Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House is located at 33°51′25?S, 151°12′55?E in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the most distinctive and famous 20th century buildings, and one of the most famous performing arts venues in the world. Situated on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, with parkland to its south and close to the enormous Sydney Harbour Bridge, the building and its surroundings form an iconic Australian image. To some the spherical-sectioned shells are reminiscent of the flotilla of sailboats commonly cruising there. Tourists - mostly with little or no interest in opera - throng to the building in the thousands every week purely to see it.

As well as many touring theatre, ballet, and musical productions the Opera House is the home of Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It is administered by the Opera House Trust, under the New South Wales (NSW) Ministry of the Arts.

The roofs of the House are constructed of 1,056,000 glazed white granite tiles, imported from Sweden. Despite their self-cleaning nature, they are still subject to periodic maintenance and replacement.

Performance venues and facilities

The Sydney Opera House has about 1000 rooms, including five theatres, five rehearsal studios, two main halls, four restaurants, six bars and numerous souvenir shops.

The House interior is composed of pink granite mined from Tarana, NSW and wood and brush box plywood supplied from northern NSW.

The theatres are housed in a series of large shells, conceived by dissecting a hemisphere. The Concert Hall and Opera Theatre are contained in the largest shells, and the other theatres are located on the sides of the shells. The smallest building is home to the Bennelong Restaurant.

A much smaller set of shells set to one side of the Monumental steps houses one of the restaurants.

There are five theatres which make up the performance facilities of the Opera House:
The Concert Hall, with 2,679 seats, contains the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world with over 10,000 pipes.
The Opera Theatre, with 1,547 seats, is the main performance space for Opera Australia.
The Drama Theatre, with 544 seats.
The Playhouse, with 398 seats.
The Studio Theatre, with 364 seats.

History

Origins

The Sydney Opera House can be said to have had its beginning during the late 1940s in the endeavours of Eugene Goossens, the Director of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music at the time, who lobbied to have a suitable venue for large theatrical productions built. At the time, the normal venue for such productions was the Sydney Town Hall, but this venue was simply not large enough. By 1954, Goossens succeeded in gaining the support of NSW Premier Joseph Cahill, who called for designs for a dedicated opera house.

It was also Goossens who insisted that Bennelong Point be the site for the Opera House. Cahill had wanted it to be on or near the Wynyard Railway Station, located in the north-western Sydney CBD.

The competition that Cahill organised received 233 entries. The basic design that was finally accepted in 1955 was submitted by Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect. Utzon arrived in Sydney in 1957 to help supervise the project.

Utzon and construction of the Opera House

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot, occupying the site at the time of these plans, was demolished in 1958, and formal construction of the Opera House began in March, 1959. The project was built in three stages. Stage I (1959-1963) consisted of building the upper podium. Stage II (1963-1967) saw the construction of the outer shells. Stage III consisted of the interior design and construction (1967-73).

Stage I was started on December 5, 1958, and work commenced on the podium on May 5, 1959 by the firm of Civil and Civic. The government had pushed for work to begin so early because they were afraid funding, or public opinion, might turn against them. However major structural issues still plagued the design (most notably the sails, which were still parabolic at the time).

By January 23, 1961, work was running 47 weeks behind, mainly due to unexpected difficulties (wet weather, unexpected difficulty diverting stormwater, construction beginning before proper engineering drawings had been prepared, changes of original contract documents). Work on the podium was finally completed on August 31, 1962.

Stage II, the shells were originally designed as a series of parabolas, however engineers Ove Arup and partners had not been able to find an acceptable solution to constructing them. In mid 1961 Utzon handed the engineers his solution to the problem, the shells all being created as ribs from a sphere of the same radius. This not only satisfied the engineers, and cut down the project time drastically from what it could have been (it also allowed the roof tiles to be prefabricated in sheets on the ground, instead of being stuck on individually in mid-air), but also created the wonderful shapes so instantly recognisable today. Ove Arup and partners supervised the construction of the shells, estimating on April 6, 1962 that it would be completed between August 1964 and March 1965. By the end of 1965, the estimated finish for stage II was July 1967.

