Situated at the Sydney Cove, Circular Quay is a major hub and ferry terminus of the city harbor. Vibrant and bustling with activity this place is the stepping-off point for many tourist attractions of Sydney. Located at the end of the CBD, this place is always dotted with, ferries, sail boats and cruises. It is a convenient starting point. One can reach any part of Sydney by catching a bus, train or taking a ferry from Circular Quay. Water taxis are also available from west Circular quay area.

The quay is actually semi-circular and got its name from the cove’s old crescent-shaped, convict-built sea wall. This is also the birth place of Sydney city.

There are walk ways, restaurants, parks, pedestrian malls and many ferry and train stations here. The icon of Sydney the Opera House is part of this beautiful area along with art galleries and The Museum of Contemporary Art. The grand custom house is also a major attraction. On the eastern side are food courts, large Dendy’s Opera Quays Cinema, cafes, bars all the way to the Opera house and on the western side are nice looking restaurants and famous Rocks area with serene and quite shopping arcades. One more major attraction here is the quaint Royal Botanical Gardens.

Many people love the winter walkways which start from the Overseas Passenger Terminal connect the terminal to the jetties and then again up to the fore court of the Sydney Opera House. One can find around 50 bronze plaques of writers like Joseph Conrad, D H Lawrence, Kipling and Mark Twain with passages from their works. One can take guided tours; book a seat for music shows, live theater, ballet or opera in any of the theaters and enjoy a great evening. On weekends street performers enthrall the visitors.

The quay is a hit with locals who love its quite serene surroundings and comfortable open spaces as well as with commuters who travel each day from Sydney Bay and other places. Many people gather to watch the magic of the mist rising out of blue waters and the sun appear in the early mornings. The nights at the quay are festive and full of life with lights from the Opera and other buildings reflecting playfully in the waters. Two major shopping areas are just a few minutes from the quay.

It gives great view of the city protected and sheltered from strong winds by ridges. The Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House frame the quay, giving it a unique view.

The place is a focal point for community celebrations and is worth a visit during New Year Eve and Australia Day firework celebration. One gets some of the most enchanting views of the Harbor and the city from here. It is a true picture postcard real life place.

Circular Quay is always well lit and patrolled.

It is a pleasant combination of leisure, transportations and tourism and one of the iconic places of Sydney. So don’t forget to be here.

If you are keen to watch most of the Australia’s famed wildlife, but are very restricted by time, then Featherdale Wildlife Park in Sydney is just the place for you.

This is because as it turns out, Featherdale Wildlife Park is a compact wildlife park – the kind of place you go through in an hour’s time (an hour is a generous allowance here) and get on with whatever you were doing before the visit, safe in the knowledge that you have seen most of what Australia has to offer in terms of wildlife.

Since Featherdale is located a considerable distance from Sydney city center – it being about an hour’s drive to the west of the city – the journey to the park is itself therefore bound to give you the opportunity to see most of Sydney city. And because Featherdale Wildlife Park is located on the way to the Blue Mountains Region of Sydney, it is a popular stopover for people traveling to explore the rustic Blue Mountains Region. Because of its compactness, these travelers find that giving Featherdale Wildlife Park a brief visit on their way to Blue Mountains does not inconvenience them too much – and after less than an hour in the park, they can be back on the road to the Blue Mountains.

This is not of course to say that all people who visit Featherdale Wildlife Park only visit it as a by-the-way though. Indeed there are people who travel considerable distance to Sydney, with the sole aim of visiting Featherdale Wildlife Park – and getting the opportunity to sample its quite extensive stock of both common and rarer wild animals.

One of the unique animals to be seen at Featherdale Wildlife Park is Australia’s icon – the Koala. And for this reason, Featherdale Wildlife Park makes the ideal place for you if you are visiting Australia from abroad to have a photograph of you taken with a Koala in the background as proof of the fact that you were indeed in Australia at some point in your life. The Koala is an animal that is very unique to Australia – and almost everyone who doesn’t give Australia a visit might never have the opportunity to see a real live Koala in their lifetime.

Other unique animals to be seen at Featherdale Wildlife Park in Sydney are the Emus and Kangaroos. And you will not only get the opportunity to see both these animals at this park – but also to feed them, if you are a person of good disposition.

The beauty of seeing animals in a setting like the one Featherdale Wildlife Park offers you is that you are guaranteed of seeing animals that you would only have been lucky to catch a sight of in the wild bush – because most of these animals are what are considered ‘shy species’ that try to avoid being seen by humans. There are, however, people who take an issue with this kind of caging for animals, with a feeling that it is not the way nature meant the animals to live and that it makes the animals ‘sad’.

The city of Sydney has over the years grown into the financial and corporate capital of Australia, and is arguably the biggest city in the country and indeed in the vast region in the pacific referred to as Oceania.

What is considered Sydney city proper sits on an area of about 26 square kilometers – though the city’s metropolis (whose residents also consider themselves residents of Sydney) stretches for tens more square kilometers on each side of the city.

Sydney is also a cosmopolitan city – with nearly a third of its population speaking a language other than English as their mother tongue, and more than a third of its population having been born in another country other than Australia. Examples of ethnic groups that find wide representation in Sydney include the Chinese, the Greeks and the native Australians – also called the Aborigines. Most of Sydney’s major ethnic groups tend to congregate in specific areas of the city such that there are areas where you are bound to find most of the city’s Chinese community, while there is also an area where you are bound to find most of the city’s Aboriginal community, another area to find most of its Indian community and so on and so forth.

The city of Sydney is also a city of education – with nearly a quarter of its residents being student at one or another of its numerous educational institutions. And for their high affinity for education, residents of Sydney enjoy relatively higher levels of income, with the average weekly income for a resident of citizen being in the five hundred to one thousand dollars. A third of the (working) residents of Sydney are actually professionals engaged in skilled professional jobs, which is quite remarkable – and possibly attributable to the fact that Sydney has quickly embraced the service economy which has more room for professionals (unlike the industrial economy where nearly everyone tends to be a laborer).

A considerable number of Sydney residents own the homes they live in – the number of residents in this category being nearly a third of the population. Again this is also remarkable, considering the real estate prices in Sydney, which have been described as among the highest in the world. It seems then that while Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world, she doest at least provide her residents with the means to enable them live here.

Sydney is home to most of Australia’s tourist attractions, and is a popular tourist destination – with the city receiving millions of visitors annually. Sydney’s tourism sector also receives a major boost from the city’s well developed tourism infrastructure and aggressive marketing.

Sydney’s climate is not harsh, which is to say that the winters are not too cold while the summers are also not too hot. The coldest it ever gets in Sydney in winter on average is about nine degrees Celsius – which is good considering that many other places often go to the negatives (sub-zero) in their winter. And the hottest it ever gets in Sydney is about 27 degrees Celsius – which again is not too bad, considering that some places can get as hot as forty making the heat simply unbearable. This makes Sydney pretty much an all-year-round tourist destination.