Sydney city break

We are excited about exploring the city for two days! I didn’t have a great time in Sydney last time I was here so want to enjoy the city with its internationally iconic cityscape this time around.

Catching the bus in from Dee Why is much quicker, but not as enjoyable as taking the Manly ferry. We see dolphins on our way, and gliding up alongside the Sydney Opera house (SOH) can’t be beat.

The Opera House is our first stop. We join a tour, a large group with headphones to hear our guide, but despite this I love it. It’s great to get a peak inside and learn the iconic building’s stories and how through its conception and completion it tested the limits of friendships, engineering, construction and design. I find the tour fascinating - some of the titbits here:

• Designed by Jørn Utzon, an unknown 38-year-old architect from Denmark who, in 1956 submitted his design in response to the international competition for “a National Opera House at Bennelong Point”. His was one of 223 entries from 28 countries.

• I loved that Utzon’s sculptural design takes inspiration from his love of nature - evoking Sydney’s cliffs, sails in the harbour, and swans. Each roof shell is not a single structure but made up of a series of precast concrete segments with steel cables inserted into channels within each segment. The tensioned cables, pulled incredibly tight, enables each shell to stand self-supporting.

• Japanese ceramic bowls inspired the roof tiles. Utzon wanted the shells to contrast with the deep blues of the harbour and Australian sky. The tiles needed to be gloss but not cause glare. The subtle coarseness of Japanese bowls was exactly what Utzon was looking for. Three years of work by Höganäs of Sweden produced the granular texture Utzon wanted for his tiles, made from clay with a small percentage of crushed stone.

• Utzon was forced into resigning in the middle of construction. In 1965 the government changed. After 24 years of (left-wing) Labor rule, the Liberal party formed a (right-wing) coalition with Davis Hughes’s Country party. Hughes made himself Minister for Public Works and with rising SOH costs refused to pay Utzon for critical works. Relations between Utzon and the NSW Government fell apart. Utzon never saw the finished building with his own eyes. He is only one of two people to live to see his building recognised as a UNESCO building.

• Inside there are four main venue spaces. They now all have nets over the orchestra pit because in the 80s an opera performed with live chickens, one of which walked off the stage and landed on the cellists head! The biggest venue houses the largest mechanical organ in the world with 10,000+ pipes from the size of a straw to pipes 3 storeys high.

• SOH opened its doors in 1973. It continues to be a building for dreams.

Knowing we could easily spend longer appreciating the SOH we tear ourselves away and walk on into the brilliant sunshine, reluctantly heading to the shops. We easily get distracted by three pieces of city art that I really love on route…

… ‘bara’ is a stunningly beautiful white crescent sculpture inspired by the shell fish hooks crafted and used by Gadigal women; it is a reflection of the moon in the sky and the bays in the harbour, and echoes the sails of the SOH.

… ‘Edge of the Trees’ is a complex ‘forest' of 29 pillars signifying the 29 local Aboriginal clans. The pillars bring together Aboriginal experiences and colonial history, and are made from different materials: sandstone and wood for the country, and steel for the built history of Sydney. Engraved on the pillars are names of Aboriginal people and places and of First Fleeters.

… ‘Forgotten Songs’ makes me sad, commemorating the songs of 50 birds once heard in Central Sydney, before they were gradually forced out by European settlement. Bird calls filter down from the canopy of birdcages suspended above, whilst the names of the birds whose calls can no longer be heard are embedded in the floor underneath. Variegated Fairy Wren, Tawny Frogmouth, Golden Whistler…

Shopping cannot be put off any longer. The shops are Saturday busy. We pick up the few clothes we need for Indonesia and with moods frayed by the consumer hustle we walk briskly away to search out Cantina OK!

