The site of the first British colony in Australia, Sydney was established in 1788 at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, commodore of the First Fleet as a penal colony. The city is built on hills surrounding Port Jackson which is commonly known as Sydney Harbour, where the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge feature prominently. The hinterland of the metropolitan area is surrounded by national parks, and the coastal regions feature many bays, rivers, inlets and beaches including the famous Bondi Beach. Within the city are many notable parks, including Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
In 2010, Sydney was ranked 7th in Asia and 28th globally for economic innovation in the Innovation Cities Top 100 Index by innovation agency 2thinknow. Sydney also ranks among the top 10 most liveable cities in the world according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting and The Economist.
Sydney has a reputation as an international centre for commerce, arts, fashion, culture, entertainment, music, education and tourism, making it one of GaWC's Alpha + world cities. Sydney has hosted major international sporting events, including the 1938 British Empire Games, the 2000 Summer Olympics, and the final match of the 2003 Rugby World Cup. The main airport serving Sydney is Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport.
History of Sydney
Artwork depicting the first contact between the Gweagal Aborigines and Captain James Cook on the shores of the Kurnell Peninsula
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| A Direct North General View of Sydney Cove |
The International Exhibition of 1879 at the Garden Palace
Radio carbon dating suggests that the Sydney region has been inhabited by indigenous Australians for at least 30,000 years. The traditional Indigenous inhabitants of Sydney Cove are the Cadigal people, whose land once stretched from south of Port Jackson to Petersham. While estimates of the population numbers prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 remains contentious, approximately 4,000–8,000 Aboriginal people lived in the Sydney region prior to contact with British settlers. The British called the Indigenous people the "Eora", because being asked where they came from, these people would answer: "Eora", meaning "here", or "from this place" in their language. There were three language groups in the Sydney region, which were divided into dialects spoken by smaller clans. The principal languages were Darug (the Cadigal, original inhabitants of the City of Sydney, spoke a coastal dialect of Darug), Dharawal and Guringai. Each clan had a territory, the location of said territory determined the resources available. Although urbanisation has destroyed much evidence of these settlements (such as shell middens), a number of Sydney rock engravings, carvings and rock art remain visible in the Hawkesbury sandstone of the Sydney basin.
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| Sydney harbour in 1932 |
In 1770, British sea Captain Lieutenant James Cook landed in Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula. It is here that Cook made first contact with an Aboriginal community known as the Gweagal. Under instruction from the British government, a convict settlement was founded by Arthur Phillip, who arrived at Botany Bay with a fleet of 11 ships on 18 January 1788. This site was soon determined to be unsuitable for habitation, owing to poor soil and a lack of reliable fresh water. Phillip subsequently founded the colony one inlet further up the coast, at Sydney Cove on Port Jackson on 26 January 1788. He named it after the British Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, in recognition of Sydney's role in issuing the charter authorising Phillip to establish a colony. The original name was intended to be Albion until Phillip decided upon Sydney.
However in 1789, shortly after the arrival in Botany Bay of the French expedition led by La Perouse, a catastrophic epidemic disease—smallpox or possibly chicken pox—spread through the Eora people and surrounding groups, with the result that local Aborigines died in their thousands, and bodies could often be seen bobbing in the water in Sydney Harbour. Colonial historian and First Fleet officer Watkin Tench, whose accounts are primary sources about the early years of the colony, suggested that the epidemic may have been caused by Aborigines disturbing the grave of a French sailor who died shortly after arrival in Australia (supposedly of smallpox) and had been buried at Botany Bay.
In April 1789 a disease, thought to be smallpox, killed an estimated 500 to 1000 Aboriginal people between Broken Bay and Botany Bay. There was violent resistance to British settlement, notably by the warrior Pemulwuy in the area around Botany Bay, and conflicts were common in the area surrounding the Hawkesbury River. By 1820 there were only a few hundred Aborigines and Governor Macquarie had begun initiatives to 'civilise, Christianise and educate' the Aborigines by removing them from their clans. Macquarie's tenure as Governor of New South Wales was a period when Sydney was improved from its basic beginnings. Roads, bridges, wharves and public buildings were constructed by British and Irish convicts, and by 1822 the town had banks, markets, well-established thoroughfares and an organised constabulary.
The 1830s and 1840s were periods of urban development, including the development of the first suburbs, as the town grew rapidly when ships began arriving from Britain and Ireland with immigrants looking to start a new life in a new country. On 20 July 1842 the municipal council of Sydney was incorporated and the town was declared the first city in Australia, with John Hosking the first elected mayor. The first of several Australian gold rushes started in 1851, and the port of Sydney has since seen many waves of people arriving from around the world.
Rapid suburban development began in the last quarter of the 19th century with the advent of steam powered tramways and railways. With industrialisation Sydney expanded rapidly, and by the early 20th century it had a population of more than a million. In 1929, the novelist Arthur Henry Adams called it the "Siren City of the South" and the "Athens of Australia". The Great Depression hit Sydney badly. One of the highlights of the Depression era, however, was the completion of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. There has traditionally been a rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne since the gold rushes of the 1850s made the capital of Victoria, Australia's largest and richest city. Sydney overtook Melbourne in population in the early years of the 20th century, and has remained the largest city in Australia since this time. During the 1970s and 1980s Sydney's CBD with a great number of financial institutions including the headquarters of the Reserve Bank surpassed Melbourne as the nation's financial capital. Throughout the 20th century, especially in the decades immediately following World War II, Sydney continued to expand as large numbers of European and later Asian immigrants populated the metropolitan area.
