Sydney, Australia

From the Exile of Criminals to an Exemplary City


Bar over the great estuary
Nightlife at a bar overlooking the estuary and Sydney Harbor Bridge.
An Inspiration in Large Format
Asian girls shopping near George Street.
Sail to Luna
Competition sailboat passes in front of Luna Park.
Indigenous animation
Accurately painted aborigine plays digestoo on Sydney's Circular Quay.
Another night of opera
Vessel leaves light marks when sailing next to the Sydney Opera House, in the great estuary of the city.
Post-Labor I
Lively conversations on one of the many terraces always at the pine cone in Sydney.
Leftover busker
Saltimbanco juggles apples and fire around Circular Quay.
multilevel sydney
Bright traffic on George Street.
literate conversations
Young people live on the steps of a library in Sydney.
towards the other bank
Well-lit boat crosses the Sydney estuary.
Photo(in)gallery
Photo shoot of a wedding in one of the shopping galleries in the center.
Natural urban decoration
Ibis refresh themselves in an artistic fountain from Kings Cross.
Opera House in the spotlight
The most iconic building in Sydney, Australia and Oceania illuminated after dusk.
Bridge tour
Visitors roam the top of the Harbor Bridge.
Harbor Bridge, night version
Detail of the Harbor Bridge Lighting.
The Rocks
The Rocks entertainment area, with some of the buildings that housed inmates arriving from Great Britain.
Science
Detail of Sydney's prolific Victorian architecture.
Saint Andrew's Cathedral
Staircase to Saint Andrew's Cathedral
The first of the Australian colonies was built by exiled inmates. Today, Sydney's Aussies boast former convicts of their family tree and pride themselves on the cosmopolitan prosperity of the megalopolis they inhabit.

Kings Cross is the first area of ​​the city that most foreigners who arrive unwilling to pay more than a few tens of dollars per night's sleep come across.

Apart from the departure and the airy journey from the airport, it was also our inaugural and surreal vision of Australia.

During the afternoon, we walked backwards and forwards through the neighborhood under a sun that baked our skin and made us tired to bend but cheered the souls fed up with the freezing weather of Alone.

We compete with young people from all possible stops for the last vacancies in the humble inns of the neighborhood already equipped for another full summer. No sooner had twilight set in, than Kings Cross transvested into his night mode.

Drunkards, drug addicts, prostitutes and pimps, countless of Sydney's marginal characters, began to roam around it.

As happens in any and all cities, there they found their social niche between alternating bars, sex shops, peepshows, showgirls' houses, liquor stores and an opportunistic MacDonalds franchise that fed at low prices and scleroticized that artery by itself dysfunctional city.

The passersby we came across seemed so lunatic, improbable, and outlawed by life that we found ourselves yielding to the weight of British colonial history in an attempt to explain its unexpected presence and abundance.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Saint Andrew's Cathedral

Staircase to Saint Andrew's Cathedral

We didn't want to be negative. Nor can we ignore the cultural importance of the neighborhood that hosted its music clubs and helped launch such landmark Australian bands as Go-Betweens and Nick Cave, among many others, to stardom.

But were there concentrated the genes of the most deviant English convicts who populated the enigmatic depths of the world?

Sydney Cove, Britain's Chosen Destination for Inmates

After the declaration of independence of USA., in 1776, Great Britain could no longer send its prisoners across the Atlantic.

Flooded with prisoners, the rulers decided to found a new penal post on the lands discovered by James Cook some sixteen years earlier.

The inaugural settlement took place at Sydney Cove. It was built on the basis of prison establishments built on lands of the Eora aboriginal tribe.

In 1792, there were only 4300 British prisoners exiled, but more than half of the native population of the area (4 to 8 indigenous people) had already been decimated by an epidemic of smallpox disseminated by the prisoners.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, CBD

Well-lit boat crosses the Sydney estuary.

Those who visit Sydney today soon find themselves on the shores of its privileged Harbour, which, even in times of expansion, Captain Arthur Phillip and other seamen soon cataloged as one of the best estuaries they had ever seen.

