OK, so the story is a few weeks old now but for those of you that haven’t heard, Tokyo is now home to a 59 feet high Giant Gundam which has been built to help promote the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. Anyway, as I sat poring over the thousands of photos of this newly created unofficial landmark (photo on right sourced from Pink Tentacle) as it overlooks Odaiba Island, I found myself longing to return to Japan for a holiday. This was inevitably followed by an attempt to draw a parallel with our own fair city’s (Sydney) recent addition to its skyline in the form of a ferris wheel at Darling Harbour.

Now admittedly, the majority of people aren’t going to get nearly as excited about a giant robot as I have, but I put this question to you – do you really think the addition of (another) ferris wheel is likely to create any hype or gain any publicity for Sydney? Likewise, do you think anyone has decided upon Sydney as their next holiday destination after stumbling across an image of the Darling Harbour Ferris Wheel? Come to think of it, didn’t Melbourne have one first and wasn’t theirs just a replica of Singapore’s which is a copy of the London Eye? You see my point?

Perhaps someday in the not-so-distant future, the powers-that-be here in Sydney will decide to throw caution to the wind and abandon their current technique of playing safe, instead thinking outside the proverbial square. Only then, will Sydney stand any chance of breaking free from the generic ‘welcome to beige country’ image that seems to be ever increasingly associated with our city. Until such time, I for one welcome our new robot overlords.