The knack of being inconspicuous ...

In 2007 I took a 4WD tour from Adelaide to Uluru for 10 days. There were 10 of us in the long-wheel base vehicle, including the driver. I was the only Australian on the tour, the other 8 were mostly European backpackers, with a couple of tourists thrown in. In general, Australians do not value, nor respect, their environment. They use it, for their recreation, but don't put a value on it.

Walter Burley Griffin [1876 - 1937] and Marion Mahoney Griffin [1871 - 1961] were Americans from the mid-west, who having won the design competition, lobbed in Australia in 1912 to bring their vision for our National Capital to fruition. Anyone who knows Canberra today, will acknowledge that Canberra is perfectly sited within its landscape. The design - drawn by Marion - uses the natural landscape to perfection. Each hillock has its special purpose and the river running through it echoes that same narrative.

The Griffins attempted to do the same with the Castlecrag peninsula, which was and is, a landscape of a totally different ilk. And the era was different. The Greater Sydney Development Association [GSDA], purchased an interest in the Castlecrag estate in 1921, and the Great Depression began to bite in 1928/9. However, the Griffin's love of the harbour landscape, its hilly precipices, its mossy gullies, and its water glimpses saw them develop designs that endeavoured to squat their domestic buildings into that landscape.

How long is a piece of string?

Before you can assess the length of that proverbial piece of string, it is necessary to find a beginning, and once found, an ending. My piece of string is a narrative - a story arc. Something that I scrabbled around in the dregs of this keyboard for all last week.

The fog may have risen, but that did not necessarily mean that I could see clearly now. I was still blinkered by a hankering after colonial-Sydney. Poor, silly me.

So I scheduled in some meanders around my new digs, sticking to streets, and paved paths so as not to cause my daughter unnecessary angst. I take my mobile with me, and give a return time. If I deplore being molly-coddled, then I have to think ahead. Not easy for the obstinant, and pig-headed, I do admit.

The arc of this small suburban settlement is determined by its physical attributes. Castlecrag sits upon a knobbly finger of peninsula that juts into Middle Harbour, barely 7kms north of the Sydney CBD. To understand the genesis, and growth of this glade, one must start from the natural world. Not a bad place to start.