Sow & Pigs

The "Sow & Pigs" is a submerged reef, just inside Sydney Heads. Explosives were used to break it up to make it less dangerous for shipping. These photos were taken from Middle Head facing SE. The cliff of South Head is to the left. The water in the foreground is Sydney Harbour. The water in the background is the Pacific Ocean. The beach is Camp Cove. The bay on the right, with all the vessels is Watsons Bay. The depression in the centre of the photo is the notorious "Gap".

3. What would I miss? Sydney's icons ...

The Opera House and the Harbour Bridge separated by a swivel.

If I had to leave Sydney, or if I CHOSE to leave Sydney, what would I miss? William Kendall seems to think that one of us Sydney bloggers will say that we will miss one of these two icons. Well, yes, I love having them there, and I am emotionally attahed more to the harbour bridge than to the opera house. But, they are just buildings. There are other bridges, albeit they do not have views over Sydney Harbour. But they do have views of water. There are other opera houses, staging remarkably similar versions of the oeuvre. Some avant-garde like this one, and others architectured more conservative. There are other Sydney icons, too. Like the green and gold First Fleet Class ferries. Like Sydney Tower, which just HAS to be a sibling of the Seattle Space Needle. Like North and South Head which stand as silent sentinels at the opening to our harbour. But they are all replaceable, to some extent, in my affections.

Sydney from on high (9) - Entry

From the observation level of the Sydney Tower, with a 105mm lens. Way out there, about 9 kms away- as the crow flies - is the entrance to Sydney Harbour, aka Port Jackson. North Head is the more perpendicular of the two, South Head is a more gentle slope. Out on the horizon is the Pacific Ocean. As has been my want in this series, what can I draw your attention to? ("to what can I draw your attention", if you prefer a more exact grammar.) This photo shows 3 of the 9 islands in the harbour: Shark Island is furthest out, and then Clarke Island. The third, Garden Island, has been joined to the shoreline by a naval dockyard extension in 1942. All that built environment on the longest peninsula is a naval base. The bit where the red "boat" is moored. Come right back to all the greenery in the foreground. This is the Royal Botanic Gardens and The Governor's Domain. The little bay on the left is Farm Cove, where Governor Phillip initially dropped anchor in January 1788. On the bottom RHS of the photograph is one of my favourite buildings in the city: the Art Gallery of NSW. This is my entry in the CDP Theme Day for February.

Is freedom ying or yang?

Ying Yang posits that there are two complementary forces surrounding us. Both are necessary, and too much of either is bad.

In Yang lies the seed of Ying, and in Ying lies the seed of Yang. Ying and Yang are cyclical. Yang grows but at its height Ying emerges. Ying grows, and at its height Yang appears.

Ying is soft, where Yang is hard.
Ying is still, where Yang moves.
The moon is Ying, where the sun is Yang.
Intuition is Ying, where logic is Yang.

Freedom is Ying, where restriction is Yang.

This fence is on the very edge of the South Head entrance to Sydney Harbour. You can see North Head in the backgroud. In the lower photograph, you can see the location of the detailed shot, in the extreme left top of the image.

This post is part of the Friday Fences community.

The wreck of the Dunbar

In atrocious conditions on the evening of Thursday 20th August, 1857, the clipper 'Dunbar' approached the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Having successfully navigated the journey from England to Sydney just three years earlier, Captain Green felt in control.


However, with visibility less than 100m due to the driving wind and squalls, he misjudged the entry, and the ship floundered at the base of South Head, with the loss of 58 crew and 63 passengers. Just one person survived - James Johnson. There is a memorial here at South Head, and another at St Stephen's Church at Camperdown. Collected relics are also on display at the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour. The siting of the red-and-white striped Hornby Light on the tip of South Head, is a direct consequence of this shipwreck.


A member of the Skywatch Friday community.

This could be worth a look

Bust of Governor Arthur Phillip, in front of the MCA at CQ

Each week in May, we tramped the city trying to recreate in our mind's eye what the landscape looked like when the first settlers arrived and for, say the next 22 years until the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810. So what did the first governor, Arthur Phillip go on when he sailed out of Botany Bay looking for a better site to found a penal colony, one that offered more protection and fresh running water?


He HAD to have sailed up this stretch of coastline along South Head, saw a likely opening and nipped in for a look-see. Maybe there have been imperceptible changes to these cliffs. 'Here's a go lads. Let's have a captain-cook in there.'


Ahh, changes to the plateau, but not necessarily to the cliffs. Up on that plateau, both Phillip and Macquarie, and the governors in between, stationed lookouts. They were looking out for supply vessels for food and for word from 'home'. Run a flag up a pole or light a fire, and pretty soon those folk down at the cove would see the signal. The signal station and the lighthouse are in the spots of the originals. There is a coastal walk right along these cliffs.


See the CBD and the bridge way off there in the distance? The signal from South Head got there fairly quickly. As the crow flies, it is about 8 miles. But try to remove all the man-made structures. This is a massive drowned valley, as deep and as wide as the Grosse Valley in the Blue Mountains. It was heavily wooded, mainly with Terpentines which are a variety of eucalypt (gum).


So Phillip in his row boat with his soldiers straining like banshees at the oars, rowed around the tip of South Head. Around where the Hornby Light now stands in all its barber-shop gaudiness. Do a mental Photoshop and take the layer out that contains anything manmade. But but but ... be careful with the colour green that you use to replace that layer.

Lycett's aquatint the property of the Dixon Library, State Library of NSW

One Joseph Lycett tried to reproduce what he saw on South Head in about 1825. Still pretty wild and wooly. But he got the green wrong. This is the green that you might see in fields in England. In Australia, the natural green is more olive or grey-blue. Not sure about the vegetation that Lycett has included either. Yes there is a lot of stunted scrubby stuff out on South Head. It catches the full force of the southerly winds which are laden with salt. But, there are eucalypts out there, too.

It was a gutsy call by Phillip.