Sweet Glory
Jul. 11th, 2004 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI had thought parking was tight in Sydney, but here it was a hundred times worse. And more expensive. But somehow we fluked a spot, after seeing an episode of what I might call "parking rage" between someone who had waited far longer than we had - he was waiting when we drove up to check the top car park and still waiting when we came back down - and a blow in who just happened to drive in and head for the momentarily empty space in the instant before the first driver selected Reverse and backed into it.
As it happened, there was no damage, a few rude words were exchanged, and the right guy got the spot. And we just breezed into one that opened up under our noses. I was relieved in the extreme, because the alternative would have been a long and hot walk up the hill.
"Where are the whales?" I asked of a fellow sporting a huge pair of binoculars as we arrived on the top and contemplated the endless expanse of ocean.
"Hard to see them amongst the whitecaps," he said "But there's whales out there alright."
He was right. It was whitecaps all the way out, and doing a search of the great sweep of sea with my dinky little pocket binos wasn't going to be much fun. I kept my eye on the few people who were leaning over the outlook railing with bigger equipment than mine, trying to aim where they were looking and maybe see what they were seeing.
Hard to spot anything, and I handed my binoculars to my son, hoping his younger and keener eyes could find a whale where I couldn't, whilst I absorbed the view.
The lighthouse sat on the highest point of the cape, a classic white-painted building in the distinctive Australian style. A convict architect, Francis Greenway, designed the first example in Sydney, and ever since then his style has been copied where at all possible. This example had been built in 1901, but its elegant shape (was and is) timeless. There were a few matching buildings nearby, one of which housed the Visitors Centre, and another a refreshment kiosk. If I had time, I would have ordered a cappuccino, sitting at a bench to drink in the view while I drank the coffee.
Southaways there was a long, long surf beach reaching out as the edge of Australia tapered away. In any other place, such a glorious expanse of sand would be a national marvel, attracting tourists, retirees, developers, high-rise buildings and sprawling shopping malls, but here, well it's just part of the view.
Northwards is the curve of Byron Bay, where the residents are a part of the environment, and the surfers mingle with the millionaires.
Cape Byron is the easternmost point of Australia, and there is a track descending steeply down to the very edge of the land. A cliff, if I remember correctly, but it was a kilometre there and back again, too long a walk at the moment.
Years ago, as a schoolchild, I had watched a movie about a team of young adventurers travelling right across the middle of the continent in a trio of Land-Rovers. They had leaned over the cliff at Steep Point on the extreme western edge of Australia, pulled up a bottle full of Indian Ocean, lugged it all the way across the deserts in the middle, and tipped it ceremoniously into the Pacific at Cape Byron. In between they had explored ghost towns from the old mining days, careered up, down and sideways through the sand dunes of the Simpson Desert, got bogged on a hundred outback tracks, skidded across dry salt lakes, stormed past Ayers Rock in the middle of a rare downpour, the water cascading down the red flanks in a thousand temporary waterfalls, driven the Birdsville Track, and revelled in the greenery as they neared the East Coast.
And now here I was where they had finished their adventure. I didn't have a bottle of distant seawater, but I had a journal that had travelled the world, passing through the hands and minds of people in lands that I could only dream about. And I had brought it here to one of the places nominated by a young lady in Vermont, part of a chain of Bookcrossers spanning the globe and stretching the imagination.
I called in my son to hold the book for me while I took a photograph to mark the occasion. Too windy here to let it go free, and if a gust snatched it away and down into the sea, I might as well throw myself after it. So there is my son, hair tousled by the wind, embarrassed before the eyes of a hundred tourists, holding up rubyjules' Bookcrossing Journal for a magic moment. How that little yellow running book gets around!
I stowed the journal away, took back the binoculars, and had a last look around the horizon.
"Look!" came a voice beside me, "Whales breaching up the coast."
It was one of the big-bino blokes, pointing out to sea, and I followed his line out to where a great splash of white showed clear against the blue. I aimed my binoculars at the spot, where the foam had died away, straining my eyes, ears, heart and soul to detect any glimpse of a whale.
And there it was. Sweet Glory, what a sight! Another flash of splash drew my eye and for one brief fantastic instant there was a huge grey body suspended in mid air, before falling back in an explosion of spray.
My heart was full. I could live and breathe, eat and drink on that sight for the rest of my life. I didn't need a photograph - that amazing image of a humpback whale flying through the air was permanently engraved.
I sighed happily and handed the binoculars to my son.
