Sydney from A to sea

By SUSAN BUCKLAND

I envy the way my brother walks down the road from his house in Sydney, jumps on a ferry and is sitting in his office in the city 20 minutes later. He says it is like taking a harbour cruise to and from work every day.

So I bought a Sydney Ferries travel pass to take advantage of cheaper fares for the few days I was in the city and started doing what thousands of Sydney people enjoy doing. I travelled from place to place by ferry.

As brother Tim had described, this means of transport was no humdrum way of getting from A to B. As well, the weather was near-perfect for those few days. Sunlight danced off the white curves of the Opera House by day and the sky was shot with soft orange in the late afternoons.

I cursed not having my camera when a cruise liner sailed under the arch of the harbour bridge, her bulk etched against the twilight sky.

Night and day, bunches of people could be seen climbing to the steel ramparts of the Sydney harbour bridge. Way up there they looked like columns of ants.

To those bridge-climbers, the ferries ploughing round the harbour with their green and gold livery and fluttering flags must have looked like toy boats.

Either way, the surrounding scenery was so infinitely preferable to belching buses and motor vehicles, it is hard to imagine how anyone able to travel to work (or anywhere else for that matter) by ferry would want to grind their way through road traffic again.

The ferry harbour transport arrived and departed on time. There was a blissful absence of traffic lights, bumper-to-bumper gridlocks or any other obstruction to slow them down. And there was peace.

I was able to plan lunch dates in Manly, window shopping in Double Bay, harbour walks round Mosman and lunch in Woolloomooloo without any concern that I would be delayed en route. Also, the ferry ride up the Paramatta River to Homebush, venue of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and now host to major sports tournaments, was a breeze. Along the way, people hopped on and off at riverside jetty stops, the equivalent of floating bus shelters.

Then there was the way I felt when I arrived at each destination, a relaxed feeling, derived from fresh air, floating on water and great scenery. While someone else did the driving.

Sydney Ferries enjoy strong tourist patronage. And surely there is no reason to believe that Auckland's regular ferry services would not do the same if they were given the encouragement to carry more of us to and from far more points around our own fine harbour.

At present there are people who want to ram a monstrously expensive eastern highway across some of Auckland's loveliest bays. Already we have the chronic problem of too many cars and not enough integrated public transport in our city.

The Waitemata may be wider and more tidal than Sydney Harbour. But it is spectacular in its own way. Could we not spend a fraction of the cost of the proposed Eastern Corridor on properly resourcing ferry transport and easing the plague of traffic on our roads?

A couple of Sydney friends always travel from Half Moon Bay to the city when they visit Auckland because they love the scenery as they sail down the harbour.

They are among the potential thousands of tourists who would line up along with many more Aucklanders to be ferried all about our magnificent harbour, if only we were able to get on with it.