Gold Fields House

Gold Fields House is a commercial office building at 1 Alfred Street, between Pitt Street and George Street, at Circular Quay. This 25 storey building was one of the city's earliest high rise office buildings, constructed in 1966. With spectacular views of Sydney Harbour, approval has been granted for it to be soon redeveloped into apartments. This view is from the walkway beside the Cahill Expressway. 

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Hyde Park, garden

The remnants of a heritage listed underground public toilet is located at Hyde Park, along Park Street close to the corner of Elizabeth Street. Built in 1909, it has now been dicommissioned and filled with sand, which preserves it and allows for reuse in the future. The features above ground such as the the lamp post on a sandstone plinth and wrought iron stairway fences have been incorporated into the garden beds.

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Pyrmont Bridge, Darling Harbour

Pyrmont Bridge is a swing bridge that crosses Cockle Bay at Darling Harbour and connects the inner city suburb of Pyrmont with the Sydney central business district. The bridge was opened in 1902 but closed to traffic in the 1980s when freeways south of Cockle Bay were built. It reopened as a pedestrian bridge with the redevelopment of Darling Harbour in 1988. It also carries an elevated monorail with a track that remains stationary so that the monorails can continue to cross even when the bridge swings open for large boats.

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Customs House Square, bar (Theme Day: Fences)

This ornate ironwork fence is located along Young Street outside Quay Bar, an outdoor bar in Customs House Square near Circular Quay.

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Sydney Hospital, Macquarie Street

The North Wing of Sydney Hospital is a heritage building along Macquarie Street, opposite Martin Place. The hospital has been at this location since 1811 and yesterday celebrated its bicentenary. There is speculation on who designed the three Old Colonial Georgian buildings but it is believed that Governor Macquarie, his wife Elizabeth and John O'Hearen contributed to the design. The hospital was constructed between 1811 and 1816 by convict labour. Governor Macquarie turned to three Sydney entrepreneurs for funding: Garnham Blaxcell, Alexander Riley and D'Arcy Wentworth. It was known as the Rum Hospital because the contractors were given a limited monopoly on the distribution of spirits in the colony, in return for building it.

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Birchgrove, Ballast Point Park, art

This is part of an artwork located in the middle of Ballast Point Park at Birchgrove, with a glimpse of the Sydney skyline seen below. "Tank 101" was created to symbolise the past working history of the site by Caltex, as an oil refinery. The original tank was the largest industrial storage vessel on this site. Panels of curved sheet steel from the old tank were incorporated in this structure with graphics using a dot font typeface to reflect the thousands of rivets and circular tanks once on the site. The text is part of a line from "The Death of Isaac Nathan" a poem by Australian poet Les Murray: "Stone statues of ancient waves, tongue like dingoes on shore".

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Birchgrove, Ballast Point Park, wall

The retaining walls at Ballast Point Park at Birchgrove are made up of rubble and recycled material encased in a wire frame, from the buildings on this former oil refinery site. If you look closely, you can see that this wall features engraved padlocks. The padlocks are locked by romantics to preserve their everlasting love, with the key thrown into Sydney Harbour. The tradition seems to have originated in Italy, where couples attached padlocks to the Ponte Vecchio Bridge in Florence and threw the keys into the river. The Sydney city skyline can be seen in the distance, across the harbour.

King Street Wharf, sculpture

This contemporary sculpture is located at the end of King Street Wharf, near Barangaroo. It's part of a matching pair, with other one located nearby but closer to the wharves, which can be seen here. In the background are a number of newer office buildings, including No.1 Shelley Street and Westpac Place.

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Walsh Bay, Sydney skyline

A late afternoon view of the Walsh Bay wharves, from Dawes Point to Millers Point, with the Sydney skyline in the background. This view across Sydney Harbour is from Blues Point Reserve, in the northern suburb of McMahons Point.

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Botanic Gardens, Memory Is Creation Without End

This art work is located in the Royal Botanic Gardens between Macquarie Street, the Cahill Expressway and the Northern Depot Gate. “Memory Is Creation Without End” by Kimio Tsuchiya was created in 2000 and installed as part of the City of Sydney's Sculpture Walk program. It features sandstone blocks which are relics of demolished buildings symbolising the circular connection of past, present, and future. This perspective shows the proximity of office buildings in the central business district to the botanic gardens.

