the jet boats and helicopters, it would hardly cost us a cent.
Suitably enthused, Ivan and I met at 8.30am at Circular Quay, the bustling ferry terminal at the heart of the city. After soggy ham and cheese croissants, we strode purposefully through the higgledy-piggledy Rocks district, once the lair of pickpockets, prostitutes, slum-dwellers and other colonial neer-do-wells.
We walked through the dank sandstone canyon known as Argyle Cut, past a church in which British garrison regiments used to worship and up multiple flights of steps to the Harbour Bridge.
It was hard not to feel smug as we strolled beneath the bridge's soaring iron girders, watching cars and trains full of glum-looking commuters streaming into the city.
The view was, as you'd expect, superb. The Opera House glinted in the sunshine and snub-nosed ferries ploughed past Fort Denison, a tiny island once known as Pinchgut by the convicts who were marooned there on a diet of bread and water.
After days of sheeting rain and black clouds, it promised to be a sparkling day. In fact it was already hot. "You'd better put some sunscreen on," I told Ivan, whose milk-white complexion betrayed his recent arrival in Australia. "I'll do it later," he said.
From the bridge - which next year celebrates its 75th anniversary - the path descended to the harbour foreshore, where the North Sydney Olympic Pool glitters beneath the bridge's enormous pylons.
We passed beneath the giant clown's face - its dazzling white teeth the size of tombstones - which marks the entrance to the Luna Park fun fair, and proceeded at a brisk pace to Lavender Bay, which has a village-like ambience thanks to its bougainvillea-draped Victorian terrace houses, timber boardwalks and yacht club.
A steep climb - the first of many - and a more gentle descent brought us to Blue's Point, named after Billy Blue, a convict from the West Indies who ferried people across the water in his rowing boat.
The distant span of Anzac Bridge, far to the south and close to our eventual destination, aroused the first twitch of alarm.
"Christ, it's a long way away," said Ivan, squinting into the haze. So far away, in fact, that it looked like a Meccano toy. Still, the distance looked just about manageable.
Sawmiller Reserve was one of the first of a dozen little patches of remnant bushland which make this walk such a pleasure. A cool, green oasis, it provided a welcome respite from tramping over hard asphalt. Fig trees sprouted from the top of a sandstone escarpment, their sinuous roots winding down the rock face like dripping candle wax.
At Balls Head, a former BP oil storage site has been turned into a sun-drenched nature reserve. The huge semi-circular spaces cut into the cliffs have become mini-wetlands alive with the croak of frogs.
Lizards scrambled out of the way as we climbed another steep flight of steps to an Australian navy base with the not very martial name of HMAS Waterhen [it's named after a destroyer sunk at Tobruk]. Mine hunters and patrol boats armed with machine guns jostled around a wharf as a reminder this is still a working harbour.
Soon we were walking through Oyster Cove, which is a distinct improvement on its former name of Kerosene Bay. Once a gas works, it's now an expanse of green dominated by an apartment development.
A rickety wooden bridge took us across a creek into Badangi Reserve, where tall eucalyptus trees shielded an emerald green under-storey of ferns. A pair of rainbow lorikeets squabbled and squawked in a Sydney red gum, and sulphur-crested cockatoos poked their heads out of tree hollows. The appropriately-named Vista St in the suburb of Greenwich offered another stunning view of the Harbour Bridge, before we plunged again down a steep hill to Gore Creek, where strangler figs wrapped themselves around boulders spotted with bright orange lichen.
Emerging back on to a street, we stopped for a cold drink at the Double D Cafe, the only source of sustenance for miles. "A lot of walkers give up here and take the ferry," the woman behind the counter said, less than encouragingly. "We had a Pommy bloke come in here the other day who was terribly sun burnt ... red as a tomato he was."
I gave Ivan a pointed look - by now a faint pink blush had appeared across his face and neck - but he pretended not to notice.
It was midday and we hadn't made the progress we'd expected. In fact after three hours it looked like we'd done only a quarter of the walk. At Woodford Bay, another well-heeled district, I filled up a water bottle and found Ivan studying an information board, the first we'd come across.
"The 26km circle walk can be walked by a fit person in approximately 8 to 10 hours but this would give little time to savour the views," it read. Right then.
Our cocky expectations of knocking it off in five hours and being ensconced in the pub for a late liquid lunch were beginning to look hopelessly ambitious. Ivan informed me sombrely that it was going to be a very long day.
A glance at the map is all it takes to understand why our progress had been so slow. Sydney Harbour is an unruly succession of headlands, peninsulas, creeks and channels which twist and turn and fold back in on each other. It looks like a toddler's shaky doodle.
We kept walking, pausing briefly to stop at a pair of commemorative plaques which neatly encapsulated the conflict at the heart of Australian history since the British established the first penal colony in 1788.
One plaque commemorated the landing, in 1790, of a party of Royal Marines led by Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who established the first settlement north of Sydney Cove.
The second, erected only two years ago, is in honour of the Cameraygal tribe of Aborigines who defended their country by resisting British invasion.
Twisted salmon gums lined a woodland path which led past a tiny beach and a row of upturned dinghies to Tambourine Bay, where Aboriginal shell middens lie hidden in the undergrowth.
We crossed a creek by means of a natural stone arch and sloshed along the fringes of a mangrove swamp.
Encountering Fig Tree Bridge, where we had to trudge along a footpath as cars and trucks roared past within a few feet, was an assault on the senses. On the plus side, we had reached the westernmost point of the walk.
We crossed to the south side of the harbour by means of the colossal Gladesville Bridge. Five hours into the walk and we hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast. In the suburb of Drummoyne [Gaelic for flat-topped ridge and named by a Scottish settler] we stumbled on a surprisingly smart European-style cafe called the Strudel Baron. We hadn't realised how hungry we were, and scoffed a pair of beef and mushroom pies.
Much refreshed, we set off through pleasantly shaded streets, pausing only to snigger like schoolboys at a furniture store called The Stool Shop.
Another bridge took us across Iron Cove, through the grounds of a former lunatic asylum to the villagey suburb of Balmain, its quiet streets lined with weatherboard houses and sandstone cottages fronted by white picket fences.
A bronze plaque set into a boulder told of the Aboriginal clans who lived here prior to the invasion of the British. There were the Eora, the Dharrawal, the Dharuk and the Guring-gai, who for tens of thousands of years fished from bark canoes and made spears tipped with sharks' teeth. There were an estimated 8000 Aborigines living around the harbour when the first fleet of convicts arrived in 1788. Thirty years later there were less than 300, the rest wiped out by frontier clashes, disease and alcoholism.
An industrial wasteland of cement works, a disused power station and a container port greeted us as we trudged across the traffic-choked Anzac Bridge.
It's guarded by a 4m-tall bronze statue of a World War I digger, which rests on a plinth containing sand taken from a Gallipoli beach.
Seven hours into the walk and I had aching hip joints and sore feet. But the city skyline was now directly in front of us, and the end was in sight. A pathway took us past old sandstone quarries dating from the 1850s and nicknamed by workers Paradise, Purgatory and Hell Hole.
A few minutes later we were at Darling Harbour and the National Maritime Museum, where a replica of Cook's ship, HMS Endeavour, is tied up to the wharf beside a modern warship and a sinister black submarine.
Increasingly creaky knees and battered feet took us past the tourist hordes gathered outside the Sydney Aquarium to the fashionable bars and restaurants of Kings Street Wharf.
A final flight of zig-zag steps, carved into a sandstone cliff in the 19th century, led us back to the terrace houses and convict-built lanes of the Rocks, where we started.
We staggered into the Lord Nelson, a handsome Georgian pub with scuffed wooden floors, ships lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a micro-brewery. We opted for the Trafalgar Pale Ale which, to our unbounded delight, was served in pint glasses, not the normal weedy schooners favoured by Australian pubs.
Two pints later, the aches and pains had miraculously disappeared and all was well with the world. The only damage done was to Ivan's skin. "I'm burnt to buggery - face, neck and legs," he said.
We had covered 26km in seven hours, crossing seven bridges, stopping only twice and exploring parts of the harbour we had never seen before.
No doubt it would be more comfortable to do the walk in a couple of days, but it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. Just don't forget to take sunscreen.
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand offers more than 59 scheduled flights per week to Sydney non-stop from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Everyday low fares from Auckland and Wellington to Sydney start from $325 one-way online. For more information or to make a booking visit airnewzealand.co.nz, call 0800 737 000 or visit an Air New Zealand Holidays Store.
WALKING
The Sydney Harbour circular walk can be done in sections of between two and five hours, returning to Circular Quay by ferry or bus. Popular sections include the Harbour Bridge to Greenwich Wharf and Drummoyne Wharf to the Harbour Bridge. Alternatively, do the walk in two days, staying at a bed and breakfast along the way. There are also 12 loops extending from the main route into various harbour peninsulas, the longest taking five hours.
A map and guide, with historical notes, can be downloaded from: www.planning.nsw.gov.au/harbour/walking.asp.
For information on bed and breakfasts along the walk: www.sydneyvisitorcentre.com or www.visitnsw.com.au.
The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust has details of a number of other harbour walks: www.harbourtrust.gov.au/topics/happtracks.html.
