Mark Meek's Ideas: Sydney

Australia's largest city, and the place where the country really began, is Sydney. This city, which is considered as an outstanding place to live with nearly half of it's population having been born abroad, actually began as a British penal colony. In the days when one could be convicted for being unable to pay debts, and when the U.S. gained independence, Australia became the main penal colony. Many low-level criminals and troublemakers were not imprisoned, but were transported to distant lands.

What is now Sydney was developed from there, as were so many other cities in newly-settled lands, by a gold rush. Many people consider the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games as "The best Olympics ever held", and the city is one of the world's most prominent destinations for both visitors and immigrants, despite the inherent Australian disadvantage of being "so far away from everything". The population of Sydney is known to be very well-educated.

The signature image of Sydney is of it's famed Opera House, built in the 1970s near Sydney Harbor Bridge. These five images of the Opera House are from Google Earth and Street View.

Here is a look at downtown Sydney, starting inside the Opera House. Does this remind Canadian readers of Vancouver? There is even a waterfront building in Vancouver, as we saw on our visit there, with "sails" that resembles the Opera House. If you see Government House, resembling one of Henry VIII's palaces, it is Government House from where the state of New South Wales was governed, adjacent to the Opera House. The first three images of Government House are from Google Street View.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.8566998,151.2150716,3a,75y,81.91h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOxlutsUMk7BaaJWQQmU1_LqWoIyUpTYHui0EjC!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOxlutsUMk7BaaJWQQmU1_LqWoIyUpTYHui0EjC%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya253.143-ro-0-fo100!7i7200!8i3600

Here are some more scenes of central Sydney, starting in Railway Square. When trains were the most common method of travel, this was the focal point of the city. So much in Sydney is named for places in Britain, it is like looking at a map of Britain, except that the landscape of Australia as a whole couldn't be more different. Sydney is in the Australian state of New South Wales, commonly abbreviated as NSW. Remember that we visited the original "South Wales". The first three images of central Sydney are from Google Earth.