…Sydney Through My Eyes
My interest in Australia began long before I ever set foot on Australian soil.
It was in 2009, while I was attending a leadership development programme at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, that Australia first came alive to me in a very personal way.
At Harvard, I met Professor James Trent, an Australian academic who spoke to me with such enthusiasm about his country that I became fascinated by it. He talked about Sydney, its extraordinary harbour, its multicultural character and, perhaps most importantly for me, the history and culture of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.
I was immediately drawn to the story.
Coming from Africa, and particularly from the Niger Delta, I have always been interested in indigenous peoples, their relationship with land, their traditions, their art and the ways in which history shapes contemporary societies. Professor Trent’s conversations opened a window into a continent that, until then, I had known mainly through books and photographs.
He invited me to visit Sydney.
Unfortunately, I could not make the journey at the time.
But the invitation planted a seed.
Australia kept calling
In 2012, another opportunity came.
Liquid Learning Group, an Australian professional development organisation, invited me to attend a leadership training programme in Sydney. Once again, circumstances intervened. I was committed to a programme at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
Wharton was not an opportunity I could easily abandon. Founded in 1881, Wharton is one of the world’s oldest and most influential business schools and has played a major role in shaping modern thinking about management, finance, entrepreneurship and organisational leadership.
So Australia had to wait.
Then came another invitation.
This time, I decided that I would go.
In 2014, I was invited to Sydney for the Strength-Based Leadership Development Forum, organised by Liquid Learning Group Pty Ltd. The programme was scheduled around 25–26 February, within a broader programme running from 24–27 February.
The philosophy of the programme appealed to me enormously. Rather than concentrating only on weaknesses, strength-based leadership asks an important question: What happens when leaders identify, develop and deliberately deploy the strengths of individuals and teams?
The programme explored strength-based leadership methodologies, team performance, organisational effectiveness and changing leadership paradigms. It brought together professionals and practitioners from business, government, academia and other major organisations.
For someone who had spent much of his life in public administration, politics, education, agriculture and institutional development, it was exactly the kind of exposure I valued.
Preparing for the journey
On 26 January 2014, I paid my registration fee of US$2,469 through my friend Peace Agbakwuru, a staff member of Diamond Bank who was then in Australia pursuing her master’s degree.
Peace became much more than a person who helped with the registration. She became one of the reasons my Australian experience became so memorable.
I also arranged my accommodation in Sydney, including the Hilton Sydney at 488 George Street.
I remember the excitement of preparing for a journey to a continent I had never visited.
Australia was not simply another country on my travel map.
It was another world.
Leaving Africa for Australia
I left Abuja on Air France and travelled to Paris before continuing towards Sydney.
The Abuja–Paris sector was roughly six hours, while the Paris–Sydney journey, depending on the routing and connection, was a much longer transcontinental undertaking of roughly a day. By the time I finally arrived in Australia, I had crossed an enormous geographical and psychological distance.
I was exhausted.
I remember sleeping for more than fifteen hours after arriving and settling in.
Jet lag was a serious problem.
My body had crossed several time zones, and my mind was trying to catch up with it.
But even in my exhaustion, I could not stop thinking about what the journey itself represented.
I had travelled from Africa, through Europe, and into the Asia-Pacific world.
As I travelled, I found myself thinking about the extraordinary story of human progress.
From Galileo Galilei looking into the heavens and challenging established ideas about the universe, to the development of mechanical flight, to the Wright brothers’ first successful powered flight in 1903, and eventually to the age of jet aircraft capable of carrying people across continents and oceans, humanity had travelled an extraordinary distance.
Here I was, an African from Bayelsa State, sitting inside a modern jet aircraft and travelling to the other side of the world.
Sometimes, the journey itself becomes the destination.
Sydney — my first impressions
Sydney immediately impressed me.
It was modern, confident, clean and cosmopolitan, but it was also deeply conscious of its history.
What fascinated me most was the mixture of peoples.
I noticed large Asian communities, particularly Chinese and Indian Australians. Sydney felt genuinely international.
It reminded me of my daughter’s school in Toronto, where I had once been struck by the extraordinary diversity of the student population. At her graduation, I remember observing that about 95 percent of the graduating students appeared to be of Indian descent.
Sydney produced a similar impression on me.
It was a city where Asia, Europe and Australia seemed to meet.
Australia before Sydney
Before describing Sydney, however, it is important to understand the Australia I was entering.
Australia’s history is much older than European settlement.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived on the continent for at least 65,000 years according to archaeological evidence. They represent some of the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. (AIATSIS).
European colonisation began in earnest with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
The First Fleet consisted of eleven ships. It carried convicts, marines, officers, sailors, families and supplies from Britain to establish a penal colony in New South Wales. More than 775 prisoners were aboard the fleet. (Mental Health NSW).
Captain Arthur Phillip commanded the expedition. After initially entering Botany Bay, he selected Sydney Cove in Port Jackson as the site for the settlement. On 26 January 1788, the British colony at Sydney was established. (National Museum of Australia)
The transportation of convicts was part of Britain’s penal system. Prisoners were sent thousands of kilometres away from Britain to serve their sentences in the colonies.
This history is complicated and painful.
The establishment of the colony occurred on land already inhabited by Aboriginal peoples, whose cultures, communities and relationships with country long predated European arrival.
Understanding that history made my visit more meaningful.
Hyde Park Barracks — meeting Australia’s convict past
One of the first historical places I visited was Hyde Park Barracks.
Standing there, I felt that I had suddenly moved from modern Sydney into another chapter of history.
The Barracks was built between 1817 and 1819 under Governor Lachlan Macquarie and designed by Francis Greenway, a convict who became one of Australia’s most important colonial architects.
It was built by convicts to house male convicts working for the government.
The building was designed to control and supervise the convict workforce. Men slept in communal dormitories, worked during the day and returned to the Barracks under strict regulation. After 1830, the site also became associated with punishment and the reassignment of convicts. It finally ceased to be convict accommodation in 1848. (DCCEEW)
Today, it is one of the most important surviving reminders of Australia’s convict history and forms part of the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage listing. (DCCEEW)
I found myself thinking about the extraordinary transformation of Australia.
A place that began, in the British colonial imagination, partly as a remote penal settlement had become one of the world’s most prosperous and multicultural societies.
History can be astonishing.
The Chinese Garden of Friendship
Peace was extraordinarily kind to me.
She took me around Sydney and ensured that I saw more than the obvious tourist attractions.
One of the places that fascinated me most was the Chinese Garden of Friendship at Darling Harbour.
I had heard about the garden before arriving in Sydney and was determined to see it.
The garden was opened in 1988 as part of Australia’s bicentenary celebrations and symbolises the relationship between New South Wales and Guangdong, with Sydney and Guangzhou having established their sister-city relationship in 1986. (NSW Government)
The garden was designed by the Guangzhou Landscape Bureau and built through cooperation between Chinese and Australian craftsmen.
As I walked through it, I could immediately recognise the philosophy of traditional Chinese gardens.
There were winding pathways, rocks, water, pavilions, waterfalls, koi ponds, plants and carefully arranged views.
The design reflects Taoist concepts of Yin and Yang and the five elements.
One of the most striking features is the Dragon Wall. The two dragons represent Guangdong and New South Wales, symbolising friendship between the two regions. (Darling Harbour)
The garden is not simply a beautiful park.
It is diplomacy expressed through architecture and landscape.
The relationship between Guangzhou and Sydney became visible in stone, water, plants and pavilions.
I found that deeply interesting.
Coming from Nigeria, a country with many ethnic groups and long-standing cultural relationships across borders, I understood the importance of such cultural diplomacy.
A note about Sydney’s “two gardens”
I remember my excitement about seeing the Chinese gardens and other distinctive garden spaces around Sydney. The principal Chinese garden I can independently verify from the 2014 period is the Chinese Garden of Friendship at Darling Harbour. It was the major Chinese-style garden associated with Sydney’s relationship with Guangzhou.
Its beauty was enough to justify repeated visits.
I particularly enjoyed the contrast between the quietness of the garden and the busy city surrounding it.
You could be standing among skyscrapers and traffic, yet inside the garden everything seemed to slow down.
That is one of the great achievements of landscape architecture.
Sydney’s universities and intellectual life
Peace also accompanied me to the university, where we met members of the academic community.
I have always enjoyed universities because I see them not merely as buildings where degrees are awarded, but as laboratories of ideas.
Every university visit gives me an opportunity to ask questions:
What are they researching?
How are they solving problems?
What relationship do they have with government and industry?
How are they preparing young people for the future?
My visit to Sydney reinforced my belief that universities must be connected to society.
Knowledge that remains inside lecture rooms without influencing communities is incomplete knowledge.
The great hotels of Sydney
I was fascinated by Sydney’s hotels.
One of the places that particularly impressed me was the Park Hyatt Sydney, dramatically positioned near the Opera House and harbour.
Its location is extraordinary.
Looking at the Opera House from that part of the harbour reminded me of my younger years and my love of opera.
I studied in the former Soviet Union, including Kiev and Moscow, and had encountered the grand opera traditions of those cities. I also thought of Paris and the Palais Garnier, the great Paris Opera.
Sydney gave me another relationship with opera — not only through performance but through architecture.
The Sydney Opera House itself is an extraordinary symbol of what human imagination can achieve.
I also encountered other leading hotels, including the Four Seasons Hotel Sydney and Shangri-La Sydney.
The Shangri-La name also brought back memories of Ghana. I remembered the Shangri-La presence in Accra from years earlier, and when I returned to Accra in May 2026, I was struck by the changes that had taken place.
Sydney Harbour — the city’s great stage
Sydney Harbour was probably the greatest visual experience of the journey.
I walked around Circular Quay and The Rocks, seeing the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, ferries, restaurants and people from every corner of the world.
The harbour did not feel like merely a body of water.
It felt like Sydney’s living room.
People met there, ate there, worked there, took photographs there and celebrated life there.
For someone who loves seafood, it was also a wonderful place to be.
Eating my way through Sydney
I am a lover of seafood, so Sydney’s waterfront dining was naturally one of the pleasures of my journey.
We enjoyed meals around the harbour, including Aria Restaurant and Café Sydney.
Café Sydney particularly appealed to me because of its location on the rooftop of Customs House overlooking Circular Quay. It opened in 1999 and became known for contemporary Australian cuisine, Australian wines and spectacular views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. (Cafe Sydney).
There is something special about eating seafood while looking directly across Sydney Harbour.
The meal becomes more than food.
It becomes scenery.
It becomes conversation.
It becomes memory.
We also visited the waterfront restaurants around The Rocks.
Harbourfront Seafood Restaurant, located in the historic Campbell’s Stores, is particularly associated with fresh Australian seafood and harbour views. (The Rocks)
The Rocks itself has a special atmosphere.
Its sandstone buildings and narrow streets connect modern Sydney with the early colonial settlement.
Even eating there can feel like eating inside history.
Taronga Zoo
Peace also took me to Taronga Zoo.
The location alone is remarkable.
From Taronga, Sydney Harbour unfolds in front of you, with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge forming an extraordinary backdrop.
The zoo itself has a long history. Taronga Zoo Sydney opened in 1916 and gradually transformed from a traditional animal exhibition into a major conservation, research and education institution. (Taronga Zoo)
I was fascinated by the Australian wildlife.
Animals such as kangaroos, koalas, wombats, emus and other native species reminded me that Australia has an extraordinary biological identity.
But the zoo also provided an opportunity to see animals from other parts of the world, including elephants, giraffes, gorillas, lions, chimpanzees and other major species.
What stayed with me was the view.
There are few zoos in the world where you can observe wildlife with one of the world’s great harbours spread out behind it.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
My visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales was especially important to me because by this time I was becoming increasingly interested in collecting art and building what would eventually become the Azaiki Museum in Yenagoa.
I therefore did not visit the gallery merely as a tourist.
I visited it as a collector.
I looked carefully.
I studied how works were displayed.
I watched how history was interpreted through art.
I was particularly interested in Australian artists whose work engaged with Aboriginal ideas and imagery.
Margaret Preston fascinated me because of her engagement with Aboriginal art and her attempt to develop an Australian visual language. Her Manly Harbour Beach demonstrates the influence of Aboriginal-inspired forms and colours on her later work. (Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The gallery’s Australian collection also includes works connected with Aboriginal artists and traditions, including works by Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu and Tiwi artists. (Art Gallery of New South Wales.
I remember thinking about the relationship between art, identity and nationhood.
That thought would stay with me.
The Australian Museum
I also visited the Australian Museum, and I returned more than once.
That was not accidental.
I had already become a serious collector and was simultaneously developing my own museum project in Bayelsa.
Every visit therefore became a lesson.
I was particularly attracted to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections.
The Australian Museum has one of the world’s significant collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material, including artworks, technologies and objects representing First Nations communities across Australia. (The Australian Museum)
Among the objects that caught my attention were traditional technologies, cultural objects, carved works and items that demonstrated the relationship between people, animals, land and spirituality.
The museum made me think about Nigeria.
We too possess extraordinary cultural treasures.
The difference is that many African societies have historically struggled to preserve, catalogue, interpret and display their cultural heritage at the scale required.
I left the Australian Museum thinking even more seriously about what I wanted the Azaiki Museum in Yenagoa to become.
From Sydney to Yenagoa
Looking back now, I can see that the Australian journey influenced the evolution of my own museum vision.
The ideas eventually expressed through the Azaiki Museum of Arts, the Azaiki Museum of African Arts and the Yenagoa Art Gallery were shaped by many experiences, and Australia was certainly among them.
Museums are not simply buildings containing old objects.
They are institutions of memory.
They tell children where they came from.
They tell nations what they value.
They preserve the voices of people who may otherwise disappear from history.
Australia helped me see this more clearly.
Shopping in Sydney
Of course, no visit to Sydney would have been complete without shopping.
I went to Pitt Street Mall, one of the major retail areas in the Sydney CBD.
The area had undergone major redevelopment shortly before my visit, and Westfield Sydney had become one of the city’s major shopping destinations.
I remember the excitement of walking through the stores and looking for things to take home for family and friends.
There was something familiar about Westfield because I had encountered the brand in London.
I also spent time around George Street, one of Sydney’s historic principal streets.
There were department stores, fashion outlets, restaurants, cafés and international brands.
Shopping became part of the experience, but I was never simply interested in buying things.
I like observing cities through their shops.
What people buy tells you something about their aspirations.
What restaurants they patronise tells you something about their tastes.
What brands dominate the streets tells you something about the economy.
The Rocks
The Rocks was another place I loved.
It combines history, tourism, restaurants, markets and spectacular views.
Walking through The Rocks, I could almost hear the echoes of the early colony.
The First Fleet had arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788, and this part of Sydney grew around that early settlement.
Today, restaurants and cafés occupy historic buildings, while tourists walk along streets that once belonged to convicts, sailors, traders and labourers.
That juxtaposition fascinated me.
The past had not disappeared.
It had simply been given a new life.
Darling Harbour
Darling Harbour was another highlight.
It represented the modern face of Sydney — restaurants, entertainment, museums, shopping, water and nightlife all brought together around a revitalised waterfront.
After walking through the Chinese Garden of Friendship, one could immediately move into the energy of Darling Harbour.
That contrast was part of Sydney’s charm.
Peace and excitement existed side by side.
Bondi Beach
We also visited Bondi Beach.
Bondi is one of those places that has become almost synonymous with Sydney itself.
The beach was beautiful, but what I enjoyed most was watching people.
Sydney seemed to have perfected the art of outdoor living.
People walked, exercised, ate, talked, swam and simply enjoyed the environment.
The city was busy, but it did not appear imprisoned by its own busyness.
Sydney at night
Sydney also had another personality at night.
After the conferences, meetings, sightseeing and long days, there was still the city’s nightlife.
I visited nightclubs and experienced Sydney after dark.
The atmosphere was cosmopolitan and energetic, with music, dancing, food and people from different nationalities.
I remember venues such as Marquee Sydney and the Ivy as examples of the city’s glamorous nightlife culture.
For me, nightlife was not simply about entertainment.
It was another way of observing society.
Businessmen, academics, young professionals, tourists and residents all shared the same spaces.
The leadership forum
But the central purpose of my journey remained the leadership programme.
The Strength-Based Leadership Development Forum gave me exposure to an international community of leaders and professionals.
The central lesson was powerful:
Every individual possesses strengths.
Every organisation possesses strengths.
The task of leadership is not simply to identify what is wrong, but to recognise what works, build on it and create conditions in which people can perform at their highest level.
The programme’s emphasis on leadership methodologies, team performance, organisational strengths and changing leadership paradigms was particularly relevant to my own experience in public service and institutional administration.
I had served in government.
I had worked in education.
I had been involved in agriculture, public administration and development.
I had worked with political institutions.
I had served in Parliament.
I had chaired and participated in organisations.
So leadership was not an abstract academic subject for me.
It was a lived experience.
The conference provided an opportunity to compare experiences with professionals, industry leaders, government practitioners, subject-matter experts and members of academia.
The real value was the exchange.
I listened.
I asked questions.
I compared systems.
I learned.
And I brought those lessons home.
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Sydney through my eyes
When I look back at the journey now, I realise that Australia gave me several experiences at once.
It was an academic journey.
It was a leadership journey.
It was a cultural journey.
It was a historical journey.
It was an artistic journey.
It was a culinary journey.
And, above all, it was a human journey.
I met academics.
I met professionals.
I met business people.
I interacted with people from different cultures.
I walked through historic buildings.
I visited museums and galleries.
I studied Aboriginal art.
I saw how another society preserved its history.
I watched how different cultures lived together in one city.
I tasted Australian seafood.
I walked along Sydney Harbour.
I looked across the water at the Opera House.
I stood at Hyde Park Barracks and thought about convicts transported from Britain.
I walked through the Chinese Garden of Friendship and thought about cultural diplomacy.
I visited Taronga Zoo and saw wildlife with Sydney Harbour as a backdrop.
I went shopping on Pitt Street and George Street.
I ate at restaurants overlooking the harbour.
I experienced Sydney by day and by night.
And everywhere I went, I was learning.
The meaning of the journey
The journey to Australia was tiring.
The distance from Nigeria was enormous.
The jet lag was real.
But every kilometre was worth it.
Australia taught me something that travel has taught me repeatedly throughout my life: when you travel with an open mind, you do not merely see another country.
You see yourself differently.
You begin to understand that your own country is part of a much larger human story.
You begin to appreciate what other societies have done well.
You begin to ask what lessons can be adapted to your own environment.
And you return home with ideas.
That is what happened to me.
My Australian journey strengthened my appreciation of leadership.
It deepened my interest in museums.
It reinforced my passion for art and cultural preservation.
It expanded my understanding of multiculturalism.
It gave me a deeper appreciation of Aboriginal history and indigenous cultures.
And it contributed, in its own way, to the continuing evolution of the Azaiki Museum and my vision for preserving African history and culture in Bayelsa.
I will visit Australia again
Sydney left a lasting impression on me.
I went there because of a leadership programme.
I returned with much more than a certificate or conference experience.
I returned with memories.
I returned with friendships.
I returned with ideas.
I returned with a deeper understanding of Australia.
And I returned with a renewed belief that leadership is about people, culture, knowledge and the courage to learn from the world around us.
Australia was, for me, a journey to another world.
But it was also a journey back to myself.
I visited Australia once.
I would like to visit Australia again.
And when I do, I will not be returning as a stranger.
I will be returning to a place that has already become part of my story.