Sydney, Australia, is one of fourteen destinations featured on Waddles' World Tour, RestMap's free daily 5-letter word puzzle. Each week's puzzles are themed around a different city, and every solve unlocks an authored travel fact about the place. The Sydney Opera House anchors the Sydney week. Below are five sourced facts that turn up across the Sydney puzzle set.
Sydney's first city sewers, built in the 1850s, discharged raw sewage directly into Sydney Harbour at Fort Macquarie — which is now Bennelong Point, the exact site of the Sydney Opera House. One of the world's most iconic cultural venues sits where the city once pumped its waste.
Source: Sustainability Matters, Pipe PerfectionWhen the Sydney Harbour Bridge officially opened on 19 March 1932, retired cavalry officer Francis de Groot galloped forward on horseback and slashed the ribbon with his sword before the Premier could cut it. He was arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital, and the ribbon had to be hastily retied for the official ceremony.
Source: Wikipedia Sydney Harbour Bridge, Time Out SydneyBefore modern sewers, Sydney used the 'pan system' — metal pans placed beneath toilet seats to catch waste, sealed airtight to trap fumes. Full pans were placed on the curb like garbage bins for collection, carted to treatment sites, and their contents processed into cakes of manure for sale as fertilizer.
Source: Pipe Perfection, Heritage InstituteThe Sydney Opera House was originally budgeted at $7 million and scheduled to open in 1963. It actually cost $102 million — 14 times over budget — and opened a decade late on 20 October 1973. The cost overruns were so extreme that the project was largely funded by a special state lottery.
Source: Britannica, National Museum of AustraliaDanish architect Jorn Utzon won the Sydney Opera House design competition from 233 entries submitted by architects from 30 countries. His design was inspired by peeling an orange — he resolved the complex roof geometry by cutting all shell shapes from a single sphere, making each piece mathematically related.
Source: Britannica, UNESCO World Heritage Centre