Edgecliff to Bronte - 5th July 2018
The group met at Edgecliff Station at 9.30am.
Participants - Ron, Chris, Helen, Richard, Colin and Natalie
Along the Way:
Or lurks millennial Eden 'neath your face?
The paraphrase was suggested by Professor Manning Clark who believed that the poem
reflected the principal obsession of the intellectual community at the time - will Australia
become a country of corrupt, 'ill-gotten' wealth or will we create a paradise that will last for
1,000 years?”
Time Taken: 9.30 to 1.30 including morning tea at Centennial Park.
Distance: Richard and Natalie concurred that the walk was about 9.9km which rounded up is 10km!
The group met at Edgecliff Station at 9.30am.
Participants - Ron, Chris, Helen, Richard, Colin and Natalie
Along the Way:
- A beautiful sunny day for a walk.
- Trumper Park cricket ground named after Victor Trumper a famous cricketer. Greatest batsman before Bradman. 250,000 people lined the route of his funeral.
- The Trumpalar tree is a large Moreton Bay tree in Trumper Park, which became the centre piece of a children’s book “Riddle of the Trumpalar” where the tree became a window back in time.
- Walked past a pond and saw remnants of the Woollahra Municipal Quarry
- The ladies were delighted to see and hear 2 macaws squawking and flying in a small local park near a kindergarten.
- Further on we walked past the exterior of a block of flats that was used in the filming of “Number 96” from 1972-1977.
- Waked past wonderful shop fronts in Queen Street Woollahra-antiques, coffee, clothes, books, pubs
- Entered Centennial Park at the Paddington gates. Found a sunny spot for morning tea in the café outside. Saw statues of Sir Henry Parkes and at a long distance the statue of Charles Dickens.
- Saw the 2 canons dating from the Crimean War and the strange statue of a boy title “We Won” which is a celebration of rugby football.
- Walked down to the The Federation Pavillion
- Saw lots of birdlife around the ponds - swans, eels, ibis, ducks, moorehens
- Also saw some kookaburras and lorikeets further on
- Walked up to Queens Park and on to Waverley Cemetery. It was quite a steep hill climb.
- Walked past Henry Kendalls grave and exited the cemetery on the north side and headed to Bronte for lunch. The original cliff path has bene closed so all walkers must traverse the cemetery to get from Clovelly to Bronte.
- Lunch at a local café.
- Bus back to Bondi Junction Station and trains home for each of us.
- Interesting point was that Queens Park and Centennial Park were originally part of a swamp land and due to Macquarie’s planning, the area was set aside to became a second water supply for Sydney.
- And here is an explanation for the words on the outside the Federation Pavillion- “The inscription on the sandstone frieze of the Pavilion, just below the dome, 'Mammon or Millennial Eden', may perhaps seem a little perplexing to first-time visitors. The words are a paraphrase of questions posed in the poem Australia by Bernard O'Dowd, written in 1901-
Or lurks millennial Eden 'neath your face?
The paraphrase was suggested by Professor Manning Clark who believed that the poem
reflected the principal obsession of the intellectual community at the time - will Australia
become a country of corrupt, 'ill-gotten' wealth or will we create a paradise that will last for
1,000 years?”
- Glad we sorted that one out!
Time Taken: 9.30 to 1.30 including morning tea at Centennial Park.
Distance: Richard and Natalie concurred that the walk was about 9.9km which rounded up is 10km!