January 2nd 2007. Sydney, Australia.

Today Ben and I are off on a walk around the city centre. Our starting point is the Town Hall.

Sydney City Council had to meet in various venues around the city after incorporation in 1842 until July of 1875 when the first part of the Town Hall was opened. Building continued however until 1889 when the Town Hall building was fully opened.

The building is stunning and has more than enough of a resemblance in its ornate design to create a sense of Hôtel de Ville, particularly in the main reception room which leads on to the Centennial Hall that is dominated by the massive pipe organ. This stunning and highly ornate Town Hall is not unlike some UK town halls (particularly in its interior layout and design) such as Manchester.

The land chosen for the Town Hall was previously a burial ground used until 1818. It was then farmed by a recluse by the name of Tom Dick who was murdered. As there were no heirs to the Dick estate the land reverted to state ownership.

Next door you will find the Cathedral of St Andrew, but many people on visiting the cathedral pass by the commemorative flagstaff outside not realising that it marks an important event in Australian military history.

Like all great cathedrals in the Empire the interior is awash with monuments to those who gave their lives in the service of their country. However, here outside the cathedral is a commemoration of the Church of England National Emergency Fund St Andrew's Huts which stood in the cathedral grounds from February 1940 until August 1947 providing recreational facilities and in their time 3 and a half million meals to the officers and fighting forces. Indeed there was also a mobile canteen which made nightly visits to isolated anti-aircraft and searchlight units.

The cathedral is a wonderfully traditional home for the establishment church. The building defies its age with the foundation stone only laid in 1837 and completion of the building in 1869. It has the appearance and feel of an ancient and not a new world monument with very pleasant stained glass.

Ben and I lunch at the Star Bar before heading on down George Street. This was at one time Brickfield Hill and it was the steep track from where convicts dug clay for baking into bricks for the colony's early buildings. In fact at the beginning of the 1800's the area was home to a small village known as Brickfield but by the 1830's the chaingangs were levelling out the George Street of today.

As we enter Liverpool Street we are in the city's tiny Spanish quarter. You can still see remnants of the changes in this area of the city with areas like Douglass Lane a reminder of the one time cobbled streets.

The light rail tracks outside Paddy's Market remind us of the old Sydney trams which ran until 1961. The tracks though are again in use with trams returned to the streets in July 1997.

We are now in China Town. Australia has had a significant Chinese population from the mid 1850's with early businessmen running the traditional trades of laundries, boarding houses and gambling dens.

I am struck by the sentiment on the Chinese Gate as we enter the heart of the community...Within The Four Seas All Men Are Brothers...a point we should all consider in our global village!

Alongside social history lies the economic history of our lives and times and things are no different in this area of Sydney. Dixon Street is actually named for John Dickson who built a steam driven windmill here in 1815 and managed to increase the grain production of the colony from 20 bushels a week to 960 even building a dam across the bay to harness the water he needed to drive the windmill.

Our walk takes us passed the Trades Hall, or more correctly The Trades and Industrial Hall and Literary Institute Association of Sydney which is home to the association of trades unions who founded the building in 1886 as a central meeting place.

Just as our fore-fathers realised the need for an educated and literate population we also have a key role to play in the futures of those who are not given the access to education that is standard in the developed world.

The now Pump House Tavern was originally a hydraulic pumping station built for the Sydney and Suburban Hydraulic Power Company to supply pressurised water through 80 kilometres of pipes under the city from 1891 until 1975. The deep water tank still visible on the roof was built by J. Abbot & Co Ltd from Gateshead, England.

Moving on to the Chinese Gardens this area was designed by landscapers from New South Wales sister state of Guangdong in southern China.

The area here leading up to Darling Harbour is a meca for leisure. But one fact few people know is that the huge IMAX is actually an Australian and not a Canadian invention. The rolling-loop projection system was invented by Ron Jones of Brisbane before the technology was sold on to the Canadians.

We stop here to watch a giant television screen showing the test match and to be entertained by a 3-piece jazz band in full cricket whites and pads playing...Blue skies (must be Australians and not the barmy army!)

I continue on in search of Australian inventiveness to cross the Pyrmont Bridge built between 1899 and 1902.

However few people are aware that one end of the bridge is Guardian Square . The Guardian was the name of the first novel published on the Australian mainland and the first to be written by a woman. In 1838 Anna Maria Bunn (nee Murray) wrote the novel at her home which stood nearby.

Pyrmont Bridge is a swing span all Australian design (Percy Allan) and construction that was built at the same time as London's Tower Bridge. Finished much sooner than Tower Bridge, Pyrmont was the first bridge in the world to be powered by electricity.

Into Cockle Bay for a flat white and some cheesecake at Citi Marina Cafe before heading back up into the city to visit the Queen Victoria Building which sits on the site of the city's early colonial marketplace.

Inside this stunning covered mall you enjoy the grandeur of British Victorian design and indeed one of the two main clocks is from Thwaites & Reed Ltd from Hastings in Sussex. What few Australians realise is that the statue of Queen Victoria that dominates the main entrance is not an original feature. Infact, until 1947 it stood infront of Leinster House in Dublin (seat of the Irish parliament). The statue was infact a gift from the people of Ireland to the city of Sydney in a spirit of goodwill and friendship.