Sydney

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge across Sydney Harbour that carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic between... the Sydney central business district and the North Shore. The dramatic view of the bridge, the harbour, and the nearby Sydney Opera House is an iconic image of both Sydney and Australia. The bridge is nicknamed "The Coathanger" because of its arch-based design. Under the directions of Dr J.J.C. Bradfield of the NSW Department of Public Works, the bridge was designed and built by English firm Dorman Long and Co Ltd of Middlesbrough, and opened in 1932. According to the Guinness World Records, it is the world's widest long-span bridge. It is also the fifth longest spanning-arch bridge in the world, and it is the tallest steel arch bridge, measuring 134 metres from top to water level. Until 1967 the Harbour Bridge was Sydney's tallest structure. The southern bridge end is located at Millers Point in The Rocks area, and the northern end at Milsons Point in the lower North Shore area.
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The Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney and the seat of the Archbishop of Sydney,... Cardinal George Pell. The cathedral is dedicated to "Mary, Help of Christians", Patron of Australia. St Mary’s holds the title and dignity of a minor basilica, bestowed upon it by Pope Pius XI in 1930. St Mary's is the largest church in Australia, though not the highest. It is located on College Street in the heart of the City of Sydney where, despite the high rise development of the Sydney central business district , its imposing structure and twin spires make it a landmark from every direction. In 2008, St Mary's Cathedral became the focus of World Youth Day 2008 and was visited by Pope Benedict XVI. Sydney was colonised on 26 January 1788, as a penal settlement governed in the name of King George III by Captain Arthur Phillip, for prisoners transported from Britain. A good number of the people to arrive in Sydney at that time were military, some with wives and family. There were also a number of free settlers. The first chaplain of the colony was the Reverend Richard Johnson of the Church of England.
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Trent Sullivan is an Australian movie and television actor, born in Sydney. He received his start in acting at four years of age when he played... Rupert in the comedy-drama film Me Myself I. Trent attends Saint Stephens College on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Sullivan currently performs in the Channel Ten and Nickelodeon UK programme H2O: Just Add Water, where he plays Elliot Gilbert, the younger brother of main character Emma.
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Cyril Ritchard was an Australian stage, screen and television actor, and director. He is probably best remembered today for his performance as... Captain Hook in the Mary Martin musical production of Peter Pan. He was born Cyril Trimnell-Ritchard in Surry Hills, Sydney, Australia, to Sydney-born parents, Herbert Trimnell-Ritchard, a Protestant grocer, and his wife Marguerite, a devout Roman Catholic who ensured her son was raised as a Roman Catholic. Educated by the Jesuits at St Aloysius' College, Cyril was a life-long devout Catholic who attended Sunday Mass wherever he happened to be. Early in his career, Ritchard played in numerous musical comedies, including Yes, Uncle! and Going Up, both in 1918 with actress Madge Elliott . He achieved star status in 1954 as Captain Hook in the Broadway production of Peter Pan co-starring Mary Martin, with whom he shared the same birthday . For his work in the show, Ritchard received a Tony Award. Both Ritchard and Martin reprised their roles in the NBC television productions of the musical, beginning with a live color telecast in 1955.
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Elle Macpherson is an Australian model, actress, and businesswoman nicknamed "The Body". She is perhaps best known for her record five cover... appearances for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue beginning in the 1980s. She is also known as the founder and primary model for a series of business ventures including Elle Macpherson Intimates, a lingerie line, and "The Body", a line of skin care products. According to Forbes, Macpherson possesses assets around $60 million. In 2010, she became the host and executive producer of Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model. Macpherson was born Eleanor Nancy Gow, in the Killara neighbourhood of Sydney, Australia, the daughter of entrepreneur and sound engineer Peter Gow, a former president of a Sydney rugby league team, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. Her mother Frances worked as a nurse before she married. Macpherson grew up in Killara, a North Shore suburb of Sydney, and she attended Killara High School. Macpherson is the eldest of four children including the businesswoman and environmentalist Mimi Macpherson.
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Kevin Bloody Wilson is a comedy singer/songwriter who uses his heavy Australian accent/style with great success. Without the aid of radio or TV... coverage , he has built up a widespread cult following. Bryant was born in Sydney, New South Wales, although he identifies himself with Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where he was an electrician in the gold mines. In the 1970s Bryant fronted his own band called 'Bryan Dennis and the Country Club'. He also used the name 'Bryan Dennis' when he hosted a country music show on 6KG in Kalgoorlie from 1973 to 1980, before he was thrown off air for playing the parody song, "I'm Heaving On A Jet Plane". He moved to Perth and began playing bawdy songs as a hobby, singing at pubs and football clubs. In 1984 he put together a cassette of his songs called Your Average Australian Yobbo, which he sold at gigs and by mail order. He managed to sell 22,000 copies of the cassette before it was eventually transferred to LP, where it went on to sell many thousands more. He is notable as Perth's most famous comedian.
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Brendan Cowell is an Australian actor, screenwriter and director. Cowell was born in Sydney. He stumbled upon acting by accident while waiting for... his sister to come out of a rehearsal; he was then cast in a commercial at age 8. He went to Charles Sturt University, in Bathurst, to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre/Media, originally considering journalism as a career option. Although he is generally known as an actor, he also has many off-screen credits to his name, such as writing and directing. He won the Patrick White Playwrights' Award for his third play Bed along with a collection of other awards. His play Ruben Guthrie showed at the Belvoir St Theatre in 2009 to sell-out houses. It has a new production at La Boite Theatre in 2011, starring Gyton Grantley and directed by David Berthold. His most famous acting role is playing the enigmatic Tom on Australian cable TV's Love My Way, for which he also wrote several episodes, and playing Todd for the first two seasons on Life Support on SBS TV, for which he also wrote sketches.
