Darling Harbour is the famous area where you can find the beautiful Harbour Bridge, the Chinese Garden of Friendship or also Paddy's Market, this big chinese market where you can find anything. Indeed Darling Harbour is a area really popular with many people each day. For me it's the best area in Sydney, because you can walk around, wander over the quay to see the water, and obviously see the Bridge which is definitely really awesome on the night when it is illuminate. Here's a picture that I took of the Darling Harbour Bridge during the Vivid Festival, illuminated with multiple colours.

Sydney just announced that this area is going to be offered a new lifting of more than 1 billion dollars, with a new business skyscraper of 44 floors, new shops and a new amphitheatre in Cockle Bay. The co-owners of Darling Park will join together to reinvigorate Cockle Bay, at the East Side of Darling Harbour. The first skyscraper in this area was build in 1994 and was following by restaurants in Cockle Bay in 1999.

These last few years, Darling Harbour had known lots of transformations with for example the construction of Barangaroo district, Darling Quarter and also the new Sofitel Hotel. There are multiple redevelopment project in this area, like Ribbon project which is going to change a cinema in an hotel. Mirvac, the owner of Harbourside shopping centre also plan to renovate the centre.

Sofitel Hotel in Darling Harbour

The group GPT will take care of the construction of the project and the new building. Commonwealh Bank, principal owner of most of the skyscrapers in Sydney could loose some good views with this new building.

This project is in really good way and lots of discussions will take place bewteen New South Wales, municipal authorities and neighbour of this area.

The New South Wales and the Queensland have their own rugby competition named State of Origin. It's an annual series of 3 rugby games that happen every year between May and June. This competition confront the New South Wales Blues and and the Queensland Maroons.

This event was created in 1980 and it is one of the most attractive and important event in Australia. Every single player is selected none because of his own club where he is playing, but according to the State where he first played as a senior, so according to his origin's State. In fact, if a player was born in New South Wales, but his first game as a senior was in a Queensland club, he could be selected as a player for the Queensland.

The winner of this game is the one who won at least 2 of the 3 games. The Queensland Maroons won 23 times since 1980, and so the New South Wales Blues won only 13 times.

The players

Dale Shearer is the try-scorer of this game with 12 tries between 1985 and 1996, followed by Michael O'Connor (11 tries) and Allan Langer (10 tries).
The record of participations is held by Darren Lockyer with 36 games.

Stadiums

Throughout its history, numerous stadiums hosted the State of Origin game. The most used stadium were the Suncorp Stadium of Brisbane which welcomed 40 games, then followed by Sydney Football Stadium of Sydney with 14 games.

State of Origin 2016

This year, the first game of the State of Origin took place in Sydney, the 1st of June. It was a massive event, where I couldn't go because there were no tickets anymore. Queensland Maroons won the game 6-4.

The Game 2 will take place in Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane the 22th of June, and the third one will take place in Sydney in ANZ Stadium again, in July. So who will win the 46th session of this Game? Will it be Queensland like last year?

I can definitely say that since I am in Australia, one of the national celebration that the most impress me was The Mardi Gras. It is a festival that happen every year in Sydney. If we had to find an equivalent back in France, it would be the Gay Pride.

It is one of the most famous festival in Australia, that attracts thousand and thousand of people from all around the world. So the Festival of Mardi Gras takes place during one month with lots of events all around the city like "Bondi Beach Drag Races" or « The Academic Discussion Panel Queer Thinking » or also the "Fair Day", a party in Victoria Park that attract more than 70,000 people each year.

But let's talk about the history of this event, and why it was created. The first march took place on Saturday 24th June 1978 at 10pm and it was met with unexpected police violence. At the beginning this march was a contribution for the International Gay Solidarity Celebration and one of a series of events by the Gay Solidarity Group. It was supposed to promote the  National Homosexual Conference and help the San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day and it’s campaign against California State Senator John Brigg’s. Indeed he wanted to stop gay rights supporters teaching in schools. It was also created to protest the Australian visit of homophobic Festival of Light campaigner Mary Whitehouse. From 3000 participants in 1979, it reached more than 50 000 in 1984. The event started to be mediated from the mid-1980s. In 2008, the festival celebrated its 30 years and in 2012 they produced their largest ever parade with more than 10,000 participants only walking in the Parade. It generates each year  an estimated $38 million for the New South Wales economy.

 The most significant event is the parade at the end of the month. The participants parade on Oxford Street,Flinders Street and Darlingursht, which are the most important areas in Sydney. They walk on the road, and all of the spectators are on the street and can watch all of the parade there. I had the chance to see this parade on March. I was firstly really impressed by the incredible number of people in the streets. Indeed, even if Sydney is a busy city, all of the streets and roads were crowded from visitors. I could hear lots of different languages from people from all over the world, and also lots of French people! It was also really impressive for me to see all of the work that was made for the event : organisers close the most important roads every year, install lots of barriers, signs, posters in all Sydney and hire thousand of people for the security and the organisation of everything. During this event, participants parade all over the streets in colourful costumes and beautiful floats. It was incredible to see that each float had its own topic, represented one community, or even express a political message. There was lots of colours everywhere, and I could really feel that people who was parading was happy to be here to defend their own cause, and the defend the Gay community.

