THE 2000 OLYMPICS : Countdown to Sydney : It’s hard to imagine a better place to host the Summer Games-- one year away-- than Australia’s sunny, sports-loving, sophisticated city

Before the gunfire rang out, the harbor lay pretty as a picture on a Sunday afternoon, boat sails snapping in the wind, ferries chugging under the tall harbor bridge and looping around the great white opera house. A few children lingered at the Double Bay wharf, scanning the watery horizon.

Then bang bang bang. The staccato sound carried far and fast across the water. I’d just arrived in Australia a few hours earlier, and spent the drive from the airport hearing a grumpy cabbie complain about rising crime. Of course Sydney, a commercial powerhouse and home to 3.7 million of Australia’s 18 million people, has its share of graffiti-marred blocks, racial anxieties and other big-city troubles. But the sound of gunfire I heard was not one of them. A girl, perhaps 10 years old, spoke up.

“Start of the rice,” she said.

Or, in our language, start of the race. It was 2:30 sharp, and these bangs were starter-pistol shots for Sydney’s weekly sailboat races. The children on the wharf had missed the observation boat and would have to watch from land--by Sydneysider standards, a small catastrophe.

Sunday afternoon boat races belong to Sydney the way Sunday afternoon skating belongs to the Venice boardwalk or Friday afternoon softball to the parks of Manhattan. Before that starter pistol fired, the shoreline had been clogged with bronzed and well-muscled men and women, squeezing into wetsuits, wrestling with rigging and scrambling over sleek 18-foot hulls, their faces war-painted with sunblock. Out on the water, they jostled for wind position and hollered about cozzies (swimsuits), eskies (coolers, often containing beer) and coldies (beer).

Maybe it did take a covert sprinkling of stray dollars to International Olympic Committee members’ pockets to bring the 2000 Olympics here and not to Beijing, as investigations have found. But once the Summer Games begin one year from now, on Sept. 15, I wonder how much anybody will complain about the site.

Since the Olympic deal was made back in 1993, a citadel of shiny new athletic venues has risen at Homebush Bay, 20 minutes west of downtown Sydney by train, 30 by “river cat” ferry. The complex was awash in rain when I visited, but even so, it was hard to imagine a city better suited than Sydney for hosting the games. All those sports-minded Aussies, all those open spaces, and all that infrastructure for international conventioneers. (By some estimates, Sydney is the most popular international convention city in the world. And for four years running, it has been voted the best foreign city by Travel & Leisure magazine’s readers.)

Furthermore, with Australia’s tourism revenues still suffering from the Asian economic crisis of recent years, it’s hard to imagine another world-class city as ready to entertain American visitors.

Olympic organizers say the train service alone can deliver up to 50,000 visitors per hour to Homebush Bay. The 110,000-seat Stadium Australia, the venue for track and field events, was completed last March. Most other facilities (including an aquatic center, boxing arena and regatta center) are also done. Of the handful of projects that remain (most notably the Sydney SuperDome, which will house gymnastics and basketball), virtually all are scheduled for completion by the end of 1999.

During the Olympics, a measure of profiteering is inevitable. But on the whole, meals and lodgings in Sydney are not a bad deal. By the reckoning of international management consultants Runzheimer International, first-class lodging and dining costs in Sydney in early 1999 were 8% lower than in San Francisco, 31% lower than in Paris, 35% lower than in Manhattan, 44% lower than in London.

In barely 200 years, the makers of Sydney have transformed it at least twice: first from a sun-drenched, wind-swept collection of wet rocks, ragged inlets, sandy beaches and aboriginal foraging territory into a great penitentiary, and then from penitentiary into one of the planet’s most cosmopolitan and widely admired cities. Drawing immigrants from throughout Asia and Europe (after the reform of immigration restrictions that kept non-whites away during the first half of this century), Sydney these days teems with diversity: An estimated one in three Sydneysiders is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

Australia’s founding fathers were some 160,000 British convicts (“government men” was the euphemism, although there were thousands of women, too), all of whom were shipped from England beginning in 1788. As author Robert Hughes writes in his landmark history “The Fatal Shore,” Australia’s settlers were “a community of people, handpicked over decades for their ‘criminal propensities’ and for no other reason, whose offspring turned out to form one of the most law-abiding societies in the world.”

Law-abiding and, for a Californian, oddly familiar. In landscape and language, in its short recorded history, in its unbuttoned and forward-looking spirit, Sydney inspires deja vu. From the hour of my arrival, the city had me thinking of San Diego on steroids.

