3rd January 2010
Drizzle heralded the start to today, so we abandoned plans to go to Manly on the ferry and headed for the Opera House via Circular Quay instead. By the time we reached Circular Quay the weather had brightened a bit and some of the street performers were starting to get going, including an Aboriginal guy playing the digeridoo and posing for photos at the same time!
When we arrived at the Opera House we decided to take one of their ’essential’ tours which basically shows you around the whole place with a bit of history and gives you an overview of the different theatre halls. They do one of these tours every 15 minutes from 9am until 5pm, each with around 30 people on it, so it’s pretty busy.
The tour was excellent, a really good way of seeing the different parts of the Opera House and finding out about the architecture. It took 16 years to complete the building, with the distinctive domes taking the architect some 3 years to find a way to develop. The tiles on the outside are also specially developed and are reflective and self cleaning - over a million of them in total. The one sad thing was that due to the time and cost overruns, the original architect resigned before it was completed and went back to his native Denmark and although he later collaborated on the project again, he never actually returned to Sydney to see the completed building.
The Botanic Gardens are right next door to the Opera House, so once we had completed the tour we headed out to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, which is a famous lookout point for views of the bridge and Opera House.
Then we walked back through the Botanic Gardens to the noisy squaking of the Cockatoos and Rainbow Lorikeets.
We walked under trees overloaded with upside-down hanging fruit bats (sleeping) and back out to the street through the Rose Garden.
We also past a Wollemee Pine, a really ancient pine which we had also seen a newly planted example of at the National Arboretum in Gloucestershire. A really enjoyable stroll.