The Sydney Eye on a Stick

Sydney Eye on a Stick - Incredible fun for the whole family.

In the middle of Sidney (and kitty corner from the Hilton) rises one of the biggest erections in Australian history - The Sidney Eye on a Stick.

Sydney Eye on a Stick

There are all kinds of ways of quantifying how high these kinds of things are - highest tower east of here, west of there, freestanding, not freestanding, this many feet to the top of the head of the bird standing tippy-toe on top of the lightning rod on the radio mast on the roof of the pod of the Eye on a Stick.

What you need to know is that the Sidney Eye on a Stick is ReallyFuckingHigh. Like a thousand feet high.


We were instructed to appear at the base of the tower about 45 minutes before our Skywalk time. (We booked these Skywalk things so I could go out and maybe get some better pictures.)

The only problem is that nobody told us how to actually find the entrance to the tower attraction. At one point, we erroneously entered the head office of the New South Wales Bottle Cap Consortium, and were promptly set packing, after confirming that, noy, we didn’t want to make a big bottle cap order, a small bottle cap order, or for that matter, a bottle cap order of any kind. Nor were we interested in their range of pull-tabs.

We went into some other building that had one of those ‘office malls’ and after poking around, we found some sort of a sign indicating we had to go up (duh) - a couple of escalator rides took us to where we needed to be.

The pre-tour presentation that we were promised (in 4D) was a cheesy movie for which we wore those cardboard 3D movie glasses. I think also that there was a gift shop involved.

The purpose of the movie is, I think, to stage groups of people so that you are doing something instead of hanging around aimlessly, waiting for your turn on the elevator.

Pretty soon up we went. The view from up top was pretty spectacular - visibility was 80 to 100 kilometers (or ReallyFuckingFar kilometers). First thing we did was to try to locate our room - being able to see or particular window was a thrill that we just had to pursue.

At 6:00pm, we got herded into an area and told to remove everything from our pockets. Wallets included. Keys. Change. Subway tokens. Phones. Cameras.  If anything fell from the tower (they said) they would be assessed a $30,000 fine.

I call bullshit on that. But whatever. Maybe it’s true. I was pissed that I couldn’t take my Cameron G16. They had lockers for us to put our stuff in, and we were to wear the key on a lanyard around our neck. What if the twat key fell then??? Eh? What then???

Next thing they gave us coveralls to put on. I’m a pro at donning a onesie from the plant and I had mine on in about 3.92 seconds.

Our guide ‘Matt’ (isn’t it always Matt?) took us into a back room - kind of like a utility access room, or a Jeffries tube. Then he started talking about safety harnesses and handing out the kind of rigging I’ve only ever seen in the circus acrobat fetish room at - ah, nevermind.

What the hell had I gotten myself into? I thought we were just going to be able to go out on a balcony and grab a few photos. Why did I need to watch my fingers on the guide rail tether?

Matt gave final instructions and asked ‘Anyone afraid of heights and want to pussy out now?’ and ‘Anyone here against their will?’

I piped up ‘Anyone here on a dare?...’ Matt liked that. I think Matt is going to add that to his ‘patter’.

Mrs. F was first in the line of people going ‘out there’ and I was next. We slid our tethers, which ended in a v-shaped gizmo with little wheels on it, onto the end of the guide rail. Once on, you could move along the rail, but you could not remove your tether. I wondered if the tether was strong enough to hold a Flushiepants, dangling over the edge of the tower.

We went out and the view was awesome. It was a little windy, but nothing terrible, and Matt lead us around to the north side, where there was indeed a balcony - with a glass floor.

The next 20 minutes were spent with Matt taking pictures in every permutation possible of person, group of people, all people, doing this, doing that, looking serious, looking goofy, pretending to throw each other off the tower.

Happy happy!

Can I be honest? The height didn’t bother me at all. I felt totally at ease and enjoyed the experience. Same for the Quad Queen.

On the south side there was another balcony for us to crowd on to - a smaller one this time - and, LURCH! It moved out over the precipice of doom fall to your death chasm below us by about two feet. I continued to look for the airport so that I could watch some airplanes take off.

Guess what? When we all went inside, took off our SKYWALK! Branded coveralls, and rifled through each other’s lockers, they had prepared these nice little photo booklets for us!

Isn’t that nice?

There are three prices in this world for such things.

Price 1: The reasonable price that you would pay for the souvenir and not even bat an eye. You’d be like, “yeah, I’ll take that, seems a good deal”.

Price 2: The price at the top range of your underwear waistband elasticity curve. You’d be like, “The most I would want to pay for this and feel like I haven’t been wallet fucked is this price. I guess I have to get it.”

Price 3: This is top range waistband elasticity price plus about 41%. This price is the price you pay once all emotional heartstring manipulations have been applied, and every bit of guilt possible has been neatly laid at your feet. This is the price that you grit your teeth at and pony up for. One dollar beyond this price is the price that any other sane person would say, “Oh yeah, that’s nuts - way too much, noybody would pay that for the photo book of you throwing your wife off the thousand foot tower.”