Geography of Sydney
Topography
Sydney's urban area is in a coastal basin, which is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the East, the Blue Mountains to the West, the Hawkesbury River to the North and the Royal National Park to the South. It lies on a submergent coastline, where the ocean level has risen to flood deep river valleys (ria) carved in the hawkesbury sandstone. Port Jackson, better known as Sydney Harbour, is one such ria and is the largest natural harbour in the world. The Sydney area is not affected by significant earthquakes.
The urban area has around 70 harbour and ocean beaches, including the famous Bondi Beach. Sydney's urban area covers 1,687 km2 (651 sq mi) as of 2001. The Sydney Statistical Division, used for census data, is the unofficial metropolitan area. and covers 12,145 km2 (4,689 sq mi).This area includes the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains, and national parks and other unurbanised land.
Geographically, Sydney lies over two regions: the Cumberland Plain, a relatively flat region lying to the south and west of the harbour, and the Hornsby Plateau, a sandstone plateau lying mainly to the north of the harbour and dissected by steep valleys. The parts of the city with the oldest European development are located in the flat areas south of the harbour. The North Shore was slower to develop because of its hilly topography and lack of access across the harbour. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932 and linked the North Shore to the rest of the city.
Sydney Basin
Sydney is mostly Triassic rock, with a some recent igneous dykes and the volcanic neck. The Hawkesbury sandstone is some 200 metres (600 feet) thick, with shale lenses and fossil riverbeds dotted throughout it. Almost all of the rocks exposed around Sydney will be sandstone. The sand that was to become this sandstone was laid down in the Triassic period, about two hundred million years ago, a time when plants were ferns, reptiles were becoming dinosaurs, and mammals were only just being thought about. The Sydney Basin sits on the east coast of Australia, which is made up of a basin filled with near horizontal sandstones and shales of Permian to Triassic age that overlie older basement rocks of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The sedimentary rocks have been subject to uplift with gentle folding and minor faulting during the formation of the Great Dividing Range. Erosion by coastal streams have created a landscape of deep cliffed gorges and remains of plateaus across. The Sydney Basin Bioregion includes coastal landscapes of cliffs, beaches and estuaries.
The sandstone that characterises Sydney was laid down almost 200 million years ago. The sand was washed from Broken Hill, and laid down in a bed that is about 200 metres thick. Currents washed through it, leaching out most of the minerals and leaving a very poor rock that made an insipid soil. They washed out channels in some places, while in others, the currents formed sand banks that show a characteristic current bedding or cross-bedding that can often be seen in cuttings.
Sydney is on low rolling hills with wide valleys, situated in a rain shadow zone below the Blue Mountains.
Climate of Sydney, New South Wales
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| The coastal suburb of Vaucluse during spring |
Sydney has a temperate climate with warm summers and mild winters. Rainfall is spread throughout the year. The weather is moderated by proximity to the ocean, and more extreme temperatures are recorded in the inland western suburbs. The warmest month is January, with an average air temperature range at Observatory Hill of 18.6–25.8 °C (65–78 °F). An average of 14.6 days a year have temperatures of more than 30 °C (86.0 °F). The maximum recorded temperature was 45.3 °C (113.5 °F) on 14 January 1939 at the end of a four-day heatwave across Australia.
In winter, temperatures rarely drop below 5 °C (41 °F) in coastal areas. The coldest month is July, with an average range of 8.0–16.2 °C (46–61 °F). The lowest recorded minimum at Observatory Hill was 2.1 °C (35.8 °F). Rainfall is fairly evenly spread through the year, but is slightly higher during the first half of the year, when easterly winds dominate.[citation needed] The average annual rainfall, with moderate to low variability, is 1,217 mm (48 in), falling on an average 138 days a year. Snowfall was last reported in the Sydney City area in 1836. However, a July 2008 fall of graupel, or soft hail, mistaken by many for snow, has raised the possibility that the 1836 event was not snow, either.
The city is not affected by cyclones. The El Niño Southern Oscillation plays an important role in determining Sydney's weather patterns: drought and bushfire on the one hand, and storms and flooding on the other, associated with the opposite phases of the oscillation. Many areas of the city bordering bushland have experienced bushfires, these tend to occur during the spring and summer. The city is also prone to severe hail storms and wind storms. One such storm was the 1999 hailstorm, which severely damaged Sydney's eastern and city suburbs. The storm produced massive hailstones of at least 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter and resulting in insurance losses of around A$1.7 billion in less than five hours. The next notable event was in the first weeks of February 2010 when Sydney received some of the highest rainfalls in 25 years, which caused flash flooding and traffic chaos.
The Bureau of Meteorology has reported that 2002 through 2005 were the warmest summers in Sydney since records began in 1859. The summer of 2007–08, however, proved to be one of the coolest summers on record. Warmer and drier conditions came back in 2009, 2010 and 2011 that recorded above average temperatures. In 2009 the dry conditions brought a severe dust storm towards eastern Australia.
All about Sydney
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