Wednesday 16 August 2006

Site of the old tramway shed


Yesterday I referred to the most famous site of an old tram shed in Sydney. It was at Bennelong Point, where the Opera House now sits.

Even the name 'Bennelong Point' is important in Australian history, for it speaks about the first contact between the original inhabitants and the European invader. In the early years of settlement , the 1790s, Bennelong was kidnapped and employed as a cultural go-between. He asked the first Governor, Arthur Phillip, to build a brick hut for him on this point.

You can see some great pictures of the point in days gone by by looking at yesterday's links.

To find out more about the indigenous history of Sydney, look here.
For more about Bennelong, look here.

The building of Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, was not without controversy. For more, look here. Happily, there are plans to undertake work to enable the Opera House to more closely resemble Utzon's original plans.

8 comments:

  1. Great photo and very good and instructive text!

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  2. Thanks seesaw - I took it from a ferry.Sun and everything was in the right place.

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  3. OHHHH! AAHHH!! UUUUHHHH!!!

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  4. Ok, as you know, there are some people who would call this photo cliché, but I love it! The links were interesting as well! Oh how I'd love to visit this cliché! :-)

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  5. It's just lovely.

    I never thought about the history behind it though. Thanks for pointing us towards the links.

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  6. What a beautiful photo! I love it! And that blue skies look stunning!

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  7. Thankyou everyone. I think it's interesting to try to bring familiar places with a different slant on them - Eric always manages that for Paris, so no matter how well you feel you 'know' a place, he always manages to help you learn somethign more. All the better if it's easy on the eye, eh!

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  8. Whenever I see a picture of this in the future I shall refer to it as the Old Tramway Shed.

    Thanks for the enlightenment.

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