Australian Adventure 2008

Messing About in Boats

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." (Kenneth Grahame)

That's our plan for a day in Sydney. The 6 am bus drives us through Kings Cross past multiple pubs. Patrons are staggering around on the sidewalk. Jet lag isn't the only reason to be up early.

Circular Quay is the site of the first fleet's landing. Now, it's a six wharf ferry interchange in the shadow of Sydney's sky scrapers occupying the middle ground between the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. The Quay (pronounced ‘key’) is the hub of what used to be the largest ferry service in the world. Sydney ferries lost that title (and nearly a third of its passengers) when the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened 75 years ago.

Circular Quay can look like an airport with boats. Large boards lit by electronic lights indicate which ferry, what time, what wharf. But now it’s so early in the morning that the loos aren’t even open. We take the ferry to Manly. The sun flashes over the water above the cliffs of North Head. We are on the Cat and it’s a quick trip and the boat is almost empty. We walk off and do a U-Turn and get right back on the boat.

Balmain is an old suburb with lots of sandstone buildings, lace ironwork, and impossibly large spreading trees. We hop a heritage ferry to get there. We sit on brightly painted red benches as we putt across the harbour in the opposite direction – at a distinctly different pace.

“I like this a lot better,” I say to Jim. Our Ferry is one of the nine boats in the “First Fleet Class” – named after boats from the first fleet. Painted clotted cream yellow with rich dark green trim, these boats have the colours of Australia. Their pace suits our mood. We are going nowhere – we’re just “messing about on boats”.

In Sydney there are a lot of boats to mess around on. There are thirty-one ferries and each year they travel over a million kilometres to thirty-nine different destinations. There is also a lot of Harbour to mess around on – with over 200 km of shoreline. And in Australia’s biggest city (over 4 million people) there’s a lot of bushland and parks behind that shoreline. We walk from one ferry terminal to another in the shade of gum trees.

Thirteen hours after we caught the morning bus, we arrive back home. We are sunburnt and happy. We’ve ridden on seven ferries and two busses. We’ve visited a hot bread shop, a pie shop, and ice-cream shop and the Bondi “Fruitologist” and brought sweet smelling mangoes and passion fruit. After a quick dip in the backyard pool, a prawn supper (washed down with a chilled glass of white), it’s time for jetlagged sleep.