Berowra Waters and Quality

Back into Sydney on Tuesday to pick up a telescope which we’ve decided is the ideal house-warming gift for people who have a beachhouse with a view in every direction. If they’re lucky, they’ll spot whales travelling up the east side of Australia, and perhaps dolphins or sharks closer in shore. There was a heart stopping moment on the beach when ominous triangular fins approached a surfer, but a more knowledgeable onlooker assured us they were dolphins, and nor sharks.

I was hoping to find the same didgeridoo player on Circular Quay this year, but so far I've not been lucky. The sound echoes all around the Quay, and you just follow it to the source. Qualty of playing varies, but the one I'm looking for is good -it's just a pity I don't remember his name! try this as a sample: Click

Yesterday we took the car down to Berowra Waters, which turned out to be a stretch of water that links, several miles away, with the sea. The road down was single-track and hacked out of the side of a cliff, so not a good journey for those who suffer from vertigo, though the steepness of the drop of was obscured by masses of very tall, very straight trees. Foliage seems to flourish only in the top section of the tree, so they’re very different to trees back home.

There’s a ferry at the bottom so on we drove and were gently ferried across to the other side where there is a restaurant, a shop and lots of power boats tied up in the marina. We ate our sarnies, fed two ducks and generally nosed around watching boats come ashore, pick up supplies and move off again. Some young lads had trouble with an engine that refused to start. It was very quiet. Fish jumped, herons fished and the sun was exceedingly hot. We debated driving further, enticed by the road sign that said Wildlife Crossing, but checked the map and decided against it. Distances are something else here.

NB There's a small book here entitled Writing a Novel. Glancing through it I noticed this in the first chapter:  "Quality is the indefineable mystery of writing, the relationship between words, which is as much the product of the space between words as the words themsleves." It goes on: "A good writer is someone who can see quality in the world and can somehow translate that onto the page." Something to ponder in a quiet moment while I wait for the man who checks house alarms to arrive.