Lower North Shore Archives

New Walking Bus Service to Escort Mosman Students to School

Two Mosman residents have launched a paid walking bus service called walked.by, offering to escort local children to and from school for $5 per trip as a Term 3 pilot in the suburb.

Julia Edgar and Sophie Krynauw started the service after noticing that many children living close to school are still dropped off by car because morning schedules are so tight. Their answer is walked.by, a structured walking bus service that puts a trained adult in charge of a small group of children along a fixed neighbourhood route.

Mosman’s geography makes the concept unusually well-suited to the area. Five schools cluster around the village, including Mosman High at 769 Military Road, Mosman Public on Belmont Road, Sacred Heart on Cardinal Street, Mosman Prep on Shadforth Street, and Queenwood and Blessed Sacrament both on Queen Street.

Beauty Point and Middle Harbour public schools sit further north toward The Spit. In a suburb of just 8.7 square kilometres, most students already live within walking distance of their school gate.

A simple idea with a lot going for it

The walked.by model works like this: trained adults called Route Managers collect children from fixed pick-up points along a capped 1.5-kilometre route and walk them to school in the morning, then bring them home again in the afternoon. Every Route Manager holds a Working With Children Check and first aid certification.

Families choose the days that suit them, from one to five per week, and can book either the morning run, the afternoon run, or both. A text confirms when the route is complete.

The service covers children from Kindy through Year 7. The service costs $5 per walk, and registrations are now open for the Term 3 pilot starting in mid-July

Julia brings significant professional experience to the venture, having led marketing roles for Amazon, HSBC and T-Mobile, while Sophie spent close to two decades in financial services. Both are Mosman residents and parents who know firsthand what the morning looks like when logistics and time collide.

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“Children who live five or ten minutes from their school arrive by car, because the logistics of the morning just don’t give families another option,” Julia said. “Walking has become something that happens when you have time, and nobody has time.”

More than just getting there on time

The case Julia and Sophie make goes well beyond solving a scheduling headache. They point to established research linking walking to school with sharper concentration, reduced stress and better road awareness in children, the kind of benefits that accumulate quietly over a school year but matter a great deal.

There is also an environmental angle. The founders estimate the Mosman pilot could remove around 16 tonnes of carbon from local roads, taking a meaningful bite out of the morning crawl along Military Road that anyone who has tried to cross it at 8:45am knows well.

“We’re not just solving a logistics problem,” Julia said. “We’re trying to help children build a healthy relationship with movement, with nature and with their community. That’s something you can’t get from the back seat of a car.”

If the Term 3 pilot goes well, walked.by plans to expand into after-school sport, care, and activity routes as well.

Joining the pilot or becoming a route manager

Mosman families with children in Kindy through Year 7 can register for the Term 3 pilot here. The site also carries a jobs page for anyone interested in becoming a paid Route Manager, a role that suits local residents who want flexible, community-connected work during school hours.

For general enquiries, the walked.by team can be reached at hello@walkedby.com.au. The service is based in Mosman NSW 2088 and is also on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Published 25-June-2026

The Mosman Sailor Who Sailed to 100 and Never Stopped Winning

@afrancolini/Instagram

Gordon Ingate OAM, who grew up in Mosman and went on to become Australia’s oldest Olympian, the world’s oldest living sailing Olympian, and one of the most beloved figures in the country’s maritime history, died on 24 April 2026, just weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday on Sydney Harbour with a gathering of family and friends who had followed his wake across eight decades of racing.

He was still sailing his much-loved timber sloop Jasnar on Sydney Harbour just two weekends before he died.

Known throughout the waterfront as Wingnut, later shortened to Wingy, Ingate embodied a particular kind of Australian sailing character: competitive, irreverent, self-deprecating about his chronic seasickness, and entirely incapable of staying off the water. Australian Olympic Committee President Ian Chesterman captured it succinctly.

“He had a remarkable record as a sportsman, but also as someone who made a real difference across his 100 years. A truly exceptional person,” Chesterman said.

A Mosman Boy, a Sea Scout, and a Lifelong Obsession

Ingate’s connection to the water began in Mosman, where he grew up alongside Sydney Harbour and joined the Sea Scouts at age nine. It was at Mosman Amateur Sailing Club that he would later meet the two most important people of his sailing life: Nina Saalfeld and her daughter Sally, who sailed on the family’s double-ended sloop, also named Jasnar.

Sailing legend, Gordon Ingate — Photo Credit: Cruising Yacht Club Of Australia/Facebook

His offshore racing career began when he was introduced to the sport by the owners of Wayfarer and Kathleen, both entrants in the inaugural 1945 Sydney Hobart. His first offshore race to Lion Island brought him a severe bout of seasickness. It was not the last time, and it never stopped him.

