DISCOVERING SYDNEY 

By Rod Smith

The pre-Olympics party has begun.

In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed into Botany Bay on the southeast Australian coast. He and his crew (including the great naturalist Sir Joseph Banks) were the first white people to set foot on that part of the mysterious continent, and would be for nearly two decades. In 1788, a small fleet carrying 736 English convicts (the majority convicted of petty crimes) found one of the finest natural harbors in the world just north of Botany Bay. The fleet’s commander, Captain Arthur Phillip, named the harbor after Lord Sydney, the British secretary of state of home affairs; by that time Captain Cook had died (killed by natives in Hawaii), never knowing what a remarkable nation would rise from his discovery of …

“Watch that ferry, mate!” I snapped out of my reverie in time to steer our 35-foot sloop away from the course of a big catamaran, jammed with passengers, that had just emerged from the bay behind the Sydney Opera House. It sped past with a friendly wave from the skipper. My companion, a Sydney by Sail charter captain, who was kindly acting as my temporary crew on a morning sail, trimmed the jib a touch and asked, “So what were you thinking about?”

“Captain Cook,” I said. A gust laid the boat over until foam kissed the rail — we were really flying, up Sydney Harbour past the Opera House toward Sydney Harbour Bridge. I could see a line of people walking up one of the bridge’s central girders, and wondered what kind of spectacular view they had of the many-armed harbor and the city sprawling on its shores.

“Captain Cook?” Dave said, chuckling. “Well, there’s old Cookie’s boat, mate.” And so it was. As we sailed past Sydney Cove and its tourist-crowded Circular Quay, with the shopping and nightlife district called The Rocks behind it, we could see an old sailing ship — an exact replica of Cook’s ship, Endeavour — boarding passengers among the ferry slips.

It looked really small. When we saw it under sail awhile later out on the harbor with an impressive spread of canvas, it looked a little more credible, but still distinctly out of place among the busy harbor traffic of pleasure boats, ferries, and container ships. The image was a statement of Sydney’s essence: That in just two centuries, the one-time penal colony has become one of the world’s handsomest and most vibrant cities.

The International Olympic Committee effectively recognized that by selecting Sydney as the site of the 2000 Olympic Games in September. Preparations are under way all over town. A new stadium is under construction and — gasp — ahead of schedule. Bright new buoys in the harbor mark trial courses for sailing competition, which, thanks to the many vantage points along the shore, will be a spectator event for the first time in recent Olympic memory. Grimy buildings, including many dating from the colonial era, are being sandblasted into new radiance. You can feel the buzz: Sydney is about to throw a party.

The city is already in party mode, in fact — which is why now, before the Games begin, is a good time to visit. I’d been to Sydney before, but only felt that I really discovered its cultural vibrancy and diversity this time. A big reason for that was spending a day with Jane Strang. I wish there were someone like Strang in every city. Her business, although it seems more like an avocation because she clearly enjoys it, is showing people around her hometown.

The day after my arrival, Strang picked me up at the hotel in a deluxe SUV and proceeded to show me around in such a way that by the time we’d visited all the key neighborhoods and seen the sights, and had lunch and numerous coffees, I felt like a real Sydneysider. It was like being looked after by the friend of a good friend. Strang can arrange “A Sydney Day” (the name of her company) to suit any taste or time frame, including a seaplane ride up the coast to her Palm Beach home for lunch. Perhaps her greatest asset is that she’s a golf insider, able to act as liaison with some of the Sydney area’s top clubs and courses.

After a day with Strang I was quite at home in Sydney, returning to enjoy at leisure some of the places she’d pointed out in passing. For example, one afternoon I went down to the Circular Quay and stepped onto a little wooden ferryboat straight out of Steamboat Willie. Ten minutes later, I was on the other side of the water in the charming little enclave called Blues Point, a perfect example of the kind of distinctive waterside neighborhoods that line Sydney Harbour. I browsed for a while in a bookstore, picking up an enlightening book on Aussie slang, then went next door to a stylish little café for a “flat white” (as cappuccino is known in Sydney).

Over subsequent days, life took on a general pattern, but not a routine: a morning run through the verdant Royal Botanic Gardens near my hotel, then coffee and pastry at a café in The Rocks, and off to explore the diverse little harborside communities. (For those interested in antiques, Woollahra is a quietly fashionable neighborhood packed with shops and galleries.) Sydney’s array of transportation options and its laid-back sensibility make it conducive to exploration without the burden of a rental car or a rigid itinerary. It’s a handsome city, with a distinctive look that I associate with the reddish Sydney sandstone used widely in building, with the second-story verandah and tiled roof of a typical house, and with the large fig, palm, and eucalyptus trees along the streets and in the many parks.

