Jumpin'

Here's another tale from the vaults, inspired by this week's photo digitizing exercise.

A couple of years ago my son and I spent a Friday afternoon wandering around Watsons Bay, an area he's very familiar with having grown up on South Head. On the way from Camp Cove beach out to the South Head lighthouse he stopped on the cliff (image below), some thirty metres above the water line and chuckled, "Me and some mates used to jump off here when we were kids." I nearly had a heart attack and stammered, "How come I never knew about that..!?" He simply shrugged, "You never asked." Fair enough.

Then last night I carried home a young woman who'd grown up in Watsons Bay. When I inquired if she had jumped off the same cliff my son had, she replied, "No way, I was too chicken, but plenty of kids did. A girl at our school did and she hit some rocks and pretty much broke everything possible. She spent two weeks in hospital, in a coma."

That's kids, but what can you do.

Comments

[Juffy]

Yep...you know your kids are grown up when they start telling you all the things they did and never told you about. I used to love telling my mum all the silly things I did on gravel roads when I was 18...

[rr]

Hi mate,

What a spinout reading that!

When I was a povo teenage copyboy at News Ltd in Surry Hills in 1984, and had a freakishly cheap flat with a few other starving copyboys at Watsons Bay, that was our Saturday and Sunday entertainment. Got a couple of kids now, and as a devoted single dad, it freaks me out to think they would ever do it .. jumping off a cliff like that. But how we loved jumping off there. What a blast! And climbing the Harbour Bridge! Now that was a Saturday night out. Did it 13 times until the wallopers intervened. Escaped a charge, but have never climbed the bridge since. Must do it legaly one time, with my two daughters. Grew up (mau=ybe not) and went off and chased danger and adrenaline in third world conflict zones as a journo instead. I say Watos Bay and the coathanger were good training!

Love your work, and so glad you are back writing and documenting the world.

Regards,

rr.

[adrian]

...freaks me out to think they would ever do it .. jumping off a cliff like that.

Mate, if that's all they do then, in this day and age, you'll consider yourself lucky. I do. Nice to hear from you.

[kae]

Pray they don't hit the rocks.