It's
hard to believe
but only 230 years ago Australia had been living its peaceful
hunter-gathering
life
until
11 ships of the First Fleet with 734 convicts on board didn’t moor
to Australian Eastern-Southern cost (modern
Sydney).
It
was one more colonial triumph for Great Britain but dangerous and
miserable life for convicts with any hope for escape. But
these
colonists of fate have enough recklessness
to
try
stealing
a
ship and
enough geographic ignorance to
go farther on coast
to
find a passage to China there. Nobody knows exactly
how many of them died of aggressive flora and fauna of the Green
Continent.
So
here was I in my geographic blindness going to Sydney and knowing
only it is located in the Southern Hemisphere. I was completely
unprepared to four hours flight through entire
continent to its Eastern-Southern cost viewing endless desert above
us. Pet name “the
Green Continent” now seems to me quite an irony.
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This is what you see for 4 hours while flying through the entire continent |
Behold, the Sea
Everything in Sydney begins with Sydney Harbour - it was true for the first colonists, it is true for modern tourists. There are two main architectural icons of Australian people there - The Sydney Harbour Bridge
и Sydney Opera House, both unspeakably beautiful.
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The Sydney Harbour Bridge |
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This district in the harbor calls
simply Rocks.
Because
of rocks,
rocks,
rocks
were
all what the first convicts, which was given this part of the harbor
for settlement, had ever seen. Rocks was one of the dirtiest and most
dangerous area of Sydney. This district gave inspiration to all plots
deserved to be mentioned in a short story collection “Sydney
Noir”
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The local seagulls are tiny and cute but bold enough to steal food, exactly like their piggy Dutch fellows do |
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You definitely can feel the Dutch touch in this building. By the
way the Dutch sailors were the first who reached Australian shores
long before British sailors did, but aggressive flora and fauna of
the North coast didn’t inspire them for colonization at all. |
The Sydney Opera House has a fascinating history. Jørn Utzon the
Danish architect won the competition to design the Sydney Opera
House. He got the most prestigious architectural prize for this
project - Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2003. Sad to say he got
enough failures and humiliation as well. When the project was on half
of its way (it took 14 years to build the House) the government cut
his powers so noticeable Utzon was forced to resign and leave the
country for good. He had never seen the finished House, he wasn’t
invited to the open ceremony Queen Elizabeth II attended. The
Australians reconciled with him in 2000s before his death in 2008.
His son who is an architect too is participating in reconstruction
works taking place now. When Jørn Utzon had been creating The Sydney
Opera House he took his inspiration from The Maya pyramids. He
thought it was important to give the new nation its symbol. It looks
like he had succeed.
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Sydney Opera House |
Walking around Sydney
Sydney
is a very friendly city to pedestrians and tourists.
It
has an
excellent public transport (Sunday
travel cap was my favorite thing about it:
you
can travel
all day on trains, buses, ferries and light rail and pay no more than
$2.70 a
day),
a
lot of parks, quays, beaches, public barbecue areas – in short
Sydney has everything to be happy. This
pure happiness is inexplicably without mention an incredibly blue,
almost transparent sky and a lot of sun which
seems a miracle to someone who escaped from a
European
winter. (I had to moved to the Netherlands to learn
how important sunlight is for
our
spirit!) But
you shouldn't forget how treacherous
this heavenly body can be. There is crazy UV index here at the summer
(January – March) - 8-11 (of 12) which
means
you
should apply 50+
sunscreen from head to toe every 4 hours if you are outside. Using
these tons of cream is annoying
as
much as
can be annoying to wear
hats,
scarves and gloves at the winter. In Australia it was melanoma stats
which made people to pay attention. The
cult of sunscreen was born (no more sunbathing till brown "crust"!).
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I am not kind of person who excited about such numbers. In days like that I was having comfort in fact that I wasn't in Melbourne where often happens to be +37 in the morning and +15 in the afternoon. |
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The oldest building in Sydney (1816) is a hospital, where an architect "forgot" to design such unimportant things, as toilets, bathrooms and kitchens |
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Sydney is having a lunch |
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Sydney
seems
like The Looking Glass of England: it might be because of left-hand
traffic here or
English
names for the
streets
(either
after
the English monarchs or the British governors etc.).
For example, governor Macquarie adored to name literally everything
after himself. There are streets, bays, mountains
named
after him. Turned out Elizabeth street in Sydney is not about the
Queen, it is about Elizabeth Macquarie, the governor's wife.
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When I think of Sydney I recall this pic. |
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If you would like to see what is inside of ships and submarines you should visit Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour |
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I can tolerate shark fin like this |
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Weird Sydney Street Art |
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I've been enjoying enormously walking around these parts of Sydney with old colonial buildings |
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Somebody in Sydney definitely loves Gaudí |
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There
is a wonderful cinema in
this “shaggy” building. On
Mondays here
you can buy
half price tickets (full
price
is
$22).
We
watched “Vice” which
was
really liked by
my
spouse but
not by me
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What I likes the most about parks in Sydney is that there you are encouraged to walk by grass, no restriction |
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My lunch view |
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The were no Ibises in Sydney until 1982. Then something happened in their natural habitat - either drought or flooding, and they retreated here and somehow settled down. They terrified me terribly at first, until it turned out that they act like ordinary pigeons and more interested in my food than in me |
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If this fountain makes you feel uncomfortable as if you have forgotten something, no worries. If you have never been to Sydney, nevertheless you saw it. In "The Matrix" which was filmed here. When I was re-watching the fountain scene on YouTube I was surprised how little crowds had changed, it still feels like walking in a human roaring river |
Sydney is a young and joyous city. You can see on its streets a lot of weird things.
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I had never learned what had he done and why they arrested him |
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Isn't it Holland? |
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Newtown is the most Bohemian district of Sydney |
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Hold the whole city under your heel you can in Customs House |
Wonderful! Looks like a great city, and your post brought it to life! I don't know if I will ever travel there. From the states, it's an 18 hour flight--too long for me!
ReplyDeleteIt takes even longer from Europe - about 22 hours plus 4-5 hours for tranzit. And I agree - it’s not easy
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