Can a family have old-fashioned fun in the era of high tech? Let’s give it a go
As we approached the far bank I spotted something poking up from the water. We got close and I saw it was a flipper, sticking straight up in the air and attached to ... oh no
The boys were slaying zombies on the computer when I went over to tell them about the plan for a weekend away – an impromptu family short-break to a place on the water, where there was no broadband internet and our time would instead be spent on wholesome things like board games, picnics, reading, kayaking and fishing. It would be just like a Famous Five adventure, I told them.
“What ho, Father, it’s a ripper idea!” said the 11-year-old, catching on quickly. His 14-year-old brother hit pause on The Walking Dead, slipped off his VR headset and said, “But what about Timmy?” We turned to look at the dog. (He’s not actually a Timmy, he’s a black labrador named Rufus, and his tail had started wagging at the sudden attention.) “Well, I’m afraid the place we’re going to has a no-pets policy,” I said. “But there’s always the kennels. It’ll be a holiday for Timmy too!” “HURRAH!” the children chimed.
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Enid Blyton never set foot in Cottage Point, but she probably would have loved the place. Nestled in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Sydney’s north, it’s a collection of a few dozen dwellings – old fishing shacks, weatherboard weekenders and a smattering of fat-cat shag-palaces – perched on a steep-sided headland overlooking a beautiful waterway. It’s Sydney’s smallest suburb (pop. 96), and while only 45 minutes’ drive from the CBD it’s a world away from city life: an isolated outpost surrounded on all sides by gum forests, sandstone cliffs and quiet waterways, with one road in and out – although there’s always the seaplane service, if you’re going for the eight-course degustation, $200pp, at the classy Cottage Point Inn. You’re 5km away from the nearest municipal street lights when you stay overnight at Cottage Point. You need to bring your own drinking water, and take away your own rubbish. And as for 5G internet, forget about it (for now, at least; a telco mast is being built and should be in service within months).
We knocked off work early on the Friday and drove in through the national park as the sun was setting. After parking up, we took the “inclinator” – a sort of alfresco elevator – for the final 100m down a vertiginous slope to our Airbnb rental, a sweet weatherboard on the water’s edge with a boatshed underneath. The first night, after a quick supper, the children drank ginger beer while Mother and I drank beer beer and we started a game of Monopoly that would tick along until the Sunday morning. That night we fell asleep looking out the bedroom windows at the masts of moored boats, silvery poles swaying gently in the moonlight.
In the morning, Mother baked a loaf of soda bread (she’s of Irish stock, though not the Traveller sort, as Enid might say) and we scoffed it with butter and jam on the sunny balcony. I lobbed a crust in the water and some nice bream rose to gobble it. This gave me an idea. “Come on children, let’s go fishing!” We trooped down to the pontoon and I explained the tactics. “Now, boys, a bream has a brain the size of a hazelnut,” I said. “But most of that grey matter is given over to suspicion. So we must gain these fishes’ trust – gently, patiently – by trickle-feeding them lots of tiny pieces of bread for 10 minutes or so.
“Then, just when they are satisfied that we are their new best friends, we will betray their trust by lobbing in a big piece of bread squeezed onto a hook and letting it drift unweighted down the water column.” It’s a fishing technique that I like to call Oooh You Rotter, and it really works. Within no time we had reeled in two fat bream, which were released after photos.
The agenda for the rest of the day had one thing on it: Nothing. It’s lovely doing Nothing sometimes, isn’t it? We read for a bit, had a picnic lunch, noodled on the guitar, played Connect 4 and gazed through sunnies at the passing boat traffic – everything from kayaks and tinnies to serious ocean-going vessels from Cottage Point’s Kuring-Gai Motor Yacht Club (est. 1945). It’s a beautiful bit of water, this: the spot where Cowan Creek meets Coal & Candle Creek and they slow-dance towards the mighty Hawkesbury River.
“I can see a few caves up there,” said Mother, nodding towards the sandstone cliffs that punctuate the headlands all around us. “I would imagine they’re used as hide-outs by smugglers,” she added, casting a sly glance towards the children. The 11-year-old looked interested. “Yes! Or perhaps by some local ruffians,” he piped up. “Shall we go and explore them, Father?”
But Father couldn’t be arsed, not today. Father wanted to sit there eating strawberries on the patch of grass by the pontoon, reading his book about Apollo 8. This was a precursor mission to the first Moon landing seven months later, but equally ballsy. Apollo 8 was the first time mankind had ever left Earth orbit – the three astronauts rode their rocket to the Moon, circled it 10 times, then blasted home again. “Fun fact,” I said to the boys. “They navigated by taking bearings off the stars with a sextant – the same technology used by seafarers going back to the 1700s.” The 14-year-old looked at me mock-quizically. “But Father, it’s the early 1950s. What’s all this talk of rockets to the Moon?” You had to hand it to him.
The next morning, the youngest announced that he wanted to kayak to the opposite shore of Cowan Creek, 400m away, as a test of courage. So we kitted up and paddled over there, sunlight speckling off the water, the calls of whipbirds ringing out in the calm air. As we approached the far bank I spotted something poking up from the water. We got close and I saw it was a flipper, sticking straight up in the air and attached to… Oh no. A dead seal. It was floating just under the surface, no movement. I called out to warn my son, a sweet kid who loves animals, and he was about to burst into tears when the seal did a Lazarus: it suddenly stuck its whiskered face up and stared at us intently. “It’s ALIVE!” we rejoiced. And for the next 10 minutes it frolicked in the water right in front of us, rolling onto its back and scratching its belly, yawning, and squirming around like a puppy on a warm rug. It felt like our very own Attenborough Moment.
“That was one of the best things I have ever seen,” the kid said to me as we paddled back. I stored that one away in the little box of treasures in my dad-heart.
We had to check out by noon, so we packed up then went for brunch at the Cottage Point Kiosk (café-style grub, good coffee, lovely location on a deck overlooking the water). Then, bidding adieu to Cottage Point, we drove to the kennels to pick up the dog. He was so happy to see us, his thick lab tail thumped the side of the car like a bass drum. “Oh Timmy, what adventures we’ve had!” said the 11-year-old, hugging Rufus’s neck.
“Can we just get home now? I want to WhatsApp my friends,” said the 14-year-old, who was starting to tire of all this Famous Five nonsense.
“Yes, and once we’ve got broadband WiFi again we’ll be able to slay zombies, too!” added his little brother.
“Woof!” said the dog in agreement.
“HURRAH!” we all chimed, and drove home.
Checklist
- Getting there: Cottage Point is a 45-minute drive from central Sydney – or you can fly from Rose Bay: seaplanes.com.au; sydneyhs.com.au
- Stay: Our cottage was $1100 for two nights. Find holiday rentals: aribnb.com.au; stayz.com.au. Or try the Cottage Point Inn, cottagepointinn.com.au
- Eat: The Cottage Point Inn offers à la carte and degustation dining. The Cottage Point Kiosk & Boat Hire is a general store and café, cottagepointkiosk.com.au