Join Ross and Cullen in Part 2 of our I'm free Sydney tour
Listen in and read along with part 2 of our tour through Sydney with Ross and Cullen and then answer the questions below to either test your memory, your English, or both. https://forms.gle/6FBzYXe3Uh8DaQF77
Ross:
You can see across Hyde Park, the big some areas, cathedral.
Now it's the second version of it. They started one in 1821. Unfortunately, it burnt down soon afterward. So they started this one in 1868, but they didn't finish it until 16 years ago. So it's about 130 years to get it all built. They wanted it finished off for the 2000 Olympics.
A view across to the Cathedral with animal art making its way through the park
looking for an Ark.
Cullen:
Thanks for joining me, Cullen here, we are about to kick off in part two about our with Ross, from www.imfree.com.au and we're making our way now towards the cathedral.
And then we're going to swing around towards Hyde Park and the Greek mythological figures. And we learn a little bit there about Sydney's early convict beginnings.
And then from there, we end up in the most magnificent lookout point towards Sydney Harbour.
So let's jump straight into it.
Ross:
As this is all originally the edge of the township. This area was the site of the markets, but by 1898 they wanted something more formal and official for the market.
So they built this big grand Romanesque-style building, which you can see around us. The problem was the design of the building didn't work very well as a market. So right through its history, it had a number of different functions.
In one instance, it was proposed to be demolished entirely and replaced by car parking.
And thankfully that didn't happen in 1986, a Malaysian company took control of the building, restored it to what we can say to the state. That said, there are a few interesting and odd things around the building, in particular, the clocks.
So you might have noticed one as we came in, now hiding behind the sign. There's also a similar one, same spot down the other end of the building.
Ross:
It shows scenes some Australian history with, but this one shows scenes from British history.
So if you go up onto level two on the hour every hour, you can see beheadings of King Charles the first.
And the whole head rolls off and everything.
It's a bit weird. Also, on the second level in the middle is a letter from Queen Elizabeth the second to Sydneysiders, which is nice, but we haven't opened it yet, and we're not meant to open it until 2085.
So I don't like my chances of being around to hear that one read out and she could have written anything, but I get the feeling it's still going to be pretty........, but we'll have to wait and see …….
It was written in 1986 the idea is that it not be open for 99 years, so we get to keep waiting for me or that you can head around the corner here as we do
Look up at the dome above. It's really pretty.
Ross:
It was in this area, had our first official horse races.
You don't find horses here anymore.
It's a place for people to escape from this city. Have picnics and a place for the big white birds with the big white beaks.
They seem to be avoiding us a little bit at the moment.
The Australian white ibis (Threskiornis Molucca) is a wading bird of the ibis family.
In recent years has become an icon of popular culture, being regarded "with passion and wit,
You can see someone chasing one over there, uh, for them to steal your picnic.
So watch out for that one.
It's also, for part of our out and about art festival, which is on at the moment.
Ross:
it's all about getting art out into the streets rather than just in museums and galleries.
So that's what all the photographs we just wandered by.
They're all photographs that are meant to represent an Australian life, interesting elements of Australian life.
But there's an extension to that exhibition over in the diagonally opposite corner of Hyde Park, which is exactly the same all photographs about Australian life except they're taken by children. So it's cool to see their, uh, views on things.
But you can see across Hyde Park, the big St Mary's cathedral.
Now it's the second version of it. They started one in 1821. Unfortunately, it burnt down soon afterward.
So they started this one in 1868, but they didn't finish it until 16 years ago. It took them about 130 years to get it all built.
They wanted it finished off for the 2000 Olympics.
A view across to the Cathedral with animal art making its way through the park
looking for an Ark.
Ross:
If you're interested in cathedrals, that can be one to have a wander around inside shows a strong Irish Catholic heritage in the early colony. Other Way beside us, he can say he's fountain, which is known as the Archibald fountain.
Now the thing that confuses me about it is it's meant to show Australia and France's ties and connections during world war one, but the artist has used Greek mythological figures to show off this fact.
Nonetheless, it's a beautiful fountain, a popular place for wedding photographs.
The story behind the fountain is it was donated to Sydney by a man named JF Archibald.
So JF Archibald was a fairly important person here in Sydney as he created a popular current affairs magazine known as the bulletin.
He was, however, also a character. He was a Francophile.
He absolutely loved France so much, so he changed his name from John Feltham,
to Jules Francois, and he went with a Bere and French, mustache, and everything.
Ross:
Hence we end up with a fountain which is meant to show ties to the French, but whilst we're here in the quiet of Hyde park, I'll run through Sydney's history in six or seven minutes.
So tune in or out depending on your level of interest.
In 1770 the Englishman, a captain cook, sailed up the East coast of Australia.
The Dutch sailed up the West coast in 1616, but we'd like to forget about that part.
Around that time, London's jails were full of convicts and prisoners.
Art in the park dazzles in the daylight of the cranes among the trees in Hyde Park
The American war of independence meant they couldn't keep shipping them over there anymore.
They had to come up with somewhere new. So eventually, it was decided upon new South Wales or as it became Sydney.
