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March 14, 2000

Sydney and environs

Dick and Witta
2005-12-03 16:59:51

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This article is among the many travelogues and photographs available at www.dickandwitta.com

Having scheduled only a week in Australia, we decided to split our time between Sydney and the nearby Blue Mountains. Unfortunately, it does sometimes rain on our parade -- and I mean it rains, and rains and rains on our parade. During our week in Australia the rainfall exceeded 2 times Sydney's total rainfall for the past two months. Yuck!

Sydney with its 4 million people is hustle and bustle during working hours -- packed with Caucasians and Asians, with cars, taxis, buses and business vans. The streets are mostly narrow, sometimes one-way and curvy, and there are no highways to speak of. Traffic is a BIG problem. Moreover, parking in town is expensive, so just forget the car. Instead bring comfy shoes and walk the sometimes hilly terrain. Sydney's been spiffed up for the Olympics, and there's plenty to see and do, even when it's raining. We enjoyed the art museum, and I could hardly pull Dick away from the natural history museum when, miraculously, the sun came out one afternoon.

Here are some photos of the Sydney Opera House taken that one memorable afternoon. It is one cool building. The 10 domes are covered with several million 6x6" beige and white tiles organized into chevrons. (Momentarily I thought of patents, oil wells and gasoline, but fortunately those images faded fast.) Under the array of exterior domes there are large glass windows, providing panoramic harbor views on 3 sides. The architectural design was chosen based on a worldwide competition, and a young Belgian architect won. Eight years after breaking ground on the project, the building's exterior was just about completed. Then an election put a new set of players into office. The new administer and the architect didn't get along. Eventually he walked away from the project, and an Australian architect finished the job. The second architect totally redesigned the building's interior, changing the number of theaters, the color scheme, and the building materials. Though the original architect is still active today, he has NEVER been back to Sydney to see the completed Opera House!

Dick pointed out to me that Sydney is a three-dimensional city. Aside from the normal busy intersecting streets, there's lots happening vertically, both upwards and downwards. A monorail loops overhead around part of downtown, and an underground light rail system helps keep the place from gridlock. There are modern, interconnecting, and very large multilevel malls in several of the buildings downtown. Perfect places to wander, shop and eat on a rainy afternoon.

The city is surrounded by water, so there are bridges overhead and sail boats, motor boats and ferries everywhere. Several upscale wharves have waterfront cafes on two levels. People even hike along the top of the Sydney bridge (the price for the privilege is as steep as the climb.) If you click on this photo and look very closely, you'll see that aside from the people at the various levels of the Opera House, there are people hiking along the absolute top of the bridge. Although you can do a conventional walk across the bridge, this is a special way to see the sights.

Now if only the rain, rain, (would) go away...