When two queens met in the harbour

Com­pul­sory Syd­ney har­bour­brid­ge­op­er­a­house photograph

If you thought that Sin­ga­pore­ans were com­pul­sive queuers, lin­ing up for any­thing, and join­ing a line even if they didn’t know what they were lin­ing up for, then you ought to take a look at Syd­neysiders. We’ve got quite a few things in com­mon with these antipodeans.

Two Tues­days ago (20 Feb), Naomi and I decided to make a day trip out of Cir­cu­lar Quay, the Opera House and the Royal Botanic Gar­dens. We had heard and read that two of the world’s most famous cruise lin­ers, the Queen Mary 2 and her older sib­ling, the Queen Eliz­a­beth 2, were due in port that after­noon, and that traf­fic around the har­bour was expected to be heavy.

If you count the lit­tle slopes in the RBG, there isn’t a more appro­pri­ate idiom than 人山人海。Damn! 华梧‘s cool!

The radio and news­pa­per announce­ments turned out to be under­state­ments. That evening, news reports esti­mated that around 300,000 peo­ple had flocked to see the two big ships. Yes, just to see the two big ships! On a Tues­day! There were no free passes for an on-board tour while the ships were in port (for less than a day), no free sou­venirs, no noth­ing. Just see. Or catch a glimpse of, as Naomi and I did, as we gave up walk­ing to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair from the Opera House because the teem­ing mass of human­ity was just too teeming.

We already had enough trou­ble get­ting to the Opera House by car. The orig­i­nal plan had been to drive down Mrs Macquarie’s Road and park at one of the many street­side lots that I remem­bered existed when I lived in Syd­ney 7 years ago — a plan which, Naomi says, had a high chance of fail­ure because park­ing lots from 7 years ago had a very high chance of, well, not exist­ing in the present day.

Not that it mat­tered, because just as we were about to turn into the leafy street behind St Mary’s Cathe­dral, we were turned away by a very apolo­getic park war­den who told us we were bet­ter off not attempt­ing to get near the har­bour by car.

We took many pho­tos of St Mary’s Cathe­dral because we were stuck in traf­fic next to it

Since we had already spent a good hour and a half in the car trav­el­ling only a few kilo­me­tres, we endured the traf­fic a lit­tle bit more and inched our­selves to the Opera House car park, where we saw the A$18 an hour fee on the board and said fuck it, we’ll park. Of course, no one told us that 15 min­utes would be spent try­ing to find a lot in the cav­ernous round and round under­ground car park of the world famous build­ing.

One Syd­ney fam­ily had it worse, think­ing it’d be a good thing if they took pub­lic trans­port, took a train from their home in the west, dis­em­barked at Cen­tral Sta­tion, hopped on a taxi for what they thought would be a short 2km plus hop to the har­bour. The taxi meter ticked like mad and they ended up pay­ing A$40 for the ride.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the shape of the Opera House was not inspired by sails nor by seashells, but by seg­ments of an orange

Nor­mally, we’d be grumpy as hell, hol­i­day or not. But thanks to the almost over­whelm­ing charm of Syd­ney (unless you’re Dick Cheney) and her attrac­tions, we weren’t. Not when you see a sign­board like this:

As for the ships the throng had gath­ered by the shore to see, we could only make out the top of the Queen Mary 2 on the other side of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. QE2 hadn’t even arrived yet. But it was easy to under­stand that some­how, that wasn’t the point of being there. You’re just glad you’re just there, what­ever the event that is going on.

The Gar­dens: Ship, what ship?

The Gar­dens

Note to Aus­tralian: Cut down tree, use wood to make paper, then write.

Tech­no­rati Tags: aus­tralia, Cunard, Mr Miyagi, QE2, QM2, Sin­ga­pore, Syd­ney