What is your favourite place to go in your city?
When people ask about my favourite place in Sydney, it’s easy to list the obvious ones. The Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Botanical Garden—everything the postcards promise—are all within a short walk of each other. Add The Rocks, with its historic laneways tucked beneath the Bridge, and you’ve got the full tourist circuit.
But my real favourite place is none of those.
It’s the OpenAir Cinema in the Botanical Gardens, the one you can see in the picture above. Every summer it appears again, like a seasonal friend—people arriving early for dinner, the harbour shimmering behind you, the Bridge and Opera House quietly taking their positions in the background. And you’re completely open to the elements. Our funniest visit was on a night of torrential rain, so heavy that all you could do was laugh along with everyone else, huddled under ponchos while the movie kept rolling.
When the sun behaves, and finally slips away, the screen rises and you watch a film under the open sky. It’s all the beauty of Sydney concentrated into a single experience—food, light, water, architecture, and that warm summer air. For me, this is the place where the city feels most alive, and somehow, most at ease.
The Afterword 
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