For close-in public transportation, Sydneysiders rely on an extensive bus network. Laura and I bought ten-ride tickets for the blue line buses that allowed us to travel from our Glebe neighborhood to the harbor and business center for about one U. S. dollar per ride.

For travel to and from the far suburbs, there’s the train. The rail network gives the city a European feel. Electrified light rail terminates in centrally located stations, reducing auto traffic and attendant congestion. This commuter train is running over a brickwork viaduct that looks like it dates back to prewar machine-age times.

As a nerdy kid in the ’50s, I enthusiastically read articles in Popular Mechanics about future modes of transportation. I could hardly wait for personal aircraft or trains that ran under the oceans in pneumatic tubes. Prominent among these notions, and far more realizable, was the monorail.

Sydney has one!

Making a loop through the city center, this vehicle looks exactly as pictured in mid-century speculative fiction. To see it is to fulfill another boyhood dream, like visiting the moon or sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke’s imaginative invention, the geosynchronous communications satellite.