Sydney: More than just a pretty face

SYDNEY, Australia — As you watch the upcoming Olympics and admire the stunning views of Sydney Harbor, remember this: In a roundabout way, we're responsible. Americans, that is. If we hadn't rebelled in 1776, the British might never have spun the globe looking for another place to dump their undesirables.

The crown had shipped 40,000 of them to its American colonies, mostly petty offenders like the debtors who settled Savannah, Ga., with James Oglethorpe. Forced to find another place to relieve its overcrowded jails, Britain discovered a continent so far away and so isolated that no convict would be able to breech the endless arc of ocean that formed its prison walls.

In going from Georgia to Australia, then, the Olympics have gone from one British penal experiment to another.

This odd kinship of outcasts dawned on me as I was sitting at a cafe beside Sydney Cove, the aquamarine inlet that sets off the heart of the city like a jade pendant. Ferry boats were churning through the whitecaps of crisscrossing wakes. On one side of the cove, the Opera House roof loomed like the upturned prows of a dozen giant rowboats. On the other side, blue Australian flags streamed in the breeze atop the long steel arch of the Harbor Bridge.

It's hard to imagine now, but this postcard spot was where the First Fleet landed in 1788 with a thousand convicts and sailors. Eight months and 10,000 miles from home, they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. They struggled and almost starved, yet somehow managed to transform their exile into a city and nation that will soon command the world's attention.

This melding of happy scenery and harsh history captures Sydney for me. The next Olympic city has become many things: a pan-Asian cultural center, a Pacific Rim boomtown, a sublime place to dine and drink and shop and play. But before any of it, there was the sea and the banished souls who found safe harbor halfway around the globe. Everywhere I turned, Sydney kept reminding me of them.

A harbor runs through it

The waterfront was the first thing my wife and I wanted to see when we arrived. The trip had been discombobulating. We left the dogwood blossoms of an Atlanta spring and emerged 22 hours later to find paperbark trees shedding their skin in an Australian autumn. This being our first time in the Southern Hemisphere, we gathered over the lavatory in our room to see for ourselves whether the water actually drains counterclockwise. Who knew that the revolving doors run backward, too? The thing blindsided me when we left the hotel to begin our explorations.