"Sydney - Cosmopolitan capital of the... " a Sydney Travel Page by iandsmith

Something about water, something about Sydney Harbour. There's an expectation. An expectation of movement, of something about to happen, of beauty, of rippling waters, of architectural monuments. It doesn't disappoint. Some find the Opera House smaller than they expected but still marvel at its architectural splendour. By day the Harbour Bridge can look a little dull with its fundamental grey paintwork. When draped with fireworks it becomes one of the world's most colourful spectacles. The city itself may suffer from the boring high rise syndrome but treasures such as the Queen Victoria Building, the Strand Arcade and the Rocks contrast mightily with the modern brashness and bold fronts of Darling Harbour.
Started as a colonial outpost it smouldered and steadily grew through the early years of white man settlement then exploded after the Second World War with expatriates from all Mediterranean and European cultures, fleeing their war torn homelands or communist oppression. I was priveleged to spend an apprenticeship working with them and, for a couple of years, played in an ethnic soccer team and got to understand a little of what we had imported. Today there is an Asian "invasion". Australia is viewed by many emerging nations as a good place to go to university and Sydney is the main target.
Thus it is that you can expect to see all races and hear all languages. A walk along the Manly Corso or Bondi Beach will soon make you aware of that.
The dream of living seaside or harbour side has become the reality of only the rich. In the last decade with the advent of even cheaper travel, prices have soared. Yet the magnet remains. Even I, who doesn't live here, find myself enjoying the not infrequent trip to see my son, daughter-in-law and grand daughter who live in its midst.
We always make to go to the beach or go to the harbour.
So should you.

As with any large city there are many attractions that your travel agent neglected to mention as they don't get the hype that others do. Wherever I travel my curiousity won't let me overlook these so you'll be sure to find the unusual and unheralded throughout my pages.
One of things you can do in Sydney is visit the Serpentine Canal, something very few Sydneysiders ever do.
It happens to be an aqueduct in the middle of Rookwood Cemetery, an attraction in itself. It's one of Sydney's oldest brick works and is currently undergoing restoration. It winds, as its name suggests, through one side of the necropolis and is adorned with classical urns and fountains en route.
Another fabulous place is the Camellia Gardens at Caringbah; hectare per hectare, I rate them as Sydney's finest.

I vividly remember returning from my first sojourn to Europe and being entranced by Renaissance architecture, masses of baroque with rococo thrown in here and there.
Then I arrived back in Oz and, for the first time in my life, realised how good were the wrought iron balconies we still had. Sydney has a plethora of them in the near (and older) suburbs. They were features on the working class dwellings of the time and today they have been tarted up in all sorts of ways as can be clearly seen in this shot taken in Surrey Hills.