A quick backgrounder on North Head

General notes:

North Head is one of the two sandstone islands, now tied to the mainland by sand, which mark the entrance to Sydney Harbour. The nearest suburb to North Head is Manly. There is more about this island status here.

Control of the site is a mess, handed down from historical happenstance. Much of the area is part of the Sydney Harbour National Park, controlled by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. The old Quarantine Station is leased out and run as a commercial hotel. Some parts of the access routes are under the control of the Northern Beaches Council, a local government body.

The remainder of the headland, and the main topic here, is the area controlled by the Commonwealth of Australia, through the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, though another Commonwealth body, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, also plays an important role, as shown in their pygmy possum work. (That article also mentions their other success, getting a breeding population of bush rats in the area.)

For more detail, see History, Geology and Biology.

This file is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/nhead/backgrounder.htm.
The home page for this site is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/nhead/index.htm<

The page was first created on 11 January 2019, updated 2 August 2020.