Convicts, pubs and fear of height Part 2 - By Phil Baker

 Phil Baker of Windham took advantage of an opportunity to spend six days in Sydney, Australia in September of this year. The following is the second of a three part article based on his observations of Sydney.

“I’m fine,” Meghan said, voice small against the wind, her face a little whiter than during the Bridge Climb orientation.

The Rocks, an eclectic neighborhood of Sydney, is home to many pubs and excellent microbreweries. The multi-tasking Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel for example brews ales with names that celebrate Sydney’s seafaring history like “The Old Admiral” and “Three Sheets.” The airy rough beam and stone interior seems unaltered since opening night in 1841. Another pub offers crocodile and kangaroo pizza washed down with pints of “Dirty Granny Cider.” An organized pub crawl takes guests to these pubs and the Fortune of War and the Hero of Waterloo among others.

Below us, a sandstone bluff falls away dropping to the small cove where the colonizing convicts landed. Now, restaurants and shops crowd a wide promenade called the Circular Quay. Here aborigines sputter into didgeridoos at most hours of the day and night. A didgeridoo is two or three feet of a small tree that ants have hollowed. It’s adorned with Aboriginal art and polished until it shines. The sound is produced by vibrating the lips. The player alters the tone by changing the shape of his mouth. It sounds like a bassoon played by Keith Richards.

 “Watch your heads and shins,” Celine warned as we ducked and stepped to a series of ladders. Nothing but catwalk was between us and white-capped water below. A train thundered above.

We were about to climb forty feet higher from the bridge’s protected underbelly toward the bright sun and dramatic forty to fifty knot winds. Meghan told Celine she was okay, trying to convince herself more than alleviate Celine’s concern, I thought. This was the worst of it Celine said. She told me later that people had frozen there. She said the ladders turned simple fear to paralyzing phobia. It was the major challenge for Meghan, the most serious obstacle she would face.

“Just don’t look down and you’ll be fine,” was Celine’s cliché but sound advice.

If Meghan had looked down she would have seen a sparkling teal Sydney Harbor 200 feet below. Shaped like a multi-toed foot of an ET-like creature, it’s a bustling body of water. The blue-green surface is arrayed with white sails and curved white-green wakes of power boats. The harbor is the destination of well over 250 cruise ships a year, a swelling of economic activity for the city. Passengers are received by an erector-set ugly glass and steel terminal that squats, full of purpose, on the quay just below the pylons of the bridge. The Circular Quay is home to a busy ferry terminal connecting the Rocks to bedroom communities, beaches and the world-class Taronga Zoo with its mobs of marsupials. But Meghan didn’t look down. She peered up as she white-knuckled the ladders that took us higher.

The wind ripped at us as we staggered at the beginning of the arch upward that’s trimmed with a utilitarian walkway for the climbers. The wind made buffeting noises in our ear-pieces like tapping a live microphone. To the west, Celine indicated Darling Harbor, a recently developed neighborhood featuring the busy Sydney Events Center, a maritime museum and an exceptional aquarium. The Chinese Garden of Friendship provides a moment of peace in the grinding cityscape.

Climbing higher still above the harbor, Celine pointed to the east at a collection of bleach-white shells, the Sydney Opera House. Splendidly positioned on the harbor with water lapping at three sides, it has a recognition factor of four billion. Two out of three people in the world can identify it. In 1956 Finnish architect Jorn Utzon provided a free-hand drawing that captured the imagination of a jury assembled to choose a design. Utzon provided no engineering details broke all the rules of the international competition and his design was selected amid controversy. Site preparation started before the engineers had any technical concept of how to build the structure. It’s one of the more photogenic buildings on the planet and a tour inside reveals equally spectacular studios, theaters and a symphony hall with amazing acoustics.

We were suspended approximately 300 feet above the water now. Meghan seemed okay but was she? 

Around the headset she asked: “How deep do you think the water is?” Her head dipped, but her eyes stayed level with mine.

“Well, pretty deep, it accommodates some pretty big ships. Why?”

“I was wondering,” she paused, “if somebody would survive the fall.”

I guess when you get right down to it fear of heights is actually the fear of falling.

“Why are you thinking about that? I don’t think the depth of water would really be the issue. The impact would ... never mind.”