MONA

The Museum of Old and New Art ("MONA") was an unexpected and delightful discovery in Tasmania. Accessible inter alia by ferry from Hobart, it's an incredible private gallery, founded by the idiosyncratic David Walsh who apparently made his money from devising and utilising a mathematical gambling system. The ferry passes multifaceted cliffs, an industrial site complete with giant metal constructions and a bridge that seems to point the way; in the distance a rust-coloured, rust-covered structure appears and on docking, you climb about a hundred steps to the gallery. The entrance to the gallery is on the hill and you descend a large spiral staircase, winding around a glass lift shaft, into the multi-level, cathedral-like exhibition space which has been blasted from the sandstone, an exercise apparently costing $100 million alone. Every visitor is given an iPhone ("OPhone") which gives details of each artwork as you pass nearby and enables you to love or hate it (7% of visitors liked the first work I loved, but it's not clear whether that's all visitors from all time, ie since MONA opened in January 2011, or just those who expressed a preference) and read splendidly mordant comments by David Walsh himself about the works (he admits candidly that the reason he has come to appreciate the Damien Hirst spin painting may be that it cost him "half a million bucks". There is, as advertised, both old and new art displayed, brilliantly, side by side: both very, very old (pre-historic) and very, very new. It's hard to describe what a transcendentally wonderful place this is and my photos don't do it justice. MONA alone was worth the trip to Tasmania and it is probably the best art gallery I've ever visited: a breathtakingly exciting experience and a source of wonder.

Opera House

It's almost with a sense of embarrassment at the obvious that I took today's pictures: there can't possibly be an original angle left. The steps of the Opera House were thronging with tourists, but it was less busy than it would have been on a bright sunny day; and the grey skies gave the building a slightly forbidding feel, so that even the Chinese couple having their wedding photos done had a rather forlorn air about them. Danish architect Jørn Utzon, following controversy over the design and escalating costs, left the project in 1966, long before its completion (in 1973, having cost $102m, 14 times its original budget). There are 1,056,006 Swedish tiles cladding the roof.

Faculty of Law

The Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney (possibly not an institution with money worries) is a striking, shining building which looks boldly across Victoria Park towards the city centre, and was designed by the architects Francis-Jones Morehen Thorpe (also responsible for the splendid Surry Hills Library). The building has won awards for its use of sustainably-sourced timber, in particular the innovative louvre system which enables occupants to close or open the wooden louvres to let in or keep out light and heat from outside. It's a quite astonishing building, especially in contrast with the older, more traditional university spires that surround it. In an incongruous touch, someone has thoughtfully dropped a plastic crocodile into the sunken water feature, where it bobs helplessly, probably forever.