G’day and welcome to Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and what is probably Australia’s most famous city. I arrived into the city late afternoon and discovered that driving in downtown Sydney is not fun at all. After missing one turn, several inconvenient one way roads, and a couple of no right turn here intersections, I suddenly found myself driving across the Harbor Bridge and having to make a ten mile loop around the outskirts of the city before I could try again. Luckily, the second attempt was successful. I checked into my hostel, grabbed some dinner, and then headed up to the roof of my hostel to check out the view. And holy crap, what a view it was! That’s the Harbor Bridge on the left and the uber-famous Sydney Opera House on the right.

I only have a couple of days here, so I woke up early and hit the ground running. First, though, I had to turn in my little rental car out near the airport and catch the train back to town. Once off the train, THEN I hit the ground running. First up was the very interesting Hyde Park Barracks. It was constructed around 1817 to house the influx of convicts arriving from Britain and is one of Australia’s earliest colonial buildings. Inside was a really great museum on the history of the colony.

From one of the windows in the Hyde Park Barracks, I snapped this photo of St James Church. It’s Sydney’s oldest church, built in 1819, though it was originally designed to be a courthouse. Both of these places were designed by convict architect, Francis Greenway. It’s hard to picture these two buildings standing here in 1819 with almost nothing else around.

Right across the street is Sydney’s huge cathedral, St Mary’s. It was started in 1868, but not completed until 1928. They just added those spires in 2000 though, so technically it was completed then, but whatever. It’s a really beautiful place. You may notice that the ground is wet in all of these pictures. That’s because the rain has just been relentless. I’m using my patented guerrilla sight seeing technique to get all of this done without getting too wet.

Since this first day has had so much rain I decided to make it primarily a museum day. The Australian museum had a lot to see, taxidermy animals from around the world, history of Australia, Aboriginal history (which I did find super interesting), but I mainly came for the dinosaurs. Right at the entrance was our good friend the Muttaburrasaurus.

It turned out to be a relatively small exhibit, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. They had a lot of T-rex skulls and a complete skeleton, which was very cool. Ten year old me was very happy.

Next up was the New South Wales Art Gallery. This place was huge and just packed with stuff from all periods. They even had a couple of those Ned Kelly paintings by Sidney Nolan. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve seen them all now.

There was way too much in that museum to cover here, but I really enjoyed the aboriginal art once again. It was kind of scattered a bit throughout the museum though.

Some of the aboriginal works are on canvas, but there were also a lot that were created with traditional materials like the four pieces seen below. They were all painted on eucalyptus bark.

Near the Art Gallery is this really great viewpoint, Mrs Macquaries Point. A lot of Sydney’s activities involve going to various viewpoints. Anyway, in 1810, the governors wife, Elizabeth Macquarie, ordered that a chair be carved into the rock on this peninsula so she could view the harbor. It’s a pretty amazing view. She never got to see the Opera House or the bridge though.

The next day was supposed to be less rainy, but I’m still employing my guerrilla sight seeing tactics just in case. So when I saw the sun, I headed straight for the ferry terminals and took a short ride across the harbor to Cremorne Point. I picked this viewpoint just by guessing on the map. The other popular ones involve harbor hikes that are probably incredible, but with the off and on downpours, I’m not in the mood today. It turned out to be a great little excursion, though, as I was blessed with a gigantic rainbow for my picture. Awesome!

It was also kinda cool to see the Opera House from the water. It’s definitely a world famous and iconic building, but I didn’t find it as interesting as I thought I would. It’s one of those places in the world that when you finally see it in person you say to yourself, “Yup… there it is.”

I got off the ferry from Cremorne and it was obvious that storm clouds were moving in. A perfect time to visit the Museum of Sydney. It was a super tiny but interesting museum. They had models of the eleven ships that arrived in Sydney Harbor in 1788. They were the first wave of British colonization to arrive. Some of the ships carried free settlers, some carried convicts, and some carried supplies, but they came prepared to stay. There was also a really interesting film about those first years.

It was still pouring when I left the museum. A great time for lunch right across the street. By the time I had finished eating the rain had cleared and the sky opened up so I made my way over to the Harbor Bridge to climb up to the Pylon Lookout. There was a cool museum about the bridge’s construction inside and at the top, a birds eye view of Sydney. Australians are really proud of this bridge. They call it the giant coat hanger. My only complaint was the annoying cruise ship blocking part of the view.

Sydney in its entirety is huge and sprawling, but I’ve been surprised at how compact the downtown area is. It’s almost claustrophobic. It does make exploring a bit easier though. And every once in a while you see an old colonial building amongst all the modern ones, like the Customs House below.

I also took a walk past the New South Wales Parliament just for the hell of it. It’s not nearly as interesting as Victoria’s, but there it is.

It was getting a little late so I topped my day off with a walk through Hyde Park right in the middle of everything. As I’ve said before, no Australian city would be complete without Queen Victoria and of course Captain Cook who started it all.

Hyde Park is really just a peaceful oasis in the city. At either end are very different types of war memorials. At the north end is the Archibald Fountain commemorating the alliance of Australia and France in WWI.

At the south end is the big Anzac Memorial. These Anzac Memorials started as tributes to the advance on Galipoli during WWI, but later evolved to be memorials to the armed services in general. Anzac stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps.

Here’s something a little different. On my way into town from the Blue Mountains and before turning in the rental car, I took a detour to the Bulgandry Aboriginal Site. It’s a collection of ancient engravings on sandstone. The site is named after the main figure of a man thought to be an ancestral hero. He’s upside down in the picture below.

There were other carvings too, including a couple of wallabies and a lot of fish. It was an interesting little detour.

Well, Sydney was just a quick stop for me so that’s gonna wrap it up. I can’t believe how much rain I’ve had on this trip to the world’s driest continent. Yeah, right! Anyway, since I don’t have a car anymore it’s time to utilize another form of transport to get to my next stop, so stay tuned…