Helen Pitt

And that is all for today.

This episode was produced by Natalie Gatenna and George Francis Lee and was presented by me, Helen Pitt.

Sound design was by Ross Burns and executive producer was Sammy Kent.

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Hello, Richard.

Absolutely.

My eighth birthday, like your visit when you were 12...

was the happiest day of my life at that short point in my place on the planet.

And I think you're right.

The moment you just walk through that mouth, it's like a transformation into another world.

It's our equivalent of Marcel Proust, you know, touching the, eating the madeleine and

instantly going back to childhood and I don't think that matters what age you are like you walk through it as an adult and you can immediately feel what it was like to be a little kid in that sense of wonder and awe they always used to say it's the place where adults can become kids again and kids can lose their adults and you just do go into this alternative universe of

Fun, but also fear and just a taste of independence was really what it was all about for all of us that went as young children, I think, as kids.

And then, again, it was a rite of passage as teenagers.

Quite often the first place many of us went without our parents because it was bus, train, ride to Circular Quay and an amazing ferry ride across the harbour.

And as artist Martin Sharp always used to say, it's part of the triumvirate.

of Sydney, really.