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.

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.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

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”

The local seagulls are tiny and cute but bold enough to steal food, exactly like their piggy Dutch fellows do

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.

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"!).

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.

The oldest building in Sydney (1816) is a hospital, where an architect "forgot" to design such unimportant things, as toilets, bathrooms and kitchens

Sydney is having a lunch

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.

When I think of Sydney I recall this pic.

If you would like to see what is inside of ships and submarines you should visit Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour

I can tolerate shark fin like this

Weird Sydney Street Art

I've been enjoying enormously walking around these parts of Sydney with old colonial buildings

Somebody in Sydney definitely loves Gaudí


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

What I likes the most about parks in Sydney is that there you are encouraged to walk by grass, no restriction

My lunch view

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

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.