And the Bells shall ring

It’s Sunday again!

So we headed off to church this morning, you would assume we were going to the Cathedral, but no. we went to the oldest surviving church in Australia. St James King Street.

An interesting history, it was originally supposed to be the court house, but in the middle, they changed it to a church (the architecture does reflect that).

The church is “high church” complete with Incense and bells… I was thankful for the open door that we sat next to and the cooling breeze (and fresh air)

The outside,

The same side inside

The church is hosting a number of musical events, co-sponsored by the City of Sydney, to celebrate the new Organ. Tonight is the first part of Handel’s Messiah, and some Rutter Hymns, (we are not going, tempted… but need to pack today, as we are heading to Tasmania tomorrow)

The bells before we entered

Further away

During the service.

The entrance

At the entrance. St James is surrounded by homelessness, and works hard for help those in need

On the way to church, we wandered through Hyde Park.

Entering the park from Liverpool Street

The memorial close up

The fountain close up

Info about the ANZAC memorial

The giant trees

Which are dangerous… isn’t everything in Australia?

The beautiful fountain

Closeup

The fountain with the Bells from St Mary’s Cathedral (catholic) in the background

St Mary’s cathedral

Across from St James was a number of significant buildings

The Hyde Park Barracks , directly across the street (Macquarie)

Government house. The seat of government for NSW

The Sydney and Sydney Eye hospital

The state Library

We then made our way back to our hotel… I still love the architecture!

The tiny building build between the others

Town Hall

An interesting building

The end of the Queen Victoria Building (a shopping mall)

The old mixed with the new.

And other silly things

As is our thing… we stumbled onto two churchy things

The first St Stephen’s Uniting church (outside was under construction) but the inside was beautiful, it was the War Memorial Wall that caught my eye, I did not realize it was a church at first. What a pleasant surprise.

As we started to leave, the organist started practicing… so we lingered a bit before moving along.

The sanctuary

The sweet Nativity, complete with parrots

The second thing that we stumbled upon was the site of the First Sermon, and later church in Australia. It unfortunately burnt down 5 years after it opened.