Given the size and importance of Sydney Harbour I booked my self on one of the Sydney Harbour Tours run by a company called Captain Cook Cruises.  It was a half day trip called a Coffee Cruise (Coffee and Cakes were served at the mid point) and was just long enough to get around the full harbour without time starting to drag.

The Coffee Cruise left from Circular Quay and while waiting I photographed some of the varied boats that could be seen in the busy harbour.

In the mix of piers, ferries etc. in Circular Quay it never proved possible to get a decent photograph of the boat I was travelling on.  However, as we pulled away from the ferry terminal it is possible to see just how complicated the area is with an elevated rail line and an elevated expressway as well as all the different types of boat.

Once we had got away from the crowded terminal area at Circular Quay we made an anti-clockwise circuit of the harbour, this meant our first point of note was the Sydney Opera House.  You can see from the sky in this shot that the weather was going off.

This peninsula is called Mrs Macquaries Point and it is named for wife of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821.  A feature of the peninsula is Mrs Macquarie's Chair which is an exposed sandstone rock cut into the shape of a bench.

The cruise then crossed the mouth of Woolloomooloo Bay which contains the Naval Base.  The big ship is L100 HMAS Choules that served with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) as L3006 RFA Largs Bay until purchased by the Royal Australian Navy in 2011 at an attractive price I was told.  It was tied up after an electrical transformer involved in the ship's propulsion system failed and it is now waiting for a replacement part - perhaps they should have taken the "Extended Warranty"

On the other side of the boat could be seen Fort Denison a former penal site and defensive facility occupying a small island in Sydney Harbour.  The fortress features a Martello tower, the only one ever built in Australia and the last one to be constructed in the British Empire.  The Fort is now a museum and tourist attraction.

Next we came to one of the most expensive harbour side communities in Sydney (apparently a certain Mr Murdoch owns one of them but the blinds are down and nobody has been seen around the place).  The second photograph shows one of the modest properties to be found in the area.

We then sailed to the harbour mouth, the boat I was on was too small to get any closer but the larger ships used for more extensive cruises get right out into the ocean.

After sorting this out we continued back into the harbour following the Northern shore.  There is another expensive harbour side community on this side as well.  The first photograph is of a modest modern design property (if you have to ask you can’t afford it).  The second photograph shows typical properties along a headland, some properties have escalators to avoid the long climb from the water to the house.

At this point the Coffee and Cakes were served and suddenly I felt like I was in a Hitchcock movie.  The crew must either raise a flag signal to warn them or else the birds have a copy of the timetable, there was suddenly quite a mass of them.

Then we cruised past what seemed to be a popular party beach, they were clearly not particularly bothered by the lack of sunshine.

As you cruise around the harbour there are still a number of gun emplacements to be seen at various places both on and in the rocks.

The cruise then went past Admiralty House is the official Sydney residence of the Governor-General of Australia.

And finally the cruise went under the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a short trip on the other side, this is a view looking back at the bridge and the Opera House.

The sky in the above photograph looks quite threatening and within a few minutes it was pouring down.  The worst of the weather wasn’t over Sydney, there was a major hail storm in the Blue Mountains with up to six inches building up on people’s roofs.

Go to the Blue Mountains page

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