Day Four: Sydney

How do my legs hurt. Even with all of the walking that I have been doing in Sydney, no one could have prepared me for the day I had today.

It started, as usual, early, but not as early. I woke up at a very late 6:00, and was on the train by 7:30 heading out to the Olympic Park. Unlike the trains heading into the city, the trains going west are always fairly empty until the end of the work day, when all of the suburbanites are heading home from their jobs in the skyscrapers downtown. In a drastic change of clientele, I was now sharing the train with hordes of school children, all in very English uniforms, riding the train to school. I got to overhear all about Sophie's triumphant return from Paris, how she got to shop at an Abercrombie in London, and I even scoffed when she complained about her 13 hour plane ride from Paris to Singapore. Please. I just did 13 and a half on Sunday, and I'm about to do it again in a few days time. Kids these days.

Once I reached the park I had a couple of hours before my second appointment with Craig, so I decided to check out the Brick Pit. It is the area where the state brickworks was located up until 1998, and was built about 77 years earlier. Once an area filled with buildings devoted to making millions of bricks that helped to build Sydney, this area was initially proposed to be infilled and a retail area built on top. This was all stopped when local authorities discovered that the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frogs have made a home for themselves in this former industrial area. Because of this realization, the Sydney Olympic Park Authority decided to set the land aside as a natural and cultural heritage conservation area, and erected what they call the Ring Walk so that visitors to the park can experience all the area has to offer.

I was really surprised by the effect this place had on me. It was so quiet, except for the birds and the frogs that could be heard chirping and croaking in the distance. Not only was the Ring Walk a unique sight that seemed to be a perfect fit for the area, but it was also interpreted with a great amount of care. The same panels which create the outer edge of the walk in some sections have interpretive information on such topics as wildlife in the area, the geological history of the pit, the technology behind its storm water collection as part of a massive recycled water campaign at the park, and my personal favorite, the interpretation of the brickworks. While most of the buildings were removed after the works closed, six small buildings still remain but are brought to life by not only ambient sound that recreates the sounds of the works, but also by the oral histories of men who once long ago worked in the pit. The mastery of it all is that you can't even hear these sounds until you begin to approach that section of the ring. The sounds start softly, and I assumed some work was starting near by, until I spotted the speakers mounted above the interpretive panels. I sat in one of the few fold down seats along the ring and took it all in, complete with a few of the Olympic Park across the water.

But as I looked down at my watch, I quickly realized that I had to get going over to the SOPA (Sydney Olympic Park Authority) building, which was all the way across from the aquatic center. I had a second appointment with Craig, who upon my arrival escorted me into a meeting room with a bright yellow door and a large clear 2 emblazoned into the frosted glass windows which formed the fourth wall of the room. He had a pile of planning documents for me, some as early as 1990, for me to read through.

Craig has been an angel for me in my time here. Always the gentlemen, he would come in and check on me in between meetings, seeing if I needed more time reserved in the room, and even made me a cup of coffee when I was entering hour number three of frantic reading and writing. Four hours into the research session, he delivered on his promise to check out a bike for me, and introduced me to the man who would give me the key to the shed out back. Almost an hour later when my eyes could no longer focus, I decided my time researching at SOPA had come to an end, and it was time to go out for a ride.

On my official SOPA bike, complete with helmet and a bright yellow safety vest I immediately stuffed into my already heavy shoulder bag, I was off to find the Newington Armaments Depot. Although I did have a small map of the park, I went on to get thoroughly lost in the most amazing of ways in the mangroves that line the east end of the park. I rode the same trails over and over numerous times, getting lost, doing some off-roading on muddy trails with barely enough clearance for my bike, and coming across this boardwalk in the middle of it all. The park lands were so sprawling that I kept getting turned around on my way to the Depot, and what I thought would be a leisurely ride with over two hours until I needed to return the bike at 5:00, turned into a sprint to the finish as I didn't find the Depot until 4:30.

But my adventures through the parklands were by far the most exhilarating experience I have had in Sydney. My legs burning, the winter sun at its highest point in the sky, my shoulder bag weighing hard against my chest, I felt more alive than I have in a long time. And you know, it really solidified my thoughts on the Olympic Park as a whole being able to experience it in that way.

While before today I had seen the very sterile areas of the park that were filled with tourists and the sparse spattering of families and couples just enjoying the space, the real joy of the park is the heritage areas and the parklands. The acres of bike trails and natural space makes one feel like they are miles away from anything, as they connect heritage areas that are both informative and mysterious. Take the Armaments Depot for example. Thousands of bombs were stored here at one time, and as Craig whispered to me today, they still have a few there, which means that the area is restricted. What a strange feeling to be one minute in a well-interpreted heritage area like the brick pit, and the next, be in an equally important heritage area like the Depot which other than the track for the trolley which hauled the bombs from one area to another, can only be experienced through fencing and veiled sight lines.

As the sun began to set early, I found myself having a hard time leaving. There was so much more I wanted to see, and even though my legs felt like jelly, I wanted to experience more of the park. But with such an early bed time these days, I knew it was best to get back home and relax so that I can have plenty of energy for the zoo and Manly Beach tomorrow. This whole one day at the park with one day off to sight see has done well by me, so I think I'm going to stick to it until I depart for San Francisco on Sunday afternoon.

Sydney Olympic Park is a place of transition. It is easy to look at the large open spaces and get kind of depressed. It takes a while to get there compared to other destinations on the City Rail, and because it is so huge, it looks mostly deserted, most of the time. But what one has to remember is that this area will be the largest urban revitalization effort in Australia, and possibly the world. The New South Wales government had a swath of land that was not only polluted, but had the remnants of the largest abattoir in Australia, an armaments depot, a brick works, and even a prison, and knew that at some point and time, with its central location in the metropolitan area, it would be redeveloped. One of their proposals would have cleaned the slate clean and sold the land off parcel by parcel to private investors. Other proposals would have built a few sporting facilities, and would again sell remaining land off to developers. Instead, they chose to leave an environmental and heritage legacy for the greater Sydney area which will stand as a testament to the devotion of the Australian people to their heritage; built, natural, and in relation to sport. What a feat.