Sydney Harbour, tourist Mecca

The harbour is only 6,000 years old, and only a recent icon. Until the bridge was built, the identity of this state was inland bound with sheep, beer and bushmen.

John Urry describes the ubiquitous ‘tourist gaze’ as being, ‘directed to features of landscape and townscape which separate them off from everyday experience . . . taken to be in some sense out of the ordinary.’ Tourism privileges the visual.