Across Sydney harbour to Manly beach

 Thursday, 29^th of March

                                

Across the Sydney harbour to Manly beach and a restful afternoon in the Hotel

We must have slept through the nights disaster that had happened just around 11pm last night. But when I run along the bay in the morning I notice at least 4 helicopters and a few reporters with film cameras interviewing people. What happened? A ferry boat collided with a stationary private boat killing three and leaving one young girl missing. That’s why the helis were still searching around the harbour. How awful!

And just this morning we wanted to take a ferry to sail across the bay to Manly beach.

The ferry is packed with at least 200 passengers and runs every 30minutes. The trip takes us along all the fancy houses and past North head and South head the two rocks that form the outlet to the open sea.

Phil tells me a funny story about his sailing disaster 30 years ago when he was invited by two friends to go sailing all of them assuming the others would know how to manage a sailing boat. But nobody actually had a clue. After only 20min on board they somehow had managed to drown or capsize the boat. Just by good luck they got stranded at Middle bay leaving Phil with the delightful job of walking back two hours to the sailing company to confess the embarrassing story.

The weather worsens and soon it’s drizzling. That’s the perfect excuse to have a coffee and read the papers. The boat accident is on the front page. Manly beach is another surfers paradise but no good for swimmers like me. Nevertheless I dare to have another dip into the water but the waves are very high and quite frightening.

Somehow I have damaged my right foot whilst running this morning and by now I can hardly walk. I am limping back home and try to rest.

We are waiting to hear from Graham, another ballooning friend of Phil. But when he texts us to say that we should meet in Manly for dinner, we politely tell him that we have just come from there and it’s all a bit too complicated. So the two of us end up in our favourite bar the Australian Hotel with a bottle of wine and their delicious pesto bread.

PHIL: Day 43/29 March

There has been a terrible accident under the Harbour Bridge not 500m from our hotel. During the night a ferry has collided with a pleasure craft and several fatalities are reported.

The Manly ferry leaves in the rain as police boats search the water beneath the Bridge. I point out to Allie Middle Harbour, location of two of my own ignominious sailing episodes from the early ‘70s which, fortunately, had less serious outcomes.

Manly is less quaint than the bays of the Eastern Suburbs, but still has a rather attractive ‘seaside’ atmosphere and Allie manages her swim whilst I drink a ‘long black’ (coffee) and read the newspapers. Intermittent drizzle spoils the return ferry trip and we decide to walk the 100m to to ‘The Australian’ pub which is beset by itinerant groups of what look like business people on ‘bonding’ exercises. They are clearly on a pub crawl quiz and are welcomed by a garrulous Irishman wearing a Captain Cook outfit who tells raucous jokes and takes group photographs –“hold that briefcase above your head, sir” – before sending them on to the next hostelry.

We work out we have enough Australian Dollars to buy a pizza and salad but not wine, so Allie runs to the adjacent bottle shop to buy an excellent Western Australia Cab Sauv on our credit card. We fail miserably to finish it before going to bed.