A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Returning to the little town of Watson's Bay, which nestles about the slopes behind 

 the curved stretch of sandy beach, the traveller again embarks, and sailing across the 

 mouth of the Port, with its long lazy roll, gets under the lee of the bold North Head, 

 and finds himself in front of the Quarantine Station. All the requirements of such an 

 institution are fulfilled here. The locality is six miles from the city, and easily acces- 

 sible. The area is superabundant for all the claims that can be made upon it ; the 

 position is breezy and healthy, and the swampy crown of the hill furnishes an ample 

 supply of fresh water. Recent events have led to great improvements in the appliances 

 of the establishment. Small-pox, though frequently imported, has never yet obtained a 

 footing in Australia, having been always stamped out by the most vigorous measures. 

 Passengers arrive now in such large steamers that a single case of infectious disease 

 means the sending of several hundreds of people to the Quarantine Ground. Thanks to 

 the liberality of the Government and the energy of the Health Department, every 

 facility for dealing with the largest passenger-ship has been provided. A steam-laundry 

 has been built capable of washing the whole of the linen in twenty-four hours ; fumi- 

 gating chambers for disinfecting all woollen garments are provided ; while cottages and 

 pavilion hospitals are scattered about in sufficient numbers, and with a degree of isola- 

 tion equal to any probable emergency. The ground for infected passengers is specially 

 marked off, and the whole Station is enclosed by a fence extending across the penin- 

 sula from the Harbour to the 

 sea. It is at all times annoying 

 to be detained at the end of a 

 long voyage, but everything pos- 

 sible has been done to make a 

 forced residence agreeable. From 

 the summit of the hill there is a 

 grand panorama of the ocean and 

 the main entrance to Port Jackson ; 

 while the view up the Harbour is 

 singularly lovely, and a man might 

 lie and look at it for days if he 

 were not fretting to get away. 

 The discomforts and nuisances 

 too often inseparable from a com- 

 pulsory detention in a lazaretto 

 are happily absent here. 



At the head of North Har- 

 bour lies the village of Manly, 

 which is situated on a flat between 



THE OCEAN BEACH, MANLY. the North Head on the one side 



and the Manly Heights on the 



other. This flat is really an old Harbour mouth, which has been slowly barred by the sand 

 washed in by centuries of billows. " The Corso," as the level street is named which runs 

 from the landing-jetty to the beach, is only a few hundred yards in length. Manly, 



