1: Myra, one of the Palm Beach ferries.
It was a cold Saturday morning as Libby and I set off for Portuguese Beach via the usual Northern Beaches public transport:, the L90 BBT. It was an uneventful hour-and-a-half trip from Railway Square to Palm Beach with the sky yet again cloudless and little in the way of the rain needed to relieve Sydney of its steadily worsening water restrictions.
1: Myra, one of the Palm Beach ferries.
Once off the bus near the Palm Beach Ferry Wharf we were a little surprised to find that one-and-a-half hours of additional sunshine had not warmed up the day at all. The air temperature was still quite cool and there was a significant breeze which made it feel even colder.
Within ten minutes of our arriving at the Palm Beach Wharf, two ferries arrived rather confusingly, each in the other's mooring spot, or so it seemed according to the indicator signs. Having travelled this way many times before I knew that the smaller ferry, the Myra, was going to be the one to get us to Bennet's Wharf, one of the two landings which service Coasters Retreat. Not so for one of the passengers, obviously experiencing Palm Beach ferries for the first time, who had taken the signs at their word.
As the ferry began reversing away from the wharf, she asked if it was the Ettalong ferry and found out that she was on the wrong one. The ferry stopped it's departure and was brought alongside the wharf once more so that she could cross to the other, more appropriate, ferry. It's best not to trust the signage at Palm Beach. So, after only a small delay we were eventually off and cruising across Pittwater in the direction of Coasters Retreat.
The day was the clearest I'd seen for quite some time; not a hint of haze as far as the eye could see. We'd had some rain about a week previously which had settled a lot of dust and there was that persistent breeze sweeping the horizons clear of any remaining visual imperfections.
2: Bennet's Wharf and The Basin
Bennet's Wharf is the first stop on this never-changing round-trip ferry route so within ten minutes we were standing where the Bennet's Wharf met the shore pondering which way to go. There had been no indication of a walking track reaching down from the nearby Soldier's Point fire trail marked on the street directory to the wharf but I felt sure that, others having got so close to the shore from West Head Road in the middle of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, generations of bushwalkers would have created at least an informal track covering the last five hundred metres down to Coasters Retreat. We were also hoping that there would be a walk from Portuguese Beach up to the Portuguese Track also shown to stop well short of the coastline.
There were three paths branching off from the end of the wharf, two going fairly steeply uphill presumably leading to some of the few houses of this small isolated community., another headed in the direction of Soldiers Point. We were about to make a decision when a figure appeared along one of the tracks, so the opportunity to get some local knowledge was enthusiastically undertaken. Yes, there was a track leading round to Portuguese Beach but is was very rough with washaways and fallen trees obstructing it; but it was passable. There was another track going up between some of the houses somewhere but precise details were not forthcoming. However, we were told that with the tide at its low point, we would be able to scramble round the rocks along the shoreline all the way to the beach without getting our feet wet.
This seemed like the best option. We were still feeling the chill having spent nearly all of our time that morning sitting on buses and boats so the thought of rock-hopping in the warmth of the full sun rather than climbing in the shade of the bush was very appealing.
The first couple of hundred metres around the shoreline was quite a scramble, clambering over large rock and boulders which had been arranged in a very inconveniently uneven way. But once Soldiers Point was reached, the unevenness was replaced by and almost table top flatness of fascinating rock formations. Some looked like brown fudge frozen in mid preparation. Others looked like giant bath sponges with spherical holes and indents seeming to permeate otherwise solid sandstone. Still others evoked cartoon moonscapes with masses of tiny craters with absurdly high sides.
All the while, out on Pittwater, boats headed for the ocean and others just bobbed at anchor with somnambulant-looking figures staring at the ends of fishing lines. The odd jet-ski shattered the peace heading in from the ocean carrying a couple of surfers with surfboards obviously returning from an early morning surf.
The walk around the shoreline was easy enough at low tide but we were very conscious of how smoothly worn our shoes had become over the year so trod very cautiously. If you want to experience fantastically varied rocks and boulders, and bleached dead trees, this stretch of the Pittwater foreshore is the place to go.
After two false alarms raised by tiny stretched of sand, which would only have been visible at low tide, Portuguese Beach appeared as we rounded a small point. And it wasn't empty! There was a lone man dressed only in shorts pacing to and fro along the length of the two-hundred metre beach.
We thought, after our initial surprise as there was no boat at anchor, that it was, in fact convenient as we might get some local knowledge as to the state of the tracks heading into the national park behind the beach. But as we got closer the lone pacer began looking more agitated then, when the pressure got too much, put on his shirt and deftly melted away into the bush never to be seen again.
We were there. Libby found her possie in the sun and I climbed the bank to the south of the beach in search of more photos.
A sailing boat motored in close to the beach and anchored, the two occupants locating their favourite spot on the boat and settling down to a hard morning's relaxing.
A tinny arrived bearing an esky and four teenage girls who, having anchored, picnicked joyfully on the beach.
