Sydney Opera House

I recently went on a tour of the Opera House and found out heaps of neat information about it. It's located on Bennelong Point (named for an Aboriginal inhabitant) in Sydney Harbour. When the idea of the project was announced, over 200 architects from all over the world submitted their designs. The design of a Danish architect named Jørn Utzon was ultimately selected, after being retrieved from the "discard" pile. His design was incredible, but basically impossible to build with the technology of the time (the 1950s). Nonetheless, construction started on the podium in 1958. When the time came to start the roof, the engineers were faced with a major dilemma on how to construct the shells. During the design process, the shells were thought to be parabolas supported by precast concrete ribs. However, they could not find a suitable way to construct them; use of in-situ concrete would be too expensive, but precast concrete was not an option either, as there was no repetition in the roof forms (making precast concrete for each section even more costly). For the next 6 years, the team tried to determine a viable option. The answer came to Utzon one day as he was peeling an orange: cast the shells from segments of a single sphere. The concrete ribs forming the framework of the building were premade and joined together, and are visible from inside the building.
In 1965, with construction still going on, there was a change in government, and the project was declared to be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Works. Tension had been developing between Utzon and the government throughout the project, mainly due to delays related to the design, and to the cost of construction far exceeding what had been expected. In 1966, the Minister for Public Works withheld more than $100,000 that was owed to Utzon, then withheld funding so Utzon was unable to pay his staff. In February 1966, Utzon resigned from the project and left Australia.
The project was completed by other architects, and the Opera House was opened in 1973 - A$95 million over budget and 11 years after the proposed time frame for completion. In the late 1990s, the Sydney Opera House Trust attempted to make amends with Utzon and asked him to develop designs for future improvements. He died in 2008 and never returned to Australia to see the building completed.
The Opera House contains many performance spaces, and was intended to be used for all types of entertainment, not just opera. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the theaters, but we were able to see all of the performance areas, which include: the concert hall (about 2,700 seats. It contains the world's largest mechanical organ, with over 10,000 pipes), the opera theatre (1,500 seats), the drama theatre (550 seats), the playhouse (400 seats). There is also a studio and the Utzon room, a small multi-purpose area.

A few shots from inside the Opera House (it's actually 2 buildings):
Compared to the exterior and framework of the building, not much thought was given to the interior. The shells create a lot of awkward spaces on the inside, and it's really time consuming and challenging to set up the stages. A lot of the groups say it's the worst venue to perform in.

A view of the outside from the inside. The roofs are made up of over 1 million tiles.A storm rolling in to Sydney Harbour:

Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens

The Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens have become one of my favorite places to hang out in the city. It's so beautiful here! It's a great place to picnic, read, or just relax and people watch. There are a lot of great views of the harbour from here. The gardens were established in 1816 and contain flowers and trees from all over the world. The colony's first vegetable patch is located here. Some of the trees are estimated to have been there since Sydney was established. There are a ton of birds here, and a lot of the trees are completely filled with grey-headed flying foxes (aka fruit bats) hanging from the branches. There are thousands of them living in the gardens. No worries though, they eat figs and nectar, and rabies doesn't exist in Australia. They are a bit of a nuisance, and are killing a lot of the trees in the gardens. They are attempting to lure them out of the gardens and relocate the colony to preserve the trees. They are listed as a threatened species, so this is causing all sorts of problems with animal activists, scientists, etc. Click here for more information on Sydney's bats.

Somehow I can't see you walking under this tree, Mom:

The rose gardens are beautiful:

There was a great orchid exhibit going on in one of the greenhouses:

The palace gardens:

I absolutely love these flowers. I'm not sure what they are called, but they grow on a tree/bush (I have a feeling a certain someone already knows the answer or will quickly find out if he doesn't!). Can you tell how hot it was this day?!

Enjoying the gardens and the Opera House. Don't worry Dad, I didn't pick this flower, it had fallen off the tree :)

Queensland Part III

For some reason, Queensland doesn't participate in daylight savings. We set our watches accordingly when we arrived, but our cell phones didn't switch over automatically like they typically do. On our first night, we set the alarm clocks on our cell phones so we'd be able to get up bright and early to be at the pool the next morning for the first underwater hockey game. Let me also say it was late, and we had just had a few adult beverages at the surf club next door. With that in mind...we miscalculated the setting of the alarm clocks and the alarms ended up going off at 4AM instead of the intended 6AM. This wouldn't have been terrible, had we noticed this small fact before we showered and got ready! Everyone else decided to go back to bed, but I stayed up and walked down to the beach. I'm glad I did, because I was rewarded with a beautiful morning.
I love you Mom & Dad, but it's things like this that make me not want to come home!



Burleigh Head National Park was right next to where we stayed. One of the walking trails in the park ran just above the rocks and beach. It was incredibly beautiful there, definitely a path I wouldn't mind walking on every day.
Inside the park:

Surfer's Paradise in the distance: