Thursday at the Olympic Park

Seats in the Main Arena, originally uploaded by zuctronic.

November 26th was Thanksgiving, so I took the day off to celebrate my American holiday with Matt from New York and my friends in Sydney. But in the morning, Matt and I took the train to the Olympic Park in the Homebush suburb of Sydney. The city of Sydney hosted the 2000 summer olympic games and I have heard a few people call that year a "turning point" for Sydney and Australia. I overheard an Aussie talking about it at the airport and he said that before 2000, Sydney was an Australian city and after 2000 it was a global city.



I think it would be exciting to live through that kind of transformation. If I lived in Sydney, I would be proud of being a world class city - especially considering its unlikely history as a penal colony for a late discovery-era England. The Olympic Park in Sydney is a reminder of that transformation from a dusty backwater to a modern metropolis. It is also a great public space for Sydneysiders and other Earthlings. It blends a set of buildings used for trade shows and sport events with a natural setting that highlights its uniquely Australian location.



Matt and I walked around and saw the main stadium and the stables. We walked over to the brick pit and walked about a third of the ring walk. I couldn't figure out what the ring walk was for until I found a description on the internet. The ring walk is a raised walkway that makes a perfect circle over the brick pit, which is flooded and reported to be a habitat for rare frogs. That's all it is... it doesn't mean anything and it was never used for anything other than walking over the brick pit in a circle. As you can see from my photos, it's rather large!



After walking back to the train station we were exhausted and it was starting to get very hot. We grabbed some cold drinks before getting on the train back to Central station in Sydney. In Central station we took a quick tour of the railway museum they have in the station.





We had plans to meet Cheryl later for a Thanksgiving Dinner so we needed to head over to the fish market to pick up some things to grill...