“EVERY CRACKING TWIG IS ALMOST DEAFENING IN THE QUIET SURROUNDINGS”
LIKE many retired people I’m just itching to get overseas again and see how the other half are living. In the meantime, I’ve found plenty to explore in my own backyard in Manly. I’ve lived all my life on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and I’d heard stories as a child that there was once a track that led down through rugged bushland at North Head to Store Beach. The idyllic beach today is accessible only by water, but I was determined to find my way down over the headland.
North Head is rich in history. Shipping once dropped off supplies at Store Beach for the nearby Quarantine Station which was for many years a no-go area and accommodated only the very sick, infected during the 19th and 20th centuries with a host of deadly diseases that included smallpox, influenza, bubonic plague, scarlet fever, typhus and typhoid. Most of the dead were buried on the headland so
