I don't need to do a lot of research into this one, at least. Again some internal reflections have screwed up the image on the left; I can't quite figure how I was shooting this one to get those.
Just beyond them we can see the start of the Royal Botanic Gardens and within it, Government House. More precisely the third government house. Well, 4th, really. The first one was a timber and canvas construction that the first governor Arthur Phillip brought from England. The second was a permanent building on the same location. It was constructed near Circular Quay, a bit behind the tall buildings that we see on the left. Specifically, it was underneath where the Museum of Sydney now is, and was always something of a dump. The third one was built at Parramatta, about 25km inland.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie (1810-1821) saw a need to bring the seat of government back to town and proposed a new Government House building in the city, but the British Home Office knocked it back. They finally approved a new building in 1835, but it would be another 10 years before it was built and occupied. This is the one that we see here; a Gothic revival style building with castellations and crenelations and turrets. It has 5 hectares of gardens but considering that it sits inside the Botanic Gardens you're not lost for green space. It served as the governor's residence from 1845 to 1996. That was when judge Gordon Samuels was appointed, and apparently the decision wasn't his but the premier of the day, Bob Carr, who wanted "less pomp". In other words, he wanted a republic and intended to diminish the office of Governor but as is typical of that "honourable man" (in the Mark Anthony sense) didn't have the cojones to say it. I'm surprised that he didn't appoint Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald or Joe Tripodi as governor, after all, he trusted them enough to have them as ministers. The house was reoccupied in the later part of the term of the following governor, Dr. Bashir. (No, not Julian Bashir from Deep Space Nine, though that would have been cool.)
Beyond that we see a row of buildings that run along the eastern side of Circular Quay. At one time this area was occupied by working docks. By the 1950s the height limit had increased from 150 to 915 feet (call it 45m to 280m) and Jet! Age! Skyscrapers! were built. Essentially these were Mad Men style office buildings that were so visually uninteresting that you're hard pressed to find any photos of them these days, much less details about them, though curiously there were still a couple of older, low rise (maybe 10 storey) buildings sandwiched in between them. Then in the late 1990s most of the Mad Men buildings, and the older ones, were knocked down to make way for apartment blocks; specifically a three building chain of blocks named Bennelong Apartments.
You can imagine how much apartment blocks in a location like this sell for. One 2 bedroom apartment sold for $1.251 million in May 2001. $3.050M in September 2011m, and $18M in July 2015, but no, our property market isn't insane, no sir. (Although I'm not sure I have a lot of confidence in that last figure from realestate.com.au; their current estimate is $4.78M, which is still very much on the insane side.)
There were protests at the time; people who thought that land worth hundreds of millions of dollars should be resumed so that they can have a prettier view to the Botanic Gardens, because tax money grows on trees and is imported by the sky gods. Surprise, surprise, that didn't happen, though the developers were forced to make some concessions such as reducing the planned height and opening up the base of the buildings to allow better pedestrian flow through them. The buildings were derided with the nickname "The Toaster". While I concede it's not the most beautiful set of buildings in the world, I've seen far worse... including most of what was there before. One Sydney radio shock jock kept banging on about what a disgrace the buildings are... before buying an apartment in one.
The skyscrapers on the southern side of Circular Quay have changed a little now; some have been updated, and some have been knocked down and rebuilt, but that's a story for another time. The sandstone building on the far side of Circular Quay is the Museum of Contemporary Art, formerly the Maritime Services Board building. To the right of that we see the Overseas Passenger Terminal which is normally home to cruise ships, but on this day was hosting the Mexican 3 masted sail training ship ARM Cuauhtémoc (BE01), named after the last Aztec emperor.
Beyond that is The Rocks, once a quarry, as well as home to maritime activity like warehouses and bond stores to service the wharves that used to be there. Behind that we can see a tall, metal looking tower; that used to be the control tower for shipping movements back when Sydney was a working harbour. Built in 1974, it closed in 2011, 5 years after this shot was taken. 10 years after, in 2016, it was demolished. The view from up there is reputed to have been spectacular but I never saw it and now never will. It has been replaced by the Barangaroo redevelopment, including a giant tower that was built to be home to a casino for high rollers. Because of course it was, this is Sydney.
We then move right to our good friend the Sydney Harbour Bridge, built in 1932 with a view to servicing the traffic of the 1970s, because that's the way civil engineers thought then. As opposed to today's infrastructure projects where you build 2 lane tunnels because, hey, it'll do for the next 5 years, then we'll get another contract for a new one.
Behind that is Goat Island, a small island of 5.4 hectares (13 acres) which is about 300 metres wide and 180 metres long. It's had a long and colourful history since settlement, including use as a gunpowder store.
The waterway beyond the bridge is the Parramatta River, which leads inland to the west.
Oh yes, and there's an Opera House in there, too. The design was selected in 1957 which, credit where it's due, was pretty unusual for the Sydney of the time where most buildings were based on the "Stack Of Lego Bricks, But Tall" school of architecture. Clearly there were a few people with a bit of vision. However there was a long road ahead, and the building was not formally opened until Queen Elizabeth II did so on 20 October 1973. We'll come back to that.