Stage III, the interiors, started with Utzon moving his entire office to Sydney in February 1963. However, there was a change of government in 1965, and the new Askin government declared that the project was now under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Works. In October 1965, Utzon gave the Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, a schedule setting out the completion dates of parts of his work for stage III. Significantly, Hughes withheld permission for the construction of plywood prototypes for the interiors (Utzon was at this time working closely with Ralph Symonds, an inventive and progressive manufacturer of plywood, based in Sydney). This eventually forced Utzon to leave the project on February 28, 1966. He said that Hughes’ refusal to pay Utzon any fees and the lack of collaboration caused his resignation, and later famously described the situation as “Malice in Blunderland”. In March 1966, Hughes offered him a reduced role as ‘design architect’, under a panel of executive architects, without any supervisory powers over the House’s construction but Utzon rejected this.

The cost of the project, even in October of that year, was still only $22.9 million, less than a quarter of the final cost.

Construction after Utzon

The second stage of construction was still in process when Utzon was forced to resign. His position was principally taken over by Peter Hall, who became largely responsible for the interior design. Other persons appointed that same year to replace Utzon were E.H. Farmer as government architect, D.S. Littlemore and Lionel Todd.

The four significant changes to the design after Utzon left were:
The cladding to the podium and the paving (the podium was originally not to be clad down to the water, but left open. Also the paving chosen was different from what Utzon would have chosen)
The construction of the glass walls (Utzon was planning to use a system of prefabricated plywood mullions, and although eventually a quite inventive system was created to deal with the glass, it is different from Utzon’s design) (more…)

Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the major landmarks of Sydney, Australia, connecting the Sydney central business district (CBD) with the North Shore commercial and residential areas, both of which are located on Sydney Harbour. The dramatic water vista of the bridge together with the nearby Sydney Opera House is an iconic image of both Sydney and Australia. The bridge is also known as “the Coathanger” on account of its arch-based design, although that name is hardly referred to by locals.

The bridge was the city’s tallest structure until 1967. According to Guinness World Records, it is the widest long-span bridge in the world. It is the world’s largest single-arch bridge, but not the longest (as millions of Australian school children were erroneously taught). The Bayonne Bridge in the United States, opened four months earlier on 15 November 1931, is 2.3 feet (70 cm) longer.

The design bears a marked resemblance to that of the New York Hell Gate Bridge. Its design was later used as a basis for the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Description

The bridge’s two ends are located in at Dawes Point (in Sydney’s Rocks area) and Milsons Point (in Sydney’s lower North Shore area). It carries six lanes of road traffic on its main roadway, two lanes of road traffic (formerly two tram tracks) and a footpath on its eastern side, and two railway tracks and a bicycle path along its western side.

The road across the bridge is known as the Bradfield Highway and is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, making it one of the shortest highways in Australia. (The shortest, also called the Bradfield Highway, is found on the Story Bridge in Brisbane). At 151.3 feet (48.8 m) wide, it is the widest bridge in the world (Guinness World Records, 2004).

The bridge deck portion of the highway is 0.71 miles (1.1497 km) long. It is concrete and lies on trimmers (beams that run along the length of the bridge). The trimmers themselves rest on steel beams that run along the width of the bridge. The trimmers and beams are visible to boats that pass underneath the bridge.

The arch is composed of two 28-panel arch trusses. Their heights vary from 55.8 feet (18 m) at the center of the arch to 176.7 feet (57 m) (beside the pylons).

The arch span is 1,559 feet (503 m) and the weight of the steel arch is 39,000 tons. The arch’s summit is 415.4 feet (134 m) above mean sea level, though it can increase by as much as seven inches (180 mm) on hot days as the result of steel expanding in heat. Two large metal hinges at the base of the bridge accommodate these expansions and contractions and thereby prevent the arch from being damaged.

The two pairs of pylons at each end are about 276 feet (89 m) high and are made of concrete and granite. Abutments, which support the ends of the bridge, are contained at the base of the pylons. They prevent the bridge from stretching or compressing due to temperature variations. Otherwise, the pylons serve no structural purpose and are primarily to visually balance the bridge itself. They were originally not part of the design but were added later to allay concerns about structural integrity - ironically, as the pylons do not actually touch the bridge (except at road level). Although inserted into the designs for their aesthetic value all four pylons have now been put to use, a museum and tourist centre with a lookout of the harbour is contained in the south eastern pylon. The south western pylon is used by the New South Wales traffic authority as a base for their cctv cameras overlooking the bridge and the roads around that area. The two pylons on the north shore are now venting chimneys for fumes from the tunnel under the harbour.

The steel used for the bridge was largely imported. About 79% came from Redcar in the North East of Britain, the rest was Australian-made. The granite used was quarried in Moruya, New South Wales, and the concrete used was also Australian made.