By midday it was all happening on Pittwater: yachts sailing lethargically in the breeze which had dropped to virtually nothing, motor-launches heading towards the ocean carrying large quantities of serious-looking fishing gear, and the occasional water-skier somewhat shattering the idill.
When a small catamaran bearing a brightly coloured sail beached raising the population in the vicinity to eleven or twelve - beach-pacer never reappeared - we figured that it was time to experiment with the alleged Portuguese Beach walking track.
There were clear indications that the track was not really open but being the middle of the day we decided that we would have plenty of time to see if we could make it up to the official part of the Portuguese Track. So we began the climb up from the southern end of the beach. It was very rough and quite overgrown and slippery with a fairly serious drop just a footstep away on the down hill side. It required careful footwork and a slow and well-balanced pace to negotiate our way up that initial steep climb.
Once onto more level ground we turned around to check out the view of the small beach getting progressively smaller as more of Pittwater became visible. Although there was no real track as such, the route was fairly obvious if you knew what to look for. The track was not completely unused, the slight indent of a regularly trod path was visible in the early afternoon light and there was the occasional piece of green plastic insulating tape tied to tree branches confirming that at least one other person had gone that way.
But the marker tape was sparsely applied and we had to rely on recognising where people had trod before. This was made relatively easy by the open nature of this particular part of the bush; you could see for hundreds of metres in every direction through the widely spaced She-oaks. There was no understorey to talk of closing in the perspective. The down side of the She-oaks was that the needle-leaves from the trees covered the ground quite thickly which tended to disguise the track quite well and make steep sections quite slippery underfoot.
We must have climbed for about twenty minutes, relying on our ability to pick the sometimes hard to detect track but reassured by the very occasional piece of green plastic hanging limply, before we reached a more substantial track where we could walk two abreast. This was obviously the ragged end of the Portuguese fire track and from that point on, the rest of the climb was rather less interesting as any view was obstructed by the lower but much denser vegetation which inhabited the less steep slopes nearer the top of the ridge.
Ten minutes later, we entered the freeway; well, the wide, well maintained track along which it was possible to drive serious fire-fighting vehicles. This was the junction between the Portuguese Track and the Soldiers Point track which was just what we had been looking for. Soldiers Point was where we were heading and, though the track was wide and a bit too much like someone's bush driveway, at least the bare rock surface at the top of the ridge thinned out the vegetation a little and the occasional glimpses of Pittwater enlivened the otherwise monotonous bush aspect.
We met one other couple heading the other way which encouraged us to believe that there was a way down from the end of the fire track to the ferry wharf. Fifteen minutes later the track ended in a fairly spectacular lookout. The reason for the 'ending' and the 'spectacular' was the sudden drop below our feet. No sign of a well worn track down to Coasters Retreat and the wharf.
We could see The Basin which was just beyond Bennet's Wharf so our destination was so close! Neither of us relished a return trip to Portuguese Beach and a possibly wet walk round the coastline. In less than a minute we had picked a likely route down which didn't necessitate jumping over the edge and five minutes later we were below the lookout and in steeply sloping, but again, open bush and able to zig-zag our way safely down towards Pittwater.
Quite quickly, the roofs of house came into view and we knew that we were close to the wharf and heading in the right direction. We were not going to make the soon to be arriving ferry however and resigned ourselves to having to wait some considerable time once we eventually got to the wharf.
The sounds of voices and the smell of fresh paint together with the glimpses of mown grass confirmed that this was Coasters Retreat and that we were approaching private property without any sign of a public pathway. But we had no choice but to make our way onto the obviously cared for lawns and footpaths of the tiny community. We were careful to respect the footpaths and lawns that we crossed even though there appeared to be no-one in residence other than those that we had heard further up the slope. The whole place was very informally laid out with access paths to the various dwellings snaking between properties with little indication of litigious consequences for walking along them.
Eventually the maze of paths lead to Bennet's Wharf and we contemplated the fifty minute wait for the return of the one ferry. We could see it at the Basin wharf just ten minutes further along it's repetitive route. As it left The Basin and headed towards Great Mackerel Beach we tried telepathy, telekinesis and just plain wishful thinking to get it to detour over to Bennet's from the other side of the basin. But to no effect.
The sun was wonderfully warm. Libby had her book. I could have written some more. But we both wanted lunch. And we wanted it soon.
Fifteen minutes later as we walked off the Palm Beach wharf having beaten the ferry that we had missed, we didn't regret the cost of the water taxi one bit.
We had excellent fish and chips at Palm Beach before boarding the L90 BBT for the hour-and-a-half ride back to Railway Square.
Getting off the bus was a bit of a surprise; we had both stiffened up, a result of immobility after scrambling over rocks, climbing up hills and slithering down slippery, wooded slopes. In relatively fashionable Sydney we looked a bit out of place, our cream shorts and trousers covered with black charcoal smudges from the recently burnt trees we had negotiated returning through the bush from Portuguese Beach.
But we didn't care. All we were concerned about was getting back to the flat, having a hot shower and putting our feet up after a long but wonderfully enjoyable day.