In 1950, aged 24, Ingate skippered Jasnar in the Sydney to Hobart and took Sally along. She was 21, an accomplished sailor and, as it turned out, a patient carer.

“I was so seasick, she looked after me for three days,” he recalled. “She was not only pumping the boat out to keep it dry, she even peeled the grapes and took the seeds out for me.”

On their arrival in Hobart, the famous sailor Boy Messenger called out from the dock: “You should marry that girl, Gordon.” He did. They sent a telegram to Sally’s family asking permission, and Gordon and Sally Ingate were married and remained so for 48 years.

An Olympic Dream Delayed by Two Decades

Ingate qualified for the 1948 London Olympics and the 1952 Olympics but his employer refused him leave both times. “The boss gave me an emphatic NO,” he said. He finally broke through for his Olympic debut at the 1972 Munich Games. Aged 46, he skippered the Tempest class alongside crew Robert Thornton to a 19th-place finish—a result he later joked was notable mostly for beating the Prince of Siam.

That single appearance was nonetheless enough to make him Australia’s oldest living Olympian, a distinction he held to the end of his life.

His campaign aboard Sir Frank Packer’s Gretel II at the 1977 America’s Cup was another chapter of a career that also included nine Sydney to Hobart races, campaigns in the 5.5 Metre and Dragon classes, and Australia’s first Admiral’s Cup campaign in 1965, where he steered Caprice of Huon to three wins from four races, finishing as the team’s top scorer as Australia took second behind Britain.

Two years later Australia reversed the result, winning the Admiral’s Cup outright, with Caprice in the team again.

He won the Scandinavian Gold Cup in the 5.5 Metre class. He won the Prince Philip Cup four times in the Dragon class, the last at age 91 at Metung Yacht Club in 2018, his Dragon, Whimsical, living up to its name.

Still Winning at 94, Still Sailing at 100

The records Ingate set late in life were as remarkable as anything he had achieved in his prime. In 2020, at age 94, he won the Dragon national championship to become Australia’s oldest open class national champion. In 2025 he was still sailing Jasnar at Sydney Harbour Regattas and recording firsts and seconds against sailors a fraction of his age.

He joined the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia on 1 January 1949, serving as Rear Commodore in 1965, and was its oldest living member at the time of his death. He was also a long-serving member of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, where his 100th birthday celebration was held in late March 2026.

In 2016 he received a Medal of the Order of Australia for services to sailing. The Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron recognised him with a Life Achievement Award in 2019, and Australian Sailing followed in 2020 with its own Lifetime Achievement Award.

Just prior to the last Sydney to Hobart, Ingate visited the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia and shared stories with 18-year-old Ali Braden, one of the youngest sailors in the fleet, who was preparing for her first trip south. His advice to her was characteristically direct.

“Hold on tight,” he said.

Gordon Ingate is survived by his son Stephen and daughter Christine and their families.

Published 29-April-2026

Two Moruben Road Unit Blocks Sell for More Than $65 Million on Mosman’s Balmoral Slopes

Raine & Horne

Seventeen individual unit owners at 13 and 15 Moruben Road in Mosman have shared in a sale worth more than $65 million after agreeing to sell their two neighbouring blocks to a developer, in one of the suburb’s largest amalgamation deals to date.

The sale, which took eight months to negotiate, covers a 1940s red-brick block of six flats at number 13, sitting on 581 square metres, and an 11-unit blonde-brick block at number 15, on 1,066 square metres. Together the two sites form a combined holding of 1,648 square metres on the elevated Balmoral Slopes, with commanding views over the harbour and through the Heads.

Nadine Marando and Nick Gittoes of McGrath Mosman handled the deal alongside acquisition specialists Chaim Lider and Emilie McKenna of Chem Property. The buyer has not been formally confirmed, although industry sources indicate Made Property secured the acquisition.

What Each Owner Walked Away With

At a sale price above $65 million across 17 individually owned units, the deal equates to roughly $3.82 million per unit on average, though each owner’s actual return depends on their lot size and entitlements.

To put that in context: one owner at 7/15 Moruben Road paid just $235,000 for their one-bedroom unit in 1999. That kind of return illustrates why agents are describing the result in terms usually reserved for lottery wins. “The buyers hit the jackpot,” McGrath’s Nick Gittoes said.

15 Moruben Rd unit — *Photo Credit: Raine and Horne*

Marando acknowledged the process was not without friction. Not every owner was immediately willing to sell, particularly long-term residents for whom the views had become part of daily life regardless of the financial upside. Under NSW strata law, 75 per cent of owners in a block must agree for a collective sale to proceed.

In this case, Marando said all 17 owners ultimately signed. “The view is everything in that location,” she said. “If you’re a certain age group, you don’t want to be distracted, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at them.”

