Yes ‘Sidney’ that’s what president Bush called our city last week in his US press statement.
It was all down to APEC, if your outside the Asia Pacific area you probably haven’t heard of it but its the equivalent of the UN in a lot of ways just for our side of the planet. APEC stands for Asia Pacific Economic Community.
It’s a week where all the Asia Pacific area world leaders come to one conference to talk about economic issues and to form deals between the countries. This year 21 world leaders were in attendance with the 3 biggest being the US president , the Chinese president and the Russian president.
To say there was extra security in place in the city was an understatement, for days the city has been in LOCKDOWN. As you can imagine Mr Bush brought 1000 support staff with him, that’s an actual figure, 250 of those were CIA security specialists, even his own snipers were brought inot the country. The Americans were the only allowed country to bring their OWN weapons into the country. The Russian’s asked for permission but were denied.
A photo of Police blocking off main streets into the CBD with riot ready police buses

Police buses filled with police ready to go if riots started up, this is taken on Park st right next to Town Hall.

All Bins were taped up for a week leaving people to put rubbish on top of or by the side of the bins.

A look into the restricted zone in the citys CBD.

A sign showing the seriousness of trying to enter the restricted zone

The Opera house in lockdown as 21 of the world’s leaders are inside discussing their issues between countries. All the tourists that come to see the famous landmark were just greeted by 3 meter tall steel fences and armed police.

Some of the peaceful protesters, a group of Chinese protestors and a police sergeant discussing with their leader what there plans were to do and urging them not to block the entry/exit of any APEC delegates.

I knew they were around but it took me an hour to find a sniper. This one I spotted was on the roof of the InterContinental Hotel, the Hotel US president bush was staying in, could of quite possibly been a US brought in sniper.

Lockdown central, all the fences keeping us the public away from anywhere near any APEC officials and goings on.

A helicopter hovering over head with a sniper sitting on the door ledge. A helicopter was in the air all day and all night for the entire duration of APEC, that’s a lot of tax paid fuel to keep it in the air.

Australian Army members manning the security checkpoints scanning cars on ramps for bombs and other devices as they drove around the city.