The total weight of the bridge is 52,800 tonnes, and six million hand-driven rivets hold the bridge together.

Access

From the Sydney CBD side, motor vehicle access to the bridge is normally via Grosvenor Street, Clarence Street, Kent Street, the Cahill Expressway, or the Western Distributor. Drivers on the northern side will find themselves on the Warringah Freeway, though it is easy to turn off the freeway to drive westwards into North Sydney or eastwards to Neutral Bay and beyond upon arrival on the northern side.

Pedestrian access from the northern side involves climbing an easily-spotted flight of stairs at Milsons Point. Pedestrian access on the southern side is more complicated, but signposts in the Rocks area now direct pedestrians to the long and sheltered flight of stairs that leads to the bridge’s southern end. These stairs are located near Gloucester Street and Cumberland Street in the Sydney Rocks area.

The bridge can also be accessed from the south by getting on Cahill Walk, which runs along the Cahill Expressway. Pedestrians can access this walkway from Circular Quay by a flight of stairs, or a lift, alternately it can be accessed from The Botanical Gardens.

Since 1998, BridgeClimb has made it possible for tourists to climb the southern half of the bridge. Tours run at dawn, throughout the day, and at twilight.

The bridge lies between Milsons Point and Wynyard railway stations, located on the north and south shores respectively, with two train lines running along the western side of the bridge. Both stations are part of the North Shore line.

Tolls

To travel across the bridge there is a toll for vehicles of AUD$3.00. This toll is only charged for traffic headed into the CBD (southbound). No toll is charged for any other northbound traffic.

There are toll plazas at the northern and southern ends. The eastern-most southbound lanes (which continue over the Cahill Expressway after leaving the bridge) have their tollbooths at the northern end of the bridge, with the remainder being at the southern end of the bridge.

The toll was originally placed on bridge travel, in both direction, to recoup the cost of its construction. This cost was recovered in the 1980’s but the toll has been kept (indeed increased) as the State Government’s main roads infrastructure department (the RTA) does not want to lose the significant amounts of revenue the bridge brings in.

When the decision to build the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was made in the early 80’s, the toll was increased from 20 cents to $1, $1.50 then $2 by the time the Tunnel opened, to pay for its construction. The Tunnel also had an initial toll of $2 southbound. After the increase to $1, the concrete barrier on the Bridge separating the Bradfield Highway from the Cahill Expressway was increased in height, due to the large numbers of drivers crossing it illegally from lane 7 to 6, so they could avoid the toll. The Toll was increased to $3 around 2004 to penalize drivers of SUVs (who mostly live north of the city) for the extra damage they inflict on Sydney’s roads. This was met with similar protests from communities north of the city as were earlier increases.

Use of the bridge by bicycle riders (provided that they use the cycleway) and pedestrians is free.

History

Planning

The building of the current bridge can be said to have started in 1890, when a royal commission determined that there was a heavy level of ferry traffic in the Sydney Harbour area, best relieved with the construction of a bridge. Vehicular access to the north shore was undertaken with a series of smaller bridges located further westwards in the harbour, but this was insufficient for the traffic in the Sydney/North Sydney area.

Designs and proposals were requested in 1900, but a formal proposal was not accepted until 1911. In 1912, John Bradfield was appointed chief engineer of the bridge project, which also had to include a railway. He completed a formal design - the now familiar single arch shape - in 1916, but plans to implement the design were postponed until 1922, primarily because of World War I.

In November 1922 the NSW parliament passed laws that allowed the bridge’s construction. Construction tenders for the bridge were requested the same year, and the British firm Dorman Long and Co Ltd, Middlesbrough won. To offset concerns about a foreign firm participating in the project, assurances were given by Bradfield that the workforce building the bridge would all be Australians.

The building of the bridge coincided with the construction of a system of underground railways in Sydney’s CBD, known today as the City Circle, and the bridge was designed with this in mind. The bridge was designed to carry six lanes of road traffic, flanked by two railway tracks and a footpath on each side. Both sets of rail tracks were linked into the underground Wynyard railway station, on the south side of the bridge, by symmetrical ramps and tunnels. The eastern-side railway tracks were intended for use by a planned rail link to the Northern Beaches; in the interim they were to be used to carry trams from the North Shore into a terminal within Wynyard station.

