'In the dense centre of city buildings rises the new tower of the General Post Office. It overlooks everything, and waves its flag of practical utility in the sight of the whole city. Very near to it appears the Town Hall, small by comparison, though more elaborate, and between them and the water the heavy masses of commercial buildings fringed by the unbroken line of masts. The city yet to be on the North Shore looks very small, and you are not surprised that no suspension bridge overhangs the water. You must look into the future for that.
'Complete your picture of the present by a glance up the long estuaries of the Paramatta and Lane Cove rivers, and a look across the rolling woodlands westward to the giant barrier of the Blue Mountains. Look also across the harbour, where right below you the round tower of Fort Dennison stands in mid-channel, and a little lower down the perfect half moon of Rose Bay, blue as the sky above. Look down to the Heads, where a dozen craft are entering upon the long huge rollers which break upon bluff Dobroyd opposite, or die down to ripples upon the innumerable beaches of Middle Harbour. Watch the many lights and colours of the water, the ultramarine of the mid-channel, the indigo in the shadow of the hills, the emerald of a strip close beneath the cliff, where no wind moves, nor any pulse of tide or ocean stir is felt; the glories of opal and amber, where fierce sun rays burn about rocky shores.
'Take in all the greatness and beauty of the present, and then try to realise the picture in the square miles of buildings already raised. You can see how they are growing, how far away to south and west, and through the forest and beside the waters of the north coast, houses and establishments of various kinds are rising like avant couriers of the compact masses whose advance is by no means slow. Look from them to a point of the city where roofs and chimneys are most closely packed, where the smoke of the labour of human life seems ascending perpetually, and you may see a succession of white puffs, and hear a louder, sharper pulse of toil pierce the low murmur of distant and multitudinous sounds, and you know that you look upon the present centre of the railway system of the colony; you have fixed your eye upon the focussing point of two thousand miles of railways. These are the feeders of the city; these reaching out divide and grip and drain the colony. They gather its produce, the results of its labour, and bring them down to this city, which stands without rival or competitor along 800 miles of coast.
The Town Hall, Sydney.
'Let us travel along each of these lines, radiating somewhat as the fingers of a spread hand from south to north.
'The South Coast Railway, the most recently opened and not yet completed line, runs down the south coast to Kiama. This line is a purveyor of many luxuries and necessaries of life, leading out first to broad suburban breathing grounds on the country between the southern bank of Port Jackson and Botany Bay, making a hundred square miles of good building country accessible, crossing the historic bay three miles up the tidal estuary of George River, crossing a somewhat barren plateau, and arriving at the National Park. It penetrates next vast forests and overruns tremendous gorges, winding about precipices, and getting down by a way of its own to the country at the foot of the Bulb Pass. All the seaward slopes and ravines of this pass are as a vast natural conservatory. They take all the morning sun, they are never touched by western or southern wind, they are plentifully watered with regular rains, and they nurse and produce a beauty unfamiliar to the latitude. Take a few steps over the brow of the hill on the old road, and look down. You see tropical verdure and bloom, palms rising a hundred feet, and spreading feathery plumes upon lance-like stems; myrtle and coral trees, figs and lily-pillies, with a sheen upon their leaves like the light on a summer sea; bowers and arches and impenetrable jungles of great vines, trailing tendrils fifty feet long, and swinging masses of perfumed bloom a hundred feet from the ground. There is nothing of the old familiar Australian bush about it. You are 1,200 feet above the sea, which stretches away to the world's rim beneath and before you. Below, past all the wonderland of the bush, is the white tower of Woolongong, and beyond that the fringe of white beach and snowy breakers, the Fern Islands, set in sapphire. Far, far away goes the coast land.
'Between coast-line and mountains lies the fertile land, the strip of country that serves and feeds the great city. The train comes here to be laden with the rich produce—milk, butter, and cheese—which by tons upon tons is taken in and distributed in Sydney every day. Out of the bowels of the mountains the line brings also coal and iron and shale and other mineral products, and from the dense forest pour down the little coast rivers.