The Policy Behind the Price

The sale would not have been possible at this scale without NSW’s Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy, which took effect on 28 February 2025. The policy permits residential flat buildings of up to six storeys on R3-zoned land within 400 metres of a town centre, overriding local planning controls on height and density where state standards are more generous.

Moruben Road sits within the affected zone, and the amalgamated 1,648 square metre site is widely expected to support a six-storey apartment building, subject to development approval. Marando described the LMR policy as having the effect of a gold rush on sites like this one. “We saw the opportunity and ran with it,” she said, noting the result ranked among the top three site sales in the street and the highest Moruben Road had seen.

The Moruben Road corridor has become one of the most active stretches in Mosman under the new policy. At number 17, AirTrunk billionaire Robin Khuda’s development company Ondas paid around $32 million for a 12-unit block in 2025. Developer HELM has acquired numbers 1 and 3 and lodged a development application for 27 apartments across eight storeys, including six affordable housing units. At least two other projects on the street are awaiting approval.

While the standard policy caps buildings at six storeys, the HELM proposal for eight storeys at 1-3 Moruben Road utilises state incentives for including affordable housing. Under these rules, developers can secure a 15 per cent bonus on floor space and height if they dedicate a portion of the project to affordable units. The policy makes a trade-off to boost essential housing, though it pushes the skyline higher than the baseline six-storey limit elsewhere on the street.

What It Means for the Street and the Suburb

For Mosman residents watching the pace of change along Moruben Road, the 13 and 15 sale confirms that the western side of the street is now comprehensively in play. Marando noted that pretty much the whole street would eventually be sold off, with construction expected on multiple neighbouring sites.

The broader debate around the LMR policy in Mosman remains live. The suburb has been among the most vocal in opposing a blanket rezoning approach, with community concerns centred on heritage character, infrastructure capacity and the pace of density uplift in established residential streets. A legal challenge brought by a local resident against the policy remains before the Land and Environment Court.

For the 17 owners who sold, though, the policy delivered a generational financial outcome. The new development on the 1,648 square metre site, once approved, will add to a Balmoral Slopes skyline that is already changing shape.

Finding Out More

Residents with questions about development applications on Moruben Road and the surrounding area can search lodged applications through this link. Information on the Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy as it applies to Mosman, including an interactive map of affected areas, is also available on the same site.

Published 02-April-2026

30 Warships to Fill Sydney Harbour for Rare International Naval Display

HMAS Leeuwin | Photo Credit: Royal Australian Navy

Sydney Harbour will host one of its largest international naval gatherings in more than a decade, with around 30 warships from nearly 20 nations set to assemble within clear view of Lower North Shore communities, including Mosman, Cremorne and Kirribilli.

A major international fleet review

The event on Saturday, 21 March, forms part of Exercise Kakadu, a multinational maritime exercise led by the Royal Australian Navy, and coincides with commemorations marking 125 years since the service’s establishment.

A central feature of the program is the fleet review, a formal naval tradition in which a reviewing officer inspects assembled vessels. HMAS Leeuwin is expected to carry the reviewing officer as it passes the fleet, with participating ships delivering ceremonial salutes.

Participating vessels have travelled from across the Indo-Pacific, with some arriving in Sydney following joint exercises conducted further north.

Personnel from the Royal Australian Navy, Vietnam People’s Navy, Royal Thai Navy, Philippine Navy, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Indian Navy attend an Exercise Kakadu harbour brief at HMAS Coonawarra, Darwin, NT. Photo: Seaman Genae Kelly/Defence

While many vessels will remain anchored across Sydney Harbour, one column is expected to move through the main channel toward the Sydney Harbour Bridge, providing a prominent visual along the harbour corridor.

Full-day program on the harbour

Ship arrivals are scheduled to take place from early morning through to midday, building toward the main fleet review in the afternoon.

The program also includes a joint aerial display by the Royal Australian Air Force, followed by a ceremonial gun salute. Later in the day, a public boating sail-past and a historical flotilla procession are expected to conclude the event.

The sequence of activities is designed to combine formal naval ceremony with public-facing displays across both water and air.

Lower North Shore vantage points

Residents along the lower north shore are expected to have some of the best land-based viewing positions.

Locations including Bradleys Head, Georges Head Lookout, Cremorne Reserve and Kurraba Reserve have been identified as key vantage points, with clear sightlines across the harbour.

Authorities anticipate increased foot traffic in these areas as spectators gather throughout the day.

Transport and maritime authorities have advised that planning ahead will be important for those attending.

Waterway restrictions, including exclusion zones around naval vessels, will be in place across parts of Sydney Harbour. Boaters are required to maintain safe distances and follow directions from maritime authorities.

On land, parking is expected to be limited near popular viewing areas. Additional public transport services, including increased bus frequency in suburbs such as Mosman, have been scheduled to assist with crowd movement.

