Cabarita to Rhodes
Day 5: Cabarita to Rhodes
Being clear about your direction but relaxed about your destination is the great advice meted out to explorers and adventurers – no matter how humble. And so it proved on today's continuing westward jaunt around Sydney Harbour.
Started out in the dawn's early light at beautiful Cabarita Park – a mighty fine place to take in the sunrise. Sauntered around the pretty foreshores walk to Breakfast Point and Sydney Harbour's only remaining car ferry at Mortlake - under repair right now but soon to recommence operations.
Out to Anchor Lookout and Wangal Reserve, before more sublime waterside walking around Yaralla Bay. This Concord Foreshore Walk is a real gem - taking you to two further treasures of the Walker Estate - Yaralla House and Rivendell. Both superb harbourside mansions with lovely gardens made even better by the blooming jacarandas in peak season.
Once around Rocky Point it was then the excellent Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway with its excellent recounts of this WWII heroic turning back of the once invincible Japanese advance through the Pacific. After a bit of solemn reflection on the bravery and the tragedy of war, it was more intriguing strolling under the Ryde Road Bridge and the Parramatta Railway Bridge to an official end at Rhodes. As a BTW, how I wish some millionaire madman would erect an antipodean Colossus at the mouth of the Rhodes bay to emulate that forgotten wonder of the ancient world - of all the lost wonders the one I long to see most. That being said, the little ‘lost kid’ statues that currently line the bay are not bad...
A fine lunch and a mango smoothie at bayside Bare Witness (great food, great views, great value - highly recommended) meant that I decided to leave the long walk around the head of Powell Creek and the Olympic Park complex for the next leg.
So it was an unofficial crossing of the Bennelong Transitway Bridge (no bridges rule still intact) to catch the ferry back to Cabarita. Nothing beats a Sydney Harbour ferry ride on a beautiful Spring day! Ended with a wrap up cool down swim at the gorgeous harbourside pool at Cabarita. What a magnificent walk - 13 km or so of great views, well-made paths, gorgeous gardens, heaps of history and almost continuous waterside walking. All in a lesser known and little walked corner of the harbour. Wonderful!