History of Sydney

Before European settlement, the area of present-day metropolitan Sydney was inhabited by an estimated 3,000 Aboriginal people of the Cadigal (also known as Eora), Dharawal, Dharug, Gandangara, and Guringai tribes.

These Aboriginal tribes led a much more settled life than the inland tribes and relied heavily on food from marine sources.

Little more is known of these people and their lifestyle and culture because they were essentially wiped out within a few years after the first British colonists arrived in 1788.

Aboriginal people were decimated by European diseases and, to a lesser extent, killed in attacks by British settlers. They also were dispossessed of their lands.

The colonists introduced an epidemic of what was probably smallpox that killed about half of the area’s Aboriginal population in 1789.

Encounters between Aboriginal people and colonists were mostly peaceful at first, but by 1790 the two sides were engaged in a series of armed conflicts known as the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars.

By the end of the century, the few remaining Aboriginal people in the area were reduced to being urban-fringe dwellers.

British explorer Captain James Cook noted the entrance to Port Jackson on his voyage of discovery in 1770 but did not enter.

He landed at Botany Bay and claimed possession of the southeastern part of the Australian continent for the United Kingdom, later naming the territory New South Wales.

It was largely on the basis of Cook’s reports and those of others on his ship, the Endeavour, that the British government decided in 1786 to establish a settlement at Botany Bay.

The intention was to set up a penal colony to help relieve overcrowding in the British gaols (jails).

That year British home secretary Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, appointed retired naval captain Arthur Phillip to be the first governor of New South Wales.

Phillip supervised the preparation of the 11 ships of the First Fleet that set sail for Australia in May 1787, and he commanded one of the ships on the journey.

The fleet arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 with more than 1,450 people, including 736 convicts, most of whom were serving time for minor offenses such as theft.

The first settlers also included 20 civil officials and more than 200 marines and their dependents, while most of the 443 seamen later sailed on to other destinations.

After a brief exploratory expedition north from Botany Bay, Phillip chose Port Jackson as a preferable site.

On January 26 he raised the British flag there and set up camp at Sydney Cove, which he named after Viscount Sydney, and the penal colony became known as Sydney.

The early years were tough for the settlers, who lacked expertise in farming and found it difficult to cultivate crops in the poor soils of the surrounding sandstone country.

Food rations were reduced on a number of occasions before the colony became more or less self-sufficient for basic food supplies by the beginning of the 19th century.

Despite the original purpose of the settlement and the unpromising start, Sydney was a commercial port by about 1800.

The first exports were products made from the seals and whales that were hunted in the ocean waters of southeastern Australia and New Zealand.

Wool and wheat became the major exports in the 1820s. Most manufactured goods were imported from the United Kingdom until the mid-1900s.

Sydney enjoyed a growth spurt with much public building work under the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, who served from 1810 to 1821.

During this period, architect Francis Greenway designed many of what are now the oldest remaining public buildings in Sydney.

Greenway had been banished to Sydney after being convicted of forgery.

He was later pardoned by Macquarie, who gained a reputation for his progressive approach in the treatment and rehabilitation of convicts.

By the end of Macquarie’s term, settlement was beginning to move outward in every direction from Sydney.

After the Blue Mountains were first crossed in 1813, farmers and pastoralists (shepherds) began to relocate to the range’s western slopes to take advantage of the rich soils and pastures there.

Meanwhile, the free population was growing in Sydney.

Although convicts provided a ready and cheap labor pool for public building projects, industry, and farming, employment prospects were ample for free workers.

Moreover, wages for free workers were relatively high, compelling freed convicts to stay in Sydney and new free settlers to arrive.

In the 1830s and 1840s a large influx of skilled migrants from the United Kingdom arrived in Sydney, which was then still the sole port of New South Wales.

The increasing numbers of free people in the colony and growing sentiment against transportation (the British system of exiling convicts as punishment) led the British government to formally end the shipment of convicts to Sydney in 1840.

Some ships carrying so-called exiles arrived in Sydney in 1849, but this was vehemently protested by local activists and was the final transportation to the city.

By 1840 Sydney had become a bustling commercial town with the beginnings of suburban development in what are now the innermost suburbs.

Gas supplies began in 1841, and the Sydney City Council was established with the incorporation of the city in 1842.

The University of Sydney was founded as the country’s first university in 1850, and teaching began three years later.

Wealth flowed into Sydney after gold was discovered in inland New South Wales in the 1850s, and burgeoning growth followed.

The first suburban municipalities were declared between 1859 and 1861.

Outward expansion depended on new, mechanized transportation systems.

The first regular steam ferry service began in Sydney Harbour in 1854; the first railway started operating in 1855; and the first tramway (horsedrawn) began service in 1861.

An extensive network of steam trams was introduced in 1879.

The entire network was electrified from 1893 through the early 1900s and formed the backbone of the inner suburban transportation system until it was dismantled and replaced with buses in the 1950s and 1960s.

Cheaper, more reliable transportation along with a greater availability of home loans for working- and middle-class people has spurred rapid suburban development from the 1870s to the present day.

Sydney prospered in the 1880s, during which time many fine Victorian-era public buildings were erected.

After a downturn in the 1890s, expansion resumed after the six British colonies in Australia became an independent commonwealth, or federation, in 1901.

The so-called Federation architecture of this period was a locally developed style that signaled the prosperity of the emerging middle class.

Large bungalow homes were built in the outer suburbs in this style, which was noted for its high-pitched roofs and wide verandas decorated with intricate timber fretwork.

In the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, meanwhile, Sydney was the focal point for a robust literary movement.

The Bulletin, a literary journal that began publishing in 1880, was the starting point for many Australian writers who gained prominence during this period.

Manufacturing became much more important in Australia, and in Sydney in particular, after the end of World War II in 1945.

Home-produced goods began to replace many of the imports from the United Kingdom.

To help supply the labor needed for industrialization, the federal government launched an initiative in the late 1940s to attract immigration from abroad.

Sydney benefited more than any other Australian city from the new influx of immigrants, becoming a cosmopolitan metropolis with a multicultural population.

Sydney’s port continued to attract international commerce and trade and established the city as a key financial and business center for the entire Asia-Pacific region.

The scenic location and vibrant cultural life of Sydney made tourism one of its leading industries.

Sydney’s reputation as Australia’s leading financial and cultural center was firmly established even before the successful staging of the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 2000 Summer Paralympics reinforced the city’s image worldwide.