Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
were converted into a music conservatorium, which amalgamated with the University of
Sydney in 1990.
Subsequent renovations (equally extravagant at $145 million) created five world-class
performance venues.
TANK STREAM FOUNTAIN
(Herald Sq, Alfred St; Circular Quay)
Designed by Stephen Walker, this four-part bronze foun-
tain (1981) near Circular Quay incorporates dozens of sculptures of native Australian an-
imals; play spot-the-echidna. The fountain is dedicated to 'all the children who have
played around the Tank Stream', which now runs beneath the city.
FOUNTAIN
SYDNEY WRITERS WALK
( Circular Quay)
A series of metal discs cast into the Circular Quay promenade hold rumin-
ations from prominent Australian writers (and the odd literary visitor). The likes of Robert
Hughes, Germaine Greer, Peter Carey, Umberto Eco and Clive James wax lyrical on sub-
jects ranging from indigenous rights to the paradoxical nature of glass.
PATH
Genres vary from eloquent poems addressing the human condition to a ditty about a
meat pie by Barry Humphries.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
After dismissing Botany Bay as a site for the colony, Governor Phillip sailed the First Fleet into what James
Cook had named Port Jackson (Warran in the local language) and dropped anchor at a horseshoe bay with an
all-important freshwater stream running into it. Phillip astutely christened the bay Sydney Cove after the British
Home Secretary, Baron Sydney of Chislehurst, who was responsible for the colonies.
The socio-economic divide of the future city was foreshadowed when the convicts were allocated the rocky
land to the west of the stream (known unimaginatively as The Rocks), while the governor and other officials
pitched their tents to the east.
Built with convict labour between 1837 and 1844, Circular Quay was originally (and more accurately) called
Semi-circular Quay, and acted as the main port of Sydney. In the 1850s it was extended further, covering over
the by then festering Tank Stream, which ran through the middle of the cove.
As time went on, whalers and sailors joined the ex-convicts at The Rocks - and inns and brothels sprang up
to entertain them. With the settlement filthy and overcrowded, the nouveau riche started building houses on the
