Australian is Manly

Few days ago I started a very interesting book on beginning of British settlement in Australia (“Dancing with strangers”). Against the old habits Inga Clendinnen has named only the indigenous People Australians –that is the ones we usually call Aborigines. And while having a picnic on the nice beach on the strange land Captain Phillip and his officers met those Australians. They even didn’t think about sharing a food with locals, they wanted to eat what they had in peace :). He drew a circle on the sand around them and gestured that Australians should stay out of it. Nevertheless Captain was so much impressed by the size of man he met there that he decided to call the place Manly

(There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supportshiskingon loyal principles and cuts off hishead on republican principles..."— Shaw, George Bernard)

And just after I flipped through the pages on that story our friends invited us to have a picnic there :) From Epping with one change from bus number 290 to 144 at St Leonards station it took us around 2 hours to get to Manly. Sometimes I think whether we still live in Sydney or maybe I still didn’t get used to the size of this city. It is amazing to think that since the time when first fleet has reached the shore of Australia till now passed only 2 centuries and White People managed to change so much. British are very effective :) In my opinion only some rocks from the steep hills around the beach and maybe one of those mighty pine trees along the coast remember the picnic of Captain Phillip.

The waves were huge. The Ocean has its own way of treating the tourists. It is neither a lake nor a sea. It is something what is very moving. It hits you in the back, brings salt into your eyes, makes you fall down into the sand and it does it again and again :), so I decided to conquer the waves - some people do windsurfing, some of them do kite surfing and I stretched out myself and I did a body surfing and it feels simply great when you start to slide over the wave on the right time :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Glorious / Disgraceful Tuesday 19 June 2018

Igatsus

Snow of Irritation