It was all a bit of anticlimax after that, but somehow the day was brighter, the winter sun brighter, and the air sweeter as I released a book, took a few more photographs, and walked back down the path to our car. With a cheery wave I pulled out and let another patient soul take my place, and we were back on the road through the increasingly lush green of Northern New South Wales.
As it happened, there was no damage, a few rude words were exchanged, and the right guy got the spot. And we just breezed into one that opened up under our noses. I was relieved in the extreme, because the alternative would have been a long and hot walk up the hill.
"Where are the whales?" I asked of a fellow sporting a huge pair of binoculars as we arrived on the top and contemplated the endless expanse of ocean.
"Hard to see them amongst the whitecaps," he said "But there's whales out there alright."
He was right. It was whitecaps all the way out, and doing a search of the great sweep of sea with my dinky little pocket binos wasn't going to be much fun. I kept my eye on the few people who were leaning over the outlook railing with bigger equipment than mine, trying to aim where they were looking and maybe see what they were seeing.
Hard to spot anything, and I handed my binoculars to my son, hoping his younger and keener eyes could find a whale where I couldn't, whilst I absorbed the view.
The lighthouse sat on the highest point of the cape, a classic white-painted building in the distinctive Australian style. A convict architect, Francis Greenway, designed the first example in Sydney, and ever since then his style has been copied where at all possible. This example had been built in 1901, but its elegant shape (was and is) timeless. There were a few matching buildings nearby, one of which housed the Visitors Centre, and another a refreshment kiosk. If I had time, I would have ordered a cappuccino, sitting at a bench to drink in the view while I drank the coffee.
Southaways there was a long, long surf beach reaching out as the edge of Australia tapered away. In any other place, such a glorious expanse of sand would be a national marvel, attracting tourists, retirees, developers, high-rise buildings and sprawling shopping malls, but here, well it's just part of the view.
Northwards is the curve of Byron Bay, where the residents are a part of the environment, and the surfers mingle with the millionaires.
Cape Byron is the easternmost point of Australia, and there is a track descending steeply down to the very edge of the land. A cliff, if I remember correctly, but it was a kilometre there and back again, too long a walk at the moment.
Years ago, as a schoolchild, I had watched a movie about a team of young adventurers travelling right across the middle of the continent in a trio of Land-Rovers. They had leaned over the cliff at Steep Point on the extreme western edge of Australia, pulled up a bottle full of Indian Ocean, lugged it all the way across the deserts in the middle, and tipped it ceremoniously into the Pacific at Cape Byron. In between they had explored ghost towns from the old mining days, careered up, down and sideways through the sand dunes of the Simpson Desert, got bogged on a hundred outback tracks, skidded across dry salt lakes, stormed past Ayers Rock in the middle of a rare downpour, the water cascading down the red flanks in a thousand temporary waterfalls, driven the Birdsville Track, and revelled in the greenery as they neared the East Coast.
And now here I was where they had finished their adventure. I didn't have a bottle of distant seawater, but I had a journal that had travelled the world, passing through the hands and minds of people in lands that I could only dream about. And I had brought it here to one of the places nominated by a young lady in Vermont, part of a chain of Bookcrossers spanning the globe and stretching the imagination.
I called in my son to hold the book for me while I took a photograph to mark the occasion. Too windy here to let it go free, and if a gust snatched it away and down into the sea, I might as well throw myself after it. So there is my son, hair tousled by the wind, embarrassed before the eyes of a hundred tourists, holding up rubyjules' Bookcrossing Journal for a magic moment. How that little yellow running book gets around!
I stowed the journal away, took back the binoculars, and had a last look around the horizon.
"Look!" came a voice beside me, "Whales breaching up the coast."
It was one of the big-bino blokes, pointing out to sea, and I followed his line out to where a great splash of white showed clear against the blue. I aimed my binoculars at the spot, where the foam had died away, straining my eyes, ears, heart and soul to detect any glimpse of a whale.
And there it was. Sweet Glory, what a sight! Another flash of splash drew my eye and for one brief fantastic instant there was a huge grey body suspended in mid air, before falling back in an explosion of spray.
My heart was full. I could live and breathe, eat and drink on that sight for the rest of my life. I didn't need a photograph - that amazing image of a humpback whale flying through the air was permanently engraved.
I sighed happily and handed the binoculars to my son.
It was all a bit of anticlimax after that, but somehow the day was brighter, the winter sun brighter, and the air sweeter as I released a book, took a few more photographs, and walked back down the path to our car. With a cheery wave I pulled out and let another patient soul take my place, and we were back on the road through the increasingly lush green of Northern New South Wales.
