The Local's Sydney

By Jason Cochran

An Englishman will occasionally try to get a rise out of an Australian by reminding him of his country's genesis as a penal colony, but Americans don't care about that. Most of our ancestors emigrated because of bad times in the Old World, too. For their part, Australians barely give a hoot themselves. As proof: most tourists don't know that Circular Quay, where the Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, and those distinctive custard-and-lime ferries join in their stirring panorama, is the very spot where the convicts first settled in 1788.


Nowadays, Circular Quay (pronounce it "Key" or you'll look like more of a tourist) is a place foreigners dream of going. Fringed with picnic-ready parkland, buzzing cafes, and multimillion-dollar real estate, this once-infamous destination is packed around the clock with people speaking more tongues than can be readily identified without linguistic training. The first settlers may have sighted Circular Quay with a singular dread, but the spot has long since untangled any negative karma by thrilling just about everyone lucky enough to be a part of it. It's a destination to be savored.

Sydney 's energy is still focused on the Harbour (with a "u," mind you) that first brought people to it. Every building within range seems to twist to face it. No matter where on the water you go, the shoreline is studded with houses that most of us can only dream of owning. The hills are decorated, like Christmas trees, with the finest baubles money can buy. Miles of paths and parkland thread from cove to cove, below a parade of picture windows. Amazingly, because Australians generally prize their natural surroundings, the water is still clean enough to support fish, penguins, and the occasional wandering whale.

Most Americans are delighted by the ferries, possibly because so few of our cities have any of their own left. Commuting to work over the glittering water of this meandering harbor seems an implausibly graceful way to live, yet thousands of people do it each day in Sydney. Which means, of course, that fares are cheap enough to make impromptu sightseeing excursion affordable and endlessly repeatable.

It's no surprise, then, that Sydney is a city about living well. It's a place that prizes late weekend breakfasts, morning jogs around the beach, and turned-out threads by local designers. Handsome brick storehouses and shipbuilding cranes tell a story about the city's past life as a working-class shipping port, but its glass-sheathed, neon-topped skyscrapers, like its chilled martini glasses, say just as much about Sydney's current status as a seat of world style.

It's easy to feel jealous of the people lucky enough to live in Sydney. From Balmain to Rose Bay, Manly to Bondi, the stately vestiges of Victoriana (swimming clubs, seafront terraces) blend gracefully with the modern influences of Speedo and Rip Curl. One could argue that even other Australians are a little green about the Sydney lifestyle—just get a Melbournian started on the work ethic of those "shallow" Sydneysiders, and you'll see.


Who is Jason Cochran?
Jason Cochran has written on travel and entertainment for publications including Entertainment Weekly, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, Newsweek, theNew York Daily News, the Rough Guides, Travel + Leisure, the Village Voice, the New York Post, Marie Claire, Inside, New York Sidewalk, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Arena (U.K.), Who (Australia), Scanorama, and Seasons (Sweden). He also devised questions for the first American season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC) and before that, spent nearly two years backpacking solo around the world. As a commentator, he has appeared on CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn, Fox TV, and MSNBC.com. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and New York University's Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program. He lives in Manhattan.