Tag: Giant Spiders

February 4th, 2024

The Sydney Observatory, surrounded by a small park, is the highest point in the city. It’s a slightly elaborate sandstone building with a square tower that still has on its roof a pole with a ball that drops every day at 1:00 pm — once an important signal to ships in the bay. Sadly, they no longer fire a canon.

You enter, say hello to the old gentleman behind the counter, and then wander through the rooms. There’s antique astronomy equipment on display, telescope, brass spoked wheels, the complex and beautiful equipment once used by British captains for charting the stars, and a video of Sydney’s past resident astronomer William Scott (Played by an actor, of course, and lecturing in the slightly chummy, pompous way a 21st century actor imagines a 19th century astronomer would. Very entertaining.)

Outside is a little grassy space where you can sit and admire the view of the city. There are a few benches, a gazebo and a bust of Danish author Hans Christian Anderson. A plaque explains the original bust, which had been hanging about the city in Phillips Park for a decade or two, was discovered to be AWOL when city employees showed up to move it to another spot. After the Danish government asked for it back, there was apparently some embarrassed/annoyed back and forth and finally, a new one was made and unveiled in the observatory park by the crown prince and princess of Denmark (The princess is Australian.) This bust of Anderson seems to be enjoying the view. Nobody knows where the first one resides now.

As I was reading this inscription, I heard children cheering and noticed a class of uniformed grammar school boys sitting in the shade near the gazebo, listening to a man I suppose was their teacher. Just beyond them I saw a team of about eight joggers, seven men, one woman, in gym shorts and boxing gloves trotting two by two up the slope to the lawn, led by a bald muscular man. He stopped, they stopped. He turned and barked a command and each pair of joggers faced each other, their faces set and fierce, and began hitting each other’s gloved fists.

The old gentleman inside gave me directions to The Rocks. “It’s quite close by,” he said, “Just go through the tunnel and down the stairs.”

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January 30th, 2024

I wanted to get to the Rocks, and according to my map I could reach it by walking all the way around Circular Quay. So I walked around, past the statue of William Bligh with its slightly defensive inscription, past the large passenger terminal, onward towards the Sydney Harbor bridge, where people grew more and more scarce, pausing to look at the old stone paved ferry ramp now descending into nothing but a view straight across the bay to the tragic Luna Amusement Park, with its enormous scary-clown face smiling back across the water.

The walk became solitary and slightly intimidating. I was past the tourist area and strolling on the edge of the working bay, a shady sidewalk with a tall fence on my right behind which seemed to be rows of harbour buildings. On my left was a massive stone wall set into a hill, on top of which I could see the backs of stuccoed houses. For a long time there seemed to be no way of getting up there. I spotted one old stone stairway that stopped halfway down, and was decorated with a playful installation, an enormous web with a plaster spider the size of an Irish Setter.

Finally I saw a stairway that was apparently meant to be used and angled all the way to the top of the hill, so I crossed the street and climbed.

Now I was in a neighborhood. Not, apparently, a bad neighborhood, but an area where tourists probably didn’t venture often and were obviously lost. Modest houses and occasional apartment buildings, corner stores. A woman trundling a hand cart of groceries glanced at me curiously as she passed. I persevered. There were more stairs a little ways down the street, well maintained, rising, with a handrail. The place to go, I decided, was up. And I was right.

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Pam Troy

A Writer’s Website

Tag: Giant Spiders