10.July_Paddington and Cockatoo, No Bears and No Birds

On this fine morning, we’re heading back to the Museum of Sydney, hey we’re actually gonna go inside this time. So we meet there at nine because we have a guided tour and we’re actually all on time this morning, but they don’t open until 9:30 so we just stand outside for half an hour. Even the gift shop was closed today. So the reason we’re there is for an exhibit of Glenn Murcutt’s work. He’s probably Australia’s most well-known architect, focusing on very sustainable, very place specific architecture, mainly residential.  His houses all harness the inherent qualities of the surrounding area, wind, sun, water, even smells etc. to reduce the need for any mechanical equipment while maintaining thermal comfort regardless of season. Not interested in iconic forms, Glenn’s work exemplifies the idea of doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

                  From the museum, we rushed out and over to Paddington to meet Adrian and her Aunt, Julie Rrap. Julie is a very well known contemporary artist and she happens to have an exhibit in a gallery in Paddington that she personally is going to walk us through. Just imagine Michelangelo showing you around the statue of David. Our situation was similar to that.

                  After the gallery, we walked back up to the main street to walk around a bit, looking for a store that another architect of interest did the interior of. The store, Aesop, the architect, Sean Godsell. Not overly impressive, but sorta interesting to look at, we didn’t spend too much time in the store. I believe we’ll be seeing some of his buildings later in the trip, perhaps Melbourne.

                  Next, we break away from Michael and Adrian to do whatever we like with the remainder of Friday afternoon and evening. We chose Cockatoo Island. Home to all of zero Cockatoos, it was once used as a ship building center for the city and is currently left in it’s ship building state for tourists to wander around and look at. It’s a bit creepy to walk around all the old abandoned buildings and not really see any people there. I personally thought it was pretty cool at the same time, but I certainly don’t need to go back. Among other things, Cockatoo was also a prison/work facility, a girl’s reformatory type school, and home to the ship industry. There are still a large number of cranes left on the island as well as a large number of industrial warehouse looking buildings that you cant get into. After wandering around, the group of us all happened to meet at the same point on top of a hill and we watched the sunset together, then climbed a tree and took some pictures and whatnot, just enjoying the evening free.