Manly Beach

On Friday Kiwi Nomad and I took a ferry to Manly Beach (what a great name!). One of the very best things about Sydney is the possibility of living in a beach town and commuting by 20 minute ferry to downtown (and indeed one of our friends there does just that). The ferry pier is in Circular Quay right by the Opera House, so the view of the city is fantastic.

The closest equivalent to that lifestyle would be living in Venice or Manhattan Beach in LA and somehow taking a ferry to downtown or living near Atlantic Highlands and taking the ferry to Manhattan (of course that ferry is far longer and NY winter is a bit different from Sydney's).

Here's a shot of the main strip that connects the port area to the beach. It's not nearly as touristy / cheesy as one might expect.

Apparently Hungry Jack's is a fully authorized subsidiary of Burger King - I would have been amazed if a knockoff had been allowed in a place such as Australia; I've definitely seen unauthorized ones elsewhere in Asia.

Here's a view of the beach facing south.

I thought this was pretty cool.


There are plenty of volleyball courts on the beach and even though the weather was by no means perfect for the beach there were people playing.

Here's a shot of something less telegenic.

There are signs everywhere that advise against swimming within 24 hours of a storm due to pollution. I guess the storm drain runoff goes directly into the sea.

Here's the corso from the beach side.

Here's a shot of the beach facing northwards.

Even though I've been to the Southern Hemisphere before there's still something odd about seeing the sun track from east to west in the northern sky. I'm sure you get used to it after a while.

I saw something which I'd heard of before at a tourist shop - a map flipped upside down so Australia etc were in the top part of the map and the Northern Hemisphere was in the bottom. It did look a bit unusual, and of course there's no reason other than historical accident and population density that our globes aren't the other way.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/maps/img12.jpg

After a nice lunch we grabbed a ferry back to the city. The timing was good as the clouds started to roll in. Here's a shot of the Opera House from the ferry. Note the BTC / Panopticon on the right.

The views of the city from the ferry really are quite impressive.

We saw a pretty old school type ship in the harbor.

It's amazing to consider that people used to live on these things for months crossing the ocean. Imagine the complexity of rigging the sails in order to make it move, as opposed to just jamming the throttles forward as one would now.

We met up with some friends and had a nice evening out.