Besides spending a few days coming to terms with Elaine's diagnosis and considering the impacts thereof, Elaine spent most of Wednesday getting our Fiji article completed and loaded onto our website, while Roy completed a few more boat projects,  including cleaning the exhaust elbow and adjusting the v-belt of the port engine.

Today, however, was a day of fun. Angie collected us as scheduled at Echo Point Park, following which we made the short trip to her home to collect her mom and had the lovely surprise of seeing her son, Stephen, having last seen him as a toddler in South Africa.

Angie had selected the North Head Sanctuary in Manly as our destination for the day, followed by a trip into the town of Manly to have a light lunch, enjoy the promenade,  have a snoop around the Corso and take the opportunity to get some groceries.

Our visit to the North Head Sanctuary commenced with a coffee and some freshly baked delights at the Bella Vista Café while enjoying the stunning views over Sydney Harbour and getting introduced to a few of the "locals", the fauna and flora, many of which are endangered and unique to this part of Sydney. The sand dunes here support one of the few remaining patches of Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrubs. Once abundant,  now less than 3% remains. This area is home to the Rainbow Lonikeets, Little Wattlebirds and the Long Nose Bandicoots, the latter of which are now listed as an endangered population.

North Head, traditionally known as "Car-rang-gel", held special significance for the local Aboriginal people and was used for ceremonies and medicinal practices. From 1828, most of the headland was set aside to quarantine passengers on ships arriving in the colony.

More than 240 people were buried in the 3rd Quarantine Cemetery between 1881 and 1925, mostly dying from smallpox and bubonic plague. A visit to this cemetery took us on a winding trail through the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrubs, which occur on patches of nutrient poor,  aeolian dune sand and include small patches of woodland and low forest, with the wind-blown sand having been deposited many centuries ago and where wild plants like the Sunshine Wattle, the Flannel Flower and the Crowea flourish.

We also had the opportunity to enjoy the walk and spectacular clifftop views of the Fairfax Lookouts, before heading to St Patrick's Seminary completed in 1889, after land was granted to the Catholic Church on North Head to build a Cardinal's Palace, and, it is a palace indeed, with its beautiful sandstone walls and fabulous views overlooking Manly Beach.

During WWII, the whole of North Head became a major defence base, making it one of the most heavily fortified sites in Australia and where North Fort was constructed with concrete gun emplacements,  tunnels and an underground plotting room, with the associated Barracks built to house and train the army gunners. The base was subsequently relocated to Victoria in 1998.

Our day was wrapped up with a barbecue at Angie's,  where we had a second surprise of seeing her eldest son, David, who also demonstrated his expert skills after cooking the meat to "melt in your mouth" perfection.

After loading all our deliveries in the car, including a new barbecue, a few logistical manoeuvres in the dark got us to the Davidson's Park boat ramp where everything was safely loaded into the dinghy before returning to Paw Paw late tonight. 

Many thanks Angie for a fascinating and unexpected day of touring an area of Sydney we would not have had the opportunity to enjoy without our personal tour guide.