Old Sydney—meaning Woolloomooloo, Woollahra, Paddington and the scattered surviving buildings of the convict architect, Francis Greenway—has left to posterity a legacy of modestly beautiful architecture. Middle-aged Sydney-meaning the speculative jerry-building of the early twentieth century—covered the gracious hills of the harbour suburbs with a rash of hideous red tile and brick. Modern Sydney—meaning the period of post-World War II development—has made architectural history with a single remarkable building, Joern Utzon’s famous Opera House. The full story is one of civic triumph and personal tragedy; but there is also a host of smaller stories concerning the attitudes of those who know and love the harbour front and to whom, at the same time, all aspects of the arts in Australia have something more than superficial meaning.

The Opera House holds special fascination for me because whenever I am in Sydney I overlook the site during my favourite walk across the bridge from the North Sydney end; but my real interest goes back much further, more than half a century in fact, to a time when as a child I used to be taken to visit my father’s ship. The recollections are still vivid: the surge of green water, the ferocious turbulence of propellers and the alarming groan of timbers followed by the clatter of the gangplanks as the ferry from Mosman berthed at Circular Quay. Travelling south-east from there we soon became involved with the world of ships, steamers, tugs and wheat ships, a colourful forest of funnels and masts eliminating from any possible consideration the ugly mess of the tram sheds at Bennelong Point. How were we to know that some fifty years later this small tongue of land would be the site of a world-famous, epoch making opera house? We were familiar with most of the operas because our house in the bush at Mosman was full of music, and I imagined that all other houses in Sydney were like that. Perhaps they were. How else can one explain the action of a government, whose antecedents had shown notorious indifference towards development in the arts, embarking on the munificent enterprise of replacing that unsightly sprawl of rusting iron with a world-class home for music?