Say it Ain't SOH

Saturday afternoon we decided to do a tour of the Sydney Opera House (the SOH).  If I am being honest, I wasn't really all that jazzed about the tour...how interesting can an Opera House be?

Boy, was I wrong!  It was an awesome tour, and had we known it was going to be so interesting, we probably would have sprung for the "behind the scenes" tour.

The Sydney Opera House was/is quite a controversial building...the design was picked out of the already discarded pile of an international design competition by a late arriving judge.  Once crowned the winner, it was estimated to take 3 years and $7 million to complete even though they had no idea how to build it.  It ended up taking 14 years at a cost of $102 million.  Though he was removed from the project towards it's completion due to political pressure, Jorn Utzon is the credited architect and the man that combined a simple shape and concept to build what many at the time thought unbuildable.  The shape that dramatically simplified the construction is the sphere.  It's said Utzon had an ah ha moment peeling an orange for breakfast.  The ah ha being that he could create these unique shapes in various sizes by merely making a wider/narrower and deeper/shorter cut into a sphere.  The second challenge was to make these shells/sails/shark fins/colliding razorbacks/sonic the hedgehogs structurally sound.  It's done by tension ... picture the collapsing giraffe toy, except the string through the giraffe is steel cables through concrete blocks.

Collapsing Giraffe ... stolen from mywoodentoys.com.au obviously.
You can not choose your "colour" and order one here, go there.

It has a very distinctive look to it, and whether you love it or hate it, it is truly iconic to Sydney.


FYI - If you happen to visit Sydney and want to attend a performance at the SOH, do better research than we did.  Pre-trip we saw two shows on for the weekend, both sold out online.  At the SOH, there were banners for at least ten shows (normal) and people in line at the box office. 

After our wonderful Sydney Opera House tour, we headed to one of my favorite restaurants of all time - Din Tai Fung...a traditional chinese dumpling house...and we proceeded to eat ourselves into food comas - soup, veggies, fried rice and piles of soupy dumplings.  A great end to a great day! 


Heaps of pictures of the SOH:

Chris Ann between the wall of SOH inspiration and commencement plaque.

The tiles on the exterior of the SOH.  They are "self-washing",  except
 that one time it didn't rain for 7 years.  Less than 1% have had to replaced,
the majority of those a result of theft during the 2000 Olympics.

The tiled ground surrounding the SOH.  I really want to believe
they used large phillips head screwdrivers to install these.

Windows recently added to the Drama Theatre foyer.  In addition to nice
 views of the bridge, they show how thick the concrete structure is.

This play was in progress while we were there.  Our guide was adamant the name not be uttered, then the play broke for intermission and one of the actors was "Macbeth" this and "Macbeth" that.  Our guide was not pleased.

Window above the balcony on the harbor side angled intentionally to reflect the
 beauty of the harbor.  Bob Ross thinks it might have been a happy accident.

Foyer of the main performance hall.

Upper level of main performance hall foyer.

Main performance hall.  You're not allowed to take pictures in here ... unless another
 tour group is already in there snapping pictures.  I'm prepared if they come after us.

A bunch of sound enhancing devices which appear to be more decorative
 than functional.  Pretty sure they know what they're doing though.

Utzon tapestry, designed and donated by Utzon in 2004 when the
Aussie government decided to finally make right a wrong crediting him
as the architect of the SOH.  Utzon had returned to Denmark after being
removed from the construction never to return until this dedication.

LT performing in the Utzon Room

Pantsless Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb

We left for Sydney on Good Friday, with plans to explore the city and get to the bottom of the Melbourne - Sydney rivalry.

We arrived at our hotel a little after lunchtime, and after refueling, headed out to explore the city.  We were staying around Hyde Park, which is about 3km from the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

We wandered around Hyde Park, reminded BigBull that everyone still drives on the left-hand side of the road, visited Darling Harbor (where they were having a clown festival), toured around Sydney Harbor, and took in the sights.

ANZAC Memorial, Hyde Park

Hyde Park

Darling Harbor

Lucky to be alive

On Saturday morning, Jeff, BigBull and I had a booking to climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge, while Chris Ann explored the markets in The Rocks and walked the whole Harbor Bridge (and back!).

