‘History’ felt weighty, academic, abstract, and

way too apart from the present, because things in the past look so different from the ones we see today. 

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According to the ‘City of Sydney’, the council website, Sydney has transformed from a penal colony in 1788 to today’s global city. Which means Sydney now has its history around 200 years and there must be lots of changes on this land, and students learn about the history in school. But if I ask someone to picture what Sydney would look like in 1921, it probably would be too hard to think of an exact image. Especially for me, as an international student, I could face more barriers with the Australian history and couldn’t feel any bond when I was totally new.

 

I still remember the day when passed through ‘The fiGoods Line’ for the first time. There was a tram trail on the road even though there’s no trams or trains around, and I was so curious about the reason behind it. 

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fiI’ve experienced a similar thing when I first when to the Downing Centre in which is currently a local & district court. The building looked stunning, but when I took a closer look at the building, I could see ‘Laces’, ‘Mark Foy’s’, ‘Gloves’, and etc. As a newbie in Sydney, I could assume that it’s a clothing factory or a department store, but it looked so different from the others. So I had to fifind the name of the building, search manually about the history of the building to get the information I want, and the same thing with the Goods line as well. 

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Maybe this could be impossible if the trail or the centre was totally gone, but they’re still here and I felt they watched all the transition and lived together with the people. These can be just an old building and road in CBD to somebody, but to me, I can now feel a historical connection after searching the place’s now and then. 

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As I mentioned earlier, nowadays, we need to open the map app, check the location and the name of the venue, search the name on search engines, and look up for the history. Without the app, it takes much more time and ffeffort as well. I wished there’s an app that combined all the historical information about the venue, and explained them to me 

 

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