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Sydney Tower - Centre Point
 As
you familiarise yourself with Sydney, you will find yourself looking
skyward and the crick at the back of your neck will confirm that Sydney
is not wanting for skyscrapers. From Darling Harbour to the CBD and into
Surry Hills, the Sydney skyline is dominated by truly massive office and
hotel buildings which tower above what remains of the federation and
colonial buildings below.
None of these
structures is quite as gravity defying as Sydney Tower on Market Street,
between Pitt Street and Castleraegh Street in the Central Business
District (CBD), a telecommunications mast with an observation deck at the
305 metre point and a revolving restaurant too.
One of Sydney's most
visited attractions is the Observation Deck and restaurant, which at 305
metres high, is the highest observation deck in the Southern Hemisphere.
You can see right across the city area and, on a clear day, all the way to
the Blue Mountains in the West.
There is a guided
tour which gives an insight into the function of the tower, and high
powered telescopes which allow you to home in on key sites and, if
people-watching is one of your favourite past-times, spy on unsuspecting
Sydneysiders tucking into their lunchtime sandwiches below.
Thankfully the
operators of the Tower haven't been too greedy, and once you have paid for
your admission, the telescopes and other facilities are available at no
extra cost.
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View from the
restaurant at dusk
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The observation area
is something of an architectural marvel in that it was hoisted up the
central needle midway through construction. This was the engineers'
solution to the problem of building a tower of this height and magnitude.
The Sydney tourist
planners had a hand in the construction too, and included a restaurant on
at the observation level which rotates slowly through 360 degrees as you
eat.
The fairly
reasonable menu prices are displayed at the base of the tower and, if you
decide to treat yourself to a revolving meal, it is likely to be one of
your more memorable restaurant visits.
A word of warning to
those with vertigo, the view from the deck is spectacular, but if a 305
metre gap between you and the ground and a noticeable wobble in high winds
are not to your taste, then take your Sydney Tower memories back home on a
postcard.
If shopping is more
your thing, or you believe that if we were supposed to get views of Sydney
from 305 metres above the ground then we would have been born with stilts,
there are plenty of shops to keep you entertained in the shopping complex
at the base of the tower. The leading Aussie brands are represented here
as well as speciality stores like Swatch and the Olympic Store.
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