Tag Archives: Sydney

Scenic Sydney

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I’ve visited some beautiful coastal cities — Rio de Janiero, Venice, San Francisco, Cape Town — but none captivated me like Sydney.

Its famous harbor, flanked by the iconic opera house and bridge, bustles with ferries and sailboats. Locals and tourists from across Asia and the world fill its shops and restaurants. Street performers, gardens, museums and other attractions compete for attention.

The Opera House seemingly changes shape depending on your vantage point.

We just spent nine days in Sydney and filled almost every hour with something interesting. Here are some highlights:

We met this koala at the Taronga Zoo, a quick ferry ride from the Circular Quay beside the Opera House.

A walk across the Harbour Bridge offers a great view of the city.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has diverse collections in a distinctive setting.

The Sydney Barracks tell the stories of convicts who helped build Australia.

An extensive, easy-to-learn transit system uses ferries, trams, buses and trains.

We fed kangaroos and met other residents of another zoo, the Sydney Zoo.

Manly has popular beaches and hiking trails. We traveled there by ferry.

Perhaps the most famous beach hike is the Bondi to Coogee Walk, where we saw swimmers, surfers, volleyball players, body builders and lots of people just enjoying the day.

This crowd was among the million people awaiting the start of Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks.

We visited the Blue Mountains, where we saw the famous Three Sisters rock formation.

This concert of Beatles music rocked the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Sydney Opera House.

Australia’s state libraries, like this one in Sydney, offer museum-quality exhibits.

The Museum of Contemporary Art is adjacent to the Circular Quay and The Rocks, the city’s oldest neighborhood.

Boats are everywhere in Sydney, including at this harbor near Watsons Bay, where we went hiking.

The Australian Museum offers an excellent introduction to the country’s natural history.

It took some adjusting (but only some) to celebrate the holiday season in a summer climate. This scene is at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

A highlight of our Sydney trip was visiting with Nepali relatives who now live there, including our nephew Manohar, with Rukshana.

This wall hanging, like the image at the top of this post, is among the Museum of Sydney’s artwork from the Coomaditchie people.

Strikingly Australia 

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Many of the things I saw after arriving in Australia two days ago didn’t surprise me: its beauty, its diversity, its prosperity, its young people drinking beer at an outdoor pub. It felt like California with the avocado toast replaced by Vegemite. 

At least that’s the vibe I got at Sydney’s Darling Harbor as Champa and I took a long walk to shake off our very long journey from North Carolina. 

Things got more complex when we spent much of the following afternoon at the Australian Museum, which we’d expected to just breeze through. It showed us how Australia is simultaneously, and strikingly, distinctive, from its history to its landscape. 

For instance, its birds. I’m not a bird watcher but I was spellbound by the collection we saw at the museum. There were giant emus and cassowaries, and distinctive kinds of turkeys, hawks and pelicans. I saw my first albatross — not the metaphor, but the actual bird, plus kookaburras, boobies and cormorants. 

Other exhibits were also revelatory, about everything from minerals to kangaroos. At the neighboring Anzac Memorial, we learned about Australia’s military history. We visited Saint Mary’s Cathedral, strolled in Tumbalong Park and ate momos and dal-bhat at one of several Nepalese restaurants near our hotel. 

Not all of it was positive. In one museum exhibit, I learned about Australia’s horrific treatment of laborers from the South Sea Islands, and its complicated, sometimes disgraceful, legacy with its aboriginal population. 

But Australia has also given us Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, scientists, Olympic champions, tennis stars and personalities ranging from feminist Germaine Greer to media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

On its shiny surface, especially what we’ve seen so far in Sydney, Australia resembles the United States. But we’re learning how the reality lies deeper, and we look forward to discovering more over the next few weeks. We’re departing Sydney this evening and will return after Christmas for more local sightseeing and the city’s famous New Year’s fireworks. 

I know all of this is a first impression based on a small section of a single city in a country so big it fills a continent, so I’m looking forward to learning more.

For now, mates, pass the Vegemite.