Sydney the Frog
It was some point during the lockdown lottery of 2021 that we decided to spend a couple of nights in Sydney for the annual Vivid light festival. With the dates moving from June to August then mid-September - sound familiar ? - we confidently grabbed a screamer deal for the Rydges at The Rocks and readied ourselves for a mini getaway. Predictably, the Covid gods shat on this one too, and the event was cancelled with only a few weeks notice.
Jump now to June 2022 with relative normalcy returning. We refreshed those plans and thanked our lucky stars we could now get the same hotel for only three times the price of last year. What a bargain! So with this in mind, we duly adopted the “if you cant beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude and booked a CBD apartment for 3 nights with the full intention of seeing Vivid and what ever else Sydney had to offer. Like a splayed frog on a cold concrete slab, we planned to dissect the city over 4 days armed with a fistful of NSW Dine & Discover vouchers set to expire at the end of the month.
Fatpap chucked a Friday sickie and we arrived into town Thursday afternoon and quickly enjoyed a quiet little “dark & stormy” on our balcony overlooking the southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. With no actual plan in mind, we strolled a casual 400 metres to the Quay from our hotel to find the mobile food precinct packed with a selection of absurdly overpriced delights. To be fair, these guys need to make a buck, and the food all looked, and tasted spectacular, but not even on Survivor Island do you pay $6 for a 250ml water! But again, the food was absolutely phenomenal so we drank with constraint. Dining on the steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art, we eagerly awaited the 6:00pm kickoff of optic festivities.
Vivid began as a smart light festival in 2009 curated and headlined by Brian Eno. It has since grown into the biggest festival of lights, music and ideas in the world and runs every night over a 3 week period in June. The centrepiece of Vivid is the light sculptures, multimedia interactive work and building projections that transform various buildings and landmarks into an outdoor night time canvas of art. Etching itself as one of Sydneys most visited events, the festival now attracts over 2.5 million people and become world famous in its own right. The natural beauty of Sydney Harbour and the blending of modern and period architecture, together with vast parklands and harbourside precincts provide the organisers and artists a myriad of opportunity to create spectacular illuminations every year. Having done Vivid many times now, every year it changes, and every year it surprises.
We spent some time poking around The Rocks which is a natural amphitheatre for the show stopping Opera House and Harbour Bridge installations. Both rotate through a series of lighting displays, and so mesmerising did they become, one hardly noticed the restart of the sequence. Each are simply magical to watch. After perhaps 2 hours bivouacked beneath the granite faced south-eastern pylon of the old coathanger, we began the Vivid Light Walk through to Barangaroo and King Street Wharf. With the Barangaroo precinct nearing completion and King St recently upgraded, this section of the Harbour city has become a wonderfull addition and well worth the visit any time of the day. Along the 4km foreshore walk a number of installations grabbed our attention including NURA - a mass installation of 150 colour-changing light pillars, THE GALLERY - stunning light projections featuring First Nations and emerging local artists from Western Sydney, and CORPI CELESTI - an installation of bright inflatable planets of our solar system.
Between the natural neon buzz and vibrant nightlife of our metropolis, it was difficult to define between city and installation. Either way, Sydney sparkled, and the drove of visitors demonstrated why Vivid is a must see for any Australian at some point. We had another night to look forward to in a few days, and given the sheer size of this years offering, we would need it. But after clocking up 10km we believed we’d earnt a drink, so we shuffled back to our digs for a balcony nightcap (or seven) while the city continued to toot and screech below us till the small hours of morning.