Foot and Ankle Care for Manly
Manly is the busiest suburb on the Northern Beaches, with a population of 16,296 at the 2021 census and a daily visitor population well beyond that. It has general podiatry, but no surgical podiatrist. Manly Foot Clinic is a short drive north in North Manly, and it is where assessment, orthoses, injection therapy and surgery all happen under one roof, so a Manly patient is not sent across the harbour for the next step.
A suburb that walks, and swims
Manly is built for feet. The Corso, laid out in 1854 and 1855 by Henry Gilbert Smith as a boardwalk across the sand spit, still runs from the ferry wharf to the beach, and most of the suburb’s daily life happens on foot along it. The walk from Manly around Cabbage Tree Bay to Shelly Beach, and on to the North Head lookouts, is done in thongs and bare feet as often as in shoes.
Manly Life Saving Club, founded in 1911 after the law banning daylight swimming was overturned, is one of the oldest surf life saving clubs in Australia, and it still patrols Manly Beach alongside the North Steyne and Queenscliff clubs. Between the clubs, the ocean pool and the surf schools, a great deal of Manly trains barefoot on wet sand. That is a particular kind of load on a foot, and it shows up in the clinic as heel pain, forefoot pain and Achilles complaints.
Getting here from The Corso
Manly is the only suburb the clinic serves where the bus is genuinely as easy as the car, because both routes that pass the clinic begin at Manly Wharf. The 167 runs from the wharf to Warringah Mall via Freshwater and South Curl Curl, and the 199 runs from the wharf to Palm Beach via Dee Why and Mona Vale. Either one puts you within a few minutes’ walk of Corrie Road.
By car it is about six minutes: out of the town centre onto Pittwater Road and north through Manly Vale. Nolan Reserve is on Pittwater Road on the way, and Corrie Road is a little past it.
