Originally, I had not planned on going to WA, but my friend Craze persuaded me to go- he wasn't flying for 43 hours after all- and in the end, I am glad I did. It was an quite interesting and a diverse place and I covered a fair amount of ground- probably 800-900 miles of mostly coast line- in my short stay. Perth is much larger and more affluent than I thought- and expensive even for Australia- with 2.5m people. And it is the most remote large city in the world, being more than 2000 miles to the closest major met area. It is closer, I think to Singapore than to Sydney and it does have a feeling of being far flung, even if not unpopulated (unless you get 50 miles outside of it). And I will never forget those crashing waves near Cape Leeuwin in the south-
Sydney has the reputation of being one of, if not the most,
beautiful cities in the world, mostly because of its harbor (and Sydneyites
seem to feel that way). And it is indeed a very pretty city with a
gorgeous harbor. However, I would not necessarily rate it equal to San Fran,
which has its hills and fantastic bay, or far better than some other Pacific rim
cities that I have seen like Auckland, Vancouver or even Seattle, which I think
are all beautiful. Maybe it was just because of expectations.
But it has the famous
Opera House, whose architect evidently quit in the middle of the project in a
fit of pique and never returned to see the finished project (5x over budget, of
course). That is quite a lot of pique
and shows what ego and a desire for control can do to a fellow, I guess. It is strange to think that a city founded originally
mostly by convicts and which was a very rough port for well over 100 years would
eventually evolve into this very upscale, clean, and chic city. Anyway-
Took a 2.5 hour walking tour, which was very
interesting. Seems that most everything
in the city is named after an early Governor named McQuardie who found an
almost endless number of landmarks to name after himself (pays to be early, I
guess)- roads, towns, lakes, rivers, parks, etc. Apparently, however, his wife, Elizabeth, finally
told him his ego was a little out of control and so he stopped and then started naming things after
her- Elizabeth Street, Mrs. McQuardie’s Chair, etc. This seemed to mollify her somewhat, I understand, and she ceased further complaints.
My walking tour started in Sydney’s Hyde Park where there
was a small women’s march. The women
held different placards and one stated “Women Are People Too!” which came as
complete shock to me. So far in
Australia I had only seen them pulling donkey carts around. Who knew?
The tour also went by some art work known as ‘the
donut’, presumably dedicated to Homer Simpson-
I did walk across the iconic harbor bridge and also took a ferry across the harbor to get a perspective on the city, and the weather both days I was there was splendid as you can see-
Looks like that photography class paid off.
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