Today the weather forecast was for a cloudy day of sweltering heat, with afternoon temperatures of 38°C – a full thirty degrees higher than back home. There was only option for such a day – Sydney’s air-conditioned museums! I left my club early and strolled through the Botanical Gardens, stopping briefly to take a shot of Sydney Opera House in the morning light…..
…..and to continue to my first destination, the UNESCO-listed Hyde Park Barracks. This was built in 1817-1819 on the orders of Governor McQuarrie, the fifth governor of the fledgling settlement of Sydney.
Its original purpose was to house convicts, but shortly after convict shipments stopped in 1840, the barracks were repurposed to accommodate female immigrants, particularly Irish women escaping the great famine. Today the site is a museum with interesting displays that recount the harsh lives of the convicts, and also the devastating impact the expanding colony of Sydney had on the indigenous aboriginal population.
The museum was very well presented……..and despite being an old building it also had powerful aircon to keep visitors cool. I left the barracks and stopped briefly at Hyde Park, one of Sydney’s many green spaces….
….. before continuing on to my next destination, the Art Galley of New South Wales, which has a collection of Australian art. Rather than display their collection chronologically, the curators mixed art from different periods in the same rooms, a successful idea that produced many interesting contrasts.
The gallery has a new annex, where they displayed their extensive collection of aboriginal art.
I spent a pleasant hour wandering around the gallery, enjoying its aircon. As noon approached however, it was time to brave the outside air to walk back through the Botanical Gardens to my next destination, a tour of Sydney Opera House. On the way I managed to see a couple things I has missed on my earlier visit to the Gardens, like Government House, the official residence of the Governor of New South Wales.
The opera house tour lasted an hour and was full of interesting facts about the construction and operation of what is now an iconic landmark and the most recently built UNESCO world heritage site. I learnt that the competition for designing the Opera House was won by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, but that he did not then have a plan for constructing his inspired but technically challenging design. A solution was only found once work had started, and this and other difficulties led to delays and cost overruns. Eventually Utzon was forced to quit the project and left Australia, never to return or see his finished masterpiece. The Australian Peter Hall took over the project, and was primarily responsible for designing the building’s interiors, which our tour focused on.
It was good to see inside such a famous building, but in my humble view, the interior is far less impressive than the magnificent exterior. The most interesting room by far was the huge concert hall, which can house 2,500 visitors – but sadly photos were not allowed there. Opera and ballet are presented in a different venue, the much less impressive Joan Sutherland Hall.
Highlight of the trip was going out onto the roof and seeing the famous white “sails” up close. They are made from a mosaic of 1,056,006 white or off-white tiles, of which only 10,000 have needed to be replaced since construction finished in 1973 (fifteen years after it started in 1958).
When our tour finished, we were released back into the baking afternoon sun, and I did the only thing possible on such a hot day – head back to my room for a bear nap and to start writing the first posts for my blog.
In the slightly cooler evening air, I ventured out again to the western part of the Rocks area, which gave me yet another perspective of Sydney’s skyscrapers.
I visited a historic pub – the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, Australia’s oldest pub brewery – for a cold beer before heading off for dinner in a local restaurant.
It has been one of those days where the crushing heat had made it hard to do much. Temperatures were forecast to drop on the next day, but I would be leaving Sydney for next destination, Melbourne, which would turn out to be a completely different type of travel experience.
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Trouspinet travels 
Phwoar!
It’s so hot the chooks are laying boiled eggs
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Lots of interesting things to do I see. I amazed you only stayed two days…you will have to come back. It does not seem that you have exhausted all the things to do in Sydney.
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