Downtown Sydney by junge1

Photography • Landscape • posted on Jan 17, 2012

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Description

This picture was taken from the street level of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and shows downtown Sydney. In the center left is the Circular Quay Ferry Terminal. The Opera House is just off the frame on the left. In the lower right is the area known as 'The Rocks', Sydney's first white settlement located on the rocky spur of land on the western side of Sydney Cove from which the Harbour Bridge now leaps to the north shore. In the early days the Rocks was a squalid place, with overcrowding, open sewers and notoriously raucous residents. In the 1820s and '30s the nouveaux riches built their three-story houses where Lower Fort Street is today; their outlook was onto the slums below. In the 1870s and '80s the Rocks was notorious for 'pushes', gangs of larrikins (a great Australian word) who used to haunt the area, robbing pedestrians, feuding and generally creating havoc. It became an area of warehouses and then fell into decline as more modern shipping and storage facilities were opened elsewhere. An outbreak of bubonic plague at the turn of the century led to whole streets being razed and the construction of the Harbour Bridge also resulted in much demolition. Since the 1970s, redevelopment has made the Rocks one of Sydney's most interesting and atmospheric areas. Imaginative restorations have converted the old warehouses into places like the busy Argyle Centre and the Rocks is a wonderful area to wander around, full of narrow cobbled streets and fine colonial buildings (Lonely Planet, Australia, 1994). This picture was taken on 28 December 2011, Sig..