The bar is in a converted garage, now teeny tiny margarita den that describes itself as a ‘micro mezcal mecca’. My kind of place! Found at the end of a small delivery lane, it is standing room only, with space for only 20 peeps at a push. Luckily we went early to beat the Saturday night crowd and had plenty room to drink and watch with fascination the deft speed shaved ice, agave spirits and hand-pressed limes were shaken and poured.

Stomachs starting to stir we walked across town to Darlinghurst to eat at Govindas, a Sydney institution. This was a nostalgic throw-back for me from when I was last in Sydney in 1998. I loved going to Govindas then when it was rooted in the Hare Krishna movement and served a very cheap vegetarian buffet and hosted a cinema with mattresses and throws on the floor. 27 years on it is more upmarket than I remember, but still serving delicious affordable food and as we leave we squeeze past people queuing to see a film screening. Happily not much has changed!

Starting to feel all the walking, I was glad to curl up in our hotel, our room high above Sydney’s streets.

Sunday early morning finds us up on our hotel roof drinking free coffee (yes!), after eating a supermarket-bought breakfast (muffins, yoghurt and fruit) in our room. The place is amazingly peaceful and we have it all to ourselves. Not wanting to go, I leave Lilz to drink more coffee whilst I head to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) on the harbour front to take a Tai Chi class. Up on the roof the class has great views of the harbour bridge and - I’m annoyed at this - a gargantuan cruise ship blocking any sight of the Sydney Opera House! 😡 Never having done Tai Chi, I’m expertly guided by Grandmaster Gary Khor “the father of Tai Chi in Australia”. I enjoy the class - although find putting the movements, mental symbolism, and breathing all together tricky and I’m pretty clumsy with it all. Something I may well look into once back home.

At 10am I see Lilz walking up to the gallery and we wander around the MCA collection. To get a better insight into the main exhibition - ‘In light of the visible’ by Cerith Wyn Evans - we join a free tour that takes us round the light installations and neon 'drawings in space' and learn about Evans’ interests, including gardens, language, Japan, music, time and perception - and his character… he sounds hard work: very demanding in search of perfection! I am pretty hypnotised by the slow flow of a free dance show by three 4th year Catchment Dance Collective students. They snake their way through the rooms improvising their interpretation of the exhibition as they go.

Outside it is hot and we don’t linger at the Blak Market - an Indigenous market of First Nations small business owners - too long. Just long enough to buy a wombat Christmas decoration!

Crossing the Harbour bridge to get to Kirribilli Market gives us great 360 views, the bridge itself a bit dour and traffic-noisy. We scoff Turkish spinach and feta gozlemes at the market, so good we wolf down seconds. The wind picks up, taking a gazebo with it, and the market hurriedly packs up.

We battle the wind and find the haven that is Wendy Whiteley's Secret Garden in Lavender Bay. Wendy began work on the garden after her husband, artist Brett Whiteley, died in 1992. Channeling her grief into a guerilla garden, she slowly transformed an overgrown wasteland outside their home into a beautiful sanctuary for everyone to enjoy. We love it. It’s a soothing balm after the city, surrounding us in green, and the story is a beautifully moving one. What I love most is after all her work, her garden is now recognised and safeguarded - in October 2015 it was granted a 30+30 year lease by the NSW State Government.

We walk down to the bay and make our way along the promenade to Luna Park. We never make it though. People coming in the other direction tell us the park has been evacuated because of the strong winds! We turn around and make our way up to the station and get the train back into the city.

Last stop is a wander around the Botanics. When I was last here I loved sitting in the Botanics (and once bumped into my cousin Toby randomly!) and remember looking up into the trees above to find a colony of large fruit bats. As they damage the trees they have now sadly been moved on, but we enjoy wandering around the large gardens in the sometimes rain. The only thing that spoils the experience is the booming bass beat from a wedding reception on a boat anchored in the harbour.

Ferry back to Manly, we enjoy watching the seagulls hitch a ride on the ferry’s air currents. We grab a pizza before getting the bus back to Dee Why where we finally see Fiona, now back from the UK!Read more