The Opera House is the thing that every visitor to Sydney photographs, and it is also a good story about stubbornness and talent. The Danish architect Jørn Utzon won an international competition in 1957 with a design of white sail-like shells rising from the point of land called Bennelong Point. The engineering was so difficult that the building took sixteen years instead of the planned four, costs soared, and a change of government and a dispute with the authorities led Utzon to resign and leave Australia in 1966. He never saw the finished building in person. It opened in 1973, and its tiled shells, covered in thousands of glossy cream and white tiles, have become a symbol of the whole country.
The setting is the point. Sydney Cove, just beside the Opera House, is where the first British fleet landed in 1788 and began a convict colony. The Royal Botanic Garden curves around the next bay, the Harbour Bridge, nicknamed the coathanger, stands over the water, and the old streets of The Rocks, once home to convicts, sailors and dockhands, climb up behind. The Opera House is listed on its own, but it is part of a wider story that includes the convict sites of the colony, such as Hyde Park Barracks, a short walk away.
For a rider the area is for walking, not riding. The roads around Circular Quay are busy with buses, taxis and cyclists, parking is expensive and hard to find, and the motorways have electronic tolls that you should sort out in advance, particularly if you are on a rental. Leave the bike somewhere sensible and take the ferry, which is the best way to see the building, with its roofs changing colour in the light and the whole harbour spread around it.
Fuel stations are plentiful in the suburbs but sparse in the heart of the centre, so fill up on the way in. The best time to visit is early morning, when the forecourt is quiet and the light is gentle, or at dusk, when the sails turn pink and gold. Spring and autumn are comfortable, and summer is hot, humid and crowded, with spectacular thunderstorms over the harbour in the afternoon.