The Bridge Climb was a pretty cool experience - we got to see the best views of the city and learned about the building of the bridge.  The whole process was really well run, and after we did a breathalyzer (to ensure we were't going to fall off the bridge), we were given these fabulous climb suits.  Since it was forecast to be about 75 degrees, they recommended that we take our pants off so that we wouldn't get overheated on the climb...so we did  :)

The walk starts off in the bowels of the bridge, getting us to the actual bridge itself, then you climb up four ladders to find yourself standing on the top of the girders of the bridge.  We proceeded to climb to the middle of the bridge, take a bunch of pictures (the guide was the only one that was allowed to have cameras), cross over the center of the bridge and come down the other side.  All in all, it took us about 3 hours to get dressed up, climb, take pictures and come back down the other side.

The bridge took 8 years to complete and on the day that the bridge opened, there were only 5 cars that lived on the north side of the harbor - lord only knows how many are there now.  There are about 6 million rivets that hold the bridge together, only 4 bolts, and about 10,000 rivets that were dropped into the harbor below (since they threw them to each other, this doesn't seem like that big of a deal!).

To put the 8 years in perspective...they are currently repainting a portion of the bridge and it has taken them 8 years to paint about a quarter of the entire bridge (safety standards)...to build the entire thing in 8 years was quite a feat!

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Wildlife Extravaganza

On Holy Thursday, Jeff and I took off of work and headed down to Phillip Island with the Turnbulls.  We had a packed itinerary that included:
1.  Forrest Caves
2.  Koala Conservatory
3.  Nobbies
4.  Phillip Island Penguin Parade

Phillip Island is about an hour and a half from Melbourne, around the east side of the bay.  We have been down to the area before for a V8 Supercars Race, Country Horse Race, and the Forrest Caves, but Jeff hadn't done the Koala Conservatory, Nobbies, or Penguin Parade - we were saving these for visitors.  We left the house around 7:30am and headed to the coast.

First stop:  The Forrest Caves.  Even though we had been here not long ago, it is always striking how beautiful and deserted this place is...even though Melbourne was on school holidays (2 weeks off for Easter), the beach was still empty.  And the waves were unbelievably strong - HUGE waves...not sure the pictures will do it justice.

Forrest Caves at high tide

BigBull almost took a wave splash to the face a few times

Next Stop:  Koala Conservatory.  The Koala Conservatory is an open-air zoo where you just walk around and see the animals in their habitat.  We saw LOTS of koalas, many different types of birds, and several wallabies.

They sleep 20 out of 24 hours

He is asleep, and has good balance

Koala poo

Wallaby, the kangaroos midget cousin

Third Stop:  The best pizza in Australia - if they delivered, we would only order from them.  We were joking with the waitress that we would be back for dinner....little did we know, we really did end up coming back for dinner - Pizza twice in one day!

Fourth Stop:  The Nobbies.  The Nobbies are known for the blow-hole, where the ocean has worn away the rocks in such a way that the water rushes in and then blows back out, but the most amazing part of the day was the rough ocean - the blow-hole didn't stand a chance to the huge waves - they were even bigger than at the Forrest Caves.  I think I took 200 pictures of the water....it'll only take one picture to make us rich, right?!

BigBull liked this rock

The cave in the bottom right is the blow-hole

A big wave hitting the blow-hole

Blow-hole post big wave

Blow-hole blowing

These waves are entering the bay and take a 90-degree turn into shore
 around the coastline.  They make for a long surf.

Fifth Stop:  The Phillip Island Penguin Parade.  Phillip Island is the home to Little Penguins, the smallest of all penguins.  They only stand about a foot tall, and they are just so cute...unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take any pictures of the penguins, so this is the only one that we have:

Happened to pass him on the side of the road.
He's molting, which is why he looks a bit scruffy.

The penguins will travel up to 2km from their home to the ocean, spend up to 4 weeks out in the water hunting, then wait until sunset to come back to their beach, and take the same route to their home that they've been doing since they were babies.  When the penguins come back to shore, they take their time gaining confidence to cross the beach - safety in numbers, then they make a sprint (as fast as you can go without any knees), rest at the beginning of their colony area, then make the long trek home.  Some have homes right on the dunes of the beach, some travel much further.  When they come back, they spend a great deal of time standing outside of their burrow - this is their social time.

Little penguin we saw on the St. Kilda Pier

Sixth Stop:  The best pizza in Australia, again.  And, embarrassingly enough, the waitress remembered us.  But the pizza was awesome!

We ended up getting home around 10.30pm, just enough time to get ready to head out to Sydney on Friday morning!