The University of Sydney is Australia’s oldest academic institution. It was established in 1850 and hosted such notable alumni as Australia’s first Prime Minister Edmund Barton.

The main campus spreads over Camperdown and Darlington in Sydney’s Inner West. Its iconic neo-Gothic sandstone buildings have been named in the world’s top 10 most picturesque universities – according to the British Daily Telegraph, Huffington Post and even Disney Pixar magazine.

In 2013, the university ranked within the top 0.3% of the world on the QS World University Rankings.

It’s a wonderful university but at times, I think, it’s students can become disillusioned with its beauty. They say familiarity breeds contempt, and in my case, I think that’s true.

So in order to revive its beauty in my own eyes, I took a day in early 2013, before classes had started, to capture Australia’s top university from the eyes of a tourist.

I forced myself to forget I was a student there and experience the beauty of the campus and adjoining parks anew.

Later on in the same year, I covered a story on the university’s education strikes as a photo journalist for Australia’s oldest student-run newspaper Honi Soit. View the gallery of photos here.