Sydney is the largest city in Australia, with a population exceeding 4 million. Though not the capital of the country (that would be Canberra, located between Sydney and Melbourne), it is the capital city of the state of New South Wales. As mentioned in the Gold Coast page, it is the site of Australia's first permanent settlement by Europeans, and is built around an immense natural harbor called Port Jackson (named by Captain Cook after Sir George Jackson, Judge Advocate of the Fleet). Its best-known landmarks are probably its distinctive Opera House (opened in 1973), its Harbour Bridge (known as "the coathanger" for obvious reasons), and its beaches (Bondi and Manly are the ones most people think of). Port Jackson has a very irregular shoreline, with great numbers of peninsulas, inlets and islets.

Sydney's Central Business District occupies one of the peninsulas and forms a spectacular skyline.

To get to Sydney from the Gold Coast, we departed from the Gold Coast Airport in Coolangatta on a flight which took a little more than an hour to reach Sydney. Baggage weight limits on this flight were quite low, but we'd checked before leaving the U.S. and planned our baggage weight around this one flight, so we were able to avoid the overweight fees.

Flying in to Sydney, we had a nice view out the left side of the aircraft of the entire harbor area before landing to the south of the city at Sydney Airport.

The runways for the airport actually extend out into Botany Bay, which was the First Fleet's initial destination in 1788 before moving north to Port Jackson. There are a few options for getting from the airport to the Central Business District. Of course there are taxis. There is also a train with a number of stops, one of which was quite convenient to our hotel (the Sheraton on the Park). But the train fare for three people worked out to about the same as a taxi fare, so neither option had much of a cost advantage for us. But we did find a shuttle van which was significantly less, and we took it. Unfortunately it stopped at several hotels, ours being one of the last, so in retrospect we might have opted for the taxi if we'd known.

After checking in at the hotel, we walked westward on Market Street to Darling Harbour, which is on the west side of the CBD's peninsula, where we watched the sun set to the northwest.





From Darling Harbour we returned up Market Street and found a food court running under some buildings on the north side of the street. The food court had a big assortment of food, from Asian to Italian to Mexican. There was also a New Zealand ice cream stand, which even sold L&P. The food court was also about to close (closing time was 6 PM), so we made some hasty decisions and were able to procure nourishment just in time. Then we returned to our hotel and spent the rest of the evening watching the Beijing Olympics on TV.