A Quarter of a Century Old in Sydney, Australia

I cried when the plane left New Zealand, but in the air, as I crossed the Tasman Sea, I regained my sense of exploration and landed in Sydney, Australia with the wide eyes and the eager heart of an adventurer.

I feel closer to (or more enchanted by) the city of Sydney than most cities, and this is before I’ve even begun my exploration. In fact, as I take the train into the city, it’s nighttime and all I can see is darkness and light. But Sydney is a little bit special because my mom visited in the past. And because I cannot forget that my name was almost Sydney.

The humidity attacks like a beast when I climb the steps out of the train tunnel and emerge in Hyde Park. The trunks of gum trees are lit like skeletal limbs by the white lights. The moon blazes above bright skyscrapers. I feel my excitement and awe blazing alike.

The next morning I step into the city with plans only to wander, a few vague destinations in mind. But I’m nothing if not a planner, so I have, of course, planned which sections of the city I will wander first. I make my way to Darling Quarter, passing again through St. Mary’s Cathedral and Hyde Park. The ANZAC memorial catches my eye, and then it’s city streets. I could be anywhere in the world, it seems, on these city streets. Blocks of shops and restaurants and flashing lights and people of all spots and stripes. What, I wonder, is it that is special about Sydney? Does it deserve my innate (and still unearned) sense of admiration and appreciation?

Then, I reach Darling Quarter. The fountains, the green space, the buildings arising me. And then, the harbor.

Sydney’s beauty is well-earned through hard work and planning: the architecture of the buildings, the focus on space and gathering places and green-spaces and water features. It is a careful culmination. Yet, Sydney’s magic lies with its harbor. The water of the harbor stretches fingers here and there, calm and dark and unknowing, but a presence of space, of reflections, of peace, of connectedness. The harbor divides Sydney in two, separates one side of the wharf from the other, but it is also a common element, a thread stretching between all the corners of the city and out into the wider world. What would Sydney be without its harbor?

During the last glacial maximum, when much of the earth was covered in ice, the Sydney harbor was a mere river snaking down from the mountains. But as ice melted and sea levels rose, the river filled in and salt water crept higher and higher up the hills and cliffs to create this great mass of water that is Sydney Harbor. That is the beating heart of the city. 

Later, I find myself in the Chinese Garden of Friendship, with calm waters and soft trees and traditional architecture juxtaposed with the skyscrapers rising in the background. The nearly motionless Australian Water Dragons sunning themselves around the place help make this little oasis seem like a step into a completely new world.

But it isn’t until I see my first Australian White Ibis and, minutes later, two vivid Rainbow Lorikeets that Sydney—that Australia—truly registers as a completely new world. One that, I find out in my afternoon perusal of The Rocks Discovery Museum, is relatively new on the world scene.

New Zealand, of course, is also quite new, but I had not realized that the massive land mass of Australia was actually “discovered” after the tiny sliver of New Zealand islands.

In 1642, as I well know, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman stumbled upon Tasmania and New Zealand. However, I had always assumed that Tasmania was “discovered” after Australia. That is actually not the case.

A series of unfortunate events occurred: in 1606 a Spanish explorer sailed through the strait between New Guinea and Australia without a single sighting of the massive continent to the south (some people say he say it, but he just didn’t stop).

Later, Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania, but never once caught sight of the two-thousand-mile coastline of southern Australia. On his way home, he did sight the north coast of Australia, but some of his men had just been eaten by Maori people in New Zealand so he wasn’t feeling too keen to make another stop, and sailed on.

Despite all of this, archeological evidence (and the existence of parts of Australia’s coastline on some very old maps) do suggest that there were some Europeans in Australia in the 1600s. Portuguese cannons dated to the early 1500s have been found along the coast and a few place names appeared on Dutch maps as they claimed parts of Western Australia for themselves. They named the whole area New Holland, but no one knew the extent of the continent. And then Captain James Cook, who also explored much of New Zealand, sailed up the eastern coast of Australia in 1770, creating detailed maps, recording some of the plant life, and finally claiming the land for Great Britain.

