Sydney

History, architecture, and giant bats that fly around in the daytime-Sydney's got it all. I spent 4 days in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. It's not nearly enough time to see all the city has to offer but I did my best with the time I had.

After I arrived on the midnight terror (Australian for a redeye flight) from Perth I found accomodations and began the whirlwind tour. First stop was Hyde Park. Sydney is full of typical urban parks with fountains, sculptures, green lawns, and walks lined with huge trees, but the best thing to me about Hyde Park is the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) memorial. It's a small rotunda at one end of the park. Inside you look down on a sculpture of a soldier laying on a sword stretched across the ANZAC insignia. Engraved into the wall all around are the names of the major battles and campaigns ANZAC has been involved in over the past 100 years or so. They also have an eternal flame for fallen soldiers and a small but well-presented exhibit of ANZAC history and artifacts. I didn't realize it before visiting the memorial but ANZAC has partnered with the US military in many of our major actions over the years, so ANZAC's history has closely resembled the history of our own military. Beside learning of our significant history of cooperation, I also learned that our troops probably weren't sharing rations in their foxholes. Most of us Yanks find Vegemite nasty but judging by the numbers of Vegemite tins on display at the memorial it seems that Vegemite is a critical part of any Australian soldier's rations while overseas. Apparently Aussies just can't get by without the stuff.

After Hyde Park I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It's a massive green space between the CBD and Circular Quay, which is the wharf in downtown Sydney near the opera house. It has all kinds of displays of vegetation from all over the world and is a great place to spend a day. It also has views of the harbour, opera house, and harbour bridge from the lower gardens. I was walking through a section of tropical vegetation from Indonesia or somehere like that when what I can only describe as a pterodactyl-like shape blotted out the sun overhead. I looked up to see the largest bat I'd ever seen flying through the trees. I looked around and realized that I was surrounded by hundreds of them. I later learned that they are fruit bats and they roost in the botanical gardens in such large numbers that they are killing the trees in the gardens. They sort of look like giant hairy brown teardrops hanging from the trees. I admit it was unsettling seeing a bat with a three foot wingspan flying around in the daytime and then realizing that about two hundred of his friends were staring at me from not very far away.

I finished up the day by doing some of the more conventional touristy things in Sydney, like walking the Sydney Harbour Bridge and checking out the opera house. Both are nice; the views from the bridge are pretty spectacular and the opera house is impressive, although it's a bit smaller than what I had imagined from the postcards. I also walked through some of the oldest sections of town by the base of the bridge. It's full of little old shops and pubs that have an out of the way feel to them.

The next morning I took a tour of Government House, which is the governor general's official residence in Sydney. The governor general is an appointed representative of the queen in New South Wales. The house was very stately, and the tour guide related some amusing anecdotes about the early government in New South Wales. For example, one of Sydney's first police chiefs or judges ( I can't remember which) was himself a criminal who had been exiled to Australia for a long string of offenses in England. After being shipped here as a criminal he had a long and illustrious career enforcing the laws he had broken at home. Another amusing anecdote concerns the artwork in Government House. At the time the house was built photography had not been invented, so the original decorations were all paintings. Of course Sydney was still a convict colony at that time, so it wasn't a very appealing place for accomplished artists to go to paint their masterpeices. The queen couldn't convince a qualified artist to go to Syndey to decorate Government House properly, so she commissioned an artist in England to paint scenes of the harbor and the surrounding countryside from written descriptions, and she shipped the pieces down to be displayed. The predictable result is that the paintings hanging in Government House today purport to represent Sydney and the harbor, but they look nothing like the real Syndey landscape, then or now. Of course the paintings can't be replaced now because they're priceless antiques, so the Governor General will probably just go on presenting a room full of pretty pictures of places that don't exist to foreign dignitaries.

After grabbing some fish and chips down at the quay and talking to some people from the US that I met on the tour, I jumped on the harbour ferry. The view from the ferry was of exclusive waterfront neighborhoods wedged side by side with ruins of prisons that held the worst of the worst transported convicts. We passed Sydney's version of Alcatraz, Fort Denison. These days they rent it out for weddings. As we passed the fort I had been having a very pleasant conversation with a couple about my age about life in Australia. The sight of the fort prompted me to remark to them that Australia, which is largely a safe, pleasant place, is what happens when you give the inmates the keys to the jail. I don't think they appreciated the irony and the conversation got a bit icy after that.

The ferry docked at Manly Beach, which is one of the better known surf suburbs of Sydney. It borders a headland that forms the north shore of the habour known as North Head. There is a waterfront walk along the entire beach that leads up through the woods on North Head. Apart from the water dragons that dangle from the rocks and trees along the way, the waterfront walk is reminiscent of a mediteranean stroll through a Greek village. If the the scenery wasn't enough to make me think I was on the Riviera, all the overweight Euorpean men in little bikini swimming suits completed the effect.

The views from North Head are spectacular. Cliffs hundreds of feet tall front on the Pacific Ocean. The bright blue of the ocean and sky create a striking contrast with the tan and red of the cliffs. Looking out over the ocean you almost expect to see humpback whales breaching offshore, and in late summer you've got a good chance of doing just that as they make their way up the coast from their summer feeding grounds in the Southern Ocean. If you turn around and walk through the woods away from the ocean you see the skyline of Sydney. Further up North Head there are ruins of anti-aircraft gun placements that were installed after the Japanese bombed Darwin at the outset of hostilities in the Pacific during World War II. Although Sydney was eventually torpedoes by Japanese midget subs, the aerial attack on Syndey never came, but the munitions magazines, gun foundations, and concrete bunkers indicate how seriously the Australians took the threat.

After walking around Sydney, Manly Beach, and climbing up to the top of North Head, I was knackered, so I decided to call it a day. There was nowhere else to go except off the cliff edge anyway, so it was back to Manly, across the harbour, and out for a nice Indian dinner in Sydney. I only had two days of work before I was to see what all the fuss was about at a big rock that I heard so much about in the middle of the desert.




1. Eucalyptus trees in Hyde Park

2. Sculpture in the ANZAC memorial

3. Fruit bats in the Royal Botanical Gardens

4. A curious fruit bat

5. Sydney Opera House

6. Sydney Harbor from the bridge

7. Government House

8. Water dragon

9. Cliffs at North Head

10. Antiaircraft gun placement