Back in My City

At my friend Max’s house in Cammeray, on the north shore of Sydney Harbour.

As is usual, I hit the ground running after arriving this morning.  The trip was fast and we landed early, around 11:45, and I was on the train into the city by noon. Landing offered a fantastic view of the city, with  few columns of smoke rising not far from the city centre (it turns out, thanks to the news that is on right now, that they were hazard mitigation burns that they are running this week).

Right before the plane took off I had gotten a text that things had gotten very busy at Town Hall and that the team couldn’t make our scheduled coffee. With the newfound extra time when I got off the plane, I decided to take the train straight into the city loop, getting off at Town Hall station (which I didn’t recognize as it is being updated, which hadn’t been done since the 50’s and 70’s – and still had the wooden escalators) where I popped up to street level and down the street to the Hilton to drop my bags so I could wander around the city for a few hours unencumbered.

From the Hilton I wandered south with the goal of Paddy’s Market to pick up some gifts for people stateside.  From Chinatown I continued toward Broadway (near the Uni, the area I had shopped when I lived in Darlington), past the Frank Gehry building which seems to have topped out on the UTS campus.  The building, pretty much like any other Gehry building, is a curvaceous brick edifice, lacking in right angles – I have a sneaking suspicion it will leak. I then walked down the first section of Sydney’s answer to the New York Highline, a conversion of disused rail lines which will ultimately stretch from Railway Square (outside of Central) to Darling Harbour. At the moment, it only runs a few blocks from Railway Square behind the ABC building to where the Gehry building is going up. I walked the length of it to Broadway, passing underneath the subway to come up on the street to see the newly completed Jean Nouvel building at Central Park as well as the now open UTS building across the street from the old Carlton Brewery site (which is now transforming into the rest of Central Park).  I planned to pop into the Abercrombie Hotel, on the corner of Wattle and Broadway, for lunch and was sad to see it was closed for renovation, I assume in conjunction with the adjacent Central Park development.

I ended up wandering through Central Park and through the base of the Nouvel building which contains a four storey upscale mall around a central atrium, not unlike the Westgate Pitt Street Mall downtown.

After I grabbed lunch (Malaysian) from one of the many takeaway shops in the mall, I headed back out to the street, through Central (and my favorite bookshop) and the Devonshire Concourse, before sitting for a bit in the main concourse of Central which is currently being updated.

I struck out up George Street through the City, wending my way to Hyde Park and Macquarie Street.  I passed the Royal Courts in time to see a swarm of journos capture cheering throngs as some barristers (wigs and all) emerged from the building. I found out via the news that the group was from the trial of John Moylan.

I turned down Martin Place and grabbed a few photos of all the construction going on, wandered up to Wynyard to see where I would be catching the bus up to the North Shore in the evening, and then headed to the QVB to pop into Victoria’s Basement to peruse the always interesting selection.

I wandered the CBD a bit more before going to retrieve my bags and make my way back to Wynyard to catch the 201 at 4:57 across the Harbour.  I must admit, the trip made me realize how shockingly close to the city many of the suburbs which I conceptualized as remote are.  The trip, all told, took fifteen minutes including walking, making it much shorter than most people commute in the US.