Lately, Sydney has become a distinctive restaurant town, too; many critics believe that both New York and San Francisco suffer by comparison. That’s been in the wind for some time, of course, but persistent rumors of a culinary explosion Down Under don’t do justice to the multifaceted feast awaiting travelers to Sydney these days.

A FEAST FOR THE SENSES
Friends sometimes ask me to describe my favorite meal from a recent trip. I suspect they’re more interested in the overall experience than a dissection of the food, so the answer usually leans more toward the good time than the sensual odyssey (although sometimes I can’t resist jabbering about, say, the savor of ’61 La Chapelle with chanterelles). My favorite meal in Sydney was a dinner at Tetsuya’s, a quiet little place where anything sensual can happen, and usually does. The taxi let me off on a conservative working-class street in Rozelle, not far from the stylish hubbub of Paddington and Woollahra, but in another world. I spotted the window of what looked like a restaurant on the corner, but couldn’t see an entrance until I ducked around the corner into the alley. There was a plain black door. I knocked on it. After a moment it opened, and I stepped into the realm of the senses.

A few days earlier, another Sydney chef had described Tetsuya Wakuda this way: “He has blended French and Japanese and Australian styles and created something unique. It’s fresh, lean, tasty, pungent, exciting, and well researched.”

That seemed like too many words. But then, Tetsuya’s menu doesn’t skimp on words, either, in its California-style listings of, for example, Confit of Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Unpasteurized Ocean Trout Roe, Braised Red Capsicum, Leeks, Kombu, Capers, and Parsley Oil. The verbiage became irrelevant when the dish arrived. It was, quite simply, one of the most elegant and delicious, intriguing and well defined — but there we go again. The point is that Tetsuya’s signature Tasmanian ocean trout dish was divine with the Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon ’91 (Hunter Valley), the succulent pale-pink fish swimming playfully in the golden wine with its redolence of buttered toast and lime.

Then there was a ruffled cream-colored pillow festooned with green and orange jewels — a lobster ravioli, as it turned out, with basil and flying fish roe. After that, Peking duck on buckwheat and daikon and duck terrine, all in the middle of a white dish that looked like Antarctica; the buckwheat had a honeyed overtone that found resonance in Henschke Mount Edelstone Shiraz ’95.

But the most powerful moment of that evening had nothing to do with direct sensual indulgence. It was a realization that struck me just after we’d been seated at a simple white-clothed table beneath an Aboriginal painting from the chef’s extensive art collection, and were just beginning to delve into the wonders of the Tyrrell’s Semillon. Aside from the art, the room was spare; the food and wine were meant to create their own ambience. As I took in the obvious pleasure at surrounding tables, and glimpsed a jewel box of appetizers passing by, it occurred to me that I was on the verge of my third spectacular dinner in as many days — that I was, in fact, in the midst of being totally blown away by the food and wine scene in Sydney.

Naturally, food in all forms became an abiding interest during my explorations. The Sydney Fish Markets are the Southern Hemisphere counterpart of Tokyo’s, a sprawling display of bounty from the cleanest, richest marine environment on earth. One morning I watched buyers from all over the world bidding at the auction, then wandered among an incredible array of beautiful (and tasty) creatures of the deep before hopping the tram to Bondi Beach for breakfast.

HOW DOES THE WINE TASTE?
Sydney is often compared to San Francisco because of its hills and picturesque bay. For wine lovers, there’s another point of comparison. San Francisco is within easy striking distance of Napa and Sonoma; Hunter Valley, one of the outstanding wine regions in Oz, is just an hour and a half away from Sydney.

A combination of lean, weathered soils and ocean-cooled climate makes the Hunter’s wines distinctive. Semillon and Shiraz are particularly notable. A good Hunter Valley Semillon, such as those produced by Tyrrell’s and Brokenwood, has a snappy lime-honey character in youth and develops a rich, toasty complexity with several years of bottle age; from oysters to curry, as they say. Hunter Shiraz is notable for a perfumed earthiness that is consistently exemplified by Rothbury Estate, among others. Not all the wines on Sydney restaurant lists are from the Hunter, of course. Wine regions all over the country offer Rieslings etched in fruit-flavored stone, black Shiraz like a Dionysian kiss, unwooded Semillon that epitomizes dry white wine, increasingly refined Pinot Noir, outstanding takes on Pinot Gris, Verdelho, Marsanne, and old-vine Grenache. The exceptions are all French: Champagne, of course, with a few Rhônes and Burgundies here and there; California seems not to exist from the Down Under perspective, and I, for one, find that rather refreshing.

I returned home with several bottles of Australian wine, of course — and some olive oil, as well. There’s an olive oil revolution under way in wine regions all over the world, and Oz is no exception. The reason it’s happening in wine regions is that olives thrive in the kind of Mediterranean climate — sunny and dry — that produces many of the world’s best wines. Australia is one of the olive oil epicenters. There is also a burgeoning farmhouse cheese industry.

Simon Johnson, a Sydney food purveyor, brings both into focus in several Dean & Deluca-style showrooms. I visited the home base in the old Pyrmont district, near Darling Harbour. Sipping espresso and browsing through several maddeningly fragrant rooms, I found extra virgin oils from the Primo Estate and Maroudas (both in South Australia), along with fine Italian oils such as Laudemio and Possetti. In a dim, spring-cooled chamber filled with aging cheeses I whiled away a sensual half-hour tasting cheddars from Tasmania and chèvres from Victoria.

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Throughout my visit to Sydney, I kept thinking of something I’d seen while sailing on the harbor: those people climbing up the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Asking around, I found out that the BridgeClimb was new, and all the rage. Recognizing a great urban adventure when I saw it, I resolved to give it a try.

Early on my last day in Sydney I dressed in shorts and hiking shoes, ate a hearty breakfast, and made my way to an office on Cumberland Street directly underneath the southern end of the bridge. At the time stamped on my ticket, I joined 10 other people in a small room where a young, outdoorsy woman in a jumpsuit briefed us on what we were about to experience. At the end of the briefing she asked each of us to blow into a breath alcohol meter (I was a little nervous after a night on the town, but I passed) and sign a standard liability release. Moving to another room, we removed all loose objects from our persons, including cameras, and stashed them in lockers. Then we were issued protective jumpsuits and safety belts with attached fall-arresting tethers, which we learned how to handle by practicing briefly on a mock-up of the actual safety hardware on the bridge.

It was easy — just slip the large ball bearing on the end of your tether into a waist-level track alongside the steps, and pull it along as you walk. Should you stumble, the bearing seizes up and stops any fall. Then we filed out through a short tunnel behind our guide and took to the girders for a leisurely, half-hour hike to the top, where a photographer waited to record our achievement for mom and posterity.

What a spectacular experience! The sensation of hiking through the gigantic Tinkertoy structure suspended over water was exhilarating, as was finally standing atop that grand old bridge with Sydney at my feet. I could see how the Parramatta River swelled into the estuary at the head of the harbor, and the majestic sandstone headlands forming its mouth, with the whitecaps of Bass Strait beyond. There was the Opera House and The Rocks, Cockle Bay with its restaurants and shark-filled aquarium, the forest of yacht masts marking Rushcutters Bay, the lush Botanical Gardens, Blues Point, and the other neighborhoods I’d visited over the last 10 days. I could even see the airport — which was, with great reluctance, my next destination.

Rod Smith is the Los Angeles Times wine columnist and writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits, but he says he’d rather be sailing on Sydney Harbour.

CLUBS DOWN UNDER
Queensland, Australia, a state boasting two of the country’s premier tourist attractions — the Gold Coast and the Great Barrier Reef — is now not only among the world’s hottest golf destinations, but serves as home for two Associate Clubs.

For those not familiar with the delights “down under,” the world-renowned Gold Coast is a coastal strip with magnificent beaches, high-rise and resort hotels, motels, theme parks, fishing expeditions, tourist shops, nightclubs, and more. And just up the coast toward the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, the once-quiet fishing village and gold port of Port Douglas has become a destination for world-class boating, hospitality, and recreation facilities. Golf in Port Douglas features sand-blown, open coastal land adjacent to the Coral Sea.

Australia’s second largest state, Queensland, also called the Sunshine State, offers tropical weather with little seasonal variation.

NICKLAUS' NEW FRONTIER
In ranking 3-year-old Lakelands Golf Club as No. 8 among Australia’s best resort courses, Golf Australia magazine asked: “How can a mere infant make such a cheeky, and profound, impression?”

The answer might be found in a name, Jack Nicklaus, who took the assignment to transform an ancient flood plain into a true resort-style course. The five tee options will appeal to Associate members of all playing levels. Nicklaus designed and personally supervised construction of this course — his first signature course in Australia. The Nicklaus touches are evident, such as the trademark bunker guarding the putting surface of the par-3 No. 6 hole and the numerous long, shallow fairway bunkers.

Lakelands’ signature hole is the 117-meter (129-yard) par-3 No. 14, which is flanked by a pond and a gently tiered waterfall, which cascades off the left of the green. Miscue your short-iron tee shot even slightly left when the flag is up the back and five will be a good score. The hole already has provided the young course its share of lore. Regulars will tell you that shifts in the wind will make good players use long irons on the hole.

As its name implies, water is in evidence in the Nicklaus design and is adjacent to 11 holes. But only the approach shot on the par-4 No. 8 hole is a challenging forced carry over water.

The clubhouse, which looks eastward to the famous Gold Coast, is luxurious as well as functional, with restaurants and bars open for lunch seven days a week. A terrace provides outdoor dining. Visitors can enjoy reading Nicklaus’ notes on the framed original design drawings hanging in the clubhouse.

A TOUCH OF ENGLAND IN OZ
Open and undulating, the recently opened Links Golf Club, Port Douglas conjures up the characteristics of the original British links that gave us golf. Small bunkers abound, many deep and forbidding, guarding approaches and warning caution. Humps, hollows, and awkward little hummocks as well as larger dunes proliferate to create a challenging and picturesque arena for golf. And, like its Scottish cousins, golf is always played before a bracing breeze beside the Coral Sea.

The main difference between The Links and traditional courses is the intrusion of a brilliant segment of pristine tropical rain forest, which completely divides the site and provides a splendid reminder of the superior pleasure of playing links golf under warm tropical skies. In addition to great golf, players are treated to magnificent views of surrounding mountains, as well as the surroundings of native flora, jabiru, and other native bird life.

The clubhouse is built in the traditional North Queenslander style, and features indoor and outdoor dining in order to take advantage of the region’s warm tropical climate. The indoor areas of the clubhouse have a distinctly residential feel, but the emphasis is on the outdoor lifestyle.

LAKELANDS GOLF CLUB
Location: Merrimac, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
Designer: Jack Nicklaus.
Par: 72.
Length: Five sets of tees: 6,489 meters (7,099 yards) off the Nicklaus black tees; 6,142 meters (6,717 yards) off the blue tees; 5,814 meters (6,358 yards) off the white tees; 5,334 meters (5,835 yards) off the red tees; and 4,685 meters (5,025 yards) off the yellow tees.
Amenities: Driving range and practice facility, Jack Nicklaus Golf School, and clubhouse with dining, bar service, and meeting facilities.

LINKS GOLF CLUB, PORT DOUGLAS
Location: Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia.
Designer: Thomson, Wolveridge & Perrett.
Par: 71.
Length: 6,125 meters (6,701 yards) off the blue tees; 5,706 meters (6,240 yards) off the white tees; and 5,239 meters (5,729 yards) off the red tees.
Amenities: The clubhouse is traditional North Queenslander style, which takes advantage of the warm tropical climate.

GOLF, AUSTRALIA STYLE

By Mark Gibson

Playing golf in Australia gives a player a wide variety of conditions. Hot, dry summer days get relief from the ocean breeze that will affect your game from lunchtime onward. Long, hot summers also make the fairways drier so the ball travels longer distances. However, these conditions can make fairway wood shots and long-iron shots difficult. So, here are a few tips.

The simplest way to make these long shots land easier is to play the ball slightly back in your stance, which means the club will still be in a descending arc at the moment of impact. This will assist the ball upward.

And, even though the cooling effect of the afternoon ocean breeze is appreciated, it can make approach shots into the greens more difficult. To help keep the ball flight under control, keep the ball down, out of the wind. To achieve this, take one more club than the distance dictates, because the harder a shot is hit, the more spin it creates. This often results in an unwanted higher flight. Then, play the ball a little farther back in your stance and take an abbreviated backswing, keeping the clubface a little closed throughout the swing. The shot is made with a strong through-swing and with a low, abbreviated follow-through.

A final tip about how to enjoy golf in Australia: Make sure you put on plenty of sunblock and drink fluids before, during, and after the game.

Mark Gibson is head golf professional at the Lakelands Golf Club. He was voted Australian PGA Teacher of the Year.