Sydney

After a 48 hour stopover in Sydney, it’s off to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains for the next three nights. During our stay, Sydney was in the throes of preparations for New Year’s Eve celebrations which will be centred around the Circular Harbour and Darling Harbour areas. Restaurants are all advertising special New Year’s Eve parties with prices in the region of AUS$500 (€250) per head for tables with views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House where the pyrotechnics will welcome in 2009. However, you don’t have to pay these prices to view the fireworks - there is plenty of free entertainment on offer as well around the harbour as well.

If you look very closely at the photo of the Harbour Bridge, you can see a group of people on the very top of the bridge just to the left of centre. These are tourists who have paid for a Harbour Bridge Climb experience which takes visitors to the very top of the bridge - not for the fainthearted (or the poor) !

Sydney is a very busy city with an unusual juxtaposition of thirty storey plus modern skyscrapers and hotels in the CBD (Central Business District) rubbing shoulders with older buildings dating from the city’s Victorian past.

Flicking back briefly to Melbourne, just down the road from where we were staying was a mural celebrating the making of the movie “On The Beach” in 1959. This movie was based on Neville Shute’s (a Melbournian) book of the same name and, as far as I can remember, told the story of the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.


Corrections to my literary recollections are welcome...