But the entire newly “discovered” giant landmass of Australia was simply ignored by the British…and then Great Britain lost the US colonies to the Revolutionary War. So Britain decided to send it’s undesirables to Australia instead. A fleet of ships, known as the First Fleet, set off for Australia with absolutely no information on where they were going and what they might need.

The first fleet was, as any child might remember from school, mostly composed of convicts. However, they were soft convicts—thieves and minor counterfeiters. This in no way prepared them for starting a colony in an unknown land. The ships first landed at Botany Bay, which Cook had written about as a nice place. But they found it marshy and uninhabitable, so they sailed up the coast and between two cliffs into the harbor. And, at a point quite near to where I am currently standing in The Rocks neighborhood in Circular Quay, they anchored the ships and started the city. It was January 26, 1788.

The Rocks is a charming area, spotted with old buildings (though not as old as the original ones built by the convicts and the officers). In fact, the convicts and officers were entirely unprepared and had no building skills, botany knowledge, or even farming ability, so it was pretty rough in those first few years. But industrial age buildings from the early 1900s still stand in the streets, scattered between cute cafes and apartment buildings. In one area, tall fences mark off The Big Dig, where archeologists are unearthing remnants from those first settlers—carved stone steps, glass bottles, tools, ceramics, and more.

I wandered down the clean streets toward the water and to Sydney’s most famous of sights. Well, two most famous of sights. I had been catching glimpses of the Harbor Bridge all day as I peered down avenues, bits and pieces of it appearing in the long narrow gaps between skyscrapers.

And finally, I had a clear view. It’s monstrous in size, but elegant and beautiful, stretching over the water from one edge of the harbor to the other. It was the second longest bridge in the world at the time of it’s completion, second only to the Bayonne Bridge in the US (which is 25 inches longer). I only studied it from afar, but anticipated more familiarity with the bridge to come in future days.

And so I turned my attention in the other direction, to the Opera House.

The design for the Sydney Opera House was actually chosen out of the reject pile. And it was an ambitious design. In one book I read, the author theorized that had the project not begun immediately and with much haste, the design would have again been rejected as no one knew how to create such narrow arched roofs covered in such heavy material. But the architects figured it out eventually, and now the Opera House rests on the edge of Circular Quay, arches aflutter, as though waving in the wind.

To give my feet a break, and to treat myself on my birthday, I settled into a café in The Rocks and ordered a passionfruit smoothie and read my book and enjoyed the warm Australian air in the pretty city of Sydney.

The next day took me all over Sydney as I tested out the public transportation. First, I bused east to walk the Hermitage Track from Rose Bay to Nielson Park. It was a quiet stroll up and down tree-tangled banks to tiny beaches with views across the vast harbor.

Later, I took a bus and then a train across to North Sydney (the train goes over the Harbor Bridge) and walked through Balls Head Reserve, Carradah Park, and Wendy Whitney’s Secret Garden.

Carradah Park was a highlight because of its vistas over the harbor from a yet-unseen angle.

And the Secret Garden teemed with large trees and shaded spots bordered with bright flowers and broad-leafed plants.

Balls Head Reserve, however, was extremely anti-climactic. I was drawn there because I’d heard there was an Aboriginal rock carving. Pretty quickly after arriving, I found the small info board pointing out the carving. Unfortunately, it was really difficult to see and only the overlaid markings on the info board helped to suggest the shape of a shark or whale carved onto a large, flat stone. 

Australia’s indigenous population is often erased from the narrative. Aborigines weren’t even included in census data as people until 1967. So it is quite difficult to know how many there were before the Europeans arrived. Estimates say 300,000. But what confounds me further is the mystery of Aboriginal origins. 

Before modern Homo Sapiens found their way out of Africa into Europe and Asia, people arrived in Australia (perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years). These people, the Aborigines, have no linguistic or racial link to any of their neighbors in the region and, as Australia has always been an island, these people therefore must have mastered ocean-craft a minimum of 30,000 years before any other people.

They sailed to a land that could not be seen using technology that did not exist anywhere else for centuries and then abandoned all ocean exploration and simply stayed. And then flourished in the vast extremes of Australia’s different climates. 

My third day in Sydney took me further afield, to the ocean-edge of the city, where I was caught by surprise by the wild sea and massive cliffs.

