The Coolidge examiner., 1936-12-24


~ is Sydney, capital city of
| New South Wales, Australia.
Trade cubes and tall apart
ments crown the ridges overlooking
the bay. There are no Manhattan
like cloud piercers, however, for
Sydney has limited her skyward
growth to $50 feet, yet position
gives impressiveness. Homes
sprawl over promontories and spill
down the hillsides to the waters
edge-a harbor- -girdling band of red
tiled roofs and Towering gardens.
And the harbor! Our harbor"
Syndeysiders proudly call it, al
though on maps it appears under
the prosaic name that Captain Cook
gave it-Port Jackson. Its multiple
arms and innumerable bays and
coves loop and snuggle among the
hills-intimate, lovely, utilitarian.
From an airplane cockpit this
water maze is even more striking
than from steamer deck. It's COM
pass is % square miles, but so ir-
regular is its pattern that one would
have to walk or sail nearly 200
miles to go around its shores. No
other harbor is more mingled with
the city to provide play space and
a haven for the worlds rich ar
gosies.
Sleek ocean steamers, rusty
freighters, crowded double-decked
ferries, speedboats, fussy tugs, and
trim, billowly-sailed yachts carve
frothy white paths on its ultrama-
rine surface. Commerce also throbs
beside several of the bays at engi-
neering works, dockyards, wheat ST.
los, ship-coaling yards, and some
IA miles of wharfage space.
Earbor Bridge Is Colossal
Like a rainbow over the port is
the mighty arch of Sydney Harbor
bridge. At the time it was opened
to traffic, in 1882, forty million fares
annually were being collected on
crOSS-harDOr ferrleS.
A constant stream of motor, train,
tram, and pedestrian traffic now
crosses the 160-foot-wide roadway
hanging high in the air from the
1,650-foot span, which at its highest
point loops 440 feet above water
level.
Of momentary note in this swiftly
changing age of the worlds great
est engineering triumphs is the
fact that Sydney Harbor bridge is
the longest and widest arch-suspen-
sion-type structure that man has
yet attempted.
Oceanic steamers tie up at Cir
cular quay in the shadow of this
colossus of steel and stone. The
genesis of trim Circular quay was
Sydney Cove, where the city was
born in January, 1888.
The American Revolution, only a
few years before, had denied to
England a place for her ''undesir-
able" subjects. So to this nook, in
1.-The finest harbour in the world in
which a thousand sail in line might
ride in most perfect security"
came Capt. Arthur Phillip of the
English navy when Captain Cook S
much publicized Botany bay had
been found unsuitable for habita-
ton. His little fleet of II ships
bore 778 prisoners, together with
officers and marine guards.
1t should be recalled that "con-
victs" of that period included many
minor offenders and those who fell
into political disfavor.
Beginning of the City
Here Captain Phillip became
governor and superintended the
carving out of a small settlement
beside ''stream which stole silent
ly through a very thick wood"
Would that he might stand at the
water front today and look up the
commercial canyons and at the
ships moving in and out of port!
Much more would be the awe of
some of the less visionary officers
who wrote reports back to the
homeland, stating that the colony
couldn't even be self-Supporting in
a hundred years! Here is a city
where the goodly governor and the
officers now may issue dinner invi-
tations without the request, Bring
your own breadi"
Phillip himself visualiZed his set
tlement developing with streets 200
feet wide but his ideas were ignored
and the city expanded without any
definite plan.
Other governors came and went,
contributing little or much to Sgd
ney. Notable among them was Gov
ernor Macquarie, the building gov
ernor," who held the reins from
1909 to 1922.
Assisting him in his comprehen-
sive building scheme was Francis
Howard Greenway, a convict, who
became the official architect with
the munifcent salary of three shill-
ings a day. Greenway's labors en-
dured, as attested by st. James
church tha COpCerUa tOriI1r,o of Mn