Sydney



Of course I would have to love a city whose iconic image is its opera house. Sydney is the largest city in Australia and it is a brilliant metropolis. Were I to live in Australia, this would be the place! As with the other antipodal cities I visited there is a small central city which is Sydney proper, and a great many suburbs that make up most of what is generally considered Sydney. When you say you’re living or staying in Sydney, people will almost inevitably ask, which suburb?

I was staying in North Ryde which is a good ways out from the central business district. Not too bad, really, except at rush hour. Bus service was less than frequent, but very direct to the city center. Staying with my friend Chris, along with Branka and Christian who were in from Belgrade, I was reminded that he travels fastest who travels alone. They were all good company and Chris’ hospitality was wonderful, but negotiating agendas cut back on my exploration of the city. Out of nine days, four were spent at an astrology conference and the remainder had a lot of late starts, so I will just have to return to Sydney. That’s not terrible, either!

The FAA conference, by the way, was as good as any I’ve been to, easily justifying this trip. Aussie astrologers are a good bunch, very friendly, very professional.

A deep long harbor with countless coves and inlets provides the core of the metropolis. Bridges, boats, and harbor views are at the center of everything. The city started out as a penal colony, and historical tours tell which parts of the city were built by convict labor, and what areas were reserved for the upper classes, mostly military officers. Victorian colonial architecture is still to be found in the older parts of the city, especially at “The Rocks” which was home to the convicts and is now of course a tourist center. Not far from the Rocks, on a piece of land jutting into the harbor sits the famous opera house. Close to that is the Harbor Bridge, and together these two structures dominate views of the harbor in the center city.

The center city is filled with highrises. A monorail loops around the CBD although it is less a practical form of transport than a tourist ride. A metro system, largely, but not entirely underground offers better service for actually getting around. There are also ferries that run the harbor and converge at the Circular Quay.

Our first day in town, Chris took Branka and me on a ferry ride from the suburbs up at the far end of the harbor. (Christian was saddled with a deadline for a book and had to work constantly, seeing next to nothing of Sydney.) A catamaran took us from narrow inlets to cross beneath the Harbor Bridge where the harbor opens up to downtown Sydney. As in Brisbane the cat made a number of stops, functioning as an aquatic bus. At the Circular Quay we switched to a ferry which took us across the expanse of the harbor, past the opening to the ocean, to a narrow peninsula which guards the harbor. It was a short walk from harbor side to ocean side, the walkway, known as “the Corso” being lined with all kinds of shops and restaurants we stopped for a lunch of barramundi, and continued to the ocean.

Manly Beach is so named because the British captain who led the expedition that first arrived there found the aboriginal residents extremely manly! (I think Darling Harbor at the inner city was actually named for a person named Darling, like the family of children that befriended Peter Pan. I have no idea how Melbourne’s Studly Park got its name.) There are still some manly specimens on the beach, although more unusual was the elaborate sand sculpture being constructed by a gentleman from Naples. On the seaside we stopped for coffee and made our way back visiting a number of the stores in the Corso.

Another day was spent on a bus making a tour of the city. A recorded historical commentary was supplemented by drivers’ remarks. As we would hop off the bus at a few sites and pick up a later one to continue the tour there were of course different drivers and some were more informative than others. Chris and I often had the bus to ourselves, and she got quite conversational with one driver which added some perspective.

One stop was at the Sydney Tower, where we went up to see the grand views of the city and its environs. It was a bit hazy, but not terrible, and the sun was already low enough to make some angles very hard to photograph, but over all it was quite beautiful. Admission to the tower included a gimmicky – but surprisingly well done – show in two parts. The first had us in small theatres where we saw a number of dioramas with images cleverly projected onto glass screens creating a “3-D” show with some Aussie bloke, and occasionally his Sheila, presenting different views and commentary of Australian scenery. The audience rotated from one section to another and after seeing all four sections of that we were ushered into a larger room where we climbed into large cushioned seats on mechanical pedestals. Metal bars lowered to secure us in and when the bloke and sheila came back on large screens they led us on a tour of Australia’s geography and history, the seats rocking, shaking, and swinging around enough to give us the feeling of soaring over the harbor, flying over the outback, riding through a gold rush town and diving down into the mine… it was all quite hokey, but done well enough to be worthwhile.

