Journey to Sydney and Back, Part 1

Have a look at our country on our journey to Sydney.
There will be pictures galore and some history on some
of the places we visited.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on each photo.

Peter at Holties House has posted quite a number of
stories on his blog about our holiday to Sydney. Our first
major stop was in Sydney.We had left Brisbane on a Sunday
morning and as we were in no hurry we stayed overnight in
Coffs Harbour and Bulahdelah before we finally arrived in
Sydney early on Tuesday morning. We spent most of the day
looking for accommodation before settling on a motel in
Engadine which is in the Sutherland Shire suburb on Sydney’s
southern fringe, Engadine is sandwiched between the
Woronora River and the Royal National Park,the first park
to be declared in Australia.
We had decided to locate near a railway line as driving into
the CBD as well as finding a car park would have been easier
to find “hen’s teeth”.
Engadine was 33km from Sydney and a forty-five minute train
ride to the centre of town. From here we were able to visit all
the tourist attractions with relative ease.




Sydney is the most
populated city in Australia,
with a population of
approximately 4.28 million
and is the state capital of
New South Wales, and is
the site of the first European
colony in Australia.






Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast.
The city is built around Port Jackson, which includes
Sydney Harbour and is a major international tourist
destination notable for its beaches and twin landmarks:
the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

Radiocarbon dating has provided evidence that the Sydney
region has been populated by indigenous Australians for at
least 30,000 years.
At the time of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788,
4000 to 8000 Aboriginal people lived in the region.
European interest in colonizing Australia arose with the
landing of Captain Lieutenant James Cook in Botany Bay
in 1770. Under instruction from the British government,
a convict settlement was founded by Arthur Phillip, who
arrived at Botany Bay with a fleet of 11 ships on
January 26, 1788.
This site was soon found to be unsuitable for habitation,
owing to poor soil and a lack of reliable fresh water.
Phillip founded the colony at Sydney Cove on Port Jackson.
He named it after the British Home Secretary, Thomas
Townshend, Lord Sydney.

Our first day we caught the train
into Sydney and went up the 305
metre (just over 1,000 feet) tall
Centrepoint Tower.
Construction of the office
building commenced in 1970, and
the construction of the tower
began in 1975. Public access to
the tower, at the time the fourth
tallest building in the world, began
in September 1981.
The total cost of construction was
A$36 million. The tower has a
maximum capacity of 960 people.
Travel from the ground to the
tower is via three high speed double
deck elevators that reach the
observation deck in approximately
40 seconds.






































































The views from the top are
to say the least, most
spectacular and a visit
to the viewing platform
is well the effort.






Next we caught the monorail
over to Darling Harbour.
The Metro Monorail, originally
Sydney Monorail is a single-loop monorail that connects Darling
Harbour, Chinatown, the Sydney
CBD and shopping districts.
There are eight stations on
3.6km of track, with four trains operating at once.
Major attractions and facilities
such as the Powerhouse Museum,
Sydney Aquarium and the Sydney
Exhibition Centre are served by
the monorail.




It was opened in July 1988
during the Bicentenary






































THE CHINESE GARDEN OF
FRIENDSHIP: was designed
in China to celebrate the
Australian Bicentenary.
The garden was a gift to
Sydney from its Chinese
sister city of Guangdong.
It is one of the largest
of its type outside Asia.


The gardens were
designed by landscape
architects and embody
principles dating back
to the 5th century.
The gardens present
visitors with a green
and peaceful sanctuary
in the midst of a major
bustling city and an ideal
escape from the
concrete surrounds of
Darling Harbour.





















































In 1984 the New South
Wales and Australian
Governments jointly
announced that a
National Maritime
Museum would be built
as part of the
redevelopment of Darling
Harbour, Sydney, close
to the site
of Australia's first
European settlement at
Sydney Cove.




The museum was
opened by Prime
Minister Bob Hawke
on 29 November 1991,
with the USA Gallery
dedicated on 1 January
1992 by US President
George Bush and Prime
Minister Paul Keating.











Model of HM "Endeavour"
inside the Maritime Museum

Our first day still wasn’t finished as
from Darling Harbour we caught the
Monorail back into the city, then a train
down to Circular Quay. Here we
investigated times when the Manly Ferry
left and we had heard of a boat ride up the
Parramatta River.
















We decided to go on both of these boat rides
the following day. For now we were going to
walk down to the Sydney Opera House before
catching the train back to our motel after a long
day. My next post will continue from the Opera
House and onto the two boat journeys.