So, because it was entirely usual, the brothers from just up the road would come down to our place and hang about and we would join them. But my brother and I did not walk, run or do great things barefoot, like the brothers up the road. We had to wear shoes, in this case Dunlop Volleys. Jump into them, a rough tie and then running down the concrete footpath.
Brothers-up-the-road would run fast and well and their feet were broad and brown. They made slapping sounds running. The Volleys made unsatisfying sounds though gravity still worked for them. The first corner had a sandstone ledge and a pale green electrical transformer lived there making a hum. We had stood in front of the grill and listened to the hum and shouted into the greyness behind so many times it was not worth pausing and anyway it was all downhill on the footpath past this house and their strip of lawn and then that house and then a sudden pull-up at Parsley Road, the older brothers at the front and so on, or maybe no particular order, and with no cars the brothers-up-the-road would run across the bitumen.
You could turn right to the Bay, but that would mean missing the bridge and then you would not meet the rest, or no-one, or another gang of runners in thongs, shorts and t-shirts. No-one else had to wear Volleys.
It was flatter here but you ran on, grabbed a metal hand-rail, down steps that could be leapt by some, then a sloping laneway with fences both sides and a sort of blue gravel stuck together underneath the Volleys to the bridge.
Parsley Bay Bridge, very unlike the image here below created with CoPilot discussing my memories, but an engineering marvel of timbers oiled or painted and strung across a Sydney bay in summer when it was all downhill to get there and suddenly wide, deep-stained, hewn planks that made the best possible thwacks if you were not wearing Volleys.
The middle of the bridge was right over the water below. Looking down it was green-blue and brown, from the seaweed that loved Parsley Bay. This was the spot where, during the highest king tides, some had climbed up and jumped way down, without breaking legs. It was compulsory to stop right there from the running and look about. To the left a path that could be covered in water led to a couple of easy steps down into the water and then wider steps with a hand-rail rough with rust and slime into the deepest part of the bay, up against the shark net. This was where my grandmother swam most mornings, taking her pebble glasses off and pasting a rubber cap over her hair pinned up for the swim.
Beyond the net, a little pier of paler timber that was excellent for night fishing. Dinghies could tie up there but they were a damned nuisance when you were looking for fish around the barnacled pylons.
To the right, path and steps to the reserve where there was a continual cricket game using bins and poles and sticks for creases. The bay was too shallow for much fun and the water still and safe.
The reserve ellipsed up between sandstone with houses studded at the top to bush and a stream that turned into a pipe underground then a concrete street-water canal that ran to the side of the bay where people did not swim, unless they were visitors.
The end of the reserve had an access strip up to the road, and a large, shabby building that might sell an ice-block but seemed determined to fall into flakey disrepair. And almost hidden was a rough track that followed beside the stream, under tree shade and vines and all sorts of exotic shrubs that failed in back yards up to Hopetoun Avenue, named for the first Governor General.
We cared not at all about Lord Hopetoun but the track was a great destination for good reason. All sorts of things might be in the stream, washed in by summer storms up above from drains in the Governor General’s avenue and on up above that to the high road and the lighthouse. It was almost dusk under the tree canopy and there were lizards, birds and cats that ran away into sandstone cliff folds covered in scratchy shrubs. Bull-ant nests, chocolate wrappers, skinned and halved tennis balls and shreds of things all leading to Dead Man’s Cave, under Lord Hopetoun’s wide bitumen road kinked by the gully.
“An old guy hung himself in there.” Everyone knew. The little creek ran through the middle of the cave with a mouth wide enough for twenty old guys and then back into darkness with a fallen sandstone block here and there. I had been in a little way but the brothers-up-the-road had explored it all, with empty bottles, withered condoms, stained magazines and old bedding here and there amongst fire circles.
This was Sydney sandstone and there were many caves. People still lived in a few in other reserves and parks.
“Aboriginal burial ground.” Everyone knew.
Peter, who lived with a steep back yard up on the Crescent, had a stone axe and there were rock carvings you could trace with a finger when the tide was right. A whale on a flat slab on Bottle-and-Glass, a rock formation the Navy used for target practise in the early days.
Crown Land now with a management plan acknowledging the Birrabirragal people and now with native bushland. Because Sydney and especially those green fringes of the city were too expensive I missed the controversy about the playground dedicated to the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1912, from their converted fishing vessel the Kainan Maru that was moored in Parsley Bay. The remnants of the expedition built a slab hut in the Reserve and lived there with one surviving sled dog until they went to the Antarctic again, presenting a samurai sword to the councilman who let them use the Reserve. The sword is now in the museum and a handsome weapon it is.
The current council’s management plan has no mention of Dead Man’s Cave, nor the sound of bare feet on the timbers of the suspension bridge.
