Weekend Walks
weekend walks: the rocks
Just in time for St Patrick’s Day we visited St Patrick’s Church in Sydney City, for the first time ever, the traditional heartland of Sydney’s Irish working class Catholics.
Well, we didn’t only visit St Patrick’s, we spent 2 hours walking approximately 7km around Circular Quay and The Rocks. The City of Sydney have very useful Historical Walking Tour brochures which we used this week while playing tourists in our home city. We chose to do the COLONY walk. And we saw things that we had walked past a thousand times in our lifetime but never really stopped to learn about it or even really “look” at it.
We are a day early but Happy St Patrick’s Day 🙂
Have a great week ahead.
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weekend walks: hermitage foreshore walk
As we had visited north, south and west on previous weeks, we were due to visit the east! It was over to Rose Bay which is about 7 km from Sydney.
Thankfully, the weather was much better than it was last week. The sun was out and skies were blue. The views of the harbour were sensational. The Hermitage Foreshore Walk was approximately 1.8 km but it wasn’t flat. We had anticipated the walk to be on boardwalk, but once again were surprised as it was sandy tracks, rock steps or gnarled tree roots.
We stopped occasionally to watch people out on the harbour: paddle boarding, water-skiing and kayaking. Luckily, the walk was uneventful, no snakes or sudden weather changes (although we did see a spider reel in lunch just above our heads – see the last photo). It was just a pleasant foreshore walk. There were little secluded beaches along the way and we also saw Strickland House (c. 1856) which was once a hospital.
After leaving Nielsen Park, the rest of our walk was through residential streets so our photos this week were mainly from the first part of our walk.
Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Have a great week ahead!
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weekend walks: coastal cronulla
We chose a coastal walk this time because after last week’s encounters with the reptiles, we opted to stay out of any bush areas. We saw lots of different birds instead.
The walk began at North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club and the weather was pleasant enough. It was cloudy but certainly was not raining. As we headed south only about 10 minutes into the walk, the rain came. Summer is gone and winter is coming. The original plan was to keep walking south to the end of the Esplanade before turning back and walking towards Wanda Beach, making the walk about 9.2 km long.
We had even fuelled up on a big breakfast beforehand.
But the rain was relentless and we ended up walking only 2.2 km south before turning back and getting into the car soaking wet! And as our luck would have it, the rain stopped as we drove off so we chose to drive up to Wanda Beach and spent almost 40 minutes or so at the Cronulla sand dunes. The sand dunes are often used by those looking for a tough workout (including athletes at pre-season training or personal training sessions).
Hope you enjoy our photos from the walk this week. Sorry we couldn’t showcase Sydney blue skies at their best.
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weekend walks: manly dam
This weekend’s walk comes with more than just photos but also a story:
Our tally for the day was one red-bellied black snake, one brown snake and one goanna. A record considering we have seen NONE before in the wild. The two snakes is on the list for Australia’s deadliest snakes so you can imagine our reaction when we came across two in the span of about 20 minutes!
We panicked and our adrenaline kicked in – for those few seconds, we couldn’t think and pretty much froze. Kind of wish now that we had thought to take a photo. The red-bellied snake just slithered right across our path – possibly sun-baking until interrupted by the vibration of us approaching. As we watched it exit, it seemed to be moving in slow motion, with its bright red belly pressed against the ground. On the other hand, the brown snake seemed petrified of us when we crunched innocently through some dried leaves as we approached a billabong. The brown snake took off alongside a log and honestly, to witness its speed as it propelled its body was sensational. More sensational that it was heading AWAY from us. We had never seen anything like it other than on TV.
The goanna also had us stopped in our tracks. He paused on the path for about 2-3 minutes, long enough for us to take a photo from a distance, before scurrying off into the bushes!
What a surreal day! And as you would have it, we had forgotten to pack our first-aid kit. So there we were, hoping we could get to the end of the walk without any snake attacks!
Hope you enjoy the photos from this weekend’s walk.
Manly Dam circuit walk is about 7.3 km which took us about 3 hours as the terrain varies quite significantly. Manly is approximately 17 km north of Sydney. There are plenty of picnic areas, areas for swimming, bike and walking tracks.
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