Words Fail Me

Leaving the Royal Botanic Garden, I stumbled on this graveyard of marble. Spooky but cool.  (Later I learned that it’s an art piece titled “Memory is Creation Without End” by Kimio Tsuchiya consisting of bits of demolished buildings.)

Some of the flora here and in New Zealand looks positively extra-terrestrial.

The Sydney Opera House. Probably the most iconic building in the Southern Hemisphere.  The seem to alternate between calling the roof “sails” or “shells” (but from some angles I think of them as conquistador helmets.)

The floor of the concert hall is carpeted with vivid purple.  (Yes, Prince performed here.  February 2016.  I looked it up.)These are called “ribs” and are the concrete covered stainless steel which support the shells.The walkway between the Concert Hall and the Theatre is sometimes referred to as “Hurricane Alley” because of the winds that speed through there.The ceramic tiles of the shells are “self cleaning” in that rainwater washes them clean……and the rain is then drained between the floor tiles and then filtered.Although the sails look white from afar, they are actually a mix of white and off-white.The theatre is named after Australian opera actress Joan Sutherland.The netting over the theatre’s orchestra pit was added after a chicken wandered off the edge of a play onto the head of a cellist during a performance.

Hey, some trips you win, some trips you lose.  But for this one, I’m enjoying the exchange rate.

By Circular Quay and the Customs House there is a quill-shaped weathervane over a map of the early Australian settlements.

Sydney’s old Customs House, ready for Christmas.