get to the point

lighthouse
Originally uploaded by Auswomble

Where to go, where to go, where to go...? Last night I looked back over a few runs I've done before and discovered that a looped run to Cremorne Point and back would see me hit my average mileage so, after walking the dogs and leaving AJ with mum, I grabbed a homebrew gatorade and headed out. Not a super early start, but I'd not want to have left it too much later than 8:30; run would be about a 90minute round trip and it was not looking like there would be much in the way of cloud cover today.

When I first moved to Australia, 11 years ago, I lived in Neutral Bay and would walk to Cremorne Point to get a ferry to work. It would take longer to get a ferry to work than a bus, but hey, I was getting a ferry to work, and that rocks. I would occasionally run around the point and back then it seemed like a bloody long way. A couple of times I swam in the Macullum pool, which has been there and free since the 1920/30s. I've watched the new year's eve fireworks from Cremorne Point and now live about 5km from there in a house, the cost of which would likely get you a small parking spot here. It really is awfully pleasant (he says in his plumiest British accent.) There is a bit about Cremorne Point here.

So, down the road, around the top of the gully, over Cammeray and the Golf Course and down to the point. It was all picture-postcard Sydney on the Harbour today. Blue sky and water, yellow and green ferries, city skyline, Opera House, Harbour Bridge, cruise liner tied up at the quay, yachts. In fact the only thing to spoil the scene was a little bald bloke, huffing and puffing his sweaty way along the footpath. I'm glad they decided to make Cremorne Point a reserve and not a coal mine.

At the very end I went down the metal ladder to the small lighthouse that I took a picture of in Aug 2008 and not today, but it looked just like that today. Then I turned for home. To mix it up a bit I headed home via Primrose Park, playing fields where a sewerage treatment plant had once been. According to North Sydney Council....

Originally an estuarine bay, in 1899 the land on which the sportsfields now stand became the site of North Sydney's first sewage treatment works. The sewage works closed in the late 1920s and the area was dedicated as parkland in 1930. The Park was named after HL Primrose, Mayor of North Sydney from 1926 to 1932, and later NSW Minister for Health.

Then to Tunks Park which is apparently reclaimed mudflats. Under Long Gully Bridge (built 1892) I followed the course of the creek back towards home, pausing a while to watch a few small fish, to enjoy just being there and to give the local mosquitos a morning snack. Back at the top of the gully (built on an old rubbish tip) I threw in a lap of Hallstrom Park at the bottom of the street, just to make sure I clicked over 16km. Glad I added a bit at the end because it gave me the opportunity to stop and watch a blue tongue lizard go about his lizary business, really very unconcerned by my presence.

I think I earned breakfast today.

Before I forget, the seized knee seems better. It must have been yesterday's intense not-stretching, not-icing and not-sleeping-with-my-feet elevated. Weird. Whatever runs up the inside of the leg from the ankle still grumbles as I set out, but by 3km it felt fine, so I think I'll just ignore it.