I landed in Sydney at 6 am, and it received me with open
arms. First, the transfer to the city is a snap with the train (AUS$ 20), which
15 minutes later deposited me in Central Station, a bare three blocks from my
accommodation. I got there around 8 am, and they kindly allowed me to leave my
backpack there, so I could go explore the city unencumbered.
I was waiting to cross the street back to Central Station,
when this young man handed me a free invitation to breakfast! It turns out a
new Vietnamese restaurant was opening, and as part of their promotion they were
inviting the first 100 customers to a free (small) dim sum breakfast and tea. I
think I had the honor of being customer number one, so I got received with many
smiles.
After getting a cup of coffee I walked around for a bit, and
at 9 am boarded the hop-on hop-off tourist bus that was to take me around the
city, looking at the main points of interest. I bought a 2-day deal that
included a walking tour through the old part of the city (which I decided to
take right away) and a harbor cruise (which I reserved for the sunset hours).
The city was established on January 26, 1788, as a convict
colony of the Brits, on both sides of a bay formed by a good size stream (the
Trunk stream, which has since been constrained to a pipe). On the east the
British established a typical expat community with gardens and mansions. On the
other side, “over there by the rocks”, was the penal colony. Convicts were
sentenced to hard labor for 7 or 14 years, which at the time meant cutting
sandstone blocks for the construction of the genteel portion of the town (women
convicts had less strenuous sentences). A convict who completed his or her
sentence was given a certificate of freedom, and it is from these freed men and
women that Australians descended (arguably most Australians can track their
ascendancy to a convict, since deportation ended only in 1860). The penal
colony was known as The Rocks, a name that the neighborhood still proudly
bears. Although the neighborhood of The Rocks was in danger of being razed to
the ground to make room for new development, some very serious heritage activism
saved it, and now one can visit there some of the oldest standing structures of
Sydney, including the oldest pub in Australia (the convicts were paid in rum)
and the oldest “hospital” (the name given to an open courtyard where the naval
surgeons did their best to keep the convicts alive).
The Rocks are the same Triassic fluvial sandstones I
described in the Blue Mountains earlier in my trip, which I will now formally
define as the Convict Sandstone, but I fleetingly saw from the bus a structure
that reminded me of soft-sediment deformation, which is suggestive of a deltaic
environment of deposition (or maybe a small delta formed in a lake, just like I
have seen in Mono Lake?).
The tour through the city was delightful, and easy as pie.
My deal also included an elevator ride to the tallest structure in Sydney, the
320-m Sydney Tower Eye, from which the sights of the harbor were absolutely
amazing. Sydney harbor is the ultimate ria embayment, with dozens of arms of
water surrounding the small islands and peninsulas that formed the ridges
between watersheds.
Back to the bus I realized that I was going to cut it quite
close if I wanted to make the last harbor cruise at 4:25 pm. I made it there at
4:20 pm, with 5 minutes to spare. Alas, there was no sunset to be seen because
the sky was cloudy, but I enjoyed great views of the Sydney Bridge, the Sydney
Opera House, and the skyline of skyscrapers behind them. The bridge was built
in 1923-1932, as part of Australia’s “New Deal” to provide employment during
the Depression. It is a fine piece of engineering, but legend has it that
Sydney residents did not trust the pure steel trusses structure, so the
designers added four stout pilons, two on each side of the bridge to reassure
the citizens (but the structure is not attached to the pilons, which are there
strictly for decoration). Still, as the inauguration day approached, and the
town was invited to come up on the bridge, there were many that feared the
bridge would plunge into the bay if the whole town were to step on it. The
engineers then loaded every available locomotive on the bridge, to show that
the structure was perfectly safe, and inauguration day was thus a rousing
success.
The iconic Sydney Opera House was designed in the 1950’s by
a Danish architect, was started two times and torn down because the wings were
deemed unstable, and it was not until new advances in structural engineering were
made that it could be completed, on the third try, in 1970. The only rules of
the architectural contest had been that (1) the structure should be ageless in
style, and (2) it should be uniquely representative of Sydney. Over the last 50
years this jewel of Sydney Harbor has demonstrated these requirements were met
ten-fold!
As the night set in I took the long walk across the Sydney
Bridge (just about the only thing that is free in this town), and under a
gentle rain got a magnificent view of Sydney, clad in diamonds of light,
proudly announcing to the world the spirit of Australia.
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