Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE HISTORY OF SYDNEY
The first inhabitants
after the Home Department's
Secretary of State. Here,
1,485 convicts, guards,
officers, officials, wives
and children landed. This
marked the beginning of
the rapid devastation of the
Aboriginal peoples, as they
fell to introduced diseases
and battled an undeclared
war against the settlers. Full citizen-
ship rights were finally granted to the
Aboriginal peoples in 1973, and their
traditions are now accorded respect.
The city of Sydney soon flourished,
with the construction of impressive
public buildings befitting an emerging
maritime power. In 1901, amid a
burgeoning nationalism, the fed-
eration drew the country's six
colonies together and New South
Wales became a state of Australia.
In its two centuries of European
settlement, Sydney has experienced
alternating periods of growth and
decline. It has weathered the effects
of gold rush and trade booms, depres-
sions and world wars, to establish a
distinctive city marked by a vibrant
eclecticism. The underlying British
culture, married with Aboriginal influ-
ences and successive waves of Asian
and European migration, has produced
today's modern cosmopolitan city.
of Australia were the
Aboriginal peoples.
Their history began in a
time called the Dreaming
when the Ancestor Spirits
emerged from the earth and
gave form to the landscape.
Anthropologists believe the
Aboriginal peoples arrived
from Asia more than 50,000 years ago.
Clans lived in the area now known as
Sydney, until the Europeans caused
violent disruption to this world.
In 1768, Captain James Cook began
a search for the fabled “great south
land”. Travelling in the wake of other
European explorers, he was the first
to set foot on the east coast of the land
the Dutch had named New Holland,
and claimed it for King and country.
He landed at Botany Bay in 1770,
naming the coast New South Wales.
At the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks,
Cook's botanist on the
Endeavour
, a
penal colony was established here to
relieve Britain's overflowing prisons.
The First Fleet of 11 ships reached
Botany Bay in 1788, commanded by
Captain Arthur Phillip. He felt the land
there was swampy and the bay wind-
swept. Just to the north, however, he
found “one of the finest harbours in
the world,” naming it Sydney Cove,
Sydney's coat of arms,
Sydney Town Hall
Sketch & Description of the Settlement at Sydney Cove
(1788) by transported convict Francis Fowkes
Desmond, a New South Wales Chief
(about 1825) by Augustus Earle
