The sights of Sydney

Admittedly we've been off the treadmill for a while but getting off the bus at dowtown Sydney was quite a shock to the system.  As busy as Oxford Street and as frantic as a supermarket pre-bank holiday, this place was stacked with the air of don't panic but oh man let's panic.

We hit the sights straight away heading for the biggy, Sydney Opera House.  We walked through the botanical gardens and up the steps to the house.  It is thought that 2 out of every 3 people in the world are able to recognise the iconic opera house structure.

The story goes...... in 1956 the NSW Government called an open-ended international design competition and appointed an independent jury. The competition brief provided broad specifications to attract the best design talent in the world; it did not specify design parameters or set a cost limit. The main requirement of the competition brief was a design for two performance halls, one for opera and one for symphony concerts. Reputedly rescued from a pile of discarded submissions, young architect, Denmark’s Jørn Utzon’s winning entry created great community interest and the NSW Government’s decision to commission Utzon as the sole architect was unexpected, bold and visionary.

Utzon understood and recognised the potential provided by the site against the stunning backdrop of Sydney Harbour giving Australia a challenging, graceful piece of urban sculpture. His design shook Sydney's post war folk to the core with the residents opposite worrying the structure would devalue their homes!

It was originally estimated the project would take 3 years to build on a budget of $7 million. It actually took 16 years and a cost of $102 millions! Time and cost over runs contributed to populist criticism and a change of government resulted in 1966 to Utzon’s resignation, street demonstrations and professional controversy. Jorn Utzon died in Copenhagen in November 2008 aged 90 and he never saw the final product but he did believe he'd created a masterpiece. The building is constantly reviewed for further enhancements and his son and daughter are now heavily involved with all new projects.

Sydney Opera House is a masterpiece of late modern architecture. It is admired internationally and proudly treasured by the people of Australia. Opened in 1973 by the Queen it is now inscribed in the World Heritage List in June 2007. In 2003 Utzon received the Pritzker Prize, international architecture's highest honour. Over 110 million visitors to date have visited the icon.

The amount of steel used in it’s construction is four times the length of the amount of steel used to construct ‘the bridge’.   The external roof  is covered by 17 different tiles with a total of 1.56 million tiles!

Inside is just as great, with 2 main halls and a small studio (where Coldplay recorded their 5th album). Crazy purple carpet flows in places and tennis star Lleyton Hewitt had his wedding here.  If you are late for a performance here  there is a lock out and you have to wait for a convenient point in the show to then be ushered inside.

Luckily for us whilst we looked around one of the concert halls the Sydney Symphony Orchestra were practicing, wow what a noise!  The hall is made from white beach timber which is great for acoustics.  The hall is totally in dependant from the main structure.  the main hall has a mechanical track organ that took 10 years to build and 2 years to tune and is thought to be the biggest in the world!

With our architectural fix done we went across to the Australian Museum.  Every January in the UK we head to the Bristol Museum to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition and to our delight the exhibition was on show here.  It didn't fail to disappoint, some great shots.