The wharf at upscale Double Bay (Double Pay, some cost-conscious locals call it) is probably Sydney at its tamest: a passel of fancy boutiques and restaurants, neighbored by a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and a few other upscale lodgings. (I stayed in the Sir Stamford Double Bay Hotel, but wouldn’t recommend it. Despite pleasantly eccentric decor in public rooms and agreeable service, my room needed new carpet, new paint and new furniture.)

The untamed end of the spectrum would probably be Kings Cross, the hell-raising red-light district near central Sydney, and the semi-tamed zone might include Glebe, which teems with yuppies, bohemians, blue-collar workers and signs of 19th century immigrants from Ireland and 20th century arrivals from Asia and elsewhere in Europe.

Darlinghurst, where I took a walk on Oxford Street one day, is host to the city’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. It’s festooned with rainbows and triangle logos everywhere, and coffeehouses with names like KINK.

In another up-and-coming trendy zone, Surry Hills, I ate an expensive dinner in a car dealership. It was called MG Garage, and since its 1997 opening has ranked among the city’s leading restaurants. You sit in a showroom with four MGs, and a waiter brings a menu. On it are modern Australian dishes (lots of seafood) and, listed near the desserts, a white MG five-speed convertible with 1.8-liter engine, priced at $45,000 (Australian). I passed on the convertible and instead went with asparagus with fresh macaroni, poached eggs and shallot butter; then galantine and a leg of suckling pig cooked in hay (yup, hay). Very good.

For more conventional tourist pizazz, there is Darling Harbor, a glitzy zone developed in the 1980s where conventions are held, a monorail runs and the National Maritime Museum, Sydney Aquarium, Powerhouse Museum and Central Railway Station stand.

Bondi is the city’s signature beach. Balmain is an old blue-collar suburb gone respectably bohemian; its main drag along Darling Street is a great place for an afternoon stroll. Woolloomooloo is mostly just an old wharf and an unremarkable neighborhood, but when a travel writer gets a chance to say he’s been to Woolloomooloo, he does not hesitate.

Manly is another fine swimming and surfing beach, modeled after Brighton in England and accessible by short ferry ride from Circular Quay. I walked the waterfront there, had a sandwich at a trendy cafe named Brazil and saw a lifeguard lounging by the sand in a shirt that said MANLY BEACH INSPECTOR.

Each morning during my four-day visit I set out to explore these territories by ferry, commuting from the little Double Bay wharf. I took a seat on the 8:29 to Circular Quay (pronounced “key”) alongside the captains and lieutenants of Australian industry. If you’re not interested in investing the time or money required by a touristy harbor cruise, get on just about any ferry and the resulting ride will give you much of the same scenery (but none of the history) for a fraction of the price. In general, a great way to get around Sydney is a SydneyPass, which for one price gives a visitor access to all ferries, trains, buses and airport transfers, as well as four different harbor cruises. A five-day pass costs about $68.

Of course my first stop was the Sydney Opera House. Tours run daily, begin every half hour, last about an hour and cost about $7 per adult--and disclose a remarkable, soap-opera-like history. Work on the opera house began in 1959, after a much-vaunted worldwide search for architects and designs. But what began as a great national identity-building effort quickly deteriorated into a financial disaster, ultimately costing about $75 million, some 15 times the first estimates. (Government lottery proceeds were used to cover the tab.) Halfway through the 14-year construction period, the project was disavowed by its architect, Joern Utzon of Denmark.

Yet once the building was finally completed in 1973, an extraordinary thing happened: It fulfilled the promises made by politicians for the preceding two decades. Now you can’t find an Australian tourist brochure or guidebook without its image, and you can’t in good conscience visit Sydney without at least circling the building up close. Not long ago, Sydney commissioned “The Eighth Wonder,” an opera about the building of the opera house. It will be staged again in 2000. And last month, Utzon and Sydney officials ended their 26-year estrangement when he and his son were hired as design consultants on the complex.

The closer you get to the opera house complex, by the way, the more it belongs to the early ‘70s. The insides are full of orange and purple fabrics. The furniture in the upscale Bennelong restaurant seems a tad modular. And the bright exterior of the buildings turns out to be tile, like tiny scales on a family of large armadillos.

Once you spend a few days in town, you realize that the opera house isn’t really the dominant landmark in Sydney at all. The Harbor Bridge is. It was completed in 1932 after nine years of work. Some locals call it “the coat hanger.” Since last October, its highest catwalks and ladders, 400 feet above the harbor, have been accessible to almost anyone (age 12 and above) with sufficient nerve and money. BridgeClimb, a private company that leads the ascents, charges $70 to $85 per adult and requires customers to pass a sobriety test. But it takes no money and not much nerve to follow the sidewalk out to the middle of the bridge span and marvel at the wind, the harbor below and the city before you.

