Overview
Rubber duckie you're the one; you make staring out over Darling Harbour so much fun. Childhood nostalgics will be beside themselves at the visiting art installation Rubber Duck by Florentijn Hofman, which is five storeys high. We loved it when it popped up in France's Loire River earlier this year, and we'll love it closer up when it bobs into Cockle Bay to mark the opening of the Sydney Festival in the two-hour spectacle billed The Arrival, complete with acrobats, 3000 littler ducks, and the opening of the Pyrmont Bridge.
Also happening on Day One is Fun Run, a theatricalised marathon focusing on one guy on a treadmill in Hyde Park (you can even be a part of it no running required), and the Daptone Super Soul Revue, a huge outdoor dance party in the Domain that thrills every year. It's disappointing that state funding for the ever-expanding street party Festival First Night was slashed in 2012, but Sydney Festival organisers are clearly showing off their powers of making-do with the fun, free, concentrated three acts of Day One that go from 9.30am until late into the night.
Read our list of the 12 best things to see at the Sydney Festival in 2013.