Sydney's transit system includes a fleet of old ferries, patriotic yellow and green, two-storied and squat like a friendly tugboat in a children's cartoon, which constantly criss-cross the many-lobed harbour. The way to Cockatoo Island runs out from Circular Quay towards the painted gate of Luna Park, from which a huge face with rouged cheeks grins insanely like a vaudeville impresario with neurosyphilis, and then past scattered barges and islands with military bases.
Cockatoo Island is nearby and a decent size, and a natural choice for at least some of the things it's been used for since the 18th century. It was a prison for particularly hard cases among the convicts, an industrial school for girls, and a shipyard. The largest part is a derelict industrial site; when I arrived, it was hosting a corporate retreat. People were team-building by running back and forth kicking small balls and hooting.
In the turbine hall, rain drums on the ceiling of corrugated steel and echoes in a cubic mile of empty space. There are mammoth lumps of mysterious steel equipment having something to do with turbines. The retreaters march in from their game to a section of the hall where seats have been set up. Some of them go woo! with excitement. The woos echo strangely in the turbine hall, and so do the laughs that come as the motivational speaker warms up the crowd before urging them to exploit more synergies or raise their sales numbers or release more folk albums or whatever.
Away from them, the older shipyard is beautiful industrial desolation, abandoned as though after the apocalypse: A few seagulls, and an older woman in overalls who was immune to the zombie virus or down in the basement when the bomb fell and now leads a ragged band of survivors who probably call her Aunt Jane or The Engineer. Later on, there are golf carts and a worker in a Black Sabbath t-shirt, who might be part of the new society she's building based on golf carts, equality for mutants, heavy metal fandom, and sustainable fisheries.
Cockatoo Island is supposed to get busy on the weekends, but today there's almost no one around. The closest thing to it is poking around the minor temples in Angkor: Ruins with few of the ropes and signs that usually control tourist traffic, which gives you an interesting feeling that you're not supposed to be here. It is being slowly restored, which is unfortunate in some ways, and signs offer retail or commercial space in the empty buildings. The place may eventually be gummed up with interpretive centres and recreations and displays that want you to lift up a flap to see what the answer is. It's drifting towards becoming a mixed-use historical playground.
In the middle of the island is a convict's barracks. This was the site's first purpose; it's where convicts were sent if they reoffended after transportation. If you stole a pig in England, they sent you to Sydney. If you stole a pig in Sydney, they sent you to Cockatoo Island. Carved into the rock below the barracks are the solitary cells, where they would send you if you somehow managed to steal a pig on Cockatoo Island. Within the cells, there were no pigs, and the cycle ended.
Signs for an audio tour point into desolate-looking ruins, and tourists pause, wondering if the audio tour might be planning to kill them. In a sprawling house on the crest of the hill is an untended photo display. There's no one there, but things rattle and shutters bang as though the place is haunted by clumsy ghosts. Set into the ground far below is what looks like a row of rusted Aztec idols, actually the remains of an underground plate bending machine.
Also, there is a tennis court, for some reason.
Along the cliff, gulls are nesting. They attack as you come close, circling and screaming. As you walk on, they settle down and fire a few more squawks at your back in a satisfied, "yeah, you'd better run" sort of way. If you sit nearby, instead, they forget about you, and their chicks come out. These stand in place for a few minutes and then peck experimentally at some grass and then waddle off down the cliff and stand there for a while, swaying slightly. It's easy to forget how dull a bird's life is. Like war, it's a grim struggle for survival that's mostly just really, really boring.
On the other side of the island is a strange little city of identical tents -- for rent by the night, it turns out. Ducklings are walking among them, and a tourist is pestering the ducklings. If you think about it, sir, there's no real need to bellow for your camera and trot up to hassle them like a dumpy, 50 year old toddler.
Manly
Another ferry takes me over to Manly. Manly harbour is separated from Manly beach by a 'corso', a pedestrian strip of beach-town businesses. At the beach, dozens of surfers bob in the ocean, waiting for waves. Being a surfer, like being a seagull chick, seems oddly dull. Shirtless, middle-aged Aussie men with skin like apples jog by, the little carvings on their leather necklaces bouncing up and down.
The coast to one side is scalloped, with bays of sand alternating with headlands crowded with low-rise apartments in Tuscan colors (a tourist says, "it's just like... honey, what was that town in Italy? Cinque Terre, yeah"). On the other, there are paths into the brush that turn out to lead along the sandstone cliffs. Beautiful walk. Sea smells, and many peaceful spots along the cliffs to climb out of the brush onto the rock. In the outcroppings nearest the beach, people have been moved to inscribe things, mostly their initials and someone else's initials with a plus sign in between.
There's stuff beyond, like a set of WWII gun pits and a command post, and, after that, disused army barracks set around a parade ground -- a square depression of red gravel. Signs promise a fort and a cafe further on, but I'm too tired to look into it.
I've been in Sydney six nights, which I thought would probably be too long, but wasn't. I had a comfortable little apartment in an 'apartment hotel'. On a high floor, though I don't know which one; they call it 38, but the numbering starts from several levels underground (the street-level lobby is on '6'), and I think a few others may be missing. It has been great, though. You can go out and be a tourist, and then come back and slump into a slovenly routine of frozen pizzas and canned beer. At night, I'd sit on the balcony listening to music from the street below and thinking, how did a busker this bad manage to buy an amplifier?
