With a bump, the tip of the kayak hits Flat Rock Beach. Herds of tan-hungry sun worshippers are nowhere to be seen. Nor are surf life-saving clubs, kiosks selling ice creams or inflatable balls being punched around. In the place of all the staple ingredients of a Sydney beach are just a few pieces of driftwood, plus an impromptu waterfall pouring down the cliffs after the previous evening's storm.
Kayaks pulled ashore, a picnic blanket is spread out. Cheese, crackers, cookies and dips are devoured by the kayakers, while overhead, a gliding kestrel scans the water for alternative snacks. The birds generally have these untapped stretches of Sydney Harbour to themselves.
The harbour is broadly seen in terms of its postcard images. The Opera House; the Bridge; giraffe necks sticking out from Taronga Zoo; the ferry chugging across from Circular Quay to Manly. But beyond the headline acts, it splinters into thousands of oft-ignored crags. Before bridges were constructed, early settlers would walk around the hundreds of kilometres of shoreline.
On their way, they’d have found hundreds of little beaches such as Flat Rock. Many of them still can’t be accessed by land, and some still don’t have official names. Angela, the Sydney Harbour Kayaks tour guide, pointed to one on the way here. “We call it Eagle Beach,” she said. “Because you often spot sea eagles perched in the tree above it.”
Flat Rock is inside Garigal National Park, which was set up in the 1990s to protect certain stretches of shoreline from development. Man’s hand can be seen repeatedly on the way into the park – multimillion-dollar houses line the cliffs, often with boats parked on private jetties outside. Numerous tiers are necessary, and mini-funicular railways called inclinators connect the upper levels with the harbour-lapped rocks.
The waterside living leads to some rather delightful entrepreneurial ideas. Angela points to a small boat pootling along between the shores, a white-bearded retiree at the helm. “That’s the coffee boat. He’s got an espresso machine on board, and he flits around delivering coffee and ice creams. I don’t think he makes much money from it, but it looks like fun to me.”
She doesn’t have a bad job herself. With the sun out, gently paddling deeper into the protected inlets is a most blissful form of exercise. The arms don’t seem to notice the work they’re putting in, and the kayaks glide across the glassy water. Eyes are drawn to the bulging Hawkesbury sandstone that so much of Sydney is built on. A milky, creamy white is the natural colour, but it blackens with weathering and reddens with oxidation. In the most water-battered stretches, it’s encrusted with thousands of oyster shells. And on top, the bare, silvery trunks of the magisterial Sydney red gum trees reach for the heavens.
The kayaking tours start at the Spit Bridge, which is also the kick-off point for another fat-burning exploration of the harbour. The marvellously indirect Manly Scenic Walkway weaves along the coast, ducking into gullies, disappearing into the sand and climbing up to the clifftops. In parts – especially when the route starts to meander through the Sydney Harbour National Park – it’s proper bushland. Whenever there’s a miniature cleft between the rocks, waterfalls cascade down, and scurrying water dragons (rather adorable local lizards) abandon the path at the sound of approaching footsteps.
The 10-kilometre walkway’s character changes repeatedly. At Grotto Point, it becomes anthropological, with ancient aboriginal rock carvings depicting dolphins and wallabies. They’re thought to have been created long before the European settlement of Australia in 1788.
Then come the views. Suddenly, a corner will be turned and you’ll be reminded where you are in staggering style. The harbour’s jutting promontories sit among unnaturally dazzling blue water, the city skyline looms over yacht sails and the narrow gap between the two heads of the harbour unveils itself. Once out of there, it’s next stop South America.
On the way into Manly, things become more idyllically beachy – all dog walkers on the sand and palm-shrouded homes squeezed alongside the creeks.
Manly itself has long been a Sydney visitor favourite, aided immensely by the direct 30-minute-long ferry service from the city centre. Most come for the beach – a short walk across the narrow isthmus that connects northern Sydney to the North Head of the harbour.
But the water on the wharf side of Manly is ideally suited to stand-up paddleboarding, a sport imported from Hawaii that seems to have mushroomed across Australia.
There’s good news for anyone who has ever attempted a surf lesson and spent two hours crashing before even standing on the board – stand-up paddleboarding is much easier. This is partly thanks to duckpond-esque waters rather than ferocious surf, but the boards are also bigger.
Craig Moulds, who introduced “Supping” at the Manly Kayak Centre five years ago, gives brief instruction on the wharf before sending his victims onto the water. Start on your knees, shuffle back a bit, and jump up onto your feet quickly – there’s more risk of overbalancing if you attempt a ginger, ponderous, gradual rise.
Ideally, the feet need to be in symmetry, either side of the handle in the centre of the board. Knees should be slightly bent and relaxed, with your back straight. But even with all that, the most important thing is momentum – and that’s where the solitary, almost body-length paddle comes in. It’s all a lot less precarious when you’re moving. The nervous wobbles turn into something altogether calmer, and it’s only upon stopping to take in the view that a calamitous tumble into the water follows.
After a few dunkings, it all starts to click. It’s really about doing as little as possible while gliding through the tethered pleasure boats.
On the way back to the wharf are two buoys, which turn out to be an unexpected sporting arena. “This is where we play Supball,” says Craig. “There aren’t many rules, but those we do have are based on netball. You have to throw the ball against the buoy to score, but the opposition’s allowed to do pretty much anything in order to stop you.”
This full contact roughhousing, apparently, makes it rather popular to watch among the bloodthirsty spectators on the wharf.
A competitive edge can also be found farther along the harbour, when Sydney by Sail offers its “social racing” experience on the third Saturday of every month. The company acts as both a sailing school and a tourist-day-cruise operator, but taking clueless beginners out on the harbour to race yachts marries the two.
The idea is pretty simple: everyone goes on one of two boats, and helps out with the grunt work as much or as little as they like. Barring a few people content to sit on the deck, it doesn’t take long before everyone’s pathetically eager to wrestle the wheel, tug ropes and unfurl sails. For the skippers, it’s like trying to manage a litter of overly excitable puppies.
It leads to a fair amount of lurching as the boom sways from side to side, not always entirely intentionally. Machismo comes to the fore as strength rather than the necessary rhythm is applied to the ropework. The hairy moments where the yacht seems to tip entirely on its side are all the more terrifying for not knowing whether it’s supposed to be happening.
After a few laps around the harbour islands, the race enters the finishing straight. The first yacht to dip its nose under the Sydney Harbour Bridge wins. The other craft edges into a lead, and the hapless crew of the Colorado starts to fear defeat. But suddenly, the yacht picks up speed and powers ahead. It's a glorious victory. Well, at least until the other skipper pulls alongside and points out that turning the motor on is cheating somewhat.
It’s not victory or defeat that’s important, though. It’s the sheer joy of being under the blazing sun on the most gorgeous harbour on Earth. And if a bit of exercise happens to occur in the process, well, that’s a handy bonus.
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