Sydney in a Day (It'll Cost You Nothing)

It’s reasonably cheap to get from Sydney airport to the centre- I took the Skytrain which cost $15 one way but you can get a taxi quite cheaply too. I was staying at Base which is a few steps from the Town Hall and probably the most central hostel. Base as it turns out is a chain of hostels, and partly for that reason I’m not too keen on them. They’re everywhere up the East Coast and in New Zealand, but they’re rather impersonal and you don’t meet people that easily.

I arrived at 8am in the morning but wasn’t allowed to check in till 2 o’clock so they told me I could leave my bag in the luggage room downstairs. There wasn’t a lift though and the lady on reception watched me struggle downstairs with my bag without an offer of a helping hand. So at 8am I set out to explore the city- my first stop was Darling Harbour where I sat with a coffee and enjoyed the early morning sunshine. It was such a peaceful part of the city and is a great place to watch the sun shimmer on the water and observe the shiny skyscraper skyline behind it. Around the harbour are lots of bars and restaurants, Cargo being the favourite club by night. There is also the Syndey Aquarium and the imax movie theatre, as well as Skycity the casino, which trust me you'll end up in when you run out of money at the end of your trip . I wandered over to the Chinese Garden of Friendship which is a small piece of tranquillity in a bustling city. The garden was intitiated by the local Chinese community to celebrate Australia’s 1988 bicentenaryis a scaled down version of a private garden from the Zhang Dynasty era 3000 years ago. It was designed and built by Chinese lanscape gardeners and architects and contains the four key elements of fire, water, plants, stone and architecture. The landscapes feature waterfalls, mountains, lakes and forests. If you have some time, why not stop for some chinese tea and a spot of lunch in the cafe there.


I walked up past the Town Hall towards Hyde Park and the Botanical Gardens. Hyde Park is Sydney’s central open green space and was actually named after Hyde Park in London and was originally a racecourse and sporting ground. The tranquil setting is popular among office workers who want some fresh air, and time out from the concrete jungle. The central pathway links the Archibald Fountain and the War Memorial. The War Memorial is a 1934 art deco tribute to the Anzac soldiers who fell in the first world war. The memorial stands 30 metres above the pool of rememberance and there is a photograph exhibition underneath the building. My favourite place to relax is the Royal Botanical Gardens, which were first established in 1816 and are home to over a million specimens of plants and flowers.


I made my way down Macquarie Street to the famous Opera House and since my tummy was rumbling I decided to stop for a sandwich. "I'll have the ham salad" I said, thinking I would receive a ham sandwich with a little bit of lettuce and a slice of tomato. "Do you want everything? She replied. Well I watched in amusement as she piled betroot, carrot, lettuce, tomato and cucumber into my sandwich and piled it like it was a doorstop. It turns out the Aussies love their betroot and shredded carrot and they are the two staple ingredients of all sandwiches and salads.

Like many things in Australia the Opera House looked smaller in real life, but it looked beautiful against the bright blue sky with the sun reflecting off the many ‘shells’ covered in glazed off white tiles. It was in fact designed by Jorn Utzon from Denmark and its construction became almost as controversial as the design. In 1956 the New South Wales Government announced an open-ended international design competition and appointed an independent jury. The competition aimed to attract the best design talent in the world so didn't specify design parameters or set a cost limit. The main requirement of the brief was a design for two performance halls, one for opera and one for symphony concerts. Supposedly rescued from a pile of discarded submissions, Jørn Utzon’s winning entry created great interest and the NSW Government’s decision to commission Utzon as the sole architect was an unexpected and bold move.

After admiring the opera house and joining the throngs of people in taking hundreds of photos of the same thing, I walked along circular quay and up towards The Rocks. Australia doesn’t have much in the way of history, but the Rocks is where Sydney first began. In 1788, Australia's first European settlers-British convicts (POMs) and their overseers-claimed the land and built their camp atop the sandstone cliffs.

The Rocks eventually grew from an open-air gaol into a vibrant port community. It's a village which has a colourful past-filled with tales of rough gangs and gritty life can still be traced in the many surviving buildings from the last two centuries. But today the renovated former warehouses, sailors' homes, and dens of iniquity house a unique mixture of fine restaurants, boutique shops, and galleries. Cadmans Cottage, built in 1816, is the oldest surviving residential building in Sydney and was occupied by Governor Macquarie's coxswain, John Cadman and his family. It was an official building associated with the surrounding government wharves and shipyard. The water police took over Cadmans cottage in 1847 and later it was used by the adjacent sailors home. Restoration began in 1972.

Walking around Sydney is the best way to do it, and if your legs aren't too tired try walking past the Opera House and round the bay to Mrs Macquarie's chair. From here you'll get the best view of Sydney, with the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House in the same shot. This chair was carved out of a rock for Governor Lachlan Macquarie's wife as she was known to go and sit in this spot to enjoy a panoramic view of the harbour. Aussies are really into keeping fit and you'll see .

So in one day, by 3pm I had seen all the most important sights Sydney has to offer. Now all that was left to do was party. Base has a bar attached to it called Scary Canary and it was ladies night. Ladies night is the most biased night known to man, but I wasn't complaining. Within one hour I managed to drink 5 'champagne' and raspberry cordials and shut the door on my finger in the bathroom. I now have a nice black mark on my fingernail to prove it. An invention in Australia that hasn't quite made it to any other country I have been to yet is the Buzzer Device Thingy. When you order your food you get a Buzzer Device Thingy which you rest on your table and wait for it to buzz and light up. It's a nerve racking experience waiting for it to buzz and flash- you know it's going to do it but you don't know when. You stare at it like you do when you're waiting for your phone to ring, but when it finally does buzz you jump up with fright. It gets you every time. When The Buzzer Device Thingy buzzes and flashes you have to go an collect your food from the kitchen window, which I think is a rather lazy service, but I suppose it saves them from having to pay waiters and waitresses.
When I lay in my 6-bed dorm trying to get to sleep, someone suddenly started talking in Swedish. It took me a few minutes to realise that the girl below me was in fact talking in her sleep, whats more she was grinding her teeth and clutching a teddy bear; it was like she was possessed. Suddenly the German sat bolt upright. "Das ist gud" he said, before laying back down. Before long it was like a mexican wave of sleep talking in different languages. French, German, French again, Swedish, grinding of teeth, German again....they could have formed a band and had a hit single. It was ever so slightly creepy....