Biennale Art Festival & Cremorne

This weekend was packed! Really full, but felt something "authentic" for sure.

Following Friday's adventure to the Sydney Cricket Ground to watch the Arizona Diamondbacks get beaten by the Australia National team at the sport America invented, it was onto Cockatoo Island for the Biennale Art Festival! Spare no time, here in Sydney.

Twas a great time at the island, but not nearly the experience you might imagine in attending an "art festival." In fact, it was rather a deserted island with exhibitions scattered sparingly throughout. The island itself used to be used as both a wharf (where ships would be moored to be loaded and unloaded) and a prison, and was roughly the size of Central Campus at the University of Michigan (so it might take you twenty to thirty minutes to walk from one end of the island to the other). As a mechanical engineer, I was far more interested in the history of an island that used to be used in such a machine-heavy way! There were ancient lifts and gear systems and pulleys and even wooden boats throughout Cockatoo Island, that walking around just to observe the sights was far worth the trip. There were also the "modern" art exhibits, which were... wonderful!....

The island could only be accessed by ferry, so we took a ferry from Circular Quay. Conveniently enough, Circular Quay is the bus stop where you would depart for the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. In fact, our ferry went directly by the Opera House and under the Harbour Bridge! What a great way to see the Opera House for the first time, up close and personal.

The trip to Cremorne was with a group of photographers from Fig Tree Hall. Bill, a student fellow (some version of an RA), set up a trip for anyone interested in photography to come along, as he himself has a $x000 camera and is quite interested in photography. So I joined the trip, really for the chance to see a new part of the city with a local who would know it better, as I didn't have any camera other than my phone. There were about ten of us in all, and I was the only one without a super-fancy DSLR super-lens camera - those cameras were amazing!

It turned out that Cremorne was just across the way from the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, so we arrived about 4pm so that we could explore the grounds while there was still daylight. But most of the people who came along were interested in the hours after sunset. What they would do is leave the exposure time on their cameras to anywhere between 1 second and 30 seconds, and would thereby manage to soak up a beautifully light Sydney skyline admist a dark night background. The pictures that came out from several of the photographers were AMAZING.

I really liked the island! There was a quaint little lighthouse at one end, where we stumbled upon a family who had spent the day fishing together. We caught the 8:30pm ferry back to Circular Quay, grabbed some dinner once we got back to campus (at Subway no less - anything else is outrageously priced, unfortunately), and called it a weekend. Was really really busy, but a great weekend. I certainly feel like I've experienced Sydney this past weekend.

#photo