We returned to Sydney to wait for our flight to Los Angeles. Time to go home. It’s fitting we finish our journey in Australia in the place where it began, in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, a place with so many assets that we couldn’t begin to visit or appreciate them all.

One of Sydney’s landmarks is a great Romanesque Revival pile of dun-colored stone—the Queen Victoria Building. It was completed in 1898.

Sydneysiders call it the QVB. Ugly, brooding and impressive, its massive façade was intended to intimidate, to emphasize the might and permanence of the British Empire. We’re big, we’re here, and we aren’t going anywhere.

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, the QVB housed a market. A century later, the restored version continues as a market, providing space for establishments far more upscale than the tailors, hairdressers and coffee houses that were the original tenants. Today you’d have no difficulty shopping for a $10,000 rare print or a $5,000 black opal pendant.

The Queen Victoria Building was a decaying wreck in the mid-’50s. You’d never know it today. Over $100 milliion has been poured into restoration work, resulting in an interior that is fresh and exciting—modern colors emphasizing 19th-century details.

A stained glass window rivals those of many cathedrals. This one depicts the Ancient Arms of the City of Sydney, an appellation I find odd. I mean, nothing in America is ancient, and America is twice as old as Australia.

The QVB houses the Great Australian Clock, a spectacular treat for my inner engineer. In my opinion, providing space for this incredible machine is reason enough for the existence of the entire building.

This melding of art and mechanics is more than thirty feet high and weighs four tons. It tells the local time on four great faces, and overseas times on smaller ones. It gives the day and date as well, although I doubt anyone consults it for that information anymore.

What turns the Great Australian Clock into an object of considerable interest and beauty is a set of 33 scenes from Australia’s history. Only eight of them are visible at any one time. The diorama below shows Captain Cook landing in 1770, wearing a powdered wig and holding a tricorn hat in his hand. As a schoolboy, I saw uniforms like his while studying the American Revolution, an event that occurred more or less contemporaneously with Cook’s voyage.

Another scene illustrates the landing of the Second Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1789. Having lost America as a convenient dumping ground for unwanted persons, England began sending prisoners and other undesirables to Australia. The voyage of the Second Fleet remains a blot on the history of Australia and Great Britain. The poor wretches being transported were starved; most suffered from disease and some were tortured. A quarter of them failed to survive the voyage because of neglect and abuse. This illustration shows a man being flogged.

An even more shameful episode from Australia’s past is dramatized in a diorama called “The Taking of the Children.” For purportedly beneficent reasons, in the years from 1869 all the way up to 1969, aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents and sent to live in orphanages. The idea was that living under white masters would break them of their “aboriginal-ness.” This practice resulted in the creation of what is called the Lost Generation. Today, most of Australia’s aboriginal people live without roots. They are not incorporated into white society nor are they members of aboriginal clans. They don’t even know who their parents are.

I think it’s commendable that some white Australians are willing to face past wrongs done by their society but I’m not sure modern Australians really get it. To wit: a recently installed diorama called “Unity” shows blackfellas and whitefellas picnicking together in a scene of amity and happiness. Certainly no such event has never taken place. The aboriginals I see are poor, marginalized, and almost invisible to the European descendants that now dominate their land. Many are embittered and angry.

One other engaging feature of this marvelous instrument: a model of the Endeavor circles the clock, sailing past marine views of the places Cook visited. In this view, the ship passes before Kiama in New South Wales, a few miles south of Sydney.

So many historic and significant buildings have fallen to the wrecker’s ball. The Queen Victoria Building almost suffered this fate. I was told that public outcry was instrumental in saving it. Had the building fallen, I’m certain that the Great Australian Clock would have been saved, but it would have been diminished by no longer hanging in a place with all that Victorian gravitas.

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And with that, goodbye Australia, hello Mexico. I am home as I make this final post of our journey, happy to have been there and happy to be back in San Miguel de Allende again.