Martin Place, Sydney

Martin Place is a pedestrian mall in the central business district of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Martin Place has been described as the "civic heart" of Sydney. As home to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Macquarie Bank, Westpac and other corporations, it is also a centre of business and finance. The Sydney GPO and the Seven Network's Sydney news centre are also located on Martin Place.

Martin Place has become a national Australian icon in popular culture for attracting high-end film and television productions and actors to the area. Martin Place runs between George Street and Macquarie Street, and provides entrances to the Martin Place railway station below street level. Other cross streets include Pitt Street, Castlereagh Street, Elizabeth Street and Phillip Street.

The initial "Martin Place" was the section between George Street and Pitt Street, officially opened 1892, and was named in honour of Sir James Martin, the three time Premier of New South Wales and Chief Justice of Supreme Court of New South Wales. Closed to traffic in stages from 1971, Martin Place is surrounded by many heritage buildings and features the 1927 World War I ANZAC Cenotaph, water fountain, entertainment area, railway access and pedestrian seating.

Sydney

Sydney /ˈsɪdni/ is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds the world's largest natural harbour, and sprawls towards the Blue Mountains to the west. Residents of Sydney are known as "Sydneysiders". Sydney is the second official seat and second official residence of the Governor-General of Australia, the Prime Minister of Australia and the Cabinet of Australia.

The Sydney area has been inhabited by indigenous Australians since the Upper Paleolithic period. The first British settlers arrived in 1788 to found Sydney as a penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Since convict transportation ended in the mid-19th century, the city has transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre.

The population of Sydney at the time of the 2011 census was 4.39 million, 1.5 million of which were born overseas, representing many different nationalities and making Sydney one of the most multicultural cities in the world. There are more than 250 different languages spoken in Sydney and about one-third of residents speak a language other than English at home.

.au

.au is the internet country code for Australia.

History

The domain name was originally allocated by Jon Postel, operator of IANA to Kevin Robert Elz of Melbourne University in 1986. After an approximately five-year process in the 1990s, the Internet industry created a self-regulatory body called .au Domain Administration to operate the domain. It obtained assent from ICANN in 2001, and commenced operating a new competitive regime for domain registration on 1 July 2002. Since this new regime, any registration has to be ordered via a registrar.

Operation

Oversight of .au is by .au Domain Administration (auDA). It is a not-for-profit organisation whose membership is derived from Internet organisations, industry members and interested individuals. The organisation operates under the consent of the Australian government which has legislative power to decide the operators of electronic addressing in the country.

Policy for .au is devised by policy development panels. These panels are convened by auDA and combine public input with industry representation to derive policy.

Sydney (TV series)

Sydney is an American situation comedy series that aired on CBS in 1990. It was created and written by Michael J. Wilson and Douglas Wyman and starred Valerie Bertinelli, Matthew Perry and Craig Bierko.

Synopsis

Sydney Kells (Valerie Bertinelli), the daughter of a now-deceased policeman, brings her New York City detective agency (in which she is the only investigator) back to her hometown and her family, including her over-protective brother Billy (Matthew Perry), himself a rookie cop. As she struggles to balance her personal and professional life, the main source of her work comes from an uptight lawyer (Craig Bierko), with whom she shares sexual chemistry. She and her best friend Jill (Rebeccah Bush) frequent a neighborhood bar run by Ray (Barney Martin), her father's old police partner.

Cast