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Tank Stream Bar, Tank Stream Way

Tank Stream Bar is a small laneway bar in Tank Stream Way. The settlement of Sydney was centred on the Tank Stream, which was a stream of fresh water that emptied into Sydney Cove. It was covered in the mid 1800s but still flows beneath the city and this laneway as part of the stormwater system.

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Botanic Gardens, Pyramid Glasshouse

The Sydney Tropical Centre in the Royal Botanic Gardens, comprises of this Pyramid glasshouse and the Arc Glasshouse. The Deutshe Bank Place building is the skyscraper that rises in the background.

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Botanic Gardens, Arc Glasshouse

The Sydney Tropical Centre in the Royal Botanic Gardens, comprises of this Arc Glasshouse and the Pyramid glasshouse. The Arc was opened in 1990 with a linking underground foyer to the Pyramid Glasshouse which had been opened in 1972. Both glass structures house displays of tropical plants. The glass office buildings rising in the background are located along Phillip Street or Macquarie Street.

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Government House, The Lodge

The Lodge is a sandstone cottage that stands beside the Government House Gate entrance of the Royal Botanic Gardens, leading to Government House. It was designed by Mortimer Lewis in the Gothic architectural style, as an exact copy of one of the lodges at the entrance gates of the Royal Park at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom. The sandstone cottage was built in 1846 as the guardhouse of Government House and was originally sited at the main entrance on Macquarie Street. It moved to its present location in 1915 when the stables were converted to the Conservatorium of Music.

AMP Building, Alfred Street

The AMP Building is a skyscraper in Alfred Street, close to Circular Quay. This was Sydney's first highrise to take advantage of the lifting of the 46 metre (150 feet) height limit which was enforced until 1957. Built in 1962, it is 115 metres tall and dominated the city's skyline for many years. It originally had a rooftop observation deck at 106 metres high.

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AMP Building, sculpture (Theme Day: Perspective)

"Amicus Certus" is a sculpture created by Tom Bass in 1960 which is located on the side of the AMP building on Alfred Street. The full motto of the Australian Mutual Provident Society is "amicus certus in re incerta" which means "a sure friend in an uncertain event". This perspective gives a view of the entrance and also a sense of the curve of the building's facade.

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Darling Harbour, Sydney skyline, Endeavour replica

The Endeavour replica is senn here moored outside the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour.This view is from Pyrmont with the Sydney skyline in the background including Sydney Tower, King Street wharf, Wildlife World and Sydney Aquarium.
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King Street Wharf, Sydney skyline, sunset

This view of King Street Wharf at Darling Harbour and the Sydney skyline is from Pyrmont, at sunset, just as the clouds rolled in from the east.

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Australian Hall, Elizabeth Street

The Australian Hall on Elizabeth Street is a heritage building built in the Federation Romanesque architectural style. It was erected between 1910 and 1913 as a club for German migrants, known as the Concordia. The Knights of the Southern Cross, a right-wing Catholic fraternal lay group, purchased it in 1920 and constructed the Australian Hall in the building. They sold it in 1979 to the Hellenic Club and Greek Cypriots used it as the Cyprus Hellene Club. This is the site of the first national Aboriginal civil rights gathering convened by the Aborigines Progressive Association and held in 1938, known as the “Day of Mourning”. The building was purchased in 1999 by the Metropolitan Aboriginal Association Incorporated and refurbished, with the hall restored to its 1938 state. It is the first non-Aboriginal structure to be recognised in Australia as an Aboriginal heritage site. NAIDOC week, which this year runs from 3rd July to 11th July, is a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and an opportunity to recognise the contributions of Indigenous Australians in various fields.

Customs House Square, Sydney Ice Bear, Vivid Sydney

"Sydney Ice Bear" was an ice sculpture of a male polar bear that was located in Customs House Square. It was carved by British sculptor Mark Coreth for World Environment Day to highlight the human impact on our environment and to create awareness of climate change. This happened to coincide with the Vivid Sydney festival, so it had quite a spectacular backdrop at night with the light projections on Customs House that I featured yesterday. I featured some daytime shots of the sculpture here.

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