aussiecities

S Y D N E Y
The Sydney Opera House is one of the most famous pieces of modern architecture in the world. It was designed by Jorn Utzon and completed in 1973.

Sydney, capital city of the state of New South Wales, in southeastern Australia, located on the southern shore of Port Jackson (an arm of the Pacific Ocean). Sydney is Australia's oldest and largest city and is a major economic, cultural, and administrative center. It has warm summers and mild winters. Mean temperatures range from 12.6° to 21° C (55° to 70° F), with an average annual rainfall of 1194 mm (47 in) distributed fairly evenly throughout the year.
Sydney and its suburbs cover about 12,400 sq km (about 4800 sq mi), from the Hawkesbury River in the north to the southern tablelands in the south and from the Blue Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. Long fingers of bushland extend deep into Sydney's metropolitan heart, making it vulnerable to bushfires. In January 1994 fires sweeping through New South Wales engulfed many suburban homes and came close to the city center. Because the metropolitan area is effectively hemmed in by geography, it faces serious environmental challenges arising from the intensity of development and traffic.
Other notable buildings in the city center include Hyde Park Barracks (completed in 1819), in Queens Square, a neoclassical building by English-born architect Francis Greenway. Greenway was sent to Australia to serve a sentence for forgery and went on to design many of Sydney's early buildings. The barracks once housed 1000 convicts and now serves as a museum of social history. Saint James Church (1822), opposite the barracks, and the Government House stables (1817), which is now the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, were also designed by Greenway. Sharing Queens Square with the barracks is the Mint Museum, the oldest public building in Sydney and originally part of the 1816 Rum Hospital, so called because the builders were allowed to import and sell rum in return for building the hospital. Parliament House (1816), on Macquarie Street, was also part of the Rum Hospital and is still the home of the New South Wales legislature. The oldest surviving private building in Sydney is the two-story Georgian Cadman's Cottage (1816), on George Street. Other vintage sites are the Queen Victoria Building (1898), housing a huge shopping gallery, and the colonial sandstone Sydney Observatory (1858). More modern contributions include Darling Harbour, a redevelopment of decaying dockland in an area the early colonists called Cockle Cove.

Go Down Under with Sydney online http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/

Economy of Sydney
Sydney is the industrial, commercial, financial, and tourist capital of Australia and is one of the most significant financial centers in the Asia-Pacific region. Sixty of Australia's largest corporations have their headquarters in Sydney, and the Sydney stock exchange is the largest in Australia. Sydney is also the hub of information technology and telecommunications, commanding more than 40 percent of the Australian telecommunications market in the mid-1990s. Because Sydney is Australia's major commercial center, public and private sector administration occupies much of the workforce. Manufacturing, however, continues to be important: metals, machinery, clothing, processed food, electronic equipment, motor vehicles, ships, and refined petroleum are some of the wide range of Sydney's manufactured products.
Sydney also handles most of Australia's foreign trade. Exported wheat, wool, and meat flow through Port Jackson or through the large port complex on neighboring Botany Bay. Sydney also has, at Kingsford Smith International Airport, the busiest air terminal in the country. The city is also served by several railroads, major highways, a monorail linking the city center with nearby Darling Harbour, and ferry and hydrofoil services.

Let's check out Melbourne . . .

