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Australia: Day 03: Sydney: Exploring the city

Sydney was full of free maps and guides so I took one and followed it. I joined 3 walking tours into one and my day walking around the city began.

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

It was time for my first GeoCache in Australia. I found a cache called Campbells Cove, GCXDDN.

Sydney Opera House was designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon

Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened on Saturday, 19 March 1932 with a small incident. The Labor Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, was to open the bridge by cutting a ribbon at its southern end. However, just as Lang was about to cut the ribbon, a man in military uniform rode up on a horse, slashing the ribbon with his sword and opening the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the name of the people of New South Wales before the official ceremony began. The intruder was identified as Francis de Groot.

Royal Botanic Gardens were opened in 1816.

My next stop was Government House. Since guided tour was free, I was happy to enter.

The Government house was constructed between 1837 and 1843 and has been the official residence of the Governor of New South Wales.

Only in this room we were allowed to take pictures

Water fountain in the formal gardens on the eastern side of Government House

Me, Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge

Mrs Macquarie's Chair is an exposed sandstone rock cut into the shape of a bench, on a peninsula in Sydney Harbour, hand carved by convicts from sandstone in 1810 for Governor Macquarie's wife Elizabeth.

Art Gallery of New South Wales  had a free entrance to the general exhibition space, which displays Australian (from settlement to contemporary), European and Asian art so I took a quick look inside.

Me as a judge in Hyde Park Barracks

Hyde Park Barracks

St Mary's Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney and the seat of the Archbishop of Sydney. St Mary's has the greatest length of any church in Australia (although it is neither the tallest nor the largest overall).

 

 ANZAC War Memorial, completed in 1934, is the main commemorative military monument of Sydney

Tourists everywhere. Here they were in front of Queen Victoria Building,  a late nineteenth-century building. It was designed as a shopping centre and later used for a variety of other purposes until its restoration and return to its original use in the late twentieth century.

Australia's largest Chinatown

Famous people meeting famous people. If you don't know the guy on the left, his name is William Bradley Pitt.

Sydney Observatory on "Observatory Hill". The most important role of the observatory was to provide time through the time-ball tower. Every day at exactly 1.00 pm, the time ball on top of the tower would drop to signal the correct time to the city and harbour below. It is now used a s a museum, where evening visitors can observe the stars and planets through a modern 40 cm schmidt-cassegrain telescope and a historic 29 cm refractor telescope built in 1874, the oldest telescope in Australia in regular use. Free entrance also attract my attention.

Finishing my circle in Sydney with a rainbow over Sydney Opera House

View from Sydney Harbour Bridge

For the end I entered the Sydney's oldest pub. The Fortune of War dates from 1828 and is Sydney's oldest pub in The Rocks. I had two nice Tasmanian James Boag beers.

24 km city walk