A Tennessee Girl in Oz: Happy bday on Q Station

I had some birthday and Christmas money saved up, and an item that's been on my "want to do" list for a while. So I decided that my birthday weekend was the time to bring those things together! And it ended up being such a perfect and fun weekend!

My "want to do" activity was going to the Quarantine Station hotel in Manly. So the Friday before my birthday, we caught the ferry after work and headed to Manly. From there, we caught a cab up to the fenced-off historic area of the North Heads, where all the travelers suspected of having disease used to be quarantined. Now all of the old lodgings have been refurbished and turned into nice lodgings for families and the like. The other old buildings, like the kitchens, hospitals, and administration buildings have either been turned into museums or part of the hotel.

T checking out a map of the grounds

No outside cars are allowed on the grounds, so we got from the front gate to our our room via shuttle.

Here we go!!!

I didn't really know what to expect. I'd booked a room online, but I wasn't prepared for how much of a camp it looked like.

The old second class lodges

But our room was really fun! In keeping with the original structure, the bathrooms were across a little walkway and separate from our rooms. We had a key for our own bathroom area; just like the olden days, I guess.

That walkway between our room and bathroom

One of the reasons I was super excited about our stay here was because a lot of the old buildings have been turned into museums. There are lots of signs describing how the buildings were used in the 1800 and 1900s, when immigrants were housed there after arriving in Sydney.

The ladies sewing area in the First Class passenger lodging

First Class kitchens in the lounge room

During our stay, we learned that the station was built in the 1830s, when smallpox was the biggest threat to Australia. At that point, any ships that were suspected of having smallpox or other disease on board had to go into the quarantine cove instead of the main Sydney harbor. The station started off very small, but was built up to hold hundreds of people. And not just hundreds of people, but all "classes" of people: the First Class passengers got the biggest rooms of course, but even the Third Class lodgings were pretty decent. A lot of the immigrants that stayed there felt like it was a holiday, having three square meals a day, going to the beach, etc. Of course, for the really sick people, I'm sure that it was not; about 600 people died at the quarantine station through the years. And most surprising to me, the station only closed in 1984. Of course it hadn't had massive groups of people staying there for many years, but I still was surprised it was closed so recently.

One of the restaurants on the hotel grounds was called the Boilerhouse. It was, unsurprising, in the old boilerhouse building, which had been redone inside so it was very cool. We ate a birthday dinner on Friday night, and we had a table where we could look down into the kitchen and watch them prepare food. It was too fun!

The view of the restaurant from outside

The only downside of the restaurant? Since it was by the water, we had to walk back up these stairs to get to our room after we ate.

But a lovely view waited for us at the top!

We had all day there on Saturday. It was kind of fun to be hanging out near the city like a true tourist. We did a lot of activities, like going down to Quarantine Beach and getting a little swim in...