Day 1: Barrenjoey Headland to Collaroy Beach

Every great journey begins with a paddle in your hand. As such, I found myself at 5:00am down at Rozelle with the Molokai girls for a quick 2hr paddle around Cockatoo Island and back. After this warm-up, I was quick to change and head into the city to flag down the L90 bus up to Palm Beach.

4:40am is an early time to start the day, so the 2hr bus ride gave me a chance to have a bit of a snooze, check out the day’s maps and send a few emails. It didn’t feel like long before I disembarked at the familiar Palm Beach golf course at the northern end of Barrenjoey Rd, slung my day pack over my shoulder, and headed up the trail towards Barrenjoey Headland.

The Hawkesbury sandstone of Barrenjoey Lighthouse glows in the morning light

Despite paddling from Palm Beach many times, I’d never actually walked up to the lighthouse that is a great landmark to keep an eye out for when on the water. (Note: it took me one race around Lion Island where I kept circling, taking a line down the Hawkesbury River rather than back to Palm Beach to learn this). The lighthouse was built in 1881 on the headland marking the entrance to Broken Bay and Pittwater. It shares the space with a customs station established earlier in the 1840s to monitor any smugglers attempting to bring contraband into Broken Bay, considered the backdoor route into Sydney.

I was quick to bound up the hand-carved stone stairs of the Smugglers Track to the top, keeping ahead of a school holiday tour group so I could enjoy the stunning views over Broken Bay (almost) to myself.

View over Broken Bay towards the Central Coast

It was a beautiful morning, and I kept a look out across the expansive ocean for whale spouts, but there were none in sight, so after a quick poke around the historic lighthouse buildings and a bit of an explore of a few small trails on the headland, I turned my back on the Central Coast and headed down towards the sand dunes of Palm Beach.

The recent storms had thrown up a lot of debris, so I joined a few other holiday beachcombers looking for trinkets and picked up a couple of interesting pieces of driftwood. Halfway along the beach, I met a fisherman and his two sons. They were out fishing for Australian Salmon (called Kahawai in NZ) that come up from the cooler Victorian waters during winter. The morning had been a success, and the boys had already snagged a decent sized 50cm fish!

Looking at the map, the Cabbage Tree Boat Harbour was marked at the southern end of the beach. I thought this would be a good place to check out, as a potential safe option from a treacherous landing at the northern end of the beach (just ask Mandy!). Upon inspection, it was definitely calmer than further north, but I wouldn’t rely on it as a certain safehaven. The rock pool looked far more enticing!

First beach down, 20+ to go! A set of stairs took me up to Whale Beach Road that leads along Little Head and I admired the modern beach mansions adorning the headland. What a spectacular place to live! But one to enjoy when working from home.

Lifestyles of the rich and the famous

Whale Beach is quite short so it didn’t take long to make my way along the sand towards Bangalley Head, apparently the highest point on the Northern Beaches. I’ve found paddling alongside Bangalley Head quite difficult when heading north to Palm Beach on a summer’s day – the NE wind chop bounces back off the rocky headland making your ama jump about. It didn’t look that bad at all today as I peered out from the clifftops! The high point provided a good vantage of the beaches to the south – I could pick out Avalon, caught a glimpse of Bilgola and then Newport over the next headland, with Long Reef jutting out far in the distance. It felt like there was still a long way to go!

Avalon was the next stop, with its distinctive sloping headland, and familiarity born by the controversy surrounding the objections of the locals to the filming of Baywatch here in 1999. I took a break to visit the bakery (no coconut macaroons!) And found a great breakfast café, Nourished, that will be a must to return to.

Avalon Beach and distinctive headland

At Bilgola I found a group of teenagers marooned on the beach, resorting to building their own shelter for the night out of palm leaves. They looked like they were having fun, and I mentioned they’d have to get a few more fronds up before the impending storm broke. I suspect a retreat to ice-creams would be the outcome in the case of calamity!

Up and over the headland, I quickly spotted the distinctive reef that juts out from Newport headland (another place to keep an eye on when paddling along the coast). The map shows a separate rocky island, but there’s no way I’d be trying to get through there on my canoe.

Storm over Newport Reef

The houses seemed to get bigger along Newport, without becoming imposing – wow! It felt a bit naughty peering in through their backyards as I walked along the beach, but it was a window into a different world – I wondered who owned such beautiful houses and hoped that the owners were able to enjoy their great view.

By this stage the sun was quite low in the sky, casting a warm glow out to sea in contrast to the massing of dark clouds congregating offshore. It was a spectacular moment.

I followed the clouds around the Bungan Headland, taking more photos as I went. Bungan Headland has an interesting role to play in Sydney's history. In 1942 during the Second World War, 3 Japanese midget submarines slipped into Sydney Harbour. Only 1 was able to fire its torpedoes and hit the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul taking 21 lives. Two of the subs never made it out of the harbour, but the third mysteriously disappeared. It wasn't until 2006 that the remains were discovered, with the bodies of the crew still on board, off Bungan Head, Newport.

I was so caught up in the view that I almost missed Bungan Castle. It looked like a place with a story, but unfortunately there was no one there to tell me about it, other than a sign that read “Bungan Castle – 1919 – Private Property”. Not a place to explore! I was pleased to have finally worked out where this mythical castle was – after our paddling session the previous weekend Amanda asked me if I’d seen the castle, and others had also referred to it when trying to spot Mona Vale Basin from the water.

That was part of the fun of this trip – tying together a mixture of places that I’d visited before, or heard of separately. Now I had a map in my mind of the Northern Beaches and how all of the features connected. Hopefully this will help when navigating out on the water.

Bungan beach was the wildest beach I came across. It may have been that evening was setting in and that the clouds continued to threaten, but it also had no carpark, and no easy access. A lone surfer made his way out to the break.

I’d enjoyed the distractions of the day – plenty of photographs, explorations of all the rock pools and a few coffees at nice cafes – but combined with a late start, had eaten into my time. I looked up at Mona Vale headland in the darkness and decided to take a short cut to Collaroy where I was meeting Lisa for dinner and a movie. The L90 appeared on the horizon, and I was aboard, completing the final 7km in a matter of minutes, rather than hours. It seemed a shame to just zoom past Mona Vale, Warriewood and Narrabeen, when they deserved the same detailed attention I’d applied to the more northern beaches. But as the storm broke, and my tummy rumbled for dinner, I knew I’d made the right decision. It’s a section of the walk I’ll definitely return to!