YOU would not claim to have been to Australia, if you would not have visited the Opera House in Sydney. This was information we received as we prepared to call on Australia, for the World Youth Day 2008 (WYD08).

This seemly floating artistic facility, as we would come to know, is a trademark of this Southland. With its pictures in magazines, on TV, and making the main feature on official emblem of the Sydney WYD08 event, we considered Opera House the building to see. (Above: The Opera house at night)

But, we also found it was just one of the many facilities and sceneries to covet in this country of so wealthy a history. Aborigines, for one, are people we had only heard of. They walked this land thousands of years before the first European ever set foot on it. So, we brushed shoulders with these great peoples, whose homage the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Pope Benedict XVI often paid in that respect.

Australia derives its name from the Latin Australis. It means "Southern". Dating back to Roman times, it weighs much on legends of an ‘unknown land of the south’ (terra australis incognita), because it lacked documented knowledge to the world. (Left: Some of the pilgrims at the Kiribbilli Harbour)

When we hit this Great Southern Land, it was Perth that we first visited and where we would stay for sometime, before the event in Sydney. Perth has many momentous structures and amenities.
With Bro James Mukwana, I had a chance of a lifetime when our few-days host (who would become family), the Chamberlains took us on an excursion of this largely tourist city. It is famous for the Swan River, surrounded by a scenic outlook, many recreational facilities.

It is provided by an Aboriginal folklore that a large mythical snake, Waggyl, created the river. It slithered its way through the area creating bends and gullies, which filled with rainwater, one wintertime. Today it attracts black swans. (Right: An Aboriginal girl with other pilgrims march to welcome the Pope at Barangaroo)

Mum and dad, or Chris and Peter Chamberlain, took us to the Pinaroo Cemetery. Certainly not to see graves, but the Kangaroos. As the Crested Crane is of honour in Uganda, so is the Kangaroo, found nowhere else outside Australia.

We drove to the Kings Park and what a spectacle Perth looks from this elevated panorama of its own! For vantage points in an almost all Botanic garden, hundreds flock to bask and eat out on virtually every holiday they can secure. 

Then there was the Hillary’s Boat Harbour. It is both a market and eating expanse. The yachts on the harbour cost hundreds of millions of shillings. Many are on sale in this rich-man neighbourhood.
In Sydney, it was all so plain to note that the city is Australia's largest and most cosmopolitan. It is the capital of New South Wales, considered the most populated in the continent. Sydney, described also as a ‘sin city’, is propped with harbours, beaches and entertainment centres. Its nights are as alive as days, or even more. But, during the WYD08, the city life was spiced with glowing and vibrant pilgrims.          

Not much may have been know about this city before the 2000 Olympics. But, Sydney at the recently concluded WYD08 become known to even the very hardly heard of corners of the world.

A bronze monument stands at the Darling Harbour to remind the world of the Olympics, but for the WYD08, a whole piece of land, Barangaroo was reclaimed from the sea, to serve as the welcoming site on which Pope Benedict greeted the world youth for the first time in Australia. (In the picture: Bro. Mukwana with Kangaroos)

To the over fifty Ugandan pilgrims, Sydney, beside the WYD08 spirit, will be remembered for the Circular Quay – the water gateway to the city – and Opera House. Most of all, they will remember China Town market, Peddy’s, where they bought souvenirs and personal effects on bargaining, like its done in many down town Ugandan markets.