Page 23 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Sydney

INTRODUCING SY DNEY  21

THE HISTORY OF SYDNEY

The first inhabitants of Australia were the guards, officers, officials, wives and children
Aboriginal peoples. Their history began landed on 26 January, now commemorated
in a time called the Dreaming when the as Australia Day. This marked the beginning
Ancestor Spirits emerged from the earth of the rapid devastation of the Aboriginal
and gave form to the landscape. Anthro­ peoples, as they fell to introduced diseases
pologists believe the Aboriginal peoples and the overwhelming invasion of the
arrived from Asia more than 50,000 years heavily armed new settlers. Full citizenship
ago. Clans lived in the area now known rights were finally granted to the Aboriginal
as Sydney, until the arrival of Europeans peoples in 1973, and their traditions are
caused violent disruption to this world. now accorded respect.
In 1768, Captain James Cook began a The city of Sydney soon flourished,
search for the fabled “great south land”. with the construction of impressive
Travelling in the wake of other European public buildings befitting an emerging
explorers, he was the first to set foot on the maritime power. In 1901, amid a
east coast of the land the Dutch had named burgeoning nationalism, the Fed eration
New Holland, and claimed it for King and drew the country’s six colonies together
country. He landed at Botany Bay in 1770, and New South Wales became a state
naming the coast New South Wales. of Australia.
At the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, In its two centuries of European
Cook’s botanist on HMS Endeavour, a penal settlement, Sydney has experienced
colony was established here to relieve alternating periods of growth and
Britain’s overflowing prisons. The First Fleet decline. It has weathered the effects of
of 11 ships reached Botany Bay in 1788, gold rush and trade booms, depressions
commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip. and world wars, to establish a distinctive
He felt the land there was too swampy character marked by a vibrant eclecticism.
and the bay windswept. Just to the north, The underlying British culture, married
however, he found “one of the finest with Aboriginal influences and successive
harbours in the world,” naming it Sydney waves of Asian and European migration,
Cove, after the Home Department’s has produced today’s modern
Secretary of State. Here, 1,485 convicts, cosmopolitan city.

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

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