Full Circle
Day 141: Sydney to Auckland
Sydney, Australia. The Harbour Bridge, the Oriana, the Opera House - all from my hotel room.
I take a walk out onto one of the most momentous waterfronts in the world. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, epitome of the no-nonsense age of heavy engineering, looms like a great protective patriarch over the delicate, playful outlines of the Opera House. One a practical solution to a practical problem, the other a work of art in itself. I am surprised what a successful pair they make.Until yesterday they were joined by a long gleaming white temporary structure whose size and elegance seemed to complement them both. The liner, Oriana, six weeks out of England, left the dockside with a big resounding farewell blast, at midnight last night. Our time in Australia has run out and today we must leave too.
Later: Flying across the one-thousand mile stretch of Pacific that separates Australia from New Zealand. It is called the Tasman Sea, after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the first white man to record a sighting of New Zealand, three hundred and fifty three years ago. Tasman, one of the great explorers of the southern fringes of the Pacific, was trying to find a route from Java to the gold-rich coast of South America (which, for slightly different reasons, we are as well).
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 141
- Country/sea: Australia
- Place: Sydney
- Book page no: 196
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RELATED LINKS
- All planes
- Day 1
- Pole to Pole
- Day 28
- Sahara
- Chapter 1: Chicago/Michigan
- Hemingway Adventure
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