The shape of the city is hazy. From above, Sydney looks like somebody spilled ink on a map, let the rivulets run and shrugged when the mess began to dry, saying ‘fine, that can be Sydney’. The way it actually happened wasn’t so different. The city was first a prison, not a place. Roads were built with no logic or forethought. The city sprang up hastily, and it was too hot and too hard ever to go back and try to make sense of it. The roads are thin and winding. They adhere to no grid. The tree roots splinter the bitumen. Sensible-seeming routes peter out into dead ends and one-way streets.

The inner suburbs are clogged with pollution and clinging heat because Sydney is a city ruled by the car, with traffic its defining feature, snaking out along Parramatta Road, across the bridges, down the Princes Highway, unmoving and seemingly infinite. But then there’s the water. Driving over a hill at Coogee or Rushcutters Bay and seeing the ocean laid out before you never fails to feel like a minor miracle. Sultry, shallow, cocksure, contradictory—this is Sydney spread wide. Slinking its way through the red tape and traffic into absolute raw, ravishing beauty.