Sydney sights: Wednesday 16 May 2012.

Dave and I spent another wonderful sunny autumn day exploring Sydney city with Seniors $2.50 fares each, which meant trains, trams and ferries all day and night wherever we wanted to go.

First stop was Milson Point station where we hopped off the train and then walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge; lovely views of Port Jackson and all.

Then we caught a public ferry to Manly and walked along the beach there. I got a good cheap haircut without having to wait from a cheerful Vietnamese hairdresser who looked about 20 but she told me she had a 22 year old son. This was followed by a lovely coffee in a sunny mall, followed by a $7 shared Subway foot long bun for lunch….we are cheap travellers.

Back onto the ferry for a trip across Sydney harbour to the main city part….. Again I was agog at the sights of the Opera House and the Bridge across the water. Hard to imagine what it would have looked like when Captain Phillip and his First Fleet came sailing in to shore.

To soak up some more history we visited "Hyde Park Convict Barracks" which is a beautifully simply designed building by Francis Greenway. He was a former convict, and he worked with Governor Macquarie to get the barracks set up for all the convicts who were arriving. Apparently a lot of the convicts were allowed to go back to their own lodgings in "The Rocks" area nearby, and they were given a lot of trust. I think Macquarie did a good job of getting building projects started and managing the young new colony, then along came some administrators who were cruel and some were sadistic….I would hate to be a descendent of some of those bullies! The genealogists in Sydney say years ago that convicts were usually dropped off family trees because of the shame of it, but nowadays it's an honour to find that a family has some convict blood in it. It was interesting at the convict barracks museum to read the crimes that got people transported….most for petty crimes of poverty, and conditions for prisoners were shocking in Britain. The public hangings paintings terrified me. Quickly condemned and probably not guilty. Being sent out to be a convict must have been a better new start for many!

The Barracks were also used for other people; one lot was over 2,500 young Irish women who were penniless and starving from the potato famine in the 1840s. A good scheme to get these away to a new life in the young colony of New South Wales. A lot of excavations of the past have been done and on display are all sorts of day to day stuff people used while at the Barracks, including gear from the young Irish women who were sent out to be domestics. One old pair of light shoes, half rat eaten by age, made me suddenly feel very emotional and teary. As if a voice in Irish said "How many steps my shoes have taken and seen!" Of all the exhibits, this jumped out at me like a ghostly spooky thing.

Anyway, it was time to go home via train again, so we headed back to our Shangri-La tent, cutting through the cemetery in the twilight. Nearly got locked in….gates still open luckily!