Melbourne (Australia), capital city of the state of Victoria, in southeastern Australia, located on Port Phillip Bay at the mouth of the Yarra River. Melbourne is Australia's second most populous city, after Sydney, and is a major economic, cultural, and administrative center. Sea breezes from Port Phillip Bay temper Melbourne's hottest months (January and February when the average maximum temperature is 26° C/79° F). Melbourne's winters are also mild.
Greater Melbourne has a population (1993 estimate) of 3,187,500. Since the 1960s large numbers of southern European and Asian immigrants have come to the city, giving it Australia's greatest concentration of Italians and significant numbers of Lebanese, Vietnamese, Greeks, Chinese, Irish, and Jews. The immigrants have contributed to a huge social, architectural, and cultural transformation of the city. Melbourne's Aboriginal residents make up about 0.2 percent of the population.
The Melbrourne metropolitan area, which is what most Australians mean when they refer to the city of Melbourne, covers an area of more than 6000 sq km (more than 2300 sq mi). The city proper, a small section in the center of the metropolis, covers only a few square kilometers. The city center occupies a compact area on the northern bank of the Yarra and is laid out in a grid between La Trobe and Flinders streets to the north and south, respectively, and Spencer and Spring streets to the west and east, respectively. High-rise buildings have replaced Melbourne's formerly low-rise skyline, though the central area remains famous for its 19th-century architecture, including Gothic-style churches, neoclassical public buildings, and terraced houses decorated with cast iron. The terrain rises steeply on the east side of the city center, where Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Parliament House, the Treasury, and the Fitzroy Gardens are found. On the southern bank of the Yarra the Victorian Arts Centre adds the Victorian Arts Centre to the charm of the city's southern entrancealong Saint Kilda Road. The complex is home to the National Gallery of Victoria, the Melbourne Concert Hall, and the Threatres Building.
Greater Melbourne sprawls east and west around the shores of Port Phillip Bay and extends inland to the Dandenong Ranges in a vast network of suburbs. The suburbs include the inner-city, formerly working-class areas of Richmond, Collingwood, and Fitzroy; distant bayside areas such as Mordialloc, Frankston, and Mornington; and the once semirural retreats in the foothills of the Dandenongs like Fern Tree Gully, Nunawading, and Belgrave. The satellite city Geelong lies 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Melbourne.
Melbourne's parks include the Domain, the Victoria and Alexandra Gardens, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, among the finest of their kind in the world. Established in 1845, the Royal Botanic Gardens are stocked with more than 10,000 species of plants, trees, and shrubs. Melbourne is also distinguished from other Australian cities in its use of trams (streetcars) for public transportation. Quaint, older trams, whose historical importance has been recognized by the National Trust, operate within a fleet of brightly painted, quieter, and modernized trams.

Economy of Melbourne
Industries of the Melbourne metropolitan area range from shipbuilding and petroleum refining along Port Phillip Bay to the manufacture of metals, motor vehicles, electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, chemicals, printed materials, textiles, clothing, paper, and processed food. Broken Hill Propietary Company, Ltd. (BHP), Australia's largest company, has its headquarters in Melbourne. BHP manufactures steel and operates mines. National Australian Bank and Pacific Dunlop, a manufacturer and distributor of various consumer goods, are also based in Melbourne. Road and rail networks focus on the city, and a large international airport is in nearby Broadmeadows.

Have a look at Melbourne online http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/
Melbourne cityscape
Photograph courtesy of the Embassy of Australia

And how about Canberra . . . .
Canberra, city, southeastern Australia, the capital of the country, in the Australian Capital Territory. Canberra is a modern, rapidly expanding city located on the Molonglo River (a tributary of the Murrumbidgee River) in a predominantly agricultural region. It is built around the artificially-created Lake Burley Griffin and is the economic center for the nearby communities of Woden-Weston Creek, Belconnen, and Queanbeyan. The government is the chief employer in Canberra, but tourism and light-manufacturing industries are growing.
Major landmarks in Canberra include the new Parliament House (opened in 1988); the Church of Saint John the Baptist (1840s); Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet, located in Lake Burley Griffin; and the Australian War Memorial, which includes a museum and an art gallery. Other sites include the National Library (1960); the Australian National Gallery (1982), housing works by Australian and other artists; the High Court of Australia building; and the civic center. Major educational institutions and academic organizations in the Canberra area are the Australian National University (1946), Canberra School of Music (1965), the University of Canberra (1990; formerly Canberra College of Advanced Education), the Australian Defence Force Academy (1981), the Australian Academy of Science (1954), and the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1969). Mount Stromlo Observatory is also here. Canberra serves as the headquarters of Australia's largest scientific research body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
The site of Canberra was settled by Europeans in 1824, and in 1908 the sparsely populated area was chosen to be the capital of Australia. The American architect Walter Burley Griffin won an international competition for the design of the new city. Construction began in 1913 but was interrupted by World War I (1914-1918). Only in 1927 was the national parliament moved here from Melbourne, which had been its temporary seat since 1901. Canberra's population grew rapidly following World War II (1939-1945). Population (1991, greater city) 303,846.