Darling Harbour and Circular Quay

Darling Harbour is, as the name suggests, a harbour. But it seems to be more than that, a district. One of the sights I visited this afternoon in Sydney, the Chinese Garden of Friendship is listed in one of my guidebooks as being in Darling Harbour, but it’s at least a five-minute walk away from the actual harbour.

There is an official-looking website for Darling Harbour that lists the Chinese Garden of Friendship as one of its attractions. The website describes Darling Harbour as a “precinct.”

Maybe Darling Harbour is really just a state of mind.

Whatever. After lunch at Bondi Beach I had an Uber driver take me to the Chinese Garden of Friendship.

Chinese Garden of Friendship

The Chinese Garden of Friendship was a gift from Sydney’s Chinese sister city of Guangzhou. It was inaugurated in 1982. And it’s kind of amazing.

The garden is a collection of trees, flowers, flowering trees, bonsai plants, paths, small Chinese structures, a waterfall, an irregular-shaped pond with lilies in it, and a short river. There are also some limestone rocks with interesting shapes in the pond and along the paths. Some of the rock installations beside the paths have two or more rocks carefully poised on top of each other and, presumably, fastened somehow so they don’t topple over and kill visitors. Killing visitors wouldn’t be very friendly.

The Chinese Garden of Friendship is not big. They pack a lot in without it feeling cramped and without it being noticeable that it’s on the small side.

What it is, is a tranquil oasis plunked down amid a busy area with a lot of tall, modern buildings. Come to think of it, seeing as though the buildings are modern, it seems more likely that the buildings plunked themselves down around the garden than the garden plunking itself down amidst the buildings.

Whatever. It is a peaceful refuge.

Entry to the Chinese Garden of Friendship is not free. The price for adults is $12 (AUD). There is a “concessions rate” for seniors that knocks off a few dollars, but you have to be Australian to get it. Foreigners who have reached the age of a near-death experience don’t qualify.

Garden of Friendship, indeed. Harrumph. Entry into the very far larger Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney is free for everyone. It’s times like these when you find out who your true friends really are.

Australian Maritime Museum

The Australian Maritime Museum is not just in the Darling Harbour precinct, but right beside the harbour. In fact, the museum has a couple of ships, a submarine and a destroyer, docked in the harbour.

When I was there, a few areas of the museum were closed for the installation of new exhibits. But there were model ships, indigenous boats, some fish dolls hanging from the ceiling of a room, a submarine-hunting helicopter suspended from a high ceiling, the huge light from the lighthouse at Tasman Island, the actual ship that the first woman to circumnavigate the globe nonstop solo, Kay Cottee, used, and more. (I hope that ships aren’t crashing into Tasman Island now that the museum has its lighthouse’s light.)

Entry to see the indoor permanent exhibits is free. There is a fee to board the ships outside. The museum building closes at 4:00 in the afternoon. The last entry onto the ships is at 3:00. I found out that last tidbit of information at 3:30.

Darling Harbour

Darling Harbour got its name when a convict ship from Britain chugged into the then largely undeveloped cove that became the harbour. The wife of the commander of the troops guarding the prisoners was heard to say, “Isn’t that a darling harbour.” The name stuck.

Much later, an early twentieth-century Premier of New South Wales, a rather prescient fellow, told his staff, “We’re going to be the laughing stock of the world. Eventually, big, modern buildings will be built around the harbour. Maybe they’ll even put an elevated expressway across the inland end of it. When that happens, will it be a dynamic harbour? Sure. Beautiful? Maybe so. But still darling? Not a chance.

“Come up with a story that won’t make us look like such fools for calling it Darling Harbour.”

The staff beavered away, did their own research, and came up with something. “Sir,” they said. “We’ve got it. The guy who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831 was Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling. Let’s tell the public that we named it after him. The public is incredibly gullible. They’ll believe anything.” And they did.

Or maybe it really was just named after Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling. I don’t know. I wasn’t born yet.

Anyway, I spent some time wandering around Darling Harbour. It is indeed beautiful and dynamic. And, unfortunately, there is an elevated expressway at the inland end of it. But, surprisingly, the expressway doesn’t detract from or block the harbour terribly.

The buildings around the harbour are mostly quite modern and bold. There is an old bridge that crosses the harbour that, today, is only for pedestrians, but I don’t know if that was always the case. When a sailboat with a tall mast has to pass through, a section of the bridge rotates so it’s perpendicular to its normal position, opening a gap for the boat to pass through.

Circular Quay

According to Wikipedia, Circular Quay used to be called Semi-Circular Quay because that was the shape of the cove it was built in before the straight docks built there turned it into a rectangle. Don’t ask me why they dropped the “Semi-” without going whole hog and just calling it what it is today, “Rectangular Quay.”

At the inland end of the quay, several wharves jut out into the water. Ferries and harbour cruise boats leave from them.

The long side docks of Circular Quay are large enough to accommodate at least one giant cruise ship. I know this to be true because there was a giant cruise ship docked there when I arrived. By coincidence, while I was walking around the quay, a tug towed the ship out to sea so it could begin its voyage out of Sydney. When the tug let the ship loose and it was under its own power, the ship’s horns, which were capable of sounding a number of different full-throated tones, started playing the theme from “The Love Boat.” I kid you not. I thought I would throw up.

(Any young people reading this probably won’t know what “The Love Boat” was. You know who you are. Consider yourself lucky.)

Circular Quay itself is not especially lovely, but the views from it are spectacular. It’s probably the best place on land to admire the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And I got a full-on view of the Sydney Opera House from the other side than the one I saw on my first day in Sydney.

And so ends another great day in Sydney. I still have a couple more days here to come. Hopefully, they’ll continue to be great. We’ll see.