The Harbour by Scott Bevan

Author:Scott Bevan [Bevan, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IF THE upper reaches of Middle Harbour Creek reminded me of Heart of Darkness, Bantry Bay is the antidote. For years, this gangly strip of harbour wriggling its way into Garigal National Park has been my escape from a heart of darkness, or a spleen of bile. It is where I have paddled to for years. For me, Bantry Bay is filled not with salt water but a magic potion that clears the head and refreshes the soul. Every time I paddle into it, I find it hard to reconcile that the bay is less than 10 kilometres from the CBD. This bay has allowed me to forget I am in a city. And it has reminded me to be grateful that I am in this city.

For one of the most serenity-inducing places on Sydney Harbour, it has a volatile past. From the 1890s, the New South Wales Department of Explosives used the shores of the bay as a storage base. For more than half a century, barges packed with the dangerous cargo would be towed out of Bantry Bay and down the harbour. Small ships would also head up to the bay to load explosives, with the last vessel making that voyage in the early 1960s. The storage facility shut in 1970, as housing crept closer.

The magazines remain along the western shore. They are stolid brick structures with thick iron doors and an unwelcoming presence. But just to make sure, one of the buildings wears a painted sign that is fading, but it still barks its message clearly: NO ADMITTANCE ON LAND. However, I have seen navy personnel bivouacking in the buildings, throwing open the iron doors at sunrise to let in the light and air, and the occasional fisherman standing on the prohibited shore, ignoring all rules and threats of fines in the hope of a tight line.

Strung along the middle of the bay is a series of public moorings. On weekdays, especially in winter, the buoys bob unused, but on weekends and in summer the bay hosts an archipelago of more than a dozen yachts and cruisers. The poet John Donne may have declared that no man is an island, but when in a boat, a man can pretend he is on an island, floating free of everyone and everything. I find it intriguing when I paddle through the Bantry Bay archipelago that people on their islands pretend I’m not there, that no other boats are there, that nothing and no one is there, except them. That is, until the aroma of coffee wafts across the bay from what looks like a floating can of Vittoria. Then no man is an island; rather, they are all caffeine lovers.

The gilded vision of the big coffee can gliding towards them is skippered by Garry White. Or, as he is better known among boaties in Middle Harbour, Garry the Coffee Boat Man. Each weekend, on public holidays, and throughout January when the harbour is heaving with pleasure craft, Garry putters across the water in his boat, waiting to be waved over by a mariner in coffee distress.

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