Sydney is a fantastic place. I’ve never seen a city with such an intriguing architectural mix. Modern buildings, led of course by the world-famous Opera House, share the streets with art deco structures, stately early 20th century government offices, and ornate 19th century mansions.
Elegant glass, steel, and concrete spires loom over – and sometimes spring from – sandstone structures from centuries past.
Although Melbourne is deemed more hip and cultured, Sydney is no slouch in these areas. There are plenty of museums, chic cafes, bars of all kinds, and excellent restaurants. (The Rocks, where the first convicts to arrive in Australia from Britain were housed, is now a lively center for dining and drinking.)
Like Melbourne, Sydney has plenty of green space, including the magnificent Royal Botanic Gardens, which stretch from the Opera House far into the center of the city, the Domain, an area that used to be the Governor’s grounds, and Hyde Park.
I’ll begin with the Opera House, which we toured on our first morning here. This inspiring structure celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2023.
It truly is an architectural masterpiece, from the iconic rooftop “sails” to the sleek and spacious interior.
It’s basically the Camden Yards of opera houses; after it opened, cities around the world decided they needed gleaming, modern opera houses. (If you’re not a baseball fan you won’t get the reference, but it’s not important.)
The steel arch Harbor Bridge sits close by the Opera House, framing a beautiful picture of Sydney’s celebrated waterfront. You can walk across the bridge, climb it during the day for a nominal fee, or climb it at night for a decidedly non-nominal fee (roughly $250 US).
Another wonderful attraction in Sydney is the State Library of New South Wales, located on the aptly named Shakespeare Place near the top end of the Botanic Garden.
The Library houses a spectacular reading room surrounded by miles of shelves, as well as a slew of exhibition spaces.
I was particularly taken with a photography display showing both the development of Sydney and the issues of concern from the 1860s to today.
There’s also a room containing evocative, sensitively-crafted portraits of Aborigines.
A walking tour of the city took us past or into several other notable buildings, including the Customs House, the Queen Victoria Building (which Pierre Cardin called “the most beautiful shopping venue in the world,” with prices to match), and numerous well-preserved official buildings, some of which have been transformed into hotels, stores, or museums.
Our hotel, the Sydney Intercontinental, is one such spot. The lower floors of the hotel preserve the old Treasury Building; guest rooms occupy a tower that respects the beautiful façade. I only wish we had more time here to explore more fully all that Sydney has to offer.
I leave Australia with the impression that this is a first world country that works. Of course, it has its share of problems, but some of the major ones faced by the US have been dealt with. As an enormous, sparsely populated country, Australia welcomes immigrants. Australia has a national health care system under which one of our guides has paid a grand total of 1500 dollars for surgery and nine years of follow-on care for bone cancer, and one of his friends has paid a total of 500 dollars for a quadruple bypass and subsequent care. The maximum tax rate to pay for this? Forty-five percent on incomes over 200 thousand dollars, barely higher than in the United States.
As a nation with a long history of discriminating against its indigenous population, Australia is showing hesitant signs of making things right; every public building and many private businesses display a sign acknowledging that they occupy lands for which an Aboriginal tribe is the traditional steward and often thanking the tribe’s elders, past, present, and future.
And, in this freedom-loving nation of proud individualists, after a mass shooting in 1996, the very conservative Prime Minister instituted a strict program of gun control, leaving that the only mass shooting in Australia’s modern history. As one of our guides said, people here would rather have gun ownership tightly controlled than worry about their children being shot at school.
Tomorrow, we’re off to Wellington, New Zealand. I’ll leave you with this view from our hotel’s 31st floor.
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