KEY POINTS:
Down on Circular Quay, fruit seller Bill Haire is not a happy man.
The rows of outdoor restaurant tables to his right are all but empty. In front, the buses have stopped running and, although trains are still moving in and out of the Quay, passenger numbers are
down to a relative trickle.
The cause is not hard to find: the massive, 2.8m-high steel and concrete fence that isolates the lower half of the central business district and barricades Sydney's iconic Opera House to keep safe the 21 Asia-Pacific leaders who will be meeting there this weekend.
It is an amazing, but daunting, sight, turning normally buzzing streets into heavily patrolled alleyways and cul-de-sacs, weapons on hips throughout.
"It was worse when they were putting up the fence," Haire says as his only two customers for the past hour turn out to be a man asking directions to a vegetable stall and a Herald reporter.
"Then we had trucks and forklifts and construction workers, police, dust, noise, and everything else. Today, at least, the fence is constructed and there is public access through the gates."
The regulars who work in the area came in during the morning rush, but there have been very few of the tourists who make up about half of his trade, and who fill most of the tables along the quay.
Through the CBD, Sydney is running almost at a weekend pace.
Blocked roads, choked arterials and repeated warnings appear to have convinced many Sydneysiders to either leave their cars at home, avoid the city altogether, or take the week off work ahead of the public holiday declared for Friday, when the real leaders' crush will bite.
The police presence is heavy, but not yet overwhelming.
Pairs of police are dotted throughout the city, on street corners, in doorways, and throughout train stations.
On the Quay, and closer to the Opera House, larger squads patrol in lines of two-by-two.
A police launch with flashing blue and red lights slowly patrolled Darling Harbour as dawn broke, later joined by jet skis. Police helicopters circle overhead.
And security teams have been busy checking every possible concealment for bombs or anything else dangerous, using mirrors to check under culverts and high pressure water hoses to flush out drains.
Behind the cops on the beat are fleets of cars and motorcycles parked at strategic points, with New South Wales' new water cannon on standby in the inner city in case demonstrations turn violent.
Police horses that would normally have worked the crowds remain quarantined in stables by the equine flu epidemic.
At Trades Hall, critics of Apec say they have no intention of violence, even if other more radical groups have promised to ignore police bans and demonstrate in forbidden areas.
A coalition of environmental, aid and community organisations have set up their own media centre to balance what they say will be the inevitable spin control dominating the official Apec media base behind the steel fence at Darling Harbour.
"We think there will be little interaction between the official media centre and the real world," says Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham.
He says the organisers of the Trades Hall centre are concerned that Australian Prime Minister John Howard and US President George W. Bush will try to use the Apec summit to undermine the Kyoto protocols on climate change, muddying the waters in a bid to promote their own proposed alternative.
And while violence is off their agenda, Wakeham says, the Trades Hall group says it fully supports the public's right to protest peacefully.
Yesterday's warmth may have been the calm before the storm.
