Sydney Ferries - the Super Cats

There are only four vessels in the "Super Cat" ferry class: the Louise Sauvage the Saint Mary McKillop the Susie O'Neill, and Super Cat 4. The top image shows the "Louise Sauvage" coming in to berth at Circular Quay. The lower image shows "Super Cat 4" motoring past Admiralty House (the Sydney Residence of the Governor General) on its way to Watsons Bay. These four ferries primarily run the Eastern Suburbs route, F7, which includes Elizabeth Bay, Double Bay, Rose Bay, and Watsons Bay adjacent to South Heah. These four vessels entered service between 2000 and 2001. Susie O'Neill was an Olympic swimmer. Louise Sauvage was a paralympic wheelchair-racer. Saint Mary McKillip was a Roman Catholic nun canonised in 2010. Then, I guess they ran out of names ... or something!

See the other ferry posts in this series: Sydney Ferries - First Fleet Class Sydney Ferries - More First Fleet Class Sydney Ferries - The River Cats Sydney Ferries - the Super Cats

4. What would I miss? Sydney's public transport ...

In October 2009, I had to surrender my Driver's Licence which I had acquired in August 1965 - my 17th birthday. Now that is a massive challenge, but it was done for medical reasons, and there was no arguing. To avoid spiraling into a slough of despond, my camera and I went more and more places. I learned the routes, and checked the timetables. I began to think nothing of changing lines, of changing modes. I qualified for the Seniors $2.50 per day card, and now I have a digital Opal card.

I would miss the public transport in Sydney. I travel by all three of these modes. I also travel by taxi because I have a disabled card that grants me a 50% discount. I know there are many people in this vast city who whinge about trains and buses being late, Who whinge about public transport being dirty, squashed, and smelly. That never occurs to me, but I travel out of peak hours. There is also a light rail system (aka trams) that the government is beginning to construct. So ... if I moved away from Sydney, I would miss the public transport.

Sipping riesling as the ship pulls away from the shore

If you recall back to Friday, I was taking you on an introductory tour of the new wing of the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Mordant Wing, donated by Simon, a businessman and philantropist. I pointed out the fourth floor sculpture garden where I could see people with something cold in their hand. I promised to take you up to see what THEY could see.


They saw variations upon this. I left about 730pm and the scene was becoming more beautiful as the twilight deepened. The cruise ship was the 'Regetta' which was playing '40s swing as the passengers sipped bubbly on the deck. Then the public address indicated that they were steaming over to Papeete, and out the harbour it went.

Wonderful sight. Just glorious. And my riesling went down well, too.

Sydney's ferries

This is the ferry, Scarborough, named after one of the vessels in the First Fleet which anchored in Sydney Cove in January 1788. This modern day incarnation is heading into Circular Quay with the Harbour Bridge behind, and beneath that the joys of Luna Park, which is on the shores of Lavender Bay.

8:50am,90mm, F11, 1/1000, ISO=500

Ship pulls away from the shore

And so endeth my bushwalk around Little Sirius Cove in the harbourside suburb of Mosman. I bought a chocolate paddle pop - one of my many addictions - and waited for the small zoo ferry (known as the 'Lady' class) to arrive from Circular Quay for another load of passengers. Our green and gold lady for today is the 'Lady Northcott'.

We chugged away from the Athol Street ferry wharf at the 'bottom' of the zoo, and as we slooped through the harbour, we were rapidly overtaken by the much larger ferry on the Manly run, 'Freshwater'.

My closing image is the obverse/yang of my opening image: I open with a view from the zoo to the city; I close with a view from the ferry to the bush that softens Taronga Zoological Gardens, with just the scar of the chairlift slicing through the bush.

Winter on the harbour

A long bow, I know, but still officially winter even though by our topsy-turvey reckoning the seasons change next week. We don't go for that solstice muck, but change our seasons by the calendar. I will irritate you northern-hemispherers further by claiming that our weather has been like this for most of August.

Taronga before the chair-lift

The good ole days weren't really, you know. I don't reckon.

Taronga Zoo has been clinging to a harbour cliffside since 1916, and from then until the very late '50s it was serviced by trams, either that or shanks's pony. Getting over there was the easy part: you went by ferry to bottom gate, or by car to top gate. If you went down, you had to clamber back up to your car. If you came by ferry it was the hard yards as you viewed the animals.


So, Taronga Zoo was serviced by a tram route that took visitors from the Athol Wharf up to the top gate, facilitating an easy ramble one-way only. As I meandered down the other day, I saw remnants of the tramway down Athol Wharf Road. See the image of the black bike? Look at the upper right quadrant and you will see a hook in the rockface for keeping the electric cabelling in place as the trams rattled along. I can find these everywhere now!


But Athol Wharf Road comes off Bradleys Head Road at top gate, and is a very steep incline as some of these images attest. More so than some of the trams could cope with. Three times they careered on down the road, past the wharf and into the harbour, having to be ignominously dredged out by crane. This happened in 1942, 1952 and 1958. This image shows the 1958 plunge.


The trams finished in the late '50s and buses took over the same route. They are still there, the buses. Plying their way from bottom gate to top gate, and thence to Mosman or to Balmoral Beach. I am unable to date the commencement of the chairlift, but here it is in all its glory.