Sydney Harbour, a Grand Sea-facing Estuary of Tasmania

We bought some generous sushi rolls at the subway station entrance and had lunch on the go, late and late.

We shared the double-decker carriage with a group of blond, chatty surfer friends. Them, on their way to Bondi Beach's bathing Eden. We exit between the near-skyscrapers of the Central Business District (CBD), a few hundred meters from the much calmer inland waters of Circular Quay.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Busker

Saltimbanco juggles apples and fire around Circular Quay.

An acrobat made his living by juggling flames on a huge unicycle that pedaled in the shadows generated by a metallic road structure.

Later on, a pair of aboriginals, almost naked and accurately painted, did the same, in her case, playing long hypnotic themes of digestoo wrapped in different house environments.

"Thank you friends. Get closer, we won't bite you!

Unless they look like a kangaroo, of course!” announces one of them with a strong ozzy accent in search of the audience and the dollars they exchanged for their music CDs.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Indigenous animation

Accurately painted aborigine plays digestoo on Sydney's Circular Quay.

From Aboriginal Presence to Australians of All Parties

From Aboriginal to Contemporary much has changed in Australia's ethnic landscape. Sydney, in particular, has become its cosmopolitan and multicultural city.

There are around 55.000 inhabitants of Aboriginal ancestry in the city, coming from the four corners of the large island.

Today, of its nearly five million citizens, more than 1.5 million were born in other non-Australian parts of the world, an immigration trend that was established after the end of World War II and continues to intensify with strong contributions from New Zealanders, Chinese, Indians , Vietnamese, Koreans and Filipinos, as well as the Lebanese, Italians and Greeks.

Sydney, speaks 250 languages. A third of the inhabitants are masters other than English.

As we walked along Pitt's shopping streets, York and George proved to be so predominant Asians that it felt like we were in Hong Kong.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, fashion

Asian girls shopping near George Street.

The height of Sydney's clearance reached our ears when the beady-eyed owner of an establishment was indignant at our resistance to taking a fake change:

"That's lubish!” threw the newly arrived small businessman in his still precarious English.

The Historical Hedonism of the People of Sydney

In those parts or wherever we went, we enjoyed it like almost all sydneysiders they took advantage of the bounty of the area's climate.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, esplanade

Statue of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, next to an esplanade in Sydney's Old Town.

CBD executives and bank employees matched short-sleeved shirts and even shorts with loose-fitting ties that enforced a modicum of professional ceremony.

After four or five in the afternoon – the very afternoon limit for working hours – instead of sneaking into the house, they joined the crowds drinking beer in pubs or outdoors.

Or they went for a run or a bike ride in their favorite, flowery and sunny parks and gardens, arranged around the many bays and peninsulas of that southern city.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Ibis

Ibis refresh themselves in an artistic fountain from Kings Cross.

As we had already seen on the subway, carefree teenagers wore flowery shirts or walked – on foot or by bus – bare-chested and flip-flops exchanging their rugby ball or australian footballo or with surfboards and bodyboards, depending on the sport that most captivates them.

We dare not contradict the notion that, due to its geographical isolation and obsession with sport, it is drunken by evasion to oceanic nature and the Outback, Australia will be a great desert, also cultural, with a hedonistic Anglophone population, averse to class stratification and poorly polished.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, passing the time

Australians follow the action at Circular Quay on The Rocks waterfront.

It is believed that this is due to the fact that he descended from both the inmates and the military who controlled colonial operations until the beginning of the XNUMXth century.

Paying for labor and local produce in rum and hence nicknamed the Rum Corps, these many soldiers challenged and supplanted the authority of three of the colony's first governors.

One of them was called William Bligh, made notorious by a no less famous “Bounty Revolt” which took place in the Tahiti.

But if there are places that seek to eradicate the nation's civilizational harshness, Sydney is one of them.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Queen Victoria Mall

Interior of the Queen Victoria department store.

The Architectural Magnificence and Culture of the Sydney Opera House

The impressive Opera House remains at the forefront of this mission.

We found it ahead of us after passing the bustling wharves of Circular Quay and the centuries-old buildings of The Rocks that housed the first inmates and their guardians, now preserved as shops, art galleries, cafes and pubs.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, The Rocks

The Rocks entertainment area, with some of the buildings that housed inmates arriving from Great Britain.

