(Attempting to) Make that which is uninteresting, interesting

Sydney residents are genuinely spoiled. There is an almost an overwhelming amount of things to see and do locally - stunning national parks, world class beaches, art, festivals, great food, coffee and wine. All against the backdrop of a beautiful, cosmopolitan, laid-back city. With such a streak of good stuff, we were bound to strike out eventually. And strike out we did.

Cockatoo Island today

Cockatoo Island, isn't exactly the Opera House,  but it is a pretty famous and well-regarded Sydney landmark. The history of the place is interesting enough - it's a tiny island in Sydney Harbour that was used to house convicts starting in the mid-19th century and later served as a reform centre for shall we say, ladies of the night and such. Think of it as a sort of Australian Alcatraz-cum-industrial centre.

Convict labor helped to turn the island into a shipbuilding site that reached its heyday during WWII (long after the convicts were gone). The few photos on the self-guided tour show an impressive operation, the largest ships appear to have dwarfed the island in size. Work on the final ship built at Cockatoo Island commenced in 1979 and by the early 90s the island was relegated to the largely deserted industrial wasteland that it is today.

The problem with Cockatoo Island is not that there isn't an interesting history behind it, but that there is nothing to see. I assure you that by reading the account you will have virtually the same experience as if you went there in person (minus the disappointment). Since Cockatoo Island was operational until relatively recently, that means it was a functioning industrial site long enough for all the interesting stuff of historical note to have been long since replaced, destroyed or removed.

Cockatoo Island is for all intents and purposes a scrap of prime real-estate in Sydney Harbour, covered in locked, empty, mouldering warehouses that are masquerading as a tourist attraction. The only benefit to being on Cockatoo Island, is that since you are standing on it, it is no longer a concrete blot on an otherwise pleasing view.

After our visit, I couldn't resist the urge to look up Cockatoo Island on TripAdvisor, just to see what others thought. (Insert caveat here, that I normally find TripAdvisor quite unreliable, more on that in an upcoming post.)

Anyway, Cockatoo has pretty solid reviews on TripAdvisor.

• 170 Excellent or Very Good 
• 24 Average
• 13 Poor or Terrible

Now my disappointment in Cockatoo Island has nothing to do with a general disinterest in history or unwillingness to read a few plaques etc. I have not one, but two history degrees, and I thought it was boring.

Port Arthur, Tasmania

So we trawled through a lot of the reviews and noticed an interesting pattern. Most of the people who really enjoyed it were actual Australians.

Now for some insight into the Australian psyche. Australians are very self-conscious of their relative 'newness' as a nation. They crave to have a kind of European History; this is why you'll meet the odd Australian who still talks about the UK as 'home' even though they've never been there. And let's face it, Australia is so young in 'Western' historical terms that it makes the United States look old.

 I don't say this to be critical, I think it's nice that Australia wants to carve out it's own modern historical narrative (and it's kind of quaint). And, Australian convict history is and can be visually and physically interesting and very moving. Cockatoo Island forms part of a 10-location World Heritage Site of convict locales throughout the country. Make the trip to Tasmania (an actual underrated destination) and go to Port Arthur (another site on the World Heritage listing) instead - now that really is a fascinating place (and Tassie has really good wine too).

But, this perceived lack of history is also rather problematic. The modern Australian narrative (although it is has improved significantly over the last 20 years or so) is still very much a santized, white-washed (no pun intended!) version of history. (*Before you shout 'hypocrite', yes, I am very aware you could say the same about much of American history!)

Red Hands painting at Ku Ring Gai

Anyway, take this for example; on Saturday we headed out to Ku Ring Gai National Park which aside from wildlife (we saw a wallaby) and amazing hiking trails, has numerous underrated and largely unvisited Aboriginal cave paintings and carvings that have - get this, an upper age limit of 2000 years!

Two. Thousand. Years. There is your history, Australia. Cave paintings, still in existence after all those years of exposure and made of nothing more than pigments from local plants. How about a little more historical pride there?