The Sydney Opera House on a bad LSD trip

As my day of beach visits in Sydney wrapped up on Saturday afternoon I headed back in to the Circular Quay area and up towards The Rocks to my bed. I desperately needed to shower and change before going out for dinner. As I walked up the side of the harbour I noticed quite a few folks with their cameras mounted on tripods, all pointed at the Opera House. OK, such a scene isn’t all that unusual but, well, it just seemed different this time. Sure enough, it was.

I happened to be in Sydney during the middle of the Vivid Sydney event. Billed as the largest event of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, Vivid Sydney includes large-scale light installations, a concert for dogs and all sort of other wacky stuff. One of the events, a repeat from last year but with a different artist this time, was Lighting the Sails. Basically the Opera House was lighted from across the harbour with rather intricate patterns and designs. It was surreal, particularly as some of the schemes were animated (there is a video below).

The event was, overall, very cool. And it definitely brought folks out to the harbour. That being said, it looked pretty much like all of us watching were tourists, not locals, so I’m not entirely convinced that we wouldn’t have been in that neighborhood anyways.