In 1973, when it was inaugurated, the Opera House aroused enormous controversy, if not for having cost 109 million dollars when it had been budgeted at XNUMX million.

That was the price of its fearless architecture, interpreted as white sails in the wind, white turtle shells, sea shells and camel humps, in any case, soon promoted to the great symbol of Sydney.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Opera House

Boat sails near the Sydney Opera House, in the great estuary of the city.

It is the scene of exhaustive exploration of almost every visitor to the city and also of around 3000 annual events of various arts.

As we admire it, we notice that dozens of figures walk the heights of the Sydney Harbor Brigde, with breathtaking views of the Opera House and the endless estuary.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Harbor Bridge, Harbor Bridge

Visitors roam the top of the Harbor Bridge.

Unsurprisingly, despite the distance to the rest of the world Sydney is one of its fifteen cities most visited.

It receives around three million international visitors a year, almost half of those from Australia.

Of these, a good number realize the prosperity and unique quality of life offered by the growing megalopolis of the Oceania, return and install themselves once and for all.

Sydney, Australia's exemplary criminal city, Harbor Bridge

Nightlife at a bar overlooking the estuary and Sydney Harbor Bridge.

We've landed there on two occasions. It never happened to us.

Discovering Tassie, Part 2 - Hobart to Port Arthur, Australia

An Island Doomed to Crime

The prison complex at Port Arthur has always frightened the British outcasts. 90 years after its closure, a heinous crime committed there forced Tasmania to return to its darkest times.
Cairns-Kuranda, Australia

Train to the Middle of the Jungle

Built out of Cairns to save miners isolated in the rainforest from starvation by flooding, the Kuranda Railway eventually became the livelihood of hundreds of alternative Aussies.
Wycliffe Wells, Australia

Wycliffe Wells' Unsecret Files

Locals, UFO experts and visitors have been witnessing sightings around Wycliffe Wells for decades. Here, Roswell has never been an example and every new phenomenon is communicated to the world.
Perth, Australia

the lonely city

More 2000km away from a worthy counterpart, Perth is considered the most remote city on the face of the Earth. Despite being isolated between the Indian Ocean and the vast Outback, few people complain.
Busselton, Australia

2000 meters in Aussie Style

In 1853, Busselton was equipped with one of the longest pontoons in the world. World. When the structure collapsed, the residents decided to turn the problem around. Since 1996 they have been doing it every year. Swimming.
Perth to Albany, Australia

Across the Far West of Australia

Few people worship evasion like the aussies. With southern summer in full swing and the weekend just around the corner, Perthians are taking refuge from the urban routine in the nation's southwest corner. For our part, without compromise, we explore endless Western Australia to its southern limit.
Perth, Australia

The Oceania Cowboys

Texas is on the other side of the world, but there is no shortage of cowboys in the country of koalas and kangaroos. Outback rodeos recreate the original version and 8 seconds lasts no less in the Australian Western.
Atherton Tableland, Australia

Miles Away from Christmas (part XNUMX)

On December 25th, we explored the high, bucolic yet tropical interior of North Queensland. We ignore the whereabouts of most of the inhabitants and find the absolute absence of the Christmas season strange.
Alice Springs to Darwin, Australia

Stuart Road, on its way to Australia's Top End

Do Red Center to the tropical Top End, the Stuart Highway road travels more than 1.500km lonely through Australia. Along this route, the Northern Territory radically changes its look but remains faithful to its rugged soul.
Perth, Australia

Australia Day: In Honor of the Foundation, Mourning for Invasion

26/1 is a controversial date in Australia. While British settlers celebrate it with barbecues and lots of beer, Aborigines celebrate the fact that they haven't been completely wiped out.
Melbourne, Australia

An "Asienated" Australia

Cultural capital aussie, Melbourne is also frequently voted the best quality of life city in the world. Nearly a million eastern emigrants took advantage of this immaculate welcome.
Discovering tassie, Part 3, Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania from Top to Bottom

