Page 26 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Sydney

24  INTRODUCING SY DNEY

The Early Colony

The colony’s beginnings were rugged and hungry, imbued
with a spirit that would give Sydney its unique character.
Convicts were put to work establishing roads and constructing
buildings out of mud, reeds, unseasoned wood and mortar
made from a crushed shell mixture. From these simple
beginnings, a town grew. Officers of the New South Wales
Corps became farmers, encouraged to work their land Growth of the City
alongside convict labour. Because the soldiers paid for Today 1810
work and goods in rum, they soon became known as the
Rum Corps, in 1808 overthrowing Governor Bligh (of Bounty
fame) when he threatened their privileges. By the early Boat building at the
1800s farms were producing crops, with supplies arriving Government Pitts Row
more regularly – as were convicts and settlers with more dockyard
appropriate skills and trades.

First Fleet Ship (c.1787)
This painting by Francis Holman shows three
angles of the Borrowdale, one of the fleet’s
three commercial storeships.

Government
House

A View of Sydney Cove
Scrimshaw
Engraving bone This idyllic image, drawn by Edward Dayes
or shell was a and engraved by F Jukes in 1804, shows the
skilful way to Aboriginal peoples living peacefully within
pass time the infant colony alongside the flourishing
during long maritime and agricultural industries. In fact,
months spent they had been entirely ostracized from the
at sea. life and prosperity of the town by this time.

1788 The First Fleet arrives, the first
1787 The First Fleet white child is born in the colony, 1796 The Revenge opens
leaves Portsmouth, and the first man is hanged Sydney’s first, but short-
bound for Botany Bay lived, playhouse, simply
Barrington, the convict and
thespian star of The Revenge named The Theatre
1785 1790 1795
1789 The Aboriginal 1790 First detachment of
Bennelong Bennelong is held the New South Wales Corps 1793 Arrival of the first free settlers
pictured in captive and ordered to arrives in the colony. Fears of
European act as an inter mediary starvation are less ened with 1797 Merino sheep arrive
finery between the whites the arrival of the supply ship from Cape of Good Hope
and blacks Lady Juliana

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