Visions

Sydney Harbour take four (I cannot leave this place alone).

My first evening walking in Sydney I was puzzled by what looked like a bit of abandoned rollercoaster track vanishing from the street into a building. Round a corner I found another bit. It turned out to be Sydney's ill-fated monorail system, built in the 1980s as part of both the Darling Harbour redevelopment and the 1988 Bicentenary celebrations, much criticised both then and since and due to be dismantled later this year. Its curious circular route has never run to capacity and, as one of my fellow passengers commented today as it crawled tediously round another bend, 'It's hardly the bullet train'. At $5 for any distance, from travelling one stop (making it one of the most expensive public transport systems in the world) to staying on a loop of its seven stations all day (making it one of the cheapest in financial but not in mental health terms) I thought I'd do two loops, one on each side of the train. Even once I'd found a window that wasn't covered in advertising I'd had more than enough after one loop plus two stations. Some visionaries are wrong.

Others really can see the future. The Danish architect Jørn Utzon's 1957 design for the Opera House was also hugely criticised. It was a sculpture more than an engineered design and its costs rose tenfold over the sixteen years it took to construct. Seven years before it was completed in 1973 Utzon was forced to resign from the project amid scandal and dispute. This evening, when I was able to go inside and really did feel I was on a ship heading out into the glistening harbour, I was consoled that in 1999 he was reappointed to prepare a 'Statement of Design Principles' to serve as a permanent reference for its conservation and development.

Take two
Take three