Here a short video that I made this day of one float:

A country couldn’t be really understand without having knowledge about its institutional set-up. Even if the political system in Australia is inspired by European and North-American democracies, it also has its own characteristics.

Presentation of country’s government

The thing that all of us have to remember about Australia is that it is truly a Monarchy. Elisabeth II, England’s Queen, is therefore also the Australia’s Queen, but more in a symbolic way. In 1999, Australian people had to decide via a referendum their political system, and they choose to keep the Queen as the head of the country. It also means that Australia decide to stay in the Commonwealth, a voluntary organisation of 53 independent and equal sovereign states. The purpose of Australia to stay in the Commonwealth is to preserve common cultural values with England, and promote the human rights and worldwide peace.

The Australian Constitution took place the 1st of January, 1901. There are 6 state governments: The New South Wales, in which we found Sydney, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia. There are also 2 self-government territories which are the Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory. A national government is here to regulate all of these states.

In Australia, there are 2 major political parties: a coalition between the National and Liberal Party of Australia, and the Australian Labor Party as the head of the government.

Regional geopolitical Context

As I am studying in Sydney , which is the most important city of New South Wales, it seems important to understand how the government function here.Here's the flag of the government in New South Wales :   

First of all, New South Wales has a government based on the principles of Westminster system, a kind of parliamentary government which follow the model of United Kingdom. The legislative power belongs to New South Wales Parliament which is represented by the New South Wales’ Governor, David Hurley since 2014.  (photo)

The executive power belongs to the Governor and also the ministers. The Premier minister and the ministers are chosen by the governor. The actual Premier of New South Wales is Mike Baird.

New South Wales celebrates his 150^th birthday of his own responsible government in 2006.

External and internal conflict in Australia

There isn’t actual conflict in Australia. The only major political problem in New South Wales and around was to choose the capital of Australia.

In the 20^th century, there was a really important rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, the 2 most important cities of Australia. To deal with it, the Australian Government chose to build Canberra, approximately in the middle of the two cities. The name “Canberra” has an aboriginal signification which means “meeting point”. So, even if Sydney is the most important city of Australia, Canberra was chosen to be the capital. This city is really unpopular in Australia, because Australian people think it is only a political city.

Canberra.

Arrived since already three weeks, I could now tell you that Sydney is such an amazing city to live. Beautiful beaches, parks, landscapes, streets are all of the things that I loved discover here.

But let's talk more about the university where I'm gonna study during this semester abroad :  MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

A little bit of history...

Macquarie University has been established in 1964.The chancellor is Michael Egan, and the vice-chancellor is Bruce Dowton. It's a public university of Australia. The name of the University has been given in reference of Major General Lachlan Macquarie, a British career military officer. It was the fifth Governor of New South Wales between 1810 and 1821, and was crucial in transforming this state from a penal colony into what is now Australia.
Since its creation, the university has been doing things differently. It was actually established to break traditions of a simple university. The will of Macquarie is to "be distinctive, progressive and to be transformational".

Macquarie University is ranked in the top ten Universities in Australia and in the top two per cent of universities in the world. In 2013, the number of students was more than 38 000.

 Location and organisation in Macquarie

Macquarie University is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. You can go to the city center in less than 20 minutes.

The campus have more than 125 hectares with green parks, facilities, and buildings. There are 6 faculties in Macquarie which are for example faculty of Art, Business and Economics, Human Sciences, etc... University also provide services and facilities such as a new library (as you can see on the first picture), Hospitals and clinics, sport and recreation center, some museums and art collections, a huge food court, and accommodations.

Welcoming integration and student interaction  

Even though I couldn't go to the Orientation Week, just before the beginning of the semester, there are lots of events to meet people here, and make new friends. Firstly, a good thing to know is that I live in the Macquarie University Village, which is on the campus. It really helps me meet new people, because there are lots of activities organised such as sports competition, free dinner, and even an Easter egg hunt. In the University, I went to the Welcoming meeting for international students, where I could visit this huge campus, met new people, and understood the organisation of the University. There was also a day where all of the associations presented themselves, and you can meet people that have the same interest than you. But even with all of these activities, it was kind of hard at the beginning to figure things out around here. It was hard to find the supermarket, to speak English all the times, to understand what you have to do in lectures... Today, I can say that I finally understand how this University works, how people live here, and it is easier to interact with people. Everyday is a new day to discover new things, meet new people, and have fun in this incredible environment!

Class content and cultural differences 

Here, the class content is not really the same than in France. You have one lecture and one tutorial each week for one subject. So as I took 4 subjects, I have 4 lectures and 4 tutorials each week. Each lecture spend 2 hours, and a tutorial spend 1 hour. You have the Ilearn Macquarie Website where you can find all of the information and homework that you have to do for the next class. I think that here electronic devices are more important than in France, because you can't know what is happening next week without checking on Ilearn.  

About the cultural differences in classrooms, here people come from all over the world. I had the chance to meet lots of international people such as people coming from Bangladesh, Denmark, Singapore, United States... There are more than 11 000 international students  in this University, and so lots of international associations.

To conclude with this University description, Macquarie is a good place to live, to study and to have amazing experiences!