Macquarie Visions

Bring back bunting, I say. Break open the flags and let them flutter from the highest post. String the darned stuff across the street, and down the street. Festoon the trees - the planes, the figs, the gums - festoon them all with the warm glow of fairy-lights as far up as the eye can see.

Why can't the future be more like the past?


It is so wonderful, and yet exasperating at the same time. The brochure calls it an 'immersive light display'. It is so very clever, and yet so very irritating. The writing moves to the left to the right, up, down and in her lady's chamber. We are immersed in old sepia photographs, which move and sway across facades. Very clever. But ... maybe ... too clever? Could it be that the best things in life are simple.


The immersion commences at St Marys Cathedral, well I guess that is back to basics. And that terrible excuse for a park actually came into its own providing a glorious perspective. Then onto Hyde Park Barracks and Joe Snell's Macquarie Arch. This is meant to represent the road over the Blue Mountains which opened up the colony and made it viable.


Other major buildings along Macquarie Street to receive the immersion treatment are The Mint, Parliament House, and the Mitchell Wing of the State Library. I have yet to see the Palace Garden Gates, The Conservatorium and the Opera House. That is next week's excursion. He built buildings. He built roads. He built a community. But he had a fatal flaw. He reckoned we came into this world as equals, and we should continue as equals once time is served for run-ins with the law. A bit of a bridge too far for many at that time.


The whole she-bang immerses the city from 27th May to 20th June, as part of VIVID, an annual celebration of light, music and ideas. I am particularly looking forward to the FIRE WATER reenactment at Campbell's Cove over the June long weekend. This year the wild colonials say hello to Bollywood. My mind boggles ...


Lachlan Macquarie became governor of the colony of New South Wales on 1st January 1810, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth. He was the 5th governer since 1788 - Phillip, Hunter, King, Bligh. He departed the colony on 1st December, 1821 returning to London to face charges, levelled at him by Bigge, that he was a wastrel out to self-agrandise. He died on 1st July 1824 a broken man. He was 62.