Australia's First City

Sydney is Australia’s largest city and was our point of entry and exit. The feeling in the center of the city is vibrant, modern, busy – it’s a city where business gets done. The harbor is glorious. I’ve always thought San Francisco had the most beautiful setting imaginable for a city – but I have to admit I think Sydney has it beat – at least from the water. Of course, the iconic Sydney bridge dominates the view, with the famous white Sydney Opera House only slightly less prominent. Both are beautiful achievements of engineering and architecture. Susan DeCorpo and Kathi, in one of their long treks, walked both ways across the bridge – though they did it at roadway level, not at the top of the arch (which one can do for about $180.00 Australian).

The waterfront, which is made up of the shorelines of several small bays, is lined with upscale apartment buildings, numerous (did I say a lot of them?) restaurants and attractions such as the aquarium and National Maritime Museum. The presence of a massive white cruise ship or two completes the effect – and the whole is punctuated with various structures from the colonial era (stone fortresses, the governor’s massive house on a prominent point and others). The harbor cruise is very much worth doing and is a good way to get acquainted with the city at the beginning of a visit. To continue the acquainting process we rode the city sightseeing bus – also something very worth doing.

The busy waterfront/harbor complex includes numerous ferries to the various Sydney suburbs and nearby cities. We rode one to Manly, just north of the city and situated on the coast near the entrance to Sydney harbor. (Manly received its name because it was where Europeans first saw some of the native aborigine peoples – and the then-governor wrote that they had a “manly” appearance. The name stuck, though now it’s a small city in its own right, with a beautiful beach.) The other “must-visit” beach in Sydney is Bondi Beach, whose name rhymes with “bonzai” – I can’t think of any other word to rhyme it with – which Kathi and Susan enjoyed for an afternoon.

We had some fabulous seafood at one of the city’s well-known seafood restaurants (on the waterfront, of course) and had a great dinner for about 12 of us at Don Quixote’s Spanish restaurant. And, of course, we didn’t ignore the educational/cultural side of things (would we ever?). The Australian National Museum was two blocks from our hotel with a wide variety of exhibits and a very notable collection of minerals, emblematic of Australia’s rich mining history. The National Maritime Museum is very well done, with a large section devoted to the US Navy in World War II. (The Australians are very aware that for most of World War II they depended on the USN to blunt the Japanese offensives that were moving in their direction.)

The city has its full share of beautiful parks – one right across the street from our hotel, (named Hyde Park after the London park near our London flat) containing the ANZAC memorial. The name, as you may know, goes back to the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps raised during World War I. As we learned later, at the War Memorial in Canberra, most Australian historians consider ANZAC to be the beginning of an awareness of an Australian national identity. In any case, throughout Australia there are ANZAC Drives, ANZAC Streets, ANZAC Parks and ANZAC Squares. The ladies paid a pleasant visit to the Chinese Gardens near Sydney’s China Town and adjacent to the large, modern convention center where those of us who were on business spent the workdays. We were struck by the numerous place names borrowed from London – in addition to Hyde Park, there are Oxford Street, Leicester Square and others.

For some pictures of Sydney go to: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/1218888/1/57041063