Darling Harbour is a vast watery precinct west of the city centre, named after Ralph Darling (a colonial Lieutenant-General who can’t have been too pleased about his girly name).

During the Great Depression the eastern promenade was known as the Hungry Mile on account of the dock workers wandering about looking for work on the wharves.

It’s this section that the pollies are now pushing to be called Barangaroo after a state-wide naming competition, in which contestants were evidently competing to come up with the silliest word that can feasibly be passed off as indigenous.

Keeping with the theme of second-rate fame, it’s also the location for MTV’s The Real World: Sydney, which I’m proud to say I’m no longer seventeen-year-old enough to have seen. And the interiors from Home and Away, which I do see constantly but only against my will since Dutch TV reveres it almost as much as McLeod’s Daughters, are done in the nearby Channel Seven studios.

Also, for the astute filmgoers amongst you, Darling Harbour also enjoys a fleeting flyover in the Power Rangers movie.

More importantly, it is a peachy spot to spend a sunny afternoon, as 20 million Aussies and half a billion tourists do day after day, including, naturally, today, and with a vengeance at that.

The eastern promenade is now packed with upmarket restaurants (these days, hungry dock workers would be hurriedly moved along by bouncers if not cops if they dared set foot here) and the western side is home to the oh-so-touristy opal gift stores. If you’re lucky, you can catch the odd open-air concert in the harbourside area to the south: Polish folk music or tambourinists from Burkhina Faso. Perhaps the occasional hungry dock worker in brown paint playing a didgeridoo.