Published 18-March-2026

Mosman at the Centre of Sydney’s $1.58-Billion Harbour Home Market

Photo Credit: Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0

As the first ferries glide away from Mosman Bay, this small harbour suburb is already setting a national record, with home buyers spending $1.58 billion on Mosman houses in a single year, more than any other suburb in Australia.

Cotality’s Best of the Best 2025 report, released 4 December 2025, tracked house sales across the 12 months to September 2025 and placed Mosman first by total value. Some 229 Mosman house sales made up that $1.58 billion figure, keeping the suburb ahead of Vaucluse and Bellevue Hill.

Morning Movement and Million-Dollar Homes

Early in the day, locals head to Mosman Bay Wharf for the F6 ferry to Circular Quay, a route run by Sydney Ferries that keeps the suburb closely tied to the CBD. The same harbour views that greet commuters also drive property prices. Cotality data showed the median Mosman house was valued at $6.1 million in November 2025, putting even standard family homes into a rare price bracket.

That mix of harbour access and high values means every sale carries weight. With close to 14,000 properties across the suburb, Mosman is large enough to generate steady sales, yet still tightly held. Cotality recorded a dwelling turnover rate of 4.1 per cent, below the national average, indicating that many households remain in their homes for years.

*Photo Credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported*

Green Spaces and Long-Term Living

By mid-morning, walkers move through Georges Head, where NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service maintains historic sites and harbour lookouts just minutes from local streets. These shared spaces help explain why so many homes remain in the same families. Buyers are not just chasing views; they are seeking the everyday rhythm of a place that blends outdoor access with city convenience.

Later in the day, children and retirees pass through Mosman’s library and council venues, where local events and programs run year-round. These routines sit behind the numbers. While other prestige suburbs rely on one-off trophy sales, Mosman’s lead comes from both steady activity and high prices.

*Photo Credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported*

Even though the total value of Mosman sales dipped slightly from 2024, it has remained at the top of Cotality’s national ranking for five consecutive years, underscoring the strength of demand despite limited supply.

As evening settles across the harbour, Mosman’s property story looks much like its daily life: calm on the surface, tightly held underneath, and quietly expensive in every direction.

Published 13-Jan-2026

Relief on the Way for Lower North Shore Bus Commuters

Photo Credit: Mosman Collective/Facebook

For months, commuters in Sydney’s Lower North Shore have battled packed buses and long wait times. Relief is coming as the government plans to roll out a new fleet of high-capacity buses.

New Buses to Ease Lower North Shore Commuter Chaos

Frustration has mounted across Sydney’s Lower North Shore, where thousands of commuters have endured lengthy delays and overcrowded buses due to ongoing service disruptions. The NSW government has now confirmed that 60 new high-capacity buses will be introduced to restore reliability and improve transport conditions in the affected areas.

Why Lower North Shore Commuters Have Been Struggling

The crisis began in October 2024, when 83 Volvo articulated buses were pulled from service due to safety concerns over chassis cracks. These buses primarily operated in the Lower North Shore and Northern Beaches, leaving commuters scrambling for transport alternatives. Delays lasted over an hour in most locations, with packed services leaving passengers waiting for as long as several buses before they could get a seat.

*Photo Credit: Mosman Collective/Facebook*

The government plan includes 50 new articulated buses and 10 double-deckers, which are meant to cut congestion and increase overall capacity. Transport Minister John Graham conceded that the takeout of the fleet had created big holes in the service, particularly during the peak hours

New Buses on the Way – But Not All at Once

While commuters can expect some relief soon, full restoration will take time. Officials confirmed that six of the withdrawn buses will be reintroduced in April, with additional buses phased in throughout the year. The 60 new buses that will be procured will be rolled out within the next 12 months, focusing on the worst-hit areas.

The Lower North Shore has been one of the worst-hit regions, with suburbs like Mosman, Neutral Bay, and North Sydney suffering from rampant transport bottlenecks. Northern Beaches commuters such as Manly, Dee Why, and Mona Vale have also suffered from extended waiting times, resulting in resident frustration.

The new fleet, under plan by state lawmakers, will be used to enhance passenger capacity and restore frequency to the most affected bus routes.

Community Relief is on the Horizon

The response from local leaders has been generally positive, though some have cautioned that relief won’t be immediate. North Shore MP Felicity Wilson acknowledged that residents had been dealing with an unreliable transport network for months but said the staged rollout of new buses would gradually restore normalcy.

Officials have assured residents that once the new fleet is fully operational, peak-hour congestion will ease, and service levels will return to pre-disruption standards. While commuters remain frustrated, the commitment to improving transport in the Lower North Shore is now set in motion.

Published 13-March-2025