After a night spent in a heavenly bed with heads resting on heavenly pillows it was a grey and drizzly day which made Sydney look unattractive because many of its high rise buildings are in brutalist grey concrete which seemed somehow threatening and even the Opera House looked grey beneath today’s skies. We decided the best thing to do was to hop on buses and travel around the city and hop off when we got to an attraction that was a) indoors and b) we wanted to see or a) outdoors b) we wanted to see and c) it wasn’t raining at that point. That way we happened to visit the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney Aquarium and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and see a number of other places in between including Circular Quay, Kings Cross (not a railway station but an a “Bohemian” area), Woolloomooloo Bay (good job the ‘o’ key works on this computer), Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, The Harbour Bridge (went over it twice on the bus), Chinatown and The Rocks where we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch.
We spent hours at the Sydney Aquarium and much of that time was spent watching the Platypuses and the Dugongs – we were enthralled. There are two huge sea tanks which have walkways beneath them so it is possible to see the creatures swimming alongside and in the case of the sharks, rays and turtles gliding overhead. There is also a huge collection of fish, sea-anenomes and corals from the Great Barrier Reef.
The Queen Victoria building (or QVB as it seems to be called) was built as a market hall in 1898 and has a large statue of the large Queen outside it. It has been elegantly restored in 1986 as an up-market, four-storey shopping mall. The building is magnificent being built of sandstone with pillars and statues on the outside and beautiful woodwork and stained glass inside.
The Gallery of New South Wales has a huge collection of artefacts starting with some stunning Aboriginal art including some very beautiful grave posts, moving on through a large collection of European art from the eleventh to twentieth centuries – with a surprisingly large number of Pre-Raphaelite paintings plus sculptures and paintings from Frederick Lord Leighton. In fact English art, perhaps unsurprisingly, is well represented with paintings from Reynolds through to Ben Nicolson and on to Gilbert and George. Australian paintings get a number of galleries to themselves and there are also Japanese and Asian galleries with stunning ceramics including works by Hamada and Shimoka as well as some beautiful and serene cravings of the Buddha.
I just love dugongs, or I think they are called cows of the sea as the shape of their snouts and eating actions are similar to a cow eating.
ReplyDeleteYou can see them in the wild off the coast of WA or in Moreton Bay near Brisbane.
Kings Cross was a reknowned "gritty area" as you poms put it. Very popular with the prostitutes of old. They were probably shipped from the mother country!! And for the record even after several trips to Sydney I have never made it "OB", otherwise known as over the bridge. We did make it on top though. Please climb the bridge!!!
I'm sorry I'm stuck with the image of heavenly loo paper. I see it everywhere. It enfolds the Sydney Opera house; makes crossing the Sydney bridge quite a job and enlivens my trips to Tesco's.
ReplyDeleteWrapping his hands in boxing gloves didn't keep him out of mischief!