You know how it is. When you live somewhere you don’t always do the things tourists do when they visit your home town. In the year before we left Pittsburgh we scrambled to do all the things we kept meaning to do but never get around to. And so it is here in Sydney. We’ve spent so much time here that we feel like locals and now that we know we’re leaving soon we suddenly realize there are museums we missed, neighborhoods to explore, beaches to walk.
One beautiful day we took the bus downtown specifically to visit the Art Museum of New South Wales, which we’d somehow missed and which we heard had a good collection of aboriginal art. We weren’t disappointed and on nearly every piece I bestowed my highest compliment, “I’d have that in my house.” If I had a house, that is.
We rested and re-energized at a beautiful garden café, the kind of place that makes us love city life.
The day was heating up and we took refuge in St. Mary’s Cathedral, a nineteenth century gothic revival building that was begun in 1868 but not completely realized until this century. I couldn’t talk Jack into visiting the crypt. He was happy to sit quietly while I explored the architecture and artifacts.
We’re always interested in pipe organs and this cathedral has several, a 1942 Australian model, and a newer Orgues LéTourneau of Quebec, installed 1997-1999.
I didn’t get to see the console for the newer organ but it can be played from this mobile console at floor level.
Back out in the suffocating Aussie summer sun we called it a day and made our way back to the cool comfort of Escape Velocity.
