Northern Beaches

Today we made a trip to the Northern Beaches. We booked a car through a community car sharing plan called Charterdrive, much like Greenwheels in the Netherlands. It was a Smart forfour.

Our car

The ride took us all along the coast via Whale Beach towards Palm Beach. Along the way we made various stops to admire the view, take pictures and have coffee and lunch.

 
Whale Beach

Palm Beach is town with a beautiful beach where a lot of surfing goes on. It was not very busy today. Probably everyone went Christmas shopping.

A customs station was on the beach established in 1843 as the Headland marked the entrance to Broken Bay and the Pittwater which were considered to be the backdoor of Sydney for smugglers

The far end of the Beach, Barrenjoey Head is part of the Kuringgai National Park. On the head you can find a lighthouse, Barrenjoey lighthouse, constructed in 1881, constructed to either guide ships into the safe Broken Bay during bad weather, or alongside on their way to Sydney.

We took the steep walk up the hill to visit the lighthouse. A volunteer gave us a tour of the grounds and the lighthouse itself. The lighthouse is still in service, but instead of running on kerosene, it now has a 75.000 candlepower halogen lamp.

On our way back it started to rain. So we decided to take an alternate route back via Ikea to buy a few things we needed.

Tomorrow the removals company will bring the stuff we shipped.