I had not yet really explored Sydney‘s downtown, George Street, Pitt Street, etc. so I walked to the modern part of the city, where the high rises and serious people are. It’s like many other financial districts. Lots of preoccupied men in business suits talking on cell phones, lots of women in skirts walking in pairs, trotting down the pavement and carrying cups of coffee, traffic, sun bouncing against glass and sidewalks and passing cars, clean chain restaurants with broad windows showing people sitting at pale formica tables and staring into open laptops.

But the sunlight in Sydney isn’t like any other sunlight, just as the sunlight in New Orleans, San Francisco, or New York City has its own color and its own way of touching objects. Each city has something that talks to the light and shapes your recollection of it. In Sydney, the downtown has flashes of yellow sandstone, with scrollwork and figures tucked in among all the sleek straight lines and reflective surfaces of a modern city. It gives the air a slightly golden tint even at noon — at least in memory.