Construction

The building of the bridge was under the management of Bradfield. Three other persons were involved in the bridge’s design and construction: Laurence Ennis, the engineer-in-charge at Dorman Long and Co was the main supervisor (Bradfield visited occasionally throughout the project, and in particular at the many key stages of the project, to inspect progress and make managerial decisions); Edward Judge was Chief Technical Engineer of Dorman Long and later became President of the British Iron and Steel Federation; Sir Ralph Freeman was hired by the company to design the accepted model in further detail. Later a bitter disagreement broke out between Bradfield and Freeman as to who actually designed the bridge. Another name connected with the bridge’s design is that of Arthur Plunkett.

The construction project itself began in 1923, with the demolition of 800 homes. The owners of these homes received compensation, but their occupants did not.

The first stage of the bridge project was the building of two worksheds at Milson’s Point to assist in building the bridge - the light and heavy workshops. Their purpose was to build the bridge’s many parts.

The first sod for the bridge was turned that same year. In January 1925, the excavations to build the abutments and approach spans began. In October 1925, the building of the abutments and approach spans themselves began, and these were completed in September 1928. Construction of the bridge itself began in December 1928, with the construction of the bridge parts in the workshops.

Construction of the arch of the bridge began in 1929, with two separate teams building the arch on each side using creeper cranes. The first panel was erected on the southern side in March 1929. The southern end of the bridge was worked on a month ahead of the northern end, in order to detect any errors and to ensure that they did not happen on the northern side.

During construction the two halves of the arch were held up by numerous support cables. Once the arch halves were completed the cables were slowly released to bring the two halves of the arch together. This was finalised on the afternoon of 19 August 1930. Ennis and four associates personally witnessed this whilst standing on top of the bridge. Following a parting that occurred due to the contracting of metal in the evening, the ends were rejoined at 10 pm, and have remained joined since then. The support cables were then surplus to the design and removed. They were subsequently used to provide the support cables for the Walter Taylor Bridge, over the Brisbane River in the western suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland.

The road and the two sets of tram and railway tracks were completed in 1931. Power and telephone lines, and water, gas and drainage pipes were also all added to the bridge in that year. On 19 January 1932, the first test train, a steam locomotive, safely crossed the bridge. About 90 others also crossed the bridge in the months that followed as part of a series of tests to ensure the bridge’s safety.

The construction worksheds were demolished after the bridge was completed, and the land that they were on is now occupied by Luna Park and the North Sydney swimming pool.

The standards of industrial safety during construction were poor by today’s standards. Sixteen workers died during construction, mainly from falling off the bridge. Several more were injured from unsafe working practices undertaken whilst heating and constructing its rivets, and deafness experienced by many of the workers in later years was blamed on the project.

The total financial cost of the bridge was £10,057,170 7 shillings and 9 pence (double the original quote). This was not paid off in full until 1988.
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European History: Sydney
Sydney was first visited by the British in 1770 when Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks sailed the Endeavour into Botany Bay. The First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 led by HMS Sirius and under the command of Governor Arthur Phillip, a total of 11 ships brought convicts and officials with plans to establish a colony.

After deciding that Botany Bay was not suitable for the settlement, Phillip rowed north to Port Jackson. On his arrival in Port Jackson Phillip fixed on a cove that he believed had ‘the best spring of water, and in which the ships can anchor so close to the shore that at a very small expence quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload’. Phillip named the cove Sydney Cove after the British Secretary of State, Viscount Sydney. On January 26, 1788, the First Fleet sailed north to Port Jackson, Phillip having left the day before to begin clearing land at Sydney Cove. It wasn’t long before the colony established itself and for the next 60 years it would be the new home to unwanted, persecuted and criminal elements of British society.

It wasn’t long before the inexperienced farmers utilising patchy European farming methods found themselves on the brink of starvation. Combined with desease and low morale, the colony was in desparate trouble. Despite the harrowing experience of the First Fleet’s settlement the second and third fleet of convicts and military setlers followed soon after the First. In 1808, Governor William Bligh was overthrown by the New South Wales (Rum) Corps whom had commercial interests in the Rum trade, this became known as the Rum Rebellion.

By 1840 the colony’s population was made up of mainly free immigrants and transportation ceased in 1842. By 1847 the convict population of Sydney accounted for only 3.2 percent of the total population. Thanks to Edward Hargraves bringing his discovery of gold from the west to the colony in 1851 and word that gold had been discovered in Victoria, settlers began leaving Sydney for the prospect of becoming rich. The gold rush that ensued attracted miners and prospectors from all over the world. Despite the mass exitus of settlers, Sydney’s population grew from 54,000 to 96,000 in 1961 due to the growth in immigration.