In my mind, cities taper off with suburbs and smaller cities, like lace edges, thinning and leaving little holes where nature begins to fill the gaps. And I suppose the other edges of Sydney must be much like that. But the ocean edge is untamed and massive. Homes perch on the edges of cliffs that plummet into teal seas. Waves crash and launch foamy sprays. Parks dot the edges, green lawns giving way to native tangle before orange sandstone reigns.

I stood on the cliffs by South Head (the Gap and Diamond Bay area), and imagined Captain Cook’s ship sailing along these massive cliffs, the sea-spray, the wild waves, the ocean-breeze. I can’t quite imagine what the view must have been like from down there rather than from up here, but I am sure it was incredible.

I visited in the wrong season, but I have read that it is quite common to sight migrating whales from these cliffs and I can scarcely imagine (coming from a land-locked state) how sensational that would be to watch.

I continued my long walk, weaving through neighborhoods when I had to and other times walking the cliff edges (staying behind the safety fences that line the whole route), until I reached Bondi Beach. The famous golden sand beach stretched out a kilometer or more and teemed with people. Surfers rode the waves, both expertly and amateurishly, but delighting in the cold water and crashing spray. Even though the wind blew and clouds dotted the sky, casting more shade than sun, scantily clad people lay out seeking the sun or engaged in games of frisbee, volleyball, and soccer. The sand between my toes was extremely fine and I delighted in the feel of it as I sat and ate my lunch.

My cliff walk urged me on, which was a good thing. I had just passed the edge of Bondi Beach and the famous Icebergs beach pool (which was empty, so I didn’t have to debate whether or not to go in on this slightly chilly day), when the sky opened up and rain began to bucket down. Luckily, I was low on the cliff rather than at the top and a rock overhang just ahead provided a fine place to shelter. After a few minutes, thunder cracked and shook and I couldn’t help my grin. I love thunderstorms (as long as I’m not at the top of a mountain or on a barren plain), and I hadn’t experienced one during my whole time in New Zealand. So to be blessed with one in Sydney was incredible. For half an hour the heavens wept and the ground shook and waves crashed into the rocks and I was in the midst of the power of nature.

As quickly as the rain had come, it departed, and I continued on. This section of my walk is the most famous, known as the Bondi to Coogee walk (or vice versa) so I saw a lot more people, but the path was better kept up and the views were stunning. I descended to several more beaches, each considerably less busy than Bondi, but equally as beautiful. As I neared the Bronte Baths, another picturesque ocean pool, rain again began to fall and the temperature dropped until I was chilled. I found more shelter, but decided I would not be swimming in the free ocean pool despite how beautiful it is.

Finally, I ended at Coogee Beach, my feet aching but feeling so satisfied. That night, I returned to Bondi Beach to meet a family friend (I’d also had dinner with her the night of my birthday) and her friends, and I loved the mix of city and beach, of it being so easy to pass between the two.

The next day (my last in Sydney), my friend Julia arrived from the US. Despite her early morning arrival and jet lag, we started with a 200-step climb to the top of the south-east pylon of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. While the Sydney Bridge Climb is probably incredible on an exponential level, it is also exponentially more expensive, so we opted to (more cheaply) climb the pylon. The views were lovely and the breeze soothed my sweaty temples.

Next, we caught a ferry past the Opera House and headed to Manly Beach.

After eating a yummy soft-shell crab burger (for me, the biggest perks of being near the sea is the sea-food rather than the sea itself), we did another cliff-top walk, this time headed up the coast with a final destination of Curl Curl Beach.

Our first scenic stop was the Manly Worm Hole, which was carved out by local fisherman (as a shortcut, so they say) rather than created naturally. On the other side of the tunnel, waves crash into the cliff and shoot into the air with such force. I could have sat and enjoyed it all day.

We passed the confusingly named Freshwater Beach and Freshwater Pool (which is a saltwater ocean pool), and then walked around the top of the bluff and descended to Curl Curl. Despite another inviting ocean pool, clouds had rolled in and it was chilly again. I dipped my feet, but will have to wait for my inevitable return to Sydney, Australia (hopefully in a warmer season) to actually submerge myself in an ocean pool.

We ended the night with a meal of dim sum and finalized our plans for the next phase of our Australian adventure!