4/7/14 - Sydney Opera House, Harbour Cruise and other city sites

In the morning we walked over to the Opera House for a private tour. The Opera House is found on Bennelong Point. It houses four major resident companies: Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Over 2000 performances are given in a year by various artistic groups. There are multiple types of tours given in a variety of languages. For those late performance attendees, the performance is shown on video in the lobby.

Sydney Opera House

Danish architect Jørn Utzon began the design in 1959. His design was really complicated. He hid all ventilation equipment behind big wings. He also placed two large halls next to each other. The larger hall was designed for instrumental acoustics. There is a set of seats around the stage for the choir (like Symphony Hall in Chicago). The organ has 138 pipes showing in front and 10K pipes behind the stage!

Each of the white curve sections has the same curvature and were put together on site. There is an abundance of wood used for walls and floors.

Dame Joan Sutherland

The second theater is the Joan Sutherland theater which is used for opera. The acoustics are designed for voice. There is not much space on the stage or the wings. They run 3 operas at a time.




Sydney and Melbourne share a ballet company and the opera. Every 3 months they switch locations.

Due to political issues and over-runs the architect resigned. Another firm completed the work. It took $102M to complete rather than the estimated $7M. And it took 16 years vs 3yrs to complete. The original architect eventually won prizes for the architecture. He also designed tapestry and mosaic patterns used in the areas outside the theater.

Following our tour of the Opera House, we took a guided Harbour Cruise. We saw many landmarks, neighborhoods and famous buildings. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is the largest single span bridge in the world. You can climb to the top.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

After the cruise we took a bus tour past the Domain, The Rocks, King's Cross and Bondi Beach. Bondi Beach is approximately 1 KM long, very near the city and is one of the best places to go to swim and surf. Its pavilion was built in 1928. Surf life saving tarted at this beach - first life guards in the world.

Bondi Beach

The Domain is a large public park which is a rallying place for crowds when issues of public importance come up. It is also a place for picnics and entertainment events.

The Rocks are rugged cliffs that played a big role in Sydney's development where in 1788 the first makeshift buildings were built by convict's hard labor. It still features colonial history. Kings Cross is a very cosmopolitan and densely populated part of the city, with lots of coffee shops, bars and the red light district.

In the evening, we had dinner at the O'Bar. This revolving restaurant was at the top of a building with nice views.