Australian Federation occurred in 1901 and the Commonwealth of Australia was declared in a ceremony in Centennial Park. The first world war spurned an economic boom for Sydney, however, with the artificial spending stimulant of the war over, the economy went into rapid decline and over a third of Sydney siders were unemployed during the Great Depression of the early 1930’s.

Music : Sydney
Every one recognises the Opera as the iconic monument of Sydney with its incomparable volumes making the building a masterpiece of international architecture. A legend tells that, in a recent past, some big stars of the Lyric art “tested” the most difficult roles in Sydney in front of a brilliant audience but very far from the Western journalists!

The Sydney opera is well reputed around the world. One of the most acclaimed soprano after the Callas era, Joan Sutherland was the incarnation of the Diva. She bring the Lyric Art to the highest as a proud ambassadress of her native city, Sydney.
It seems that there is a invisible link between the Australian city and the Opera, you can meet sometimes in completely unexpected fields. Gastronomy for example: Nellie Melba, another famous Australian soprano gave her name to the famous dessert “the Melba peach�!

Today, the Sydney Opera and Australia has a lot of great artists who perform on the international scenes. Sir Charles Mackerras, Yvonne Kenny, Deborah Riedel, Simone Young or LISA Gasteen are the perfect examples just like the composers Percy Grainger, Peter Sculthorpe or Ross Edwards.

Pick up a copy of 3D World (dance/r&b), Drum Media (rock) or Brag (bit of both): they’re free from most music shops and newsagents, and have a gig guide in them. Spraci (http://www.spraci.net/) and Faster Louder (http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/cityselect.htm) have upcoming gigs and regular nights listed as well.

If you’re here in Feb, maybe take a look at the Good Vibrations Festival (http://www.jammusic.com.au/goodvibrationsfestival/). There’s also the Great Escape over Easter (http://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=GREATESC06&searchId=b5685074-46cc-47e6-92a0-90bb06f53315).

Theater: Sydney
Theater in Sydney has suffered from inconsistent audience taste to economic woes due to a struggling Australian dollar. The era of lavish musical productions may be over unless they are produced through state-supported theater companies. There are newcomers, such as producers John Erskine and Ben Gannon, who believe in Sydney’s potential.

SYDNEY Aussie legit producers and promoters importing popular acts have seen better days. Today, they have to contend with the ailing Australian dollar (which has plummeted more than 20% against the greenback in the past two months), not to mention .

The site on which The Capitol Theatre stands has been used for entertainment for well over 100 years. Originally built as a market place where entertainment included circus, theatre and side shows, a second market was built on the site in the early 1890’s.

In 1915 the market building was carefully demolished, brick by brick, and the walls rebuilt exactly the same but some four metres higher to form Wirth’s Circus Hippodrome, complete with hydraulic seal pit (the now instrument room is inside the walls of this former seal pit)!

In 1927 the interior was remodeled to make The Capitol Theatre. For the next 60 years the theatre enjoyed a chequered history playing host to opera, rock concerts, movies and stage performances.

The theatre underwent a $35 million dollar refurbishment in the 90’s and is now regarded as one of the finest theatres in the country a grand old tradition continues..

Tours And Activities : Sydney
Sydney is an excellent base for both sightseeing and day excursions that you can plan and do yourself. As well as the immediate Sydney area, a wide variety of half and full day tours take in surrounding regions including the world famous Hunter Valley wine growing region, and the beautiful Blue Mountains area to the west of Sydney.

A cruise on the most magnificent harbour in the world is not to be missed on your visit to Sydney! Choose an hour, half day or full day cruise with Sydney’s leading cruise companies. Dining options and special events such as New Year’s Eve Cruising are also available.

Explore Sydney’s world class harbour, stunning museums and art exhibitions, visit the world famous Taronga Zoo, or hop a bus to any of Sydney’s superb beaches. A variety of tours are available including the exciting Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb.

Just a 1½-2½ hour drive north from Sydney, the Hunter Valley long ago recognised the value of tourism, and wine tasting in the Hunter is now an institution, and an excellent introduction to the variety and quality of Australian wine. Alternatively, Sydney’s most popular recreation area for people who prefer the bush to the sea, the Blue Mountains attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year with its scenic beauty and rugged terrain of tree clad slopes and sheer sandstone cliffs. Other areas we include are Port Stephens, where you can cruise with wild dolphins.