Beneath the Harbor Bridge and next to the Circular Quay ferry hub lies the Rocks, the city’s oldest neighborhood, full of graceful brick buildings, tourist shops, restaurants and an open-air crafts fair. Seeing it mentioned so often as the first stop for tourists, I was ready to scoff at the Rocks, but the buildings were irresistible, the restaurants include a few of the best in town, and on a sunny weekend, when Sydneysiders themselves wade into the tourist mob, it’s hard to beat the atmosphere.

For a more sobering experience, stroll south and east past Circular Quay to the Hyde Park Barracks. From 1819 to 1848, this was home to thousands of the convicts who helped build the city--up to 600 of them at a time, sleeping in hammocks like the ones that now hang eerily on the top floor. Surrounded by an austere gravel yard and thick wall, the barracks today serves as a historical museum, offering descriptions of prisoners who were lashed 25 times (for being absent one night without leave) or 36 times (feigning sickness to avoid duty) or 50 times (stealing a pair of shoes). It’s daunting to imagine those days, but the Aussies handle that history with remarkable self-effacement and broad humor. Downstairs, the museum gift shop peddles plastic ball-and-chain sets for $3, plastic rats for $2.50.

It takes a day or two to stop in at the many other landmarks in the same area: the Queen Victoria Building, an upscale shopping mall set in a spectacular 1898 building on George Street; the cultural center now occupying the old Customs House by Circular Quay; the gray-columned Art Gallery of New South Wales, which stands across the street from the botanical garden and the sprawling “Domain,” formerly a private preserve for the governor, now a great grassy harborside public space.

It was an exhilarating four days, but I suppose exhilaration is an individual thing. Most of the Sydneysiders I encountered were friendly and cheerful. Outside of Dublin, I’ve never felt more welcomed by a city’s residents.

But one day toward the end of my stay, I caught a taxi back from the Rocks to Double Bay and found myself in the care of a driver even more downbeat than the one who’d brought me in from the airport. This man, a European who’d arrived seven years ago, wasn’t too happy to be sharing the place with so many other immigrants from so many other lands.

Before I could tell him about all my adventures in the city, he offered me a bit of free tourism counseling.

“Sydney’s gone to hell,” he said. “Take a few snaps of the opera house, you’re done.”

I thanked him and wished him well. Now I look forward to watching the world ignore his advice.

GUIDEBOOK

Sydney Bound

Getting there: Qantas, Air New Zealand and United Airlines have nonstop flights (about 15 hours) from LAX to Sydney. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,248.

Where to stay: Many hotels are already full for the Olympics. Prices are subject to change. At the luxury end, the 100-room Observatory Hotel is a sort of Aussie Ritz-Carlton on a hill near the harbor; 89-113 Kent St. (the Rocks), telephone (800) 237-1236 or 011-61-2-9256-2222, fax 011-61-2-9256-2233, Internet https://www.observatoryhotel.com.au; double rooms $346 to $406. (There are a couple of Ritz-Carltons in town as well.) The 158-room Park Hyatt Sydney has a better location (right on the water, across from the opera house), less precious furnishings and even higher brochure rates, with double rooms fetching $455 to $629; 7 Hickson Road (the Rocks), tel. (800) 233-1234 or 011-61-2-9241-1234, fax 011-61-2-9256-1555, Internet https://www.sydney.hyatt.com.

More moderate is the Russell, an intimate 29-room inn full of bright hues and set in a 19th century building; 143A George St. (the Rocks), tel. 011-61-2-9241-3543, fax 011-61-2-9252-1652; doubles with private bath $126 to $154 (with shared bath, $77 to $105), including light breakfast.

For the frugal, the Sydney Central YHA hostel, in a nine-story 1913 building, is a palace among hostels, clean, conveniently located and full of amenities (laundry, pool, bistro, bar); 11 Rawson Place, tel. 011-61-2-9281-9111, fax 011-61-2-9281-9199, Internet https://www.yha.org.au; from $16 per person in a dorm room to $46 nightly for a suite with private bath (available to full members only).

Where to eat: The MG Garage serves contemporary Australian food; 490 Crown St. (Surry Hills), tel. 011-61-2-9383-9383; main dishes $18 to $24. The other favorites (but where I didn’t dine) are Forty-one (in a skyscraper on Chifley Square), Quay (in the overseas passenger terminal at Circular Quay West), Rockpool (in the Rocks) and Tetsuya’s (in the Rozelle area).

For more information: Australian Tourist Commission, tel. (800) 369-6863, fax (805) 775-4448, Internet https://www.australia.com.

Books to Go

* Some guidebooks to Australia, L16.

If you go:

Update on tickets, flights, hotels L2.