Sydney. If you want to take the train from the airport to the city, and want to save almost $14 and explore a bit of Sydney on foot, buy your Opal card at the airport station, and then walk 25-30 minutes to the closest station, which from the domestic airport is Mascot. The walk is not very pleasant: rubbish, heavy trucks driving fast near the sidewalk, waiting at the traffic lights under the scorching sun, but still, when you spend $55 on a Jetstar flight from Gold Coast to Sydney...
Welcome to Sydney!
Walking to Mascot train station.
This shack (the block) is probably worth a million dollars.
This is the other side of the street.
The entrance to the station is here. Can you find it?
Mascot apartments next to the train station with Woolies, cafes, kindy... a 3 bedroom apartment may cost 860k here.
Pitt Street Mall, a Westfield in disguise.
St. Mary's Cathedral
Sydney Tower
Add yellow cabs on the wrong side of the road and voilà you get New York.
The Reserve Bank of Australia Museum is an interesting and free museum right next to Martin Place train station. The early colony and Commonwealth years of Australia were a mess in regards to currency (and railways). First Australian notes were printed in 1913 - 12 years after the establishment of Commonwealth of Australia. The currency thing is now sorted out (railways is not). Australia uses decimal currency, banknotes are very hard to forge and it's ok if you take them surfing - they are plastic... and we make them for 13 countries. :-)
Queensland state government printed its banknotes long before the federal government.
A private bank note, bought by the federal government, and stamped "AUSTRALIAN NOTE".
This 1000 pound note was very easy to forge and soon after issuing it was restricted to inter-bank use. Also, the sheep.
Five Australian Royals - first ask the public what they would like to call the new currency, then decide that you don't like any of their suggestions and come up with something stupid yourself, start making designs, roll back when you start receiving death threats from the public, use 'dollar' - now everyone is happy.
The year is 1963. In 1966 the new decimal currency "dollar" will be introduced: 1..12 pence -> 0.833..10 cents, 1..10 shillings -> 10..100 cents, 1 pound (20 shillings) -> 2 dollars.
Manly Municipal Council
Christmas in summer
Manly, The Corso
Manly beach
Shelly beach in Manly
Bondi beach
Camp Cove in Watsons Bay
Hornby
A postcard at sunset
An aboriginal audio-visual show at sunset, on the roof of the Sydney Opera House
Another weekend break possible thanks to cheap Jetstar flights and AirBnB accomodation. Hurray!
A practical tip: on Sundays the public transport in Sydney is capped at $2.50, so you can travel on the trains, ferries, and buses around Sydney practically for free.
Old and new.
A model of the CBD under the glass floor of the Sydney library
A monument to a pioneer woman
Queen Victoria Building - a 19th century shopping centre.
Darling Harbour
Brutalist architecture near the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The Rocks - Sydney's old town.
The Rocks
The Rocks Museum documents history of the native people of the Sydney area.
Behind Circular Quay
Sydney ferries
On a ferry to Parramatta
On a ferry to Parramatta, the river quickly becomes narrower.
A typical double-decker Sydney train.
CBD packed tight.
A cruise ship "parked" right in the centre of Sydney - Circular Quay
The view of the Opera House from the bridge on a rainy day.
People sitting in the lower deck have a good view of other people's feet and knees.
Sydney train from a ferry.
Sydney Trains A set from the front.
An interesting thing about Sydney Trains' fleet is that it is custom made for Sydney, currently by companies in China and Australia. There are no labels inside or outside the trains that would tell you who the manufacturer is or what model it is. This method is applied in other cities and to other public transport vehicles in Australia. The buses in Gold Coast, for example, are often of the "no-name" brand.
A postcard from Sydney
Postcard #2 - Darling Harbour
Maritime Museum
Sam Fiszmanwas a Polish Jew who after the war settled in Australia and was active in the Labor Party. A park overlooking Bondi beach bears his name and features his credo: "I am better than no man and no man is better than I". I'm not a fan of that credo - the first part sounds stupid: almost everyone alive is better than Hitler or Stalin, the second part sounds like an excuse for any wrong thing you might do.
Postcard #3
Two Canberra class landing-helicopter-dock (LHD) ships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN): built in Spain and in Australia.
The remaining pictures are from the Australian Navy Museum on Garden Island.
The middle section of a WW2 Japanese midget submarine.
A humorous take on Australian Navy.
Self-deprecation is part of Australian culture.
Postcard #4 - a view from the top of Garden Island
Australia had and has strict immigration policies, including sometimes deportation of whole groups of people. For another example see: Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901
I didn't know that Australia took part in occupation of Japan.
