Sydney Trip Day 2- The Rocks Tour

The beautiful Sydney Opera House, visible from near Sydney's Rocks area.

We started The Rocks Tour at the Argyle Centre, going out along an old cobbled street and arrived in a courtyard.

Our guide stopped and told us about the courtyard and that the bricks used to make most of the houses in the Rocks area were mined there.

We walked to a bench in front of Cadman’s Cottage and sat down.

The guide talked with us again, then took us inside.

Cadman’s Cottage was made of limestone and there was a green streak of lime scale to where something had been.

We walked around to First Impressions, a carving of the first people to leave impressions on the land, hence the name. On the first side, there was an imprint of a freeman and his family. It was as if someone had pushed a man into wood. There was a piece on the freeman on a plastic stand.

The second side was a convict with chains around his legs. The guide said that they would only get chains around their legs if they escaped in Australia.

The third and last side was a soldier.

A bit along an old road from First Impressions was the end of George St, where a battle had played out. The Government wanted to knock down the old convict buildings, but the residents wanted to keep the buildings, since it was part of their heritage. There was a big fight between the police and the residents, and the guide had a picture of it.

In the end the buildings didn’t get knocked down, but the residents had to move and live in the Sirius, an apartment block on a hill over looking the Rocks, instead of their old houses.

We arrived back at the tour centre, but instead of going in, we went through a hallway a door down from the tour centre. At the end of the hallway, there were stairs leading up to the old houses that used to be there.

We went up the stairs and found the rooms of the houses that used to be there. The stone walls were still partly there so you could see where the rooms were, and the archaeologists that studied it and made it suitably for walking through put chairs and tables in some of the rooms so you could see how crowded things were back then.

During the turn of the century, rats as well as overcrowding were a problem. Rewards were given on rat tails, but stopped once it was found that some recipients were breeding rats for profit!

Baths during this time were taken in the order of father, mother, and then in descending order of age, leading to the expression ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’.

The Rocks Tour was a very good introduction to the history of Sydney and the beginnings of Australia, revealing old secrets of this modern city.

Sydney Trip Day 2 - Powerhouse Museum

We made a trip to Sydney in April this year. Here is a 360' view from the Rocks, which includes the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge (affectionately known as The Coathanger).

During our visit to Sydney, we visited the Powerhouse Museum. www.powerhousemuseum.com

The first thing we saw there was a big steam train. There was a platform that you could walk up onto and it ran alongside the train so you could see into the train.

At the end of the train there was a table with miniature models of machines designed by James Watt in 1785 to increase steam powered electricity, just beside the full-size model.

Elsewhere in the Museum, we saw a glass case were two round porcelain bowl shapes approximately 12cm long, 6cm wide and 4cm high, and one of them had a spout. A TV was showing two women in old clothes who were talking about the porcelain bowl. One woman was saying it was the perfect shape for a gravy boat, and would look great sitting on a table, full of gravy. The other woman said it would be a good gravy boat, if it wasn’t a chamber pot. Unswayed, the first woman said that she would have to wash it first!

The Strasburg clock was on a podium and a voice talked about its features. In one compartment was Jesus at the last supper. The Disciples came one at a time and bowed to Jesus, then left at the other side of the box. The 6th disciple was Peter, who turned his back on Jesus and left. As he did, Satan appeared at the window. Satan also appeared at the window when Judas, the last disciple, entered, carrying a bag of gold. Judas also turned his back on Jesus. Underneath there was a big map of the Solar System, with the Sun at the centre and all the planets rotating around it. There was also a normal clock, a stair case and several other things.

We walked around to a room with lots of old transport, like a Penny Farthing that you could sit on, a fire truck that you could go on, and aeroplanes that hung from the ceiling.

We walked around to a space area. There was stairs up to parts of a space shuttle and you could go through a zero-gravity room where the floor moved around to the ceiling in a circle around a platform that you walked onto.

The Powerhouse Museum also has a Chemical Lab area where there were different experiments, most of them with magnets.