The favorite victim of Australian anecdotes has long been the Tasmania never lost the pride in the way aussie ruder to be. Tassie remains shrouded in mystery and mysticism in a kind of hindquarters of the antipodes. In this article, we narrate the peculiar route from Hobart, the capital located in the unlikely south of the island to the north coast, the turn to the Australian continent.
Rhinoceros, PN Kaziranga, Assam, India
Safari
PN Kaziranga, India

The Indian Monoceros Stronghold

Situated in the state of Assam, south of the great Brahmaputra river, PN Kaziranga occupies a vast area of ​​alluvial swamp. Two-thirds of the rhinocerus unicornis around the world, there are around 100 tigers, 1200 elephants and many other animals. Pressured by human proximity and the inevitable poaching, this precious park has not been able to protect itself from the hyperbolic floods of the monsoons and from some controversies.
Braga or Braka or Brakra in Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 6th – Braga, Nepal

The Ancient Nepal of Braga

Four days of walking later, we slept at 3.519 meters from Braga (Braka). Upon arrival, only the name is familiar to us. Faced with the mystical charm of the town, arranged around one of the oldest and most revered Buddhist monasteries on the Annapurna circuit, we continued our journey there. acclimatization with ascent to Ice Lake (4620m).
The Little-Big Senglea II
Architecture & Design
Senglea, Malta

An Overcrowded Malta

At the turn of the 8.000th century, Senglea housed 0.2 inhabitants in 2 km3.000, a European record, today, it has “only” XNUMX neighborhood Christians. It is the smallest, most overcrowded and genuine of the Maltese cities.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Adventure
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.
Conflicted Way
Ceremonies and Festivities
Jerusalem, Israel

Through the Belicious Streets of Via Dolorosa

In Jerusalem, while traveling the Via Dolorosa, the most sensitive believers realize how difficult the peace of the Lord is to achieve in the most disputed streets on the face of the earth.
cozy Vegas
Cities
Las Vegas, USA

World Capital of Weddings vs Sin City

The greed of the game, the lust of prostitution and the widespread ostentation are all part of Las Vegas. Like the chapels that have neither eyes nor ears and promote eccentric, quick and cheap marriages.
Meal
World Food

Gastronomy Without Borders or Prejudice

Each people, their recipes and delicacies. In certain cases, the same ones that delight entire nations repel many others. For those who travel the world, the most important ingredient is a very open mind.
Tabatô, Guinea Bissau, tabanca Mandingo musicians. Baidi
Culture
Tabato, Guinea Bissau

The Tabanca of Mandinga Poets Musicians

In 1870, a community of traveling Mandingo musicians settled next to the current city of Bafatá. From the Tabatô they founded, their culture and, in particular, their prodigious balaphonists, dazzle the world.
Sport
Competitions

Man: an Ever Tested Species

It's in our genes. For the pleasure of participating, for titles, honor or money, competitions give meaning to the world. Some are more eccentric than others.
Traveling
unmissable roads

Great Routes, Great Trips

With pompous names or mere road codes, certain roads run through really sublime scenarios. From Road 66 to the Great Ocean Road, they are all unmissable adventures behind the wheel.
Unusual bathing
Ethnic

south of Belize

The Strange Life in the Black Caribbean Sun

On the way to Guatemala, we see how the proscribed existence of the Garifuna people, descendants of African slaves and Arawak Indians, contrasts with that of several much more airy bathing areas.

Sunset, Avenue of Baobabs, Madagascar
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio

days like so many others

Santo Domingo, Colonial City, Dominican Republic, Diego Colombo
History
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

The Longest Colonial Elder in the Americas

Santo Domingo is the longest-inhabited colony in the New World. Founded in 1498 by Bartholomew Colombo, the capital of the Dominican Republic preserves intact a true treasure of historical resilience.
boat party, margarita island, PN mochima, venezuela
Islands
Margarita Island ao Mochima NP, Venezuela

Margarita Island to Mochima National Park: a very Caribbean Caribe

The exploration of the Venezuelan coast justifies a wild nautical party. But, these stops also reveal life in cactus forests and waters as green as the tropical jungle of Mochima.
ala juumajarvi lake, oulanka national park, finland
Winter White
Kuusamo ao PN Oulanka, Finland

