Life in slow motion – Sydney congestion
On a sunny, still autumn day a dirty brown pall hangs over Sydney. From the Blue Mountains it could be mistaken for smoke from the seasonal wild-fires, except that this isn’t fire season and as we descend into Australia’s largest city, the murk is revealed as pollution.
Smog, smoke, pm10, call it what you like, it is dirt and from the look of the place, most of it is from the never-ending stream of cars and trucks. Whatever charms Sydney may have, and there are one or two, the traffic counteracts them almost in their entirety.
By large city standards, say New York, LA or Tokyo, Sydney is a sprawling spacious country town with a busy heart. By other standards the place is crowded, congested and impossible; for example, it takes only one small incident to jam up the CBD traffic on a Sunday afternoon so that a normally slow 30 minute drive to the airport becomes a 90 minute trip back.
Youthful NSW Police in their blue baseball-style caps look like errant skateboarders in high-viz as they preside over a minor traffic incident; the resulting detour means slow-motion chaos – a wrong turn takes an age to complete and even longer to rectify.
It seems that everyone in Sydney is trying to drive to the same place at the same time. Life passes me by and suddenly quarter of a tank of gas is looking skinny.
At the Darling Harbour hotel, car parking is offered as an extra; an additional $45 if the valet is involved. When asked if that means the car will be taken away immediately and not returned for 24 hours the concierge nods. I can’t pay fast enough; it’s a bargain to be rid of the thing.
Sydney has trains and if you can be bothered with a crash course in underground networks then the system is useful and on most days, quicker and less expensive than a car. Most places worth seeing are accessible on foot or by train from the CBD. The walk from Darling Harbour to the Harbour Bridge is excellent and on the way you can cross an old road-bridge to a maritime museum which includes a small frigate and a submarine.
In New Zealand we call that Devonport and our navy, except that we don’t have any submarines, not even really old ones.
The walk then takes you along the city edge and under the Harbour Bridge. If you want to cross the bridge by car a road trip is 50:50 because with the best will in the world those are the odds for finding the on-ramp, as opposed to ending up under the sea, where the view is a rather subterranean shade of eerily lit tunnel concrete.
They built that because the massive bridge was not big enough; have I mentioned the traffic? However, the walk to and under the bridge is nothing short of majestic and worth the visit alone. It is possible to walk the length of the bridge but the thing is so big the approaches begin and end about a light year before the water it crosses. Getting up there is at best mysterious.
The opera house is stunning from the outside but hardly worth the bother to go in, after all, it is famous for the exterior appearance, not the part where they do all that silly loud singing and prancing about. However, even the outside is hackneyed now, although there is a newer and quite novel feature: While following the water’s edge around the Opera House a very noticeable hum emanates from beneath the sea. Puzzling at first but with a bit of thought, it is the sound of the traffic in the tunnel below.
After that you can head up-town via the botanic gardens and old Government House then include a quick dash up the Tower, which has an elevator but is still meant to leave you breathless because of the stunning views. Mostly it leaves you wanting to go back down to the ground where you can’t fall any further. The shopping is OK, if you like that sort of thing. Lots of people but . . .
Bondi is pretty cool but that is only a day’s worth and not at this time of year. Sports matches are better seen on TV and don’t seem to pull the crowds.
Frankly, Sydney is compromised by the inconvenience of getting anywhere. And right now everyone you meet is whining about the budget because of the chronic introspection Australia suffers from. It is surprising that a nation borne of farmers with 10 per cent of the world’s sheep (way more than us) struggles to grasp how economic boom years up to 2008 and a brief spendthrift episode afterwards can result in more debt than they have ever had.
Mining has not closed up shop but opportunities are limited and anyone who remembers the story of the grasshopper and the ants will know what happens when we play all summer without a care for the damp cold winds of inevitably bleaker times.
As opined in a previous column Australia is a beautiful country with much to see, feel and appreciate, but as for Sydney, the best place to be after a quick visit ends up being the destination with the best signage; the airport.