Sydney (part the second)

There are two landmarks you have to see when in Sydney. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let you board a flight out of the airport if you haven't been to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Not wishing to take the risk, I visited both. On the same day.

The Harbour Bridge is, there's no getting away from it, an impressive piece of metalwork. It is the heaviest single-arch steel bridge in the world. It is not the longest. It was the longest until very soon after it opened when some wretched Americans opened one that is a few centimetres longer. So Sydney had to fall back on having the heaviest.

You can take a tour up on to the steelwork itself, but it's ludicrously expensive, and something deep in my Scottish roots rebelled. Especially when I discovered that you can walk up one of the stone pylons, two of which stand at each end for about 5% of the cost of the bridge walk. You get up close and personal with the bridge, you get the same views and you get an exhibition on how they built the thing in the first place. You're also allowed to take your camera with you, which isn't allowed on the official tour.

What I didn't get, was decent weather, but it was midwinter's day after all. It was raining quite heavily when I left the hotel, but luckily it stopped on the way out along the bridge and had started to clear up a bit by the time I got to the top of the pylon.

The view from the top of the pylon is pretty impressive – of course you can see the Opera House:

But you also get an unusual view of the bridge itself:

On the first picture, you can see that the bridge carries trains as well as cars. Originally the two leftmost lanes in the picture were for trams, but they no longer cross the bridge. The path on one side is for people, and on the other is for bicycles.

On that second picture you can see two of the bridge climb parties.

Some facts about Sydney Harbour bridge:

• The bridge took 5 years to build, opening in 1931.
• It cost an impressively precise £10,057,170, 7 shillings and 9 pence (Australian pounds). The original estimate was around £4.2 million.
• On a hot day, it grows by 18cm – the lower arch, which is bearing all the weight is hinged at the four points where it meets the rock to allow the bridge to bend.
• Between 1948 and 1971 a colony of white cats lived on top of the pylon which is now used for the exhibition and pylon-climb.
• During construction, the unfinished arches were held back by cables anchored into tunnels on either side of the harbour.
• The stone pylons at each end have virtually no structural rôle – they are almost exclusively aesthetic. They were added because the town planner of the time (one Dr Bradfield) felt the bridge looked better with them than without.
• The bridge was designed by a firm in Middlesbrough in England.

Walking across the bridge gives some impressive views of the harbour. Sydney is built around a huge network of inlets that open out to the Pacific at Manly. Geographically, is is a flooded river valley system.

Having walked across and back, I popped into the Sydney Observatory – originally built on the highest point of land in the city. I guess it's still on the highest hill in the city, but being hemmed in by floodlit skyscrapers can't help when it comes to looking at stars. You can see it in the first of the bridge views above – in the group of trees to the right of the end of the bridge.

There's an interesting exhibition about the history of the observatory and its importance in the early colonial period. For a small fee you get a guided tour as well, including the chance to look through one of the telescopes at the sun – there's some special filter or lens or something so that you don't blind yourself. We also managed a look at the moon which had risen by then, although it was still broad daylight. I was surprised how much detail there was to see.
From the telescope dome, I got another great picture of the Harbour Bridge:

By now, though, it was time to get round to the Opera House where guided tours are available all day. The tour itself is very good, but opportunities for photographs was a bit limited; they don't let you take pictures in the theatres themselves (there are 5 of them) and it was quite dark in the foyers by this time.

The story of the building project is well known, I think. Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect, won an international design competition in 1957 and the project was to take 6 years to build at a cost of $7 million. In fact, it took 16 years to build and cost $102 million. The main problem was how to construct the shells that give the building its distinctive appearance.

Utzon's original drawings were vague, to say the least – they looked as though they'd been drawn on the back of an envelope. When it came to actually creating the shapes, nobody knew how to do it. Eventually Utzon came up with the idea of making them out of concrete ribs which all have the same curvature so that the same moulds could be used over and over again, rather than having to find some way of making each roof segment individually. You can see the ribs on this picture:

In 1966, amidst ever more acrimony, Utzon resigned from the Opera House project. He left Sydney and never returned to Australia, so he never actually saw his masterpiece finished. The interiors which he designed were not implemented – some say to the detriment of the accoustics.

Ironically, the largest of the performance spaces is not the Opera Theatre, but the Concert Hall and, in fact, the Opera Theatre is not suitable for staging very large productions. There are discussions going on currently about whether a new, dedicated Opera Theatre should be built and, if so, where.

There are over 1 million ceramic tiles on the outside of the building. Although the building looks white, around half of them are a light beige colour to reduce the glare on sunny days. The tiles are coated to make them self-cleaning; when it rains, the dirt just runs off.

Approaching the Opera House from the front involves climbing a lot of stairs. Utzon's intention was that the shape would remind visitors of the approaches to a Mayan temple, where the House itself represents a temple to the arts.

In 1999, Utzon was re-engaged by the NSW government (the owners of the House) to design new interiors for some of the spaces – a general purpose room and the long, western foyer. His clean, Scandinavian designs give an idea of what the whole house might have looked like.

One last thing: before 1957, the site where the Opera House stands – Bennelong point – was home to a municipal tram depot.

From the outside of the Opera House, the view to the Harbour Bridge and Circular Quay was great as dusk fell and the city scape lit up:

Circular Quay is a major transport hub for the city – not only do many bus routes terminate here, the local metro rail runs through it and about a dozen ferry services leave for some of the suburbs.

By the time I walked round the harbour area to look back to the Opera House, night had fallen properly. This close to the equator – about 34° south – night falls very quickly. For comparison, Amsterdam is 52° North and Edinburgh is 55° North. Phoenix, Arizona is about 34° North.

From the International Passenger Terminal (the long line of white lights on the centre right of the above picture), you not only get a different view of Circular Quay...

... you also get an amazing view of the Opera House: