A Down Under Christmas - Part One: St. Mary's Cathedral Lights

We are just back from a marvelous holiday trip. More on that in the next couple of posts, but let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

Because we are the world’s biggest procrastinators we were really feeling the holiday spirit, we spent our last night in town on the courtyard at St. Mary's Chathedral, a grand church on the border of Sydney's Central Business District. Now, Sydney may not have snow for Christmas, but they do have music and lights in abundance (as further evidenced by our night out at Carols in the Domain). 

We arrived a bit before sundown to catch a local choir perform. Now, the choir - who sang mostly gospel and R&B tunes - was rather low on what I would have considered to be the desired 'funk' quotient for their chosen songs like "All I Want for Christmas is You," The Jackson 5's "Give Me One More Chance" (whose Christmas origins are questionable, at best), and "Go Tell it on the Mountain." Nonetheless, the forecourt was full of families having a grand time - toddlers dancing and grandmothers foot-tapping. It was all in good fun. 

A little after 8, the first projection began to appear behind the chorus.

After the chorus wrapped up, and it had gotten a little darker, we were treated to the most fantastic light show. Obviously, I can't capture in photographs the way that the images moved, but the projections were quite fluid and full of surprises. The most stunning thing was the detail that the designers took with creating projections that matched all the details of the building by casting light that highlighted intricate architectural nooks and crannies without any overflow or light spillage. It was a quite stunning display. I'll leave you with a few photos, and the promise of a return soon with a couple of posts about our holiday trip.