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From: Charles
Remote Name: 63.34.226.134
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Date: 24 Jul 2001
Time: 03:59 -0500
This afternoon we took a bus tour to familiarize ourselves with Sydney. The contrasts between Sydney and Brisbane were interesting.
Australia is a continent very close in size to the continental United States but it only has about 18 million people (compared to our 260 million plus). Metro Sydney has a population of 4 million, almost 25% of the entire population. Brisbane, on the other hand has approx 350,000 people.
When we checked out in Brisbane this morning I talked about it with the desk clerk, who was originally from Sydney. His comment was: Brisbane is a country city by comparison; Sydney is much busier. Down here, we struck up a conversation with a florist while waiting for the tour bus. When he learned we had been in Brisbane, he laughed and remarked that they don't like Brisbane much down here; that Sydneysiders consider Brisbaners to be a bunch of rednecks (his words!) and Brisbane itself a country town.
Sydney does have a much busier feel to it. The sidewalks (called "footpaths" in Australia) are much more crowded; the traffic heavier. The streets and public places also seem to have more trash than we noticed in Brisbane. Sydney also tends to have some street people and vagrants roaming around, which we'd also not noticed in Brisbane (at least where in the downtown area we'd been in). Rules don't seem to be posted as prominently, but they DO have signs everywhere pointing out that cameras are in use for security purposes.
On our way in from the airport, we talked about the cameras with the cabbie. He was very matter of fact about it and seemed genuinely puzzled that use of cameras like this was controversial in the States. The idea of a privacy issue just didn't seem to register at all.
The whole concept of personal security seems to have a different meaning here. In October Brisbane will be hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, a gathering of leaders from former various British colonial territories. There is a real concern about violence similar to that at the recent G-7 meeting in Italy (there have actually been some websites started about how to assault the security forces), yet in the paper this morning there was a article about the fact that none of the security forces was planned to be armed during the meeting. Go figure!
From: France
Remote Name: 64-83-219-162.dhcp.stcd.mn.charter.com
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Date: 21 Jun 2007
Time: 15:42 -0500
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