Bill Bryson in "Down under":
Life cannot offer many places finer to stand at eight thirty on a summery weekday morning than Circular Quay in Sydney. To begin with, it presents one of the worlds's great views. To the right, almost painfully brilliant in the sunshine, stands the famous Opera House with its jaunty, severely angular roof. To the left, the stupendous and noble Harbour Bridge. Across the water, shiny and beckoning, is Luna Park, a Coney Island-style amusement park with a maniacally grinning head for an entrance. Before you the spangly water is crowded with the harbours's plump and oldfashioned ferries, looking for all the world as if they have been plucked from the pages of a 1940s children's book with a title like Thomas the Tugboat, disgorging streams of tanned and lightly dressed office workers to fill the glass and concrete towers that loom behind.
An air of cheerful industriousness suffuses the scene. These are people who get to live in a safe and fair-minded society, in one of the world's great cities - and they get to come to work on a boat from a children's story book, across a sublime plane of water, and each morning glance up from their Heralds and Telegraphs to see the famous Opera House and inspiring bridge and the laughing face of Luna Park.
No wonder they look so damned happy.