Harbour biodiversity (3 of 3)

The Sydney Institute of Marine Science is a joint venture between the four Sydney-based universities and was established in 2006. It is housed in the old navy mine disposal station at Chowder Bay which is reached via Middle Head. Belinda here is deeply immersed in research on cuttlefish.


As well as research (they have 25 PhD's of research dangling from their jetty alone!) one of their major briefs is to engage with and inform the community. After a talk in one of their lecture rooms and a tour of their acquarium, we tucked into a wonderful lunch-box on the Clifton Gardens jetty before our ferry trip back up the harbour.
The next offering in this program by the Maritime Museum is a tour of all 8 lighthouses in the harbour on 19th August.

Harbour biodiversity (2 of 3)

Whilst the ferry, Proclaim, hove to, Dr Poore discussed with us some of the underwater life around the very popular (in season, of course) swimming beach, Neilsen Park, which is on the southern shore of the harbour. Much of the harbour foreshore is national park.

Neilsen Park is one of a number of harbour beaches that has a shark net.


This net has encouraged a growth in the population of a tiny variety of seahorse which uses the netting as a breeding ground. So many seahorse cling to it, that it gets too heavy to do its job properly and each off-season, is 'cleaned' by National Park rangers and UNSW researchers. Sydney Harbour is home to two species, the potbelly seahorse and the more common White's seahorse.

Just in front of the sandstone rocks, is an underwater 'field' of seaweed which has been infested by the Long-Spined Sea-urchin which breeds in warmer waters. Because the Eastern Australian Current is 2 degrees warmer over the last decade, this urchin has now spread as far south as Tasmania with disastrous effects on the more jungle like seaweed in those waters.

Harbour biodiversity (1 of 3)

With 60 others, I jumped aboard the Rosman Ferry Proclaim last week for a 5 hour cruise in acknowledgement of International Biodiversity Day. The National Maritime Museum and WEA, together with the University of NSW and the new Sydney Institute of Marine Science cruised us around a range of sites in the harbour to discuss its health and its marine populations.

It was a perfect autumn day to be on the water, and the stormy backdrop added considerably to the charm of the day.


As we chugged around west of the bridge, Dr Alistair Poore, from UNSW, chatted to us about the original shoreline and the impact on marine diversity of the alterations to this shoreline necessary as the city developed. He showed us sites where there was joint venture research between our universities to ameliorate the hard lines of much of the harbour foreshore.

Drifting down the river on a lazy afternoon

This retirement caper is a bit of a lark. A bit of oright ...

Here I was at the pointy end of one of the little red ferries that ply our harbour, the sky was blue, the breeze was there, but less than fresh, the temperature hovered in the mid-20s. A nice lad brought me sandwiches and a cuppa.

Simply messing about on the harbour.


From the National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, we crossed the main channel then nipped up the Lane Cove River. There was little in the way of autumn colours, so we drooled over the waterfront houses of the first half of the 20th century.

A thing of beauty is a joy ... until renovated!

Built in 1912 and decommissioned in 1983, White Bay was a coal-fired power station built to add more electricity to the Sydney grid with the extension of the urban train system and the immense popularity of the tramways system. The site covers 3.9 hectacres of land about 4km from the city centre. It is located in the suburb of Rozelle on the shores the Bay. It is no longer accessible to the public although occasionally the Historic Houses Trust conducts tours but, as with tours of the Tank Stream, these tours sell as rapidly as Carols at Kings!


The skeletal remains have settled further into the primordial slime since '83. That is a long time with no decision on the future of the site. In 2000 ownership passed from the NSW Electricity Commission (its heirs and successors forever!) to the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority for a mere $4m AUD. Its zoning means that it cannot be used for housing.

Hah ... that is why it has sat there that long! Waiting for a rezoning. Glad that Frankie Sartor no longer has control of that particular function of state government. See what I can see in this final image? A graveyard for old boats: Kanangra, Waratah, John Oxley. Now where did I put those fencing wire snippers?

A remarkable lightness of being

As the compellingly craggy Lloyd Rees drew to the end of his long life, his eyesight dimmed to a perception of light - and this is what he transferred to the canvas. There are some heart-stopping renditions of Sydney Harbour, September Sun being one. Chugging across the top of the harbour swell and through the wake of vessels gone before me, the sun and the salt combine to heighten my own perception of the light being absorbed around me.Time is in neutral: mid-week journeymen have no need for hustle, no use for bustle. They have the patience to listen, to look, to watch and to think. Out on the deck, the breeze whistles around the collar as the shadows of the grey girders lengthen into the afternoon.People watching is a guilty pleasure enjoyed by many at train stations and at ferry wharves. Pier 4 at Circular Quay is no exception. Woolwich service to the left: Milsons Point, McMahons Point, Birchgrove, Greenwich Point, Woolwich. Watson's Bay to the right: Garden Island, Darling Point, Double Bay, Rose Bay, Watsons Bay. We sit there absorbing the midday warmth, rocking gently with each rise and fall of the creaking wharf. We watch, smile, nod, acknowledge. A stir is caused by unattended baggage: a sign of that world out there that is not as far away as one would hope.The massive Manly ferry departs for its 30 minute journey out to the Heads with a gradual turn to the left. The River Cat commences it hour long journey under the bridge and up the Parramatta River. Smaller vessels ply their busy trade: tugs, taxis, fire trucks, police. Larger vessels tote for trade: square riggers, floating hotels, trashy paddle steamers all ready themselves for the evening. Evening on the harbour is like black ink: the light has gone.