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| City Guide - Sydney - City Overview | ||
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City Overview Celebrated as the 'Queen of the Pacific Rim', vast, vibrant Sydney is home to one of the world's most beautiful harbours, which stands as the city's majestic centrepiece with the imposing Opera House the jewel in its crown. The State capital of New South Wales, Sydney is a thriving centre for both business and the arts and as with everything in Sydney its landscape is larger than life. Sydney has all the cosmopolitan amenities - top shopping, excellent restaurants and buzzing nightlife and visitors often find similarities with San Francisco. Carved between the mountains and the sea, the city offers the ultimate in the great outdoors. The Pacific Ocean swells onto golden surf beaches, while a seasonally shifting palette of colours unfolds further inland over the Blue Mountains. In addition to the Harbour famously adorned with sail boats mirroring the distinctive curves of the Opera House, there are numerous inland waterways and national parks. From its sordid beginnings as a British penal colony in 1788, Sydney rapidly flourished establishing booming trade links and witnessing large-scale development throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Sydney Opera House -a feat of avant-garde architectural vision - epitomises the city's desire to lead the New World into the twenty-first century and Sydney's architecture is a stunning melange, with little Victorian structures nestling below towering concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers. All the extravagant exuberance and plate-glass sophistication nonetheless fail to compensate for a certain competitive edginess in the city's psyche. After the Australian Federation was created in 1901, the traditional bickering between Sydney and its arch rival Melbourne was settled in 1908 - by making Canberra the new national capital. However, until 1927, when the city of Canberra was completed and parliament finally convened in its new home, Melbourne remained the seat of national government. Sydneysiders insist that their city remains the 'true' capital of Australia and indeed, with over 200 years of white history, it certainly has all the bearing and stature of a capital city. Yet the rivalry with Melbourne persists - a rivalry based more on style than on stature for, while Sydney is decidedly Anglo in its ethnic orientation, Melbourne is more continental with a much more tangibly imported culture. Australia's white history has eclipsed its indigenous inheritance and, although Sydney has the highest Aboriginal population of any Australian city, a stroll around the city's streets offers little evidence that it has anything other than a white heritage. While museums, galleries, theatre and dance troupes pay tribute to the archaeological and cultural legacy of indigenous culture,Aborigines in the city remain very much an invisible minority. Its semi-tropical summers and mild winters mean that Sydney is an excellent place to visit at any time of the year. |
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