Under the Arctic's Icy Spell

We are at 66º North and at the gates of Lapland. In these parts, the white landscape belongs to everyone and to no one like the snow-covered trees, the atrocious cold and the endless night.
Couple visiting Mikhaylovskoe, village where writer Alexander Pushkin had a home
Literature
Saint Petersburg e Mikhaylovkoe, Russia

The Writer Who Succumbed to His Own Plot

Alexander Pushkin is hailed by many as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. But Pushkin also dictated an almost tragicomic epilogue to his prolific life.
Coin return
Nature
Dawki, India

Dawki, Dawki, Bangladesh on sight

We descended from the high and mountainous lands of Meghalaya to the flats to the south and below. There, the translucent and green stream of the Dawki forms the border between India and Bangladesh. In a damp heat that we haven't felt for a long time, the river also attracts hundreds of Indians and Bangladeshis in a picturesque escape.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Young people walk the main street in Chame, Nepal
Natural Parks
Annapurna Circuit: 1th - Pokhara a ChameNepal

Finally, on the way

After several days of preparation in Pokhara, we left towards the Himalayas. The walking route only starts in Chame, at 2670 meters of altitude, with the snowy peaks of the Annapurna mountain range already in sight. Until then, we complete a painful but necessary road preamble to its subtropical base.
Crocodiles, Queensland Tropical Australia Wild
UNESCO World Heritage
Cairns to Cape Tribulation, Australia

Tropical Queensland: An Australia Too Wild

Cyclones and floods are just the meteorological expression of Queensland's tropical harshness. When it's not the weather, it's the deadly fauna of the region that keeps its inhabitants on their toes.
View from the top of Mount Vaea and the tomb, Vailima village, Robert Louis Stevenson, Upolu, Samoa
Characters
Upolu, Samoa

Stevenson's Treasure Island

At age 30, the Scottish writer began looking for a place to save him from his cursed body. In Upolu and the Samoans, he found a welcoming refuge to which he gave his heart and soul.
Jabula Beach, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa
Beaches
Saint Lucia, South Africa

An Africa as Wild as Zulu

On the eminence of the coast of Mozambique, the province of KwaZulu-Natal is home to an unexpected South Africa. Deserted beaches full of dunes, vast estuarine swamps and hills covered with fog fill this wild land also bathed by the Indian Ocean. It is shared by the subjects of the always proud Zulu nation and one of the most prolific and diverse fauna on the African continent.
Pilgrims at the top, Mount Sinai, Egypt
Religion
Mount Sinai, Egypt

Strength in the Legs, Faith in God

Moses received the Ten Commandments on the summit of Mount Sinai and revealed them to the people of Israel. Today, hundreds of pilgrims climb, every night, the 4000 steps of that painful but mystical ascent.
Chepe Express, Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railway
On Rails
Creel to Los Mochis, Mexico

The Barrancas del Cobre & the CHEPE Iron Horse

The Sierra Madre Occidental's relief turned the dream into a construction nightmare that lasted six decades. In 1961, at last, the prodigious Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad was opened. Its 643km cross some of the most dramatic scenery in Mexico.
Walter Peak, Queenstown, New Zealand
Society
New Zealand  

When Counting Sheep causes Sleep Loss

20 years ago, New Zealand had 18 sheep per inhabitant. For political and economic reasons, the average was halved. In the antipodes, many breeders are worried about their future.
Daily life
Arduous Professions

the bread the devil kneaded

Work is essential to most lives. But, certain jobs impose a degree of effort, monotony or danger that only a few chosen ones can measure up to.
savuti, botswana, elephant-eating lions
Wildlife
Savuti, Botswana

Savuti's Elephant-Eating Lions

A patch of the Kalahari Desert dries up or is irrigated depending on the region's tectonic whims. In Savuti, lions have become used to depending on themselves and prey on the largest animals in the savannah.
Full Dog Mushing
Scenic Flights
Seward, Alaska

The Alaskan Dog Mushing Summer

It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.
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