Narrabeen, Northern Beaches, Sydney

Last weekend despite grey and rainy weather my wife and I decided to go outside, but not too far from home as rain could catch us any moment. So we drove to Narrabeen. And you know what, that was one more time when we realized that there is no need to go too far to see a nice place, it is all close to you…

A bit of a history of this beautiful place. This place is opposite on the southern shore of Narrabeen lagoon, bounded by Warriewood to the north, Elanora Heights to the west and extends east to the ocean.

During the 19th century travellers had to ford the lake. Thus the first bridge was opened there in 1880, followed by the second one in Ocean St. in 1925. In 1913 the extension of the tram to Narrabeen provided easier transport and as a result the whole area around the lake became very popular for holidays and camping.

I wondered where the name Narrabeen came from and found out that there are different possibilities, which are: Narrabin, a native plant growing near the lake entrance; Narrabine, an Aborigine girl; narrow beans eaten by early explorers.

This day we got there by car and because it was afternoon we decided to make a short walk near the lake to the ocean. The walk around the lake is so beautiful: calm water… green shores… birds…

Few minutes after we started our walk we saw many ducks, pretty big ones and of different colours. We knew we could meet them and were prepared by taking some bread with us. And that really worked. They all gathered around us making sounds and pulling their heads towards us. Our baby Maxim was so interested in all this and so suspicious. He just was sitting in his pram looking with his big blue eyes at those funny and noisy birds around us. That was lots of fun.

Then we continues our walk. There were old beautiful houses on the lake shore. I think they are quite expensive being in this location and with such a nice view. Then we went through some street and got right to the ocean. It was sunset and the picture we saw was just amazing. They sky was light blue and the clouds had yellowish-pink colour. The water was silver and cool. There were a few surfers who were riding the waves.

That was a beautiful day for all of us.