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Sydney Harbour

Vivid Sydney

Sydney hosted the Vivid festival [^] from 27th May to 13th June 2011, “a festival of light music and ideas”.

Luckily it was on while we were in Sydney for Mrs CannibalRabbit and a friend to Mary Poppins the Musical. That gave me something to do while they were Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-ing and Chim-Chiminey-ing. That was a hike along the length of the Sydney CBD in the rain! But it was worth it.

One thing that would have been nice was a tripod, but we were travelling light – carry-on luggage only. With a bit improvisation I got some reasonable photos, most of them using the Sydney Harbour Bridge to lean the camera on. Circular Quay was just teeming with people, all trying to take photos so the extra height from the Bridge helped.

Vivid Sydney Opera House

Sydney & Old Photos

Have you ever wanted to make your photos look old.  There are plenty of guides out there on the web for doing this in Photoshop and other high-power and high-cost photo editing applications.  But there is a one-stop website offering the same service in seconds – all Wanokoto does is create antique photos [^] – and it does it well.

CannibalRabbit Sydney old Queen Victoria Old

This aged photo of the Queen Victoria in Circular Quay has a much better impact.  I like how the modern lines of the Queen Victoria seem so out of place in the otherwise mid-20th Century setting. 

Over at CannibalRabbit we have some more present day photos of the Queen Victoria, the Queen Elizabeth 2, and their crossing.

Rose Bay – Sydney Seaplanes

Rose Bay Seaplane
de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver – VH-AQU – Sydney Seaplanes

I have had this as the title image for this site for a while now.  I thought that it was time for an explanation.  Rose Bay is the site of Australia’s first international airport – a seaport.  When we went out on a Harbour cruise to see the passing of the Two Queens on Sydney Harbour we managed to get down to Rose Bay, in Sydney’s Inner-Eastern suburbs.  While we were there we saw a couple of Sydney Seaplane’s flying boats come in to land.

In 1938 Qantas Empire Airways launched it’s luxurious flying boat service to England from Rose Bay.  The 15 passengers onboard paid a little more than the average annual wage of the time for the privilege of a ten day flight rather than a six week voyage.  The flight took ten days and had 31 stops.  As would be expected with the price they had paid the guests were pampered all the way with meals being served on china and there was enough room on-board to play quoits, and the nights were spent in top hotels on land. 

Today Qantas is gone from Rose Bay, but there is a regular flying boat service to Palm Beach, Gosford and Newcastle, as well as Sydney joyflights (Sydney Seaplanes [^]).  On the tourist-busy weekend that Sydney was experiencing with the two Queens in town, it seemed as though Rose Bay was busier than Sydney’s “real” airport at Mascot.  Even with this steady flow it was still hard to get a good photo.  This one had the bonus of having the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in the background, making this unmistakable photo of Sydney.

Sources: Sydney Seaplanes [^], abc.net.au [^], Airways Museum [^], Afloat Magazine [^], Qantas [^].

The Age Has Googled A Ferry Disaster

The Age is running a story about Google Maps at the moment and the apparent “ferry disaster” in Sydney Cove: 

The Age “Ferry Crash” in Sydney Cove from Google Maps

The ferry “collision” appears right beside a giant cruise liner – either the Queen Elizabeth 2 or Queen Mary 2 – which was docked at Sydney Cove when the photographs were taken.
The image appears to show a ferry travelling at full speed colliding with a smaller boat. Metres away, another boat appears submerged under water except for the tip of its nose. Source: theage.com.au

Google have said that this is just an image stitching issue.  The interesting thing is that the Age couldn’t be bothered to research their story properly.  Two things indicate that the Liner in question is in fact the Queen Elizabeth 2: the fact that she is berthed facing out into the harbour, whereas the Queen Victoria was facing Circular Quay; and secondly, a quick Google revealed that the call-sign on the roof of the Bridge “GBTT” belongs to the QE2. 

Link to Google Map [^], with the QE2’s call sign clearly visible.