Sydney Tower Restaurant and the illusion of view

Last Saturday I lunched with family and family friends at the revolving restaurant atop Sydney Tower. Everyone made the obligatory comments about the spectacular view. I noticed, however, that very rarely did any of the hundreds of diners seem to look out the window. This, in my view, is because the view, which all the tourist brochures assure you is beautiful, is breath-takingly ugly. Except for some glimpses that pass by, it is at least as bad as the officially lauded view from that other hideous Sydney tourist attraction, the Monorail.

In 1770, when Captain James Cook sailed into Sydney Harbour, or Port Jackson as he named it, he excitedly wrote of the best harbour in the world. It is indeed a huge, beautiful and deep harbour, with tributaries and arms all over the place, so Sydneysiders are blessed with the presence of lots of waterways. An early diarist noted that his ship had to move slowly through the harbour because of the abundance of marine life. Today Port Jackson is all but dead. And this is the best bit of the view from Sydney Tower, when not obscured (as it mostly is) by filthy, disintegrating, jerry-built architecural monstrosities.

Unfortunately, the undisputed glory of the harbour, from a bird's eye view, is nothing compared to the disgusting sprawl of a city of four million people, and the polluted film of the sky. What you see from Sydney Tower is perhaps the most graphic example one can imagine of wrong planning, execrable architecture, human misery and downright aesthetic and environmental vandalism that Australia can offer all in one place. No one wants to view it, but to admit that is seen as infra dig.

As in the case of the appalling rough concrete interior design of the Sydney Opera House, no one wants to expose the naked emperor. I kept my mouth shut because it was a luncheon for a family member's birthday, but it was clear no one wanted to see what may well be the most expensive and most-touted view on this continent. I saved my comments for this blog.