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Yvonne Strahovski is an Australian actress. Born in Australia to Polish immigrant parents, Strahovski speaks Polish and English. After graduating... from the University of Western Sydney, she featured in a number of Australian television shows before starring as Sarah Walker in the American television series Chuck. Strahovski was born in Campbelltown, a suburb of Sydney, as Yvonne Strzechowski to Peter and Bozena Strzechowski. Her parents had emigrated from Warsaw, Poland. She adopted the more phonetic spelling of Strahovski as her stage name at Chuck, which was at producer Josh Schwartz's behest for the sake of easier pronunciation. Strahovski's father is an electronic engineer, and her mother works as a lab technician. Strahovski started acting when she played Viola in a school production of Twelfth Night. She spent her high school years attending Santa Sabina College, Strathfield. She graduated from University of Western Sydney's Theatre Nepean in 2003.
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Geraldine Brooks is an Australian journalist and author whose 2005 novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While retaining her Australian... passport, she became an American citizen in 2002. A native of Sydney, Geraldine Brooks grew up in its inner-west suburb of Ashfield, where she attended the all-girls' Bethlehem College and the University of Sydney. Following graduation, she was a rookie reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and, after winning a Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship, moved to the United States, completing a Master's degree in journalism at New York City's Columbia University in 1983. The following year, in the Southern France artisan village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup, she married American journalist Tony Horwitz and converted to his religion, Judaism. As a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans, with the stories from the Persian Gulf, which she and her husband reported in 1990, receiving the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad".
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Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the... Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Subsequently, a writing prize there has been named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New England . He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books. Keneally was known as "Mick" until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler's Ark , which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler's List.
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Allan Robert Border AO is a former Australian cricketer. A batsman, Border was for many years the captain of the Australian team. His playing... nickname was "A.B.". He played 156 Test matches in his career, a record until it was passed by fellow Australian Steve Waugh. Border still retains the world record for the number of consecutive Test appearances of 153 and the number of Tests as captain. He was primarily a left hand batsman but also achieved sporadic success as a part time left arm orthodox spinner. Border amassed 11,174 Test runs . He hit 27 centuries in his Test career. He retired as Australia's most capped player and leading run-scorer in both Tests and ODIs. His Australian record for Test Match runs stood for 15 years before Ricky Ponting overtook him during the Third Ashes Test against England in July 2009. Border was one of the 55 inaugural inductees of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. Born in Cremorne, a North Shore suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Border grew up with three brothers in the nearby suburb of Mosman.
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Claudia Lee Black is an Australian actress and voice actor, known for her portrayals of Aeryn Sun in the science fiction television series Farscape,... Vala Mal Doran in the science fiction series Stargate SG-1, Chloe Frazer in the Uncharted series, the witch Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins and squadmate Samantha Byrne in the game Gears of War 3. Black was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. She was educated at the Kambala Girls School, in Sydney. Black has spent most of her life in Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Claudia has acted in Australian and New Zealand television and movies. She portrayed a hermaphrodite named Jill Mayhew in the Australian television series Good Guys Bad Guys. She also had a leading role in the New Zealand soap opera City Life playing the role of Greek lawyer Angela Kostapas. For her roles in Farscape, Black was nominated for a Saturn Award in the Best Actress category in both 2001 and 2002, and won the award in 2005. She has appeared in the feature films Queen of the Damned and Pitch Black.
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Catherine Jane Sutherland/Catherine J Chilson is an Australian actress best known for playing Katherine "Kat" Hillard, the Pink Ranger on Mighty... Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers: Zeo, and Power Rangers: Turbo from 1995–1997, joining the TV series in the third season and leaving in 5th season. She reprised the role in season four, Power Rangers: Zeo, and season five, Power Rangers: Turbo , and appeared in the movie that connected the two seasons. She has done voiceovers for various characters on Power Rangers since Catherine left the show; the most famous is the female Machine Empire General Tezzla in the Power Rangers: Wild Force episode "Forever Red". She played the onscreen victim of a deranged serial killer in the 2000 film The Cell. In the theatrical cut she appeared as only a dead body, although the DVD release contains deleted scenes of her before her character's death. She got the role in the movie by appearing on the Australian reality show Dream Factory. In 2004, Sutherland had a brief role as Sarah Price, the wife of a murder victim on an episode of America's Most Wanted.
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Phoebe Jane Elizabeth Tonkin is an Australian actress and model. She is best known for portraying Cleo Sertori in H2O: Just Add Water and Fiona... Maxwell in Tomorrow, When the War Began. As of 2011, she portrays Faye Chamberlain in The Secret Circle. When she was four, Tonkin attended several dance courses in classical ballet, hip hop, contemporary dance and tap dance. At the age of twelve, she began courses at the Australian Theatre for Young People at the Wharf Theatre. She later graduated from Queenwood School for Girls in Balmoral, New South Wales. Tonkin's first television appearance was on the Australian teen show H2O: Just Add Water, where she played one of the main characters, Cleo Sertori. While not a strong swimmer, she worked to improve her abilities during pre-production of the show. On 20 October 2007, Tonkin appeared on the Nickelodeon UK Kids' Choice Awards, where she presented the award for best band alongside H2O co-stars Claire Holt and Cariba Heine. Her other credits include appearances on the Australian series Packed to the Rafters and the film Tomorrow, When the War Began, and a guest role on Home and Away in 2010.
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