SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

                                         Bit about the Big City

      Stretching 60 miles north to south and 35 miles east to west Sydney is Australia's largest city. The harbor divides the city into its north and south sections. After an eight month voyage from England Captain Arthur Phillip established a penal colony in 1788. The flotilla of eleven ships carried a thousand convicts. Forty of the original passengers died during the 250-day voyage from England. They landed on a sandstone peninsular known as The Rocks. After 1776, the English could no longer send their prisoners to the United States, so they sent them to barren and isolated Australia.

      Because of a lack of soil, some of the original settlers migrated several miles inland to farm. Later soil was imported into The Rocks. Home now to 3 ½ million people, the city is hilly reminding me a great deal of San Francisco. The streets are narrow. The city has subway and monorail systems. The downtown monorail makes a loop of the area every six minutes. Sydney is the capital of New South Wales. Natives call themselves Sydneysiders. The southeast part of Sydney is parkland, greenbelt, and sporting area.

      During the 1838 plague, the city was burned to the ground, then was rebuilt. In years past hangings took place at sunrise or sunset because the spirit rises at that time. Sydney’s famous Harbor Bridge, built in 1932-34, is the longest single span steel bridge in the world. Paul  Hogan was working on the bridge when the movie industry discovered him.

     The first crude wood huts erected by the convicts were followed with simple houses made of mud bricks cemented together with a mixture of sheep’s wool and mud. Rain soon washed the mortar away and no buildings in The Rocks survived the earliest period of convict settlement. There were no permanent buildings before 1816. Much restoration on historic colonial buildings has taken place in recent years.

      Cadman’s Cottage, a small two-story yellow sandstone building built in 1816 is the oldest surviving house in Sydney.  John Cadman was sentenced for stealing a horse. He eventually married Elizabeth who had stolen a hairbrush and a knife. Cadman became superintendent of government boats and was allowed to live in the upper story of the cottage. Originally the cottage was at the water’s edge, but because a fair amount of reclaimed land, the cottage now sits back 100 feet or so from the water. The original seawall still stands in front of the cottage.

     The waterfront of this thriving port was once lined with warehouses backed by a row of tradesmen’s shops, banks, and taverns. Above them rose cobblestone alleyways to the cottages of seamen and wharf laborers.

Garrison Church

      The very walkable inner city is best seen on foot.  British and Colonial Regiments once worshiped at Holy Trinity Church, built in 1840, and is also known as the Garrison Church. The oldest church in the country has a distinctive ‘wine glass’ shaped pulpit. The Visitor Center occupies the Sydney Sailors’ Home, 1859. The Argyle stores date to the 1800s, and Susannah Place, an example of a typical dwelling occupied by working class families from the mid 1840s, is now a museum.

     Sydney became a notorious port full of taverns and brothels. The old west image of bars, brawls, amd brothels is long gone. Prostitution, once outlawed, became legal again in Sydney in mid 1999. Sydney is surrounded by sprawling suburbs. With three-quarters of the country desert, 86% of the population lives in urban areas, with the majority of those in Sydney and Melbourne. All of the large cities are on the coast. The harbor officially titled Port Jackson, but commonly called Sydney Harbor, has 150 miles of waterfront, and the harbor area is basically downtown. The Lord Nelson, built in 1836 as a Brewery Hotel, still brews its own beer on the premises. Large aging vats are visible from the dining area. It is the oldest remaining hotel in the city. We enjoyed a very good lunch here in the historic ‘brew house’.

Tomorrow more on Sydney