Sydney in ’90 Is Rocking, Not Waltzing, Matilda

Like its landmark Opera House, Sydney always seems to be under full sail.

It is a sprawling city, larger in area than London or New York City, and one of its constants is water--the pounding South Pacific and the gentler coves and inlets of massive Port Jackson harbor that lap the headlands and islands of Sydney’s lush landscape.

Yet this town is not so much surrounded by water as it appears to float on it. The modern glass skyscrapers emerge from behind the Circular Quay, Sydney’s bustling transportation center. It is an image reminiscent of the view of Manhattan from Queens: just towering buildings out of the flat--no land in sight.

And from the sun-warmed deck of a Sydney ferry, really the best way to get your bearings, it’s easy to imagine that the vessel is anchored and that the gorgeous Royal Botanic Gardens are slipping past, or that massive Harbour Bridge, nicknamed “the Coat Hanger” by locals, is drifting high overhead, dangling from some invisible skyhook.

Sydney is a charged city of 3.5 million people; it is Australia’s generator, and never mind that the folks in Melbourne argue that their town deserves equal billing in Australia’s heirarchy of influence. Sydney has the banks, the culture, the thriving club life, the fabulous waterfront bungalows that hang like treehouses from the hillsides, the restaurants that serve Thai and seafood, cheap Indian and pricey nouvelle.

Sydney is balmy temperatures and terrific white-surf beaches like Bondi (that’s bond-EYE) and Manly, both only a few miles from downtown. Sydney is an ethnic mixing bowl that rivals New York: More than half of its population is foreign-born or one generation removed, and the city has long shed its pre-World War II image as a British outpost.

It has a populous gay community and it is the magnet for the nation’s artists, writers and designers; the attitude is Southern California, except it’s more like ‘60s SoCal than ‘90s.

It is still part Wild West--check out any pub in the historic, pseudo-funky Rocks district--and part Wall Street, though the mood is rarely frantic. But often Sydney’s homogenized approach at being laid back can be grating. From more than one angle, Sydney looks like a corny version of Boston’s Quincy Market.

Darling Harbour, for example, is a precious, prettified mall cluttered with tacky T-shirt stands and “aboriginal” boomerangs at inflated prices, and the food is standard shopping-center fare: cinnamon buns, frozen yogurt, burgers, pizza. Darling Harbour has two saving graces: Virgin, the largest record store in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Virgin Cafe, a cheery bar that pours Red Back draft beer, Australia’s best.

The city may appear well-scrubbed at first look, but some of its ragged neighborhoods have a used-up look that’s hardly rescued by the occasional charming terrace or restored townhouse. Kings Cross is Sydney’s combat zone, an obstacle course for tourists who have to step off the curb of the main drag of Darlinghurst Road to avoid the strip-club touts and the hookers, who look more embalmed than beautiful in their makeup.

Paddington, just east of the central business district, has a frenetic Saturday scene at its flea market, but the goods are either ratty or overpriced. What Australia doesn’t need is another stall selling stuffed koala bears made in Taiwan.

Sydneysiders march purposefully through their town, stopping obediently for traffic lights, queuing for buses, keeping rather starchily to themselves except when they cross the threshold into the hotels or pubs, where pints of Fosters and Tooheys are the great ice breakers and conversation makers. (Many really do say “g’day,” but the more common expression is “no worries,” which sums up a rather basic Australian attitude.)

Residents are immensely proud of their villages and their “slurbs,” which is what they affectionately call the suburbs, and protective of their enclaves. So much so that, in six days of traveling about the city I did not once see an aboriginal Australian, although many make Sydney their home.

It’s another example of how Sydney and much of Australia seem to be, culturally and socially, a step behind their American cousins. Although Australian women were enfranchised to vote nearly two decades before American women, their advancement in government and business lags behind their Yank sisters.

The machismo of the country’s male-oriented society comes through loud and clear in the shouts from any pub. And the inability of Australia to integrate the aborigines into any strata of white society (considering that those people populated the land 40,000 years before white Europeans set foot on it) is a result of ignorance or insensitivity, or both.

The sprawl of Sydney and its haphazard layout, built on and around hills and harbors, presents a problem for visitors who want to maximize their travel time; the problem can be compounded by hemispheric disorientation. In this part of the world the toilets flush backward, the sun curves north in its daily arc, it gets colder as you go south. All that, plus the beer has more alcohol than ours.

After coming down to earth mentally and physically after your flight, you should take many naps the first day or two in Australia. Then head to Jetty No. 6 at the downtown Circular Quay to buy a two-hour Capt. Cook coffee cruise of the harbor.

The modern, comfortable cruise ships offer an inspiring view of Bennelong Point and its jewel, the Opera House, with its fluffy white wings, as well as some of the city’s choicest real estate along Double and Rose bays. Whether you’re predisposed toward culture, shopping, eating or nature, a sail through Sydney is a splendid afternoon outing as well as an orientation requisite.

History has given Sydney more character than some of the other cites in the continent. The city on view, with its flower-bordered bays, its pastel cottages, its yachts, windsurfers and more yachts, started as a convict settlement. Sydney was the first “fatal shore” settled by exported convicts who overflowed Britain’s jails and who were no longer welcome in some of England’s other colonies, thanks to the American Revolution.

The First Fleet, carrying 750 male and female prisoners, sailed into Port Jackson in 1788. Free settlers arrived later to reinforce the colony. Among the governors was one William Bligh, of H.M.S. Bounty fame. But it was Bligh’s successor, Lachlan Macquarie, who in the early 1800s established social reforms that made a base for the city’s growth.