Cairns is next.
Cockatoo Island is nearby and a decent size, and a natural choice for at least some of the things it's been used for since the 18th century. It was a prison for particularly hard cases among the convicts, an industrial school for girls, and a shipyard. The largest part is a derelict industrial site; when I arrived, it was hosting a corporate retreat. People were team-building by running back and forth kicking small balls and hooting.
In the turbine hall, rain drums on the ceiling of corrugated steel and echoes in a cubic mile of empty space. There are mammoth lumps of mysterious steel equipment having something to do with turbines. The retreaters march in from their game to a section of the hall where seats have been set up. Some of them go woo! with excitement. The woos echo strangely in the turbine hall, and so do the laughs that come as the motivational speaker warms up the crowd before urging them to exploit more synergies or raise their sales numbers or release more folk albums or whatever.
Away from them, the older shipyard is beautiful industrial desolation, abandoned as though after the apocalypse: A few seagulls, and an older woman in overalls who was immune to the zombie virus or down in the basement when the bomb fell and now leads a ragged band of survivors who probably call her Aunt Jane or The Engineer. Later on, there are golf carts and a worker in a Black Sabbath t-shirt, who might be part of the new society she's building based on golf carts, equality for mutants, heavy metal fandom, and sustainable fisheries.
Cockatoo Island is supposed to get busy on the weekends, but today there's almost no one around. The closest thing to it is poking around the minor temples in Angkor: Ruins with few of the ropes and signs that usually control tourist traffic, which gives you an interesting feeling that you're not supposed to be here. It is being slowly restored, which is unfortunate in some ways, and signs offer retail or commercial space in the empty buildings. The place may eventually be gummed up with interpretive centres and recreations and displays that want you to lift up a flap to see what the answer is. It's drifting towards becoming a mixed-use historical playground.
In the middle of the island is a convict's barracks. This was the site's first purpose; it's where convicts were sent if they reoffended after transportation. If you stole a pig in England, they sent you to Sydney. If you stole a pig in Sydney, they sent you to Cockatoo Island. Carved into the rock below the barracks are the solitary cells, where they would send you if you somehow managed to steal a pig on Cockatoo Island. Within the cells, there were no pigs, and the cycle ended.
Signs for an audio tour point into desolate-looking ruins, and tourists pause, wondering if the audio tour might be planning to kill them. In a sprawling house on the crest of the hill is an untended photo display. There's no one there, but things rattle and shutters bang as though the place is haunted by clumsy ghosts. Set into the ground far below is what looks like a row of rusted Aztec idols, actually the remains of an underground plate bending machine.
Also, there is a tennis court, for some reason.
Along the cliff, gulls are nesting. They attack as you come close, circling and screaming. As you walk on, they settle down and fire a few more squawks at your back in a satisfied, "yeah, you'd better run" sort of way. If you sit nearby, instead, they forget about you, and their chicks come out. These stand in place for a few minutes and then peck experimentally at some grass and then waddle off down the cliff and stand there for a while, swaying slightly. It's easy to forget how dull a bird's life is. Like war, it's a grim struggle for survival that's mostly just really, really boring.
On the other side of the island is a strange little city of identical tents -- for rent by the night, it turns out. Ducklings are walking among them, and a tourist is pestering the ducklings. If you think about it, sir, there's no real need to bellow for your camera and trot up to hassle them like a dumpy, 50 year old toddler.
Manly
Another ferry takes me over to Manly. Manly harbour is separated from Manly beach by a 'corso', a pedestrian strip of beach-town businesses. At the beach, dozens of surfers bob in the ocean, waiting for waves. Being a surfer, like being a seagull chick, seems oddly dull. Shirtless, middle-aged Aussie men with skin like apples jog by, the little carvings on their leather necklaces bouncing up and down.
The coast to one side is scalloped, with bays of sand alternating with headlands crowded with low-rise apartments in Tuscan colors (a tourist says, "it's just like... honey, what was that town in Italy? Cinque Terre, yeah"). On the other, there are paths into the brush that turn out to lead along the sandstone cliffs. Beautiful walk. Sea smells, and many peaceful spots along the cliffs to climb out of the brush onto the rock. In the outcroppings nearest the beach, people have been moved to inscribe things, mostly their initials and someone else's initials with a plus sign in between.
There's stuff beyond, like a set of WWII gun pits and a command post, and, after that, disused army barracks set around a parade ground -- a square depression of red gravel. Signs promise a fort and a cafe further on, but I'm too tired to look into it.
I've been in Sydney six nights, which I thought would probably be too long, but wasn't. I had a comfortable little apartment in an 'apartment hotel'. On a high floor, though I don't know which one; they call it 38, but the numbering starts from several levels underground (the street-level lobby is on '6'), and I think a few others may be missing. It has been great, though. You can go out and be a tourist, and then come back and slump into a slovenly routine of frozen pizzas and canned beer. At night, I'd sit on the balcony listening to music from the street below and thinking, how did a busker this bad manage to buy an amplifier?
Cairns is next.
