Sydney – Page 6 – Not Your Average Engineer

June 14, 2010July 1, 2020

Around Downtown Sydney

The analogue of the Space Needle in Sydney.

St Mary’s Cathedral.

A police checkpoint with a bunch of police motorcycles. They were big Yamaha sport touring bikes. Looked like really great machines in top shape.

An odd statue that is part of a festival going on in Sydney.

Down at Circular Quay.

The statue is luring the woman in!

An old house to the west of Sydney Harbor Bridge.

The bridge looming large in the background.

A neighborhood pub saluting the Hero of Waterloo.

A church for soldiers.

Amongst the skyscrapers.

Chimneys of old and the bridge.

A street performer really drew a crowd.

The Circular Quay.

A bunch of motorcycles parked together.

The Royal Automobile Club. I doubt it has much to do with automobiles anymore.

The old water police station.

Sydney has a monorail. I wonder if Seattle knows about this.

Town Hall.

The El Camino never died in Australia and remains quite popular.

June 14, 2010June 16, 2021

The Sydney Observatory

With the Sydney Harbor Bridge looming to the north, I walked up the hill from the bridge ramparts to the Sydney Observatory.

A memorial to World War I and all of the ANZAC forces who died in various battles.

A memorial to the soldiers from New South Wales who served in the South African War otherwise known as the Second Boer War.

The observatory. It was used primarily for time-keeping to allow accurate setting of ship chronometers. The buildings to the left were also used as the signal houses to send messages from one side of the harbor to the other via flags.

looking to the west at some of the commercial shipping areas.

One of the original telescope mounts.

One of the original telescopes. The whole setup was maybe only 10-15 feet tall.

Looking back north at the bridge.

June 14, 2010July 1, 2020

The Sydney Harbor Bridge

The Sydney Harbor Bridge is a truly impressive structure. It captures the imagination just like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. You can’t really get an appreciation of just how large it is or how much work it took to create until you stand underneath and look up or walk across.

For a few hundred dollars, you can climb the bridge. The little ants in this photo are people coming down off the bridge. I don’t see myself climbing it anytime soon. Way too expensive for not even getting to take your camera to the top.

The Sydney Opera House from the southern bridge pier.

Looking up at the massive bridge pier and the ironwork.

The deck is 49 meters across. That’s HUGE.

Looking north along the highway lanes. The pedestrian path starts below.

Some important-looking plaque.

Looking back into the city.

Starting the long walk across. The entire way is monitored by CCTV cameras and security personnel in bright reflective yellow jackets. I felt very “secure,” especially in the sections where the entire pedestrian walkway was surrounded by chain link fence and barbed wire.

Looking out toward the mouth of the bay.

Circular Quay and downtown.

At the western bridge pier. Note the CCTV camera keeping a steady gaze on any hooligans who might come across the bridge. An Australian TV show tested the bridge defenses a few years ago to hilarious results. Don’t film the bridge if you look like a terrorist!

Cameras cameras everywhere.

They don’t want you to illegally climb the bridge. You must pay money for the privilege to climb.

One of the old ferry slips for the cross-harbor traffic. Before the bridge was completed, everything went back and forth via boat. This little slip is all that remains. Now everyone uses the bridge or the tunnel to get across.