Back out in the city a brilliant young classical guitarist was entertaining folks on the plaza. Tom Ward is his name and after a bit of listening, Chris and I both bought his CD. He was determined to get to Carnegie Hall, and hoped I would come see him there. “How far is San Francisco from Carnegie Hall?” he asked. Well, most Americans wouldn’t know the distance from Adelaide to Perth.

Darling Harbor, Chris complains, is getting more and more touristy and commercial, much like Fisherman’s Wharf. I found it nowhere near as mobbed and tacky, but yes, it is a bit commercial and tacky. No matter. They have an excellent aquarium and a pretty good animal exhibition. Everyone says the zoo is much better, and offers spectacular views of the city, but the zoo is an all day trip and we were interested specifically in Aussie fauna, making this the preferable alternative. Branka, Chris, and I went to see the beasts of the land and sea. A lot of the critters we saw are venomous. Apparently all the spiders in Aus are venomous to varying degrees (some very little; some, like the redback, enough to make you sick; and then there are the really bad ones…) and even that unique mammal, the platypus, is the world’s only venomous mammal. Snakes, octopi, jellyfish… the most poisonous animals of the world live here. Well, except for Ann Coulter. With all the venomous critters here, no wonder there are so few predators!

The animal exhibit led from bugs to reptiles to crocodiles to mammals, included a pretty nice aviary, a roof full of wallabies, some koalas. Chris explained that it’s new and not yet up to the quality established by the aquarium. One of the staff was sitting by the wallaby exhibit with a lizard that she invited Branka to pet. Branka bravely overcame her feelings about reptiles and gingerly petted the lizard. As she sat to pet the lizard, the handler warned her to be careful of the redback nesting near her leg. Branka jumped up, horrified that a venomous spider was allowed such latitude. The handler explained, “Well, it’s not one of ours!” Leave ‘em alone and there shouldn’t be a problem. In another room another handler had a python he was inviting people to pet. The snake and I got very friendly, and Branka even managed to give the pretty baby a little stroke.

Over at the Aquarium the first thing we saw was the platypus! What a cute little thing, and even stranger in real life than in pictures, zooming back and forth across the pool, his webbed feet spread wide, he only came to the surface briefly for air. Alas, he would not stay still enough for a decent photo, except once…

The other great feature was a glass tunnel where we could walk among sharks, rays, giant turtles, and large fish. Some enjoyed resting on top of the tunnel, but only in small patches, not really obstructing our view.

Out in the city a few nights I also saw bats – amazing, seemingly infinite squadrons of flying foxes, huge fruit-eating bats that had wingspans that had to be more than a meter across. I was lucky enough to be directly under a low flying procession while it was still light enough to get photos!

A bit off form the tourist area, on the other side of the CBD are the City Hall and the Queen Victoria Building. The QVB was originally a Victorian office building that’s been redone as a shopping gallery. With a completely re-done interior, they’ve done an excellent job of keeping the architecture authentically Victorian. At a casual glance it actually appears to have been originally built this way in the late 1900’s. The shops are a bit pricey as the surroundings would suggest, but there’s no charge to look around.

Our last night in Sydney (Branka and Christian left the same day as I, only – mercifully for them – much later in the day.) We went to see “La Boheme” at the Sydney Opera House. It was an updated production, all well done, but it was the opera house itself that was most dazzling. Up close and inside it really is brilliant. Seating was reasonably comfortable in a house that was perhaps 2/3 the size of SFO. (I like smaller houses. The singers can work less on filling the house with their voice allowing more vocal artistry.) Outside the hall, lobbies opened up to picture window views of the harbor and the bridge. Close up details of construction showed simple, but attractive art-deco type patterns in the tiles, all invisible in the common long shots. As the opera house is a bit off and separate from the rest of the waterfront it has its own complex of restaurants and bars. We had a very nice supper out on the plaza surrounded by the great civic landmarks. And as such things go the meal was very reasonably priced. The meal, the opera, and the company altogether made a perfect last night in Sydney.

Australia

Melbourne * Brisbane * The FAA Conference

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