The Fish Trap

My godparents lived at the foot of the hill, on the harbour. All the neighbours had manicured formal gardens, not this house, it had a jungle! After walking through darkest Africa we reached the lawn by the boatsheds. Barbeques and boat launching were the Sunday games. At some point in the afternoon a group would row the middle of the harbour, find the tiny float and haul up the line to the chicken wire fish trap. Barbequed leatherjackets, yum!

The Long Stairs

At the bottom of the steep hill we lived on was bush to the waterfront. The bus terminus lurked there. I always thought the buses had a good nap their before launching themselves up the hill.

There was a concrete path leading down to the harbour from the slumbering buses. This became a rivulet of stairs cascading down the scrubby outcrops. At the last dogleg a large rock platform jutted out ten metres above the waters of Middle Harbour.

When you got to the little beach there was a small netted pool. There you could happily swim with the baby sharks before they got big enough to be scary.

The Shops

A walk to the shops was always a choice. Did I mean Bonds Corner 300 metres up the road from home, the school shops a kilometer away or the junction shops a mile away in the old money.

Bonds Corner was lollies, or alcohol it was a schizophrenic shop. The school shops were a mix of small dressmakers, accountants, a chemist and the milk bar newsagent. Lollies galore and all sorts of interesting magazines to covet. The junction shops was a large conglomeration of banks, doctors, chemists, hardware and fruit and veg shops. It also had the Sydney cream tiled pub.

The Fifth Hole

The fifth hole on the harbour golf adventure is a par three. The tee is high above the harbour at the edge of a bluff. The green is thirty metres below, with only rock and scrub between. Immediately behind the green is the harbour, surrounding it are sand traps. This is the place that golf is an exercise in vain hope. When returning from my morning expedition as a marooned pirate I would see hope after hope be offered to the spirits of whimsy. It was a great place to collect golfballs for resale.

An Elderly Primary School

The school was built in the 40s, brick and concrete. Late 50s timber temporary sheds shared space near the red clay tennis courts with flash new metal and vinyl temporary sheds. I remember listening to the ABC radio for children, posh voices floating from the woven soft center of the largest brown biscuit I had ever seen, fixed above the blackboard. Just thinking of blackboards now, I remember the delight I felt when it was my turn to beat the chalk out of the dusters. I loved making so many clouds.

The school at the bottom of my garden

This walk to school I always thought of as a walk through my extended garden. It was all cared for except where it was wonderfully wild. The road turned left following the bay, then it turns right away from water. There is the oval, the brick grandstand, the primary school, the first shops.

Harbour Glimpses

The walk to school through the bush allowed me to see the water in all weathers narrowly catching the lights between steep slopes of grey green tree. The water was at the foot of any gully you looked down. Muddy strands of dinghies, rowing for their fishtraps at moonlight.