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Day 17: 25/6/13
I slept a little bit on the night bus last night- I'd say I got four hours anyway which wasn't too bad. We got to Sydney around 9, a half hour earlier than we were supposed to! We drove across a highway bridge with a view of the harbour bridge and the opera house beside us which was cool. I felt like I'd seen the two main things I came to see before I even got here! The hostel had said they were just a five minute walk from the greyhound stop so there was no shuttle or anything! It took me a few minutes to figure out where I was going and it was raining so by the time I actually got to the hostel I was soaked! They did let me check in which was great. They had free breakfast- cereal and toast- until 10 aswell so I had breakfast and then I went to bed!
I could hear the rain the whole time I was in bed and it made it very hard to get back! Eventually I made myself get up and have a shower and then I was grand.
I didn't really have any plan for today so I just went to the reception and asked for a map. They told me about a free walking tour that was starting in a few minutes so I went to do that. It started at the town square where there was a big building which I think was the city hall and a cathedral. The guide was a young guy from Sydney who was a primary teacher but only worked part-time since coming back from travelling abroad and now gave tours on his days off.
We went to the Queen Victoria building. The building itself is really nice but outside it there was a statue of Queen Victoria that apparently used to stand outside the government buildings in Ireland (I presume he meant the Dail) and the Irish government sent it over to Sydney as a gift. There was another statue opposite it of a dog that the queen used to have. On this statue there was a piece of rock and a sign saying it was a gift from the battlements on the castle in Blarney. Obviously the Irish like to send over a lot to Sydney! Inside the building it was a shopping centre, but an old fancy one. The shops were small, more like markets and there were really high ceilings and archways with lots of decoration. We walked through that building and went underground where there were loads of shops and came out at Pitt St Mall, which is a pedestrianised area for shopping. The Westfield shopping centre is there and that's where the Sydney sky tower is where you can get views over Sydney. It's supposed to be the tallest structure in Syney but it looked debatable!
We walked to Hyde park then where St Mary's cathedral is. It's the biggest one in Australia. There was a fountain outside it which made for a good view- it's a popular spot for wedding photos. Apparently inside the church you can see evidence of a strong Irish Catholic influence.
We passed by a statue of Lachlann Macquarie then who was a governer of Sydney at one stage. He named a streets after himself, which starts where the statue is, and he built a barracks to confine the convicts, more or leas to lock them up ar night. The barracks was just across the road and you can get tours there to see what life was like as a convict.
There were no architects in Sydney when it was first established so they had to use the expertise of a convict who was an architect found guilty of forgery. Francis Greenway was his name and he designed a lot of the older buildings in Sydney, including the barracks.
Governer Macquarie believed that Sydney could be a great city, not just a convict colony. He wanted to build a hospital but the Brittish government wouldn't give him any money as they were only interested in Australia as a convict colony. So the governor devised a clever plan. The sale of alcohol was controlled by the government and he decided to give three business men the complete righs to the sale of rum, if they built a hospital for him. So they did. They built a much bigger hospital than Sydney needed and some of it fell apart early on as they obviously weren't too good at building! Because it was too big, the government use one of the wings of the hospital. The guide said Sydneysiders find it quite funny that their government use a building funded solely by rum!
The guide pointed out some speakers then which were left over after a multination conference called APEC, in 2007 I think. It seems its worth looking up on YouTube as comedians from an Australian tv show decided to test the security measures put in place. They put a crew together- a big car with a Canadian flag, bodyguards, etc and fake passes with things written on them like 'This is not a pass'! The guards waved them through all the checkpoints and didn't ask to check any passes and they themselves had to come clean before they actually entered the building. The police arrested one of the bodyguards but one of the comedians who was dressed as Osama bin Laden was walking around scott-free behind the police! I think all charges were dropped as he police had never checked any passes. I must look it up!
