We had a drive out to North Head just for fun – it was a lovely sunny day with strong winds forecast for later.
We had a walk around the North Head track and took in the amazing views across to Sydney and out to sea. We didn’t see any whales, they’ve all gone home to the Antarctic now, I think (Correction, they are still up north – see Chris’s comment). The wind came up very suddenly , the harbour was covered in whitecaps and branches were blowing off the trees. It was still quite warm, however.
We learned later several boats had been overturned and people were in the water but they were all rescued.
We walked to the nearby Australian Artillery Museum but the buildings were closed. We walked on to the old gun emplacements at North Head and looked at the rusty old remains of what was used to defend Sydney against invaders.
The gun barrel is (I think) a 9.2 inch breech-loading counter bombardment gun from the 1890s that was originally sited at Signal Hill, Vaucluse. There are more details about Sydney’s guns in this report on the Ben Buckler “disappearing” gun at Bondi.
Humpback whales would still be up North right now. They don’t migrate back to Antarctica until September/November, according to http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/publications/pubs/eastern-humpback-whales.pdf .