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As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'd always wanted to visit Australia and, when no one would send me, went ahead and sent myself...

New South Wales

Hank Shiffman
2003-11-29 14:55:13

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the QVB is four floors of shops and cafes in an elegant setting we don't often see in our less ornate age. The building began life around the turn of the century as a produce market and was almost destroyed in the 1950s to make way for some no doubt eminently forgettable structure. Fortunately, this was a rare case where wiser heads managed to prevail.

Not that I have anything against urban renewal. Darling Harbour is the kind of project that could give planners a good name. A corner of the harbour that had fallen into disuse with the advent of containerized shipping, it was redeveloped in the late 80s as a shopping and entertainment center. The dusk view at left was taken from a nice little restaurant with the unlikely name of Thai Foon, the night scene from the north side pedestrian bridge. You can see the tracks for the Sydney Monorail in the right hand picture, another example of mass transit that must have seemed like a better idea on paper than in practice. Like the Detroit People Mover, the monorail runs in one direction on a loop around downtown. Not the most practical service I've seen, although I did find myself riding it on occasion.

Speaking of mass transit, a new addition to Sydney's network is a light rail line that was built to link the central rail station to some of the Olympic sites. Nowadays it's a great way to get to the fish market, one of the city's more interesting examples of real, as opposed to tourist, life. Sydney has the second largest fish market in the world; only Tokyo boasts a bigger one. I couldn't bring myself to get up in time for the arrival of the catch. So I settled for a fairly wonderful seafood lunch and a visit with a rather self-satisfied looking pelican.

Every summer, all the cities in the Bay Area have their little arts & wine festivals, with food and wine and lots of craft stalls. It's one of the things I like about the place. But I have to say that Sydney's weekend markets are way better. I particularly enjoyed the Paddington Bazaar, held every Saturday on the grounds of a church a half hour's walk east of the central business district. It's a neat collection of professional and just plain goofy, sometimes in the same stall. More touristy but just as much fun was the weekend market back at The Rocks, with more touristy and mass produced junk but the same sense of fun and the feeling that the perfect souvenir might be right around the corner.