Gov. Macquarie employed a convicted forger named Francis Greenway to help him achieve his plans, and some of Sydney’s most impressive buildings--Hyde Park Barracks, St. James Church--were in part designed by Greenway.

The Barracks, just north of Sydney’s Hyde Park, is a wonderfully evocative building (closed for the next few months for renovation) where visitors can imagine the caged life that prisoners lived in the reconstructed “dormitories.”

The adjacent Barracks Cafe is good for a California-esque lunch of leg of ham with minted potato salad or a British afternoon tea; in fact, Devonshire teas, featuring crumbly scones and thick cream and jam, are enormously popular in Sydney’s many coffeehouses and cafes.

Sydney’s downtown is neatly contained (more so if you elect to use the bright red Explorer Bus, which, for about $8, will shuttle you among Syndey’s top 20 sights, with the option to alight at each stop and rejoin the next Explorer). The Barracks is only a short walk past the many-spouted Archibald Fountain to the Australian Museum, the Oz version of the American Museum of Natural History.

In a city where time is best spent out of doors on the water, in the parks, watching the old men in white suits and hats bowling on the splendidly green grass, an exception is to take an afternoon (or more) in the magnificent Powerhouse, just a short walk from the Darling Harbour complex or five minutes from downtown on the monorail.

The Powerhouse is to museums what Steven Spielberg is to movies: wonderful entertainment. It is Australia’s Smithsonian, except with more active touchie-feelie sensory delights.

Visitors should send their thank-you notes to the New South Wales government, which rescued the 19th-Century Ultimo Power House in 1977. The plant was built to supply electricity for Sydney’s extensive tramway network; both closed in 1963.

The Powerhouse is the most recent home of the 111-year-old Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, but think of it more as a theme park: The King’s Cinema, a re-created Art Deco movie house, plays silent films; “Take a Seat” is a funky exhibit of chairs, including a ruby-red sofa shaped like Marilyn Monroe’s lips.

The Mind and Body display lets you get in touch with all your senses--hear your heartbeat or sniff some snuff--while James Watt’s enormous steam engine, built in 1785, churns an iron piston three stories high.

There’s a fabulous section called Little Wheels, featuring every Matchbox vehicle ever made, plus other marvels: old Bugatti race cars, Apollo moon landers, Australian-designed wine sacks, robotic bands that play marches, special get-involved exhibits for kids 8 and under.

Along with the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, the Opera House has become the symbol of a city. Its white, picture-perfect, ship-sail roof is imposing from any angle, although it looks best from a ferry coming out of Circular Quay.

Built during 16 years at a cost of $100 million, Sydneysiders still dispute the acoustic and the artistic merit of this performing-arts complex, but tourists have revered its qualities since the place opened in 1973.

The interior of the Concert Hall (the Opera House has four auditoriums of various sizes) is marked by dramatic angles and edges (it reminds me of Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall), wide seats and polished floors. Acoustics weren’t nearly as dramatic during a recent performance of Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” by the Stockholm Bach Choir: Voices often evaporated before they reached me in the first balcony. For those who elect not to listen but would like to visit, one-hour tours of the Opera House are conducted daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $4.50.

The art of shopping isn’t as refined in Sydney as are the more classical arts, but a couple of Victorian malls worthy of a morning browse are the renovated Strand Arcade (there really is a coffeeshop here called Mrs. Sippy’s) and the imposing Queen Victoria Building, with its 200 shops and restaurants.

Eating, drinking and commerce are the major draws of The Rocks, a gentrified redevelopment of cobbled streets and historic buildings that extends from near the Circular Quay to Dawes Point under the Harbour Bridge.

The Rocks was the site of Sydney’s first settlement, and in the 19th Century was a squalid section overrun by thugs and thieves. Despite the efforts for modern restoration, the Rocks has resisted yuppification, and it’s a wonderful place to tour by foot; pick up a map and a guide from the visitors’ center at 104 George St.

Suggested stops: The Argyle Arts Center for a rich whiff of Australiana goods; Cadman’s Cottage, built in 1816 on George Street and the oldest house in Sydney; and the Lord Nelson Hotel, with its excellent homemade ales and raucous atmosphere.

Once you’ve nailed down the must-see sights of Sydney, hit the beach.

Sydney has two types of beaches, those on the harbor (small and calm) and those on the ocean. Bondi, on the ocean, is a 45-minute ride from the central district, a nondescript journey until the bus descends onto the wide sand that curves exactly a kilometer and attracts a crowd whose priorities are (1) surfing, (2) partying and (3) surfing.

Bondi is bordered by a green park and a strip of shops; its rather seedy, seaside Victorian architecture smacks of Brighton on England’s south coast.

The waves at Bondi were breaking furiously the March day I visited, and the sky was colored by dense black clouds that periodically broke into patches of blue. I put away any thought of a dip and instead picked out a piece of fresh perch at the Bondi Fish Shop, had it breaded and fried and served with chips and a diet Schweppes cola, and then I negotiated the concrete boardwalk, skipping around the skateboarders and the joggers, and nibbled lunch by the beach.

Nearby a young man was doing his sit-ups, so I offered him a french fry; feeling conspiciously American on this beach full of athletes, I self-consciously called it a chip. We talked about New York, his visit to Los Angeles, mine to Sydney, the best pubs, the best beer.

I mentioned the current political topics in Oz--the tight race for prime minister, the trouble with the Labour government’s campaign--and he interrupted and pointed at the Pacific and described waves he’d seen, “some at high as that house over there.” He didn’t end our chat with “no worries, mate,” but that was implicit.