RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 23

RANDOM AT LARGE

80,000 GRAND OPERA

If the Australia Square building, with its circular shape and 50 storeys, is first over the horizon as a ship approaches Sydney, there can be no doubt that the strange lines of the opera house attract more attention, and certainly far more discussion, among Sydneysiders and visitors than skyscrapers or the harbour bridge. It looks sometimes like a collection of seashells, at others rather like billowing spinnakers in a flurry of yachts rounding a buoy. No-one in Sydney, apparently, is particularly interested in that. What occupies their attention is progress on the project and its cost. If a visitor lis-

tened to all the Australians on his ship, and those' he met ashore, and believed everything they had to tell him, he would not sleep at nights. The opera house, they say, is going to take far longer to complete than the famous bridge. Its cost, according to these reports, started at s3m, is now at sBom and is likely to rise further. Some of the stories about the thing simply have to be apocryphal. The basic building was just about complete, they say, when it was discovered that there was no provision for wiring it electrically, and they had to drill into the concrete all over the place . . . that there is no

provision for car parking ... that they forgot about the running water ... that for all its size, it will never hold enough people . . . that it is far too big to be half-filled in any part at one time. . . . But there is an unmistakeable pride among Sydney people in this extraordinary. piece of architecture, mainly because it is taking so long to build and is going to cost so much. Sometimes the pride is an inverted one, expressed in bitter complaints. But Sydney really likes it and has in it a lasting basis for conversation. It’s the same, as the old song sings, the whole world over. Remember Frances Hodgkins?