Our final day in Sydney had arrived, after scoring some free luggage storage at the YHA (rather than paying hourly for a locker) we headed out. We went to find the free city walking tour so we could learn a little more about Sydney's history. This was run by a lady named Lily who was born in Sydney (although she had the strongest European accent I had heard outside of Europe!).

The tour started in Hyde Park which is named after the one in London but theirs is considerably smaller. They do use it for events though, the most popular being the annual Zombie walk for charity. From the park you can see St. Mary's Cathedral, this was orginally a large church but in 2000 they added the spires so it could be classed as a cathedral. Moving towards the habour we were told about Lachlan Macquarie, a governor of New South Wales in 1810. He is known to have been one of the most influencial people to change New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settement.

We then walked to the Sydney mint, a building orginally commissed by Lachlan as the new general hospital to replace the old one in The Rocks.The contractors were paid in rum and the design of the hospital was not the best. No toilets, no running water and was seen by the public as a place you went to die. They had to build a fence around the hospital as patients would try and escape. Later on a new hospital was built next door (with plumbing and no fence) and the old one became the royal mint factory.

On our walk we continued down Macquarie street and passed the parliment building and state library, all with fantastic architecture. Most of the buildings were designed by an architect who was previously a convict, and have a similar appearance to buildings in London. After waiting for some more pedestrain lights to change we contined on to the Botanic gardens. It would appear Sydney hates pedestrains with about a 15 minute wait for the lights to change and 15 seconds to cross. Our tour took us in to the Botanic gardens briefly to show us a greek fountain before leading us down to the habour.

From there we made our way to The Rocks and were told more of the history relating to gangs and theives that use to wait in the dark narrow alleyways. Good thing it has been cleaned up, today in to a quaint shopping and tourism area. The tour ended where the Tall Ship was moored inbetween the bridge and the opera house. If only we had done this tour on our first day we might have found the ship sooner!

After the tour we returned to The Rocks for some lunch before waiting for our 15 hour overnight bus to Surfers Paradise.