Last day in Sydney. We got on a Big Bus tour to see the city, but I'm sorry to say that I barely took any photos and didn't make any notes so can't really remember anything. Does anyone remember much of what they saw on one of those tours? I did love the city though, the history was interesting, and I remember the pretty, colourful old terraced houses with balconies, and the thoroughly modern high-rise covered in plants with a huge panel of mirrors facing downwards and angled so that sunlight could reach everywhere.
We'd booked onto a two-and-a-half hour boat tour of the harbour for the afternoon, and the bus tour got us to Circular Quay just in time. Thankfully it wasn't very windy or cold up on the boat deck, and the sun was out, so we could happily gaze out at the beautiful views of the stunning harbour while listening to the tour guide's commentary on the history of the place.
In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew on the HMS Endeavour were the first known Europeans to see Australia. They made first landfall on the east coast at what he named Botany Bay (due to the range of new-to-European-science plants, insects and animals they found) then sailed north, exploring and mapping the coastline. (In northern Queensland there is a town called Cooktown, and another called Seventeen-Seventy, and probably many more such references.) Not far from Botany Bay, Cook passed an inlet, noted that it looked to be a good and safe anchorage, and named it Port Jackson, but didn't go in. It would be another eighteen years before someone went in.
In 1788, having taken eight months to sail from England with a fleet of eleven ships carrying over a thousand people, Captain Arthur Phillip decided to venture into the little inlet Cook had marked as Port Jackson, and "had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security." We now know that it is the second largest natural harbour in the world after Rio de Janeiro, with 240km of coastline and 66 bays. Choosing a bay with deep water, good defence positions, and a source of fresh water nearby, he made landfall and named that particular bay after the Home Secretary at the time, who had authorised Phillip to establish the new colony - Lord Sydney. Sydney Cove is where Circular Quay now is, the one the modern city grew out from and is based around.
The colony of New South Wales, the first European settlement in Australia, was a penal colony - most of the settlers were convicts. Their sentences were either for seven years, fourteen years, or life, but of course, even if they managed to survive until being freed, they had no way to sail back to England. So most stayed, claimed some land, worked hard and made a new life for themselves. Brits in Australia are still referred to by Aussies as POHMs ("poms") - Prisoners of His Majesty.
Now, two hundred and thirty years after it was founded, Sydney is the size of Greater London but has a few million less people at 5.1 million. Sydney Harbour is a National Park and a heritage-listed marine park; since legislation introduced in the 1970s forbade anyone from 'putting muck into the harbour' as the tour guide put it, industry has moved out and the water is very clean. There are sharks. It's very sheltered, right next to the ocean but protected from it. It doesn't need dredging, but there are a lot of reefs and over a hundred shipwrecks. Most of the land along the extensive shoreline is public, either open to the public or set aside as a park, because the authorities didn't think it was right that only the richest should be able to enjoy the waterfront. I like that they did that! Of course, only the richest can afford most of the waterfront houses (and have their fancy cars displayed in glass-walled rooms to show off to tourists on boats), but many of them don't own the water frontage; so the public can wander along and sit on one of the pretty, white-sand, nearly-empty beaches directly in front of some millionaire's house, or just go for a stroll, if they so wish.
After a lovely couple of hours - boat trips are nice anyway but Sydney Harbour is amazing and beautiful! - we wandered around a bit, saw some of the old colonial buildings. It was getting dark, the lights were coming on, there was a park with tall globe lamp-posts and a fountain, it was pretty. We made our way back to Circular Quay to have a nice last-night dinner on the waterfront. The next morning, we'd go our separate ways - my mum and stepdad back up to Cairns, and my sister and I to Bali.
I really wished I didn't have to go.
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