Cockatoo Island

Not all of my activity ideas are raging successes. Sunday was a good example of that. I'd wanted to go to the beach, but the morning started off pretty rainy. So Toby convinced me to put that plan off for another weekend, but said we could do something else so the fun picnic lunch I'd prepared would still be put to good use.

The rain cleared up in the late morning, so I looked through my list of "Sydney activities" for a good picnic location. I've heard a lot about Cockatoo Island since we've been here: there are concerts and art shows there, and lots of school kids go on field trips to it. Reviews online also talk about the camping facilities, so I figured this might be a great place for us to check out!

To get to Cockatoo Island, we took the ferry over to Circular Quay. From Circular Quay we switched ferries. With 20 minute waits for each ferry, we were pretty excited by the time they arrived. 

Cockatoo Island, it turns out, is a weird mishmash of different things. Historically, it was first used as a convict housing area, where convicts mined the sandstone that could be sent back and used in the city. So there are some old convict housing buildings there. Then it was converted to shipyards, all through the war and up until 1991. So there are lots of left-behind pieces of machinery around the island. 

Now the island is mainly used to house art exhibits and shows in the old warehouse buildings. It's also set up for camping and glamping, and there are hundreds of tents in a row. It is a little odd.

We walked around the island for a little bit, but it became more and more obvious that if there wasn't an art show happening, you have to be really, really interested in old buildings to get a lot of enjoyment out of the area. It also was incredibly windy - so windy, in fact, that we had to hunker down in some stairs to try and have our picnic lunch. Not exactly what I'd intended!

There were some nice views though!

But before too long, we'd had our fill of the wind and the old buildings, so we headed back to the ferry. Unfortunately for us, a group of Scouts had the same idea and filled up the first ferry that came through. 

But we made it on to the next ferry! And even though the trip out was kind of long and sort of a bust, we still had fun. And we can say we've seen Cockatoo Island. My only regret? We didn't see a single cockatoo!