So on the 26th of January, 1788, the first fleet of ships arrived here in Sydney with 700 convicts, 700 other people that said they only managed to beat a number of French ships by four days.
Ross:
So we could have had a completely different history.
The other thing was they thought the land was completely uninhabited.
In actual fact, it was inhabited by the Gadigal tribe of Australian native Aborigines.
They'd been around for at least the past 30,000 years. So at first, there was some curiosity and interest, but then there were violent attacks and outbreaks of disease, which largely decimated the Australian native Aboriginal population.
So much so, unfortunately, they only represent one and a half percent of Sydney's population to this day.
So during those first few years, the colonies started to grow as a convict colony.
A couple of years after Sydney was founded, 75% of the population were convicts, so you can understand it wasn't a very law-abiding society.
The other issue they had was that of food and famine. There were reliant on most of their food coming out on ships from England. These ships are very often wrecked or lost at sea.
Ross:
So in 1790 when a ship known as the Lady Juliana, came out with 220 women and not very much food, the largely male-dominated society at the time complained at this,
By 1792 free settlers started coming out here. Farming started to work. Sydney started to prosper by the 1840s they stopped sending convicts to the East coast of Australia. Guessing 150,000 was about enough.
Then by 1851, we had the first of a number of gold rushes, which really helped Sydney to prosper, but also helped Melbourne to prosper and hence sparked off the debate between the two cities as to who is more important, which hasn't finished yet.
So in 1901 the six States of Australia came together as a Federation under the coin. This was when the debate between the two cities was most aggressive because it had to be
decided who would be the capital of this new country Australia.
Ross:
Sydney was like, well, we're here first. We have the most heritage and old buildings.
Clearly, we should be the capital.
Melbourne was were young, were more hip, and European, where the biggest at the time where you should be the capital.
The two cities, we're both so stubborn. They fought so aggressively. They had to build a whole new city in between the two of them.
Canberra.
That said, Melbourne was the capital for the first 26 years because that's how long it took us to build Canberra.
But war has come to Sydney in the form of infiltrations and thinkings, but these days Sydney as a focus of world events, rugby world cup, Sydney Olympics, but I'll give you brains at rest, and we'll head this way out of Hyde Park.
Ross:
You can see where we are standing where we started back at the town hall, the long thin queen Victoria building with all the little green dots on the roof.
Then we headed up pass Sydney tower, which pokes up above everything else there over into Hyde Park.
You can see the triangular area of greenery and grass.
That was the domain which I mentioned from the hospital hanging off the edge of the model is the new South Wales art gallery as well.
We headed down through Martin place past the round Australia square building and were now directly opposite this middle Wharf over the road, way behind in that little square building with two orange lines on the roof. That's custom house.
So from here, we'll head around into the rocks, which is the oldest surviving part of Sydney.
So the model obviously goes from the Harbor bridge, opera house, circular Quay, all they back down the other end to central station, but you can also see to this side, this area of water, which is known as Darling Harbor, which for want of a better way of explaining it. Sort of a touristy precinct has our wildlife, Sydney and sea life, Sydney aquarium, and the point beneath me here and directly across the water; you can see the curved roofs and the two walls of the national maritime museum as well.
Also, they have free fireworks in darling Harbor at 8:30 PM on Saturday nights. So it could be worth checking out tonight if you want to.
The other thing to mention about tonight's that our clock's jump forward by an hour tonight.
Date.
Yes. So you'll get one less hours late tonight — sorry guys.
Ross:
Um, but yeah, also, it can be kind of hard to photograph because of the reflection. If you really want a picture of it, they have three postcards, but we can continue back at down here.
Cullen:
And great to have you with us joining us are on that snapshot as we walked around Sydney on the most beautiful day and really giving some insights into that
tour.
And of course, you can get more details from I'm free. www.imfree.com.au, and you can tell we were there as we were going through the change of daylight savings. And so a lot of people had been out the night before. It was, yeah, it was kind of interesting.
Anyway, look, um, I guess one of the other things that it's important to know is that a really Ross and many of his guides are out there sort of rain, hail, thunder sun. The sun will shine and a really every day, and there's no need to book. Um, this is the perfect place where you can just turn up sort shortly, shortly before,
the tour starts, and you can find your local guide there in a bright green t-shirts.
So anyway, with that, we are also going to add in our memory test
As a form inside this podcast.
Cullen:
For those of our listeners want to test, test the memory,
And or there comprehension if English is your second language and you can get more details on more podcasts at eattmag.com
Thanks for joining us it's great to have you.
Thank you, everybody, for your four and five-star reviews on iTunes and Stitcher and Spreaker.
It's really a great, the whole team is very, um, wrapped whenever that happens.
We just wanted to say that. And of course, you can join us for our next podcast is we continue a journey around Australia.
And please don't forget to click the link inside this podcast so you can see the images that we took during the day as well. All right. We'll catch you in the next one, cheers.
Join us in part one of the podcast with Ross and Cullen.
https://eattmag.com/join-cullen-in-part-one-of-the-im-free-sydneys-sight-seeing-tour/
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