Sydney Part Two.

On Sunday morning we walked back to Circular Quay and took a ferry to Manly. Manly is a beach resort near the "Heads" (the entrance to Sydney harbour) and the ferry took half an hour to make the trip. Close to Manly the cry of "Dolphins!" went up and most of the passengers went to the port side to take a look. The locals stayed in their seats - this must be a relatively common occurrence.

Manly is a fairly typical tourist trap with lots of expensive shops, cafes and restaurants but its glory is its ocean facing beach which has a long ribbon of fine yellow sand and great waves crashing up the sand. There were hundreds of children representing a dozen or so swimming clubs having swimming, surfboarding and relay races all along the beach. Hundreds of parents were marshalling their offspring into groups ready to race. Mothers were standing by with towels and sympathy for the loosers. Olympic sized medals presented by local celebrities awaited the winners. You just don't see anything like this at Rosemarkie beach.

There was a corner of the beach left over for visitors and we booked 2 square feet of that and went to play in the waves. The crowd was constantly marshalled by whistle blowing life guards who shouted at us to stay within the flags. It's difficult to take grown men with red and yellow chequered skull caps tied on with ribbons seriously but they really were insistent that we would drown if we didn't stay between the flags. It was great fun.

That evening we met our tour group for the first time. They are mixed in every sense. The group is mostly Canadian, we are the only Scots and there are also English, Belgian and Americans represented. There are some big personalities and Stuart, the CEO, has had his hands full already.

The undoubted highlight of the first day as a group was a sailing trip around the harbour on an Admiral's Cup racing yacht. Several passengers including myself were delegated to turn the handles that trimmed the sail. Very important work. The consequences of an untrimmed sail could be disastrous. There was a brisk breeze and before long the yacht was tipped over at a scary angle and was banging along at a steady 12 knots. Every now and again, to avoid hitting the land, the yacht had to come about and go off in a different direction. This involved the sails needing trimmed and the rest of the 'crew' racing across from one side to the other in the instant that the boat was level. Then off we went again at top speed. We all took a turn at steering and Susan and I were both "awesome". This is a word that you here a lot down under. Charlie got the honour of steering us back under the Harbour Bridge to take us home.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Darling Quay and marvelling at some children hanging out of a building (see photos). Then it started to rain and we went back to the hotel to dry out. Another great day.