A fleeting moment, not real bridge to past Sydney is not innocent. Sydney is the Caravaggio of cities - sumptuous, tempestuous, full of violent emotion and intense contrast, fecund and fetid, passionate and putrid, strongly flavoured, deeply textured, dangerous, enchanting, shadowed, untame, intense. So forgive me for feeling that the Fleet Review - a plodder of a centenary no one had heard of until the PR machine nobbled it - didn't quite get it in the bag. Fair enough for Sydney to go gaga over some foreign prince who bowls in for a minute on a retinue of floating death machines that symbolise warfare from the same dead empire the prince represents. Fine, I suppose, if we must sign up for the country-cousin role, frantically deferring to a nation whose glory days are centuries gone. Perhaps it's even OK that, at a taxpayer-funded $40 million, the shindig could have funded a decent school or hospital wing. I mean, it's idiotic, obviously. But maybe it's worth it for a good party and a bit of uniform braid - except that the braid was tacky and, frankly, the party wasn't that great either. Surely, if "the biggest event since the Olympics" was your goal, you'd commemorate an event people knew and cared about? First Fleet, Founding, Federation - that sort of thing? But centenary of the first entry of the Royal Australian Navy to Sydney Harbour? I mean, hello? From Blues Point, where we stood, the fireworks had some nice moody moments and the Last Post was almost moving. But the solo went on too long, and the mishmash of rock, pop and braided bombast sounded like the Cootamundra brass band played through a tinny radio. I know, there was a story; the "seven-act drama" of the Australian Navy projected onto the Opera House and the Maritime Museum. But the narrative arc - and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here - drooped rather than soared, with sound and fury both ends and a doldrums in the middle, signifying nothing. And the weirdest thing is that, for the cost of this hoopla, we could have kept some of our real maritime history that we're busy replacing with rubbish. Behind the gunpowder and the bunting sat the hammerhead crane on Garden Island, the old Glebe Island Bridge and every heritage item on the entire Barangaroo site (including the 1904 pumping station, 1913 sandstone seawall and the Sydney Ports' Harbour Control Tower), are all up for demolition. It's like we've decided sanitised celluloid history is much more manageable than the real thing and, darling, so much cheaper. And it's this willingness to demolish the reality of our own dark and dangerous stories for imported upbeat pretence that leads us to focus our very worst cultural accretion on the territory we love most, the water's edge. I say nothing of the hideous crust of prosthetic-pink precast resorts up and down the coast. Nor of the departure of Danish public-space guru Jan Gehl from Barangaroo. After all, a $440,000 fee for no work sounds like the kind of client disdain most of us could do with more of. Barangaroo is a lost cause. It should have been brilliant; Sydney's urban fabric intensely linked to its voluptuous place and patchwork culture. Instead, successive governments connive to reap top-dollar by shoving it into the anonymous global stratosphere, all rich lifestyle and threadbare values. The Garden Island hammerhead crane is also virtually gone. A now-rare reminder of our working harbour, it has decorated Sydney's skyline since World War II, when it was built to service the British navy. You might say we now service that navy in other ways - by hosting princes-who-party. Yet many will be sad to see the crane finally fall. Those decisions, though, are already made. The latest victim of those charged with its protection is the old Glebe Island Bridge. It's an old, well-worn path, much loved by the development fraternity. First, apply 10 years or so of outright neglect. Next, a cost-benefit analysis showing - heavens - that even basic maintenance is now an expensive option. Third - so sorry, love to help, what can I do? buildings don't just restore themselves - demolish. The Glebe Island Bridge (1903) is the second-oldest bridge on the harbour. Along with its nearby sibling the Pyrmont Bridge, it was one of the world's earliest electrically-powered swing bridges. Such was the innovation that in 1907 their designer, NSW Public Works engineer Percy Allan (assisted by J.J.C. Bradfield), was invited to address the Royal Institution of Civil Engineers in London. It is muscular, beautiful and listed on five heritage registers, including the Register of the National Estate and the Roads and Maritime Services section 170 register. As it happens, the $37.5 million cost of restoring the bridge, as assessed by ACIL Allen, is almost equal to the cost of "full demolition" ($37.3 million). Either would have been covered by the cost of the weekend fireworks blow-up, with some left over for the 15-year maintenance cycle. Allen argues that, at 1000 daily pedestrians or cyclists, each trip would cost the taxpayer $15.20. By that token, each half-hour firework watching cost us $23.50. But it's not just money. It's about how we make a place that - unlike firework displays or a show of foreign ships - embodies collective significance, for us. Sydney is not just a city of light. It's also a city of shadows. Our wild Caravaggio of cities is thrilling, voluptuous, troubled. This is its magic and its legacy. We delete it at our peril. Twitter: @emfarrelly