Pinchgut

There are nine islands in Sydney Harbour: Clarke Rodd Goat Garden Spectacle Snapper Shark Cockatoo, and Fort Denison. This is Fort Denison, originally known as "Pinchgut". It was a little mound of a thing, in the main channel, just off the end of Bennelong Point (where the opera house now is). The first colonial settlers banished to this island transgressors that they did not hang. Sans food. Hence, the colloquial name. The mound is no more, indeed, the island is covered with a tiny fort, with its Martello tower. It is very expensive to travel to. Hence, this is as close as I will take you.

I had walked the length of Lady Macquarie's Drive in The Domain. To say it has wonderful views is an understatement. The flowers, hardly native, were a delight, so I dropped to the turf for a photographic "fiddle".

Then I turned east to take a shot down the harbour, towards the heads (not in sight). This first headland, is the tip of Garden Island, which is no longer an island, a dry-dock having breached the gap in 1942. See the Manly Ferry way down stream, as it rounds Middle Head for the journey upstream to Circular Quay.