March 16, 2011

Beach day!

Beautiful Sydney morning mood as seen from our balcony:

Routinely we strolled down to the ferry stop. Sharon, Warwick et.al. were driving over to Manly, since they were leaving at around noon. Self portrait (and the Sydney central business district waterfront):

We chugged over to Circular Key to change ferry and take “the Manly fast ferry” (very creative name) to Manly. Finding out where it left was a challenge, the web site said wharf 6, but there was no information there. After inquiring with the locals we found out that it left just west of wharf 6, outside the whole ferry stop system, from a spot with no markings or information whatsoever. Strange, especially since the ferry only stops here briefly, en route from Darling Harbor to Manly.

The ferry arrived and people started getting off, and off, and off. After a couple of thousand people had gotten off the relatively small ferry, the boys and I started speculating that they had attached a large plastic tube to the boat on the other side, where people could enter the boat from a tunnel arriving under the water. Maybe we were on candid camera and the flow of people would never stop?

Finally on board, the catamaran ferry accelerated and after a short while we were flying along Syndey bay. We got some great views of the Opera from “the other side”:

and then the classic triple: Sydney central business district, the opera and the harbor bridge:

Manly is a suburb of Sydney, but really seems like a small town of its own. It is located 17 km (10.5 miles) from the center of Sydney and we covered the distance in a little over 15 minutes in this thing:

We strolled through the streets of Manly, with abundant shopping possibilities, until we reached the beach where we found our friends:

It was here that a certain William Henry Gocher claimed his 15 minutes of fame when he in 1902 swam in the middle of the day in defiance of local government regulations. In 1902 it was forbidden to swim during daylight hours for decency reasons. William wore a neck-to-knee suit, he was wise enough to not provoke more than necessary.

Man, the world has certainly changed over the past 100 years. It is simply mind-boggling how much social rules and ideas about decency have changed in some parts of the world the past century.

William must have been a PR pioneer, he staged the stunt to create buzz for his newly started paper “The Manly and North Sydney News.” Since the police did not stop him he repeated the stunt. Still no reaction, so he accused the authorities of being chickens. On the third attempt he was questioned by the police, but no charges were made. A year later the Manly council decided to allow all-day bathing, as the first place in Australia, provided that bathers wore a neck-to-knee costume, of course.

William didn’t seem to be successful in many other political or business aspects. His paper closed after a short time and his second paper started in Sydney a few years later suffered the same fate. He ran for a seat in the senate in 1901 and  ended up in 49th place, of 50 candidates.

But he did do this one thing which made him searchable on Google, remembered and written about on a blog 109 years after his stunt.

During the first full bathing season in 1903, the year after the ban was lifted, 17 people drowned on Manly beach. A year later a surf life saving club was formed to safeguard the public. Sounds like a good idea. This was possibly the first such club in the world.

The kids lived in the water all morning (Warwick and I count as kids), while the grownups suffered on the beach:

Us kids then built sandcastles

Peter demonstrates that very active children can also master the art of pure relaxation:

The buoyncy of the water made it possible for our teenager to sit on my shoulders one last time:

While we were building the sandcastles Peter came up from the water to show us what he had found. It was a bluebootle jellyfish. By chance he was holding it on the jelly part, which was only about 6-7 cm (3 inches) long, and he hadn’t touched any of the tentacles. Shame on me for not photographing it.

These cute looking jellyfish are known as Portuguese Man-of-War in other parts of the world. They can have tentacles up to 10 meters long. The tentacles are full of a nasty stinging venom that causes severe pain and causes red “whip” marks on your skin which lasts for 2-3 days. The tentacles are used by the bluebottle to kill small fish, shrimp etc.

Interestingly enough they are not one organism, but a whole colony of many small individuals of 4 different species. They live together in symbiosis and are so specialized none of them could survive alone. Nature is full of fantastic wonders.

They are very common here and more than 10 000 people are stung in Australia each summer.

Soon after a sign was set up by the lifeguard:

People continued bathing like nothing special was going on.

We said good-bye to Warwick, Sharon, Brooke, Harry and Peter. We will see them again in Brisbane.

After a good dose of ice-cream

we headed back to our apartment and some schooling.

Eirik

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