Travel Agencies : Sydney
Welcome to the web directory that provides the most authentic and reliable sites on Sydney Travel Agencies. This web directory is home to a number of web links that will take you to the sites that provide details on Sydney Travel Agents and the various travel agencies in Sydney.

We have tried to list the official sites related to the travel agencies in Sydney. But where there was a case of non-availability of official sites for some travel agents, we went ahead and screened a number of sites on travel agents in Sydney and selected the most informative site that would help you out while you are traveling in Sydney.

We have made sincere efforts to list all the relevant websites that will help a person in tracing the various travel agents in Sydney as well as the various facilities they are offering. However, if you do not find some relevant site related to any Sydney travel agent, then please use the feedback link at the bottom of this page to apprise us of the same. We will leave no stones unturned to add the missing link to our web directory as soon as possible.

Travel Guide : Sydney
Celebrated as the ‘Queen of the Pacific Rim’, vast, vibrant Sydney is home to one of the world’s most beautiful harbors, with the imposing Opera House as the jewel in its crown.

The State capital of New South Wales, Sydney is a thriving center for both business and the arts. The city has all the cosmopolitan amenities – top shopping, excellent restaurants and buzzing nightlife. Carved between the mountains and the sea, it also offers the ultimate in the great outdoors. The Pacific Ocean swells onto golden beaches, while a seasonally shifting palette of colors unfolds

further inland over the Blue Mountains. In addition to the harbor, famously adorned with sailing boats that mirror the distinctive curves of the Opera House, there are numerous inland waterways and national parks.

From its sordid beginnings as a British penal colony in 1788, Sydney rapidly flourished, establishing booming trade links and witnessing large-scale development throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The Sydney Opera House (a feat of avant-garde architectural vision) epitomizes the city’s desire to lead the New World in the 21st century. Sydney’s architecture is a stunning melange, with little Victorian structures nestling below towering concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers.

All the exuberance and plate-glass sophistication nonetheless fail to compensate for a certain competitive edginess in the city’s psyche. After the Australian Federation was created in 1901, the traditional bickering between Sydney and its arch rival, Melbourne, was settled in 1908, by making Canberra the new national capital. However, until 1927, when the city of Canberra was completed, Melbourne remained the seat of national government. Nevertheless, Sydneysiders insist that their city remains the ‘true’ capital of Australia and indeed, with a triumphant hosting of the 2000 Olympic Games, the world might even agree with this. But the rivalry with Melbourne persists – a rivalry based more on style than on stature for, while Sydney is decidedly Anglo in its ethnic orientation, Melbourne is more continental, with a much more tangibly imported culture. To Melbourne, Sydney will always be hedonistic and shallow, just as to Sydney, Melbourne will always be grey and intellectual.

Symphony : Sydney

The following are the general terms and conditions applying to the purchase of tickets to Sydney Symphony performances. We ask you to please read these carefully as by forwarding your application you are confirming that you have read, understood and accept the terms and conditions. Also if you acquire tickets on behalf of anyone else, you agree to these terms on your own behalf and as an agent for them.

The Sydney Symphony will use its best endeavours to supply you with the tickets you order, however, the Sydney Symphony cannot guarantee the availability of tickets, or that seating is available in the seating reserve that you request. Allocation of tickets is subject to availability. The Sydney Symphony reserves the right to reject any application for tickets or completed Subscription Order forms at its discretion.

You must purchase or obtain your tickets from the Sydney Symphony or from an authorised agent. (more…)

Current Masterplan : Sydney
The current Sydney Olympic Park Master Plan encourages a broad range of commercial, residential, recreational, leisure and public uses that utilise the available facilities and infrastructure and add to the unique qualities of the Park for visitors, workers and residents. Cultural, educational and environmentally orientated uses are also envisaged.

Sydney Olympic Park’s diversity and flexibility of built form and public spaces provides significant potential to attract a range of complementary uses and activities.

Low-medium rise offices is encouraged at Sydney Olympic Park, as are opportunities to increase the residential population.

Local convenience retailing is envisaged including themed facilities to add activity and vitality. A nucleus of retail uses is proposed within the Town Centre spread over a number of sites. Restaurants, food outlets, cafes and convenience retailing are encouraged.

The urban core of Sydney Olympic Park is a large area with significant development potential. The following gross floor area estimates have been used to test implications for built form under the master plan.
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