The street we were on, I think it was called Martin Lane, was one of the main banking streets. The Bank of Australia had a building there and on the front of it was the Australian coat of arms. There's an emu on one side of the coat of arms and a kangaroo on the other. They were chosen because neither animal can go backwards and thwy hoped Australia wouldn't go backwards! The street also had loads of flags up about the lions rugby tournament.
The GPO was also on this street. It has a big clock tower at the top. During World War 2, the tower was taken sown as it was feared it would be a target for air-raids, which never ended up happening. When they put it back, they found the word 'eternity' written in white chalk inside the bell. One man had turned Christian during the 40's and written the word about half a million times throughout the city during his lifetime to spread God's message. Nowadays it's seen all over Sydney and in the year 2000 it was projected onto the harbour bridge for the New Year's firework celebrations.
The fountain on that same street had been used in one of the matrix films and one of the superman films were made here too. They made it look like New York City by hiring a load of yellow taxis.
We went to an alley then with loads of bird cages hanging in the air above you. They are to resemble all the species of bird that died off when the white man came to Australia- I think there were 50 different types- that seems like a lot!
The Customs house was next. It was near circular quay and the harbour. Outside it they had an English flag which is supposed to be in the spot that the first English flag was laid when they arrived. The guide didn't know exactly how they knew where it would be! Inside the Customs house they had a model of Sydney set into the floor with glass over it. So you could walk back and over on top of the model, looking at the various buildings. On the floor aswell there was a symbol like a swastika which was a good luck symbol at the time. Apparently lots of important buildings at the time had this symbol.
We came to circular quay then which is where the ferries leave from to go to other parts of Sydney and where the harbour is that the opera house and harbour bridge were located. So we got our first proper views of them! The guide told us about the architect who designed the opera house, who was a Dutch guy. During the building of it, the government changed and the new government thought it was too expensive so they got rid of him and he Had to go homw. So he never got to finish his designs properly. The people that did finish it contacted him about the inside so it should be similar to what he had intended anyway. He never came back to Australia though so he's never seen the results of his work, and I think he may be dead now.
To the left of circular quay is the Rocks area which is the oldest part of Sydney. At the entrance to it from Circular quay is Cadman's cottage. He was a convict but worked with the rowing boats at the quay. The cottage is interesting as it's one of the oldest in the area- built in 1916. Beside the cottage there's a pine tree with a fence around it. It seems hundreds of years ago there was a particular species of pine in danger of extinction and then when they discovered Australia they found the same species here so they were able to repopulate the species and they survived!
The Rocks area anyway has all the old stone buildings and little laneways- you can imagine what it was like to live there in the 1800's. It was really rough, because it was mostly convicts that lived there. The guide told us about gangs that used to fill socks with sand and beat people with it. If there were any police around or anything they'd just empty the sand out and a sock wasn't a lethal weapon!
The Hero of Waterloo is one of the oldest pubs in the Rocks and still exists today. If you went to this pub in the 1800's you would be given a lot of free drink, thinking the barman was really generous! Then at some stage when you were really drunk they would open a trap door underneath you and you would fall into a basement. In the morning you would wake up on a ship and have to work as a slave there. Cells and shackles have been found underneath the pub, as well as tunnels leading all the way to the harbour. Historians say though that they probably just put them in a wheelbarrow and wheeled them offg down the street- people that saw them just wouldn't have cared!
In the street we passed a green box not unlike a phone box shape, which was a Public urinal! It is the last one left but it's still working! It looked small though. I'd say men would have to bend down to use it!
Of course there was also an Irish pub there. I think there may have been an Irish shop in the pub too. There's always an Irish pub stuck in the middle of things!
We finished the tour at the Overseas passenger terminal where there was a really good view of the harbour bridge and the opera house. It was dark at that stage so they looked really cool with the lights- you can see for yourself in the photos!
After the tour I walked towards Darling Harbour. I just wandered there a bit and had some food. I had heard it was nice and it was but I'd say it would be even nicer in the day time. I just went back to the hostel then and I intended to upload all the blogs. But then my Internet finally ran out of money so uploading them involved going downstairs to use the wifi so I got lazy and just went to bed!
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