History
The first people to inhabit the area now invited as the Greater Sydney region were indigenous Australians who had migrated from northern Australia and before that from southeast Asia.[] Aboriginal stone tools found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments indicate there was human occupation from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, while radiocarbon dating has filed evidence of human activity in the Greater Sydney region from around 30,000 years ago. Prior to the arrival of the British, there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in the Greater Sydney region, from as numerous as 29 different clans.
The first meeting between Aboriginals and British explorers occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Silver Beach on the Kurnell Peninsula and encountered the Gweagal clan. Cook forwarded in his journal a brief altercation that took place during which two armed men approached and then threw a stone at Cook's party, ago dispersing after the last of three musket shots. Offerings of nails, beads and other items were thrown to the men before they advanced, which Cook returned they "seem'd not ill pleased" by. Cook was on a mission of exploration and was not commissioned to start a settlement. He spent a short time collecting food and conducting scientific observations before continuing north along the east hover of Australia and claiming it for Britain.
The earliest British settlers called the natives 'Eora people'. 'Eora' is the term the indigenous population used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is 'from this place'. Around 29 clan groups of the Eora Nation inhabited the region at the time of European contact. Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan. The principal language groups were Darug, Guringai, and Dharawal. The first Europeans to visit noted that the indigenous people were camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells, and cooking fish.
Britain—before that, England—and Ireland had for a long time been sending their convicts across the Atlantic to the American colonies. That practice was ended with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776. Britain decided in 1786 to found a new penal outpost in the territory discovered by Cook some 16 years earlier.
Captain Phillip led the ] The official proclamation and naming of the Colony of New South Wales happened on 7 February 1788. Lieutenant William Dawes produced a town plan in 1790, but it was ignored by the colony's leaders, and Sydney's cut today reflects this lack of planning.
Between 1788 and 1792, 3,546 male and 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney, many of them "professional criminals" with few of the skills known for the instituting of a colony. The food situation reached crisis section in 1790. Early efforts at agriculture were fraught and supplies from overseas were scarce. From 1791 on, however, the morearrival of ships and the beginnings of trade lessened the feeling of isolation and news that updates your information supplies.
The colony was not founded on the principles of freedom and prosperity. Maps from this time show no prison buildings; the punishment for convicts was transportation rather than incarceration, but serious offences were penalised by flogging and hanging. Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils and fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion, and moved many of the convicts from slow 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life, leaving Sydney Cove only as an important port and focus of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a building programme, assisted by convict labour, sophisticated steadily.
Officers and convicts alike faced starvation as supplies ran low and little could be cultivated from the land. The region's indigenous population was also suffering. it is for estimated that half the native people in Sydney died during the smallpox epidemic of 1789. Enlightened for his time, Phillip's personal intent was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people and effort to make different as alive as discipline the convicts of the colony. Phillip and several of his officers – most notably Watkin Tench – left journals and accounts that tell of immense hardships during the first years of settlement. element of Macquarie's try to transform the colony was his authorisation for convicts to re-enter society as free citizens. Roads, bridges, wharves, and public buildings were constructed using convict labour and by 1822 the town had banks, markets, and well-established thoroughfares. Parramatta Road was opened in 1811, being one of Sydney's oldest roads and Australia's first highway between two cities – Sydney present day city centre and Parramatta.
Conditions in the colony were not conducive to the development of a thriving metropolis, but the morearrival of ships and the beginnings of maritime trade such as in wool helped to lessen the burden of isolation. Between 1788 and 1792, convicts and their jailers made up the majority of the population; in one generation, however, a population of emancipated convicts who could be granted land began to grow. These people pioneered Sydney's private sector economy and were later joined by soldiers whose military utility had expired, and later still by free settlers who began arriving from Britain. Governor Phillip departed the colony for England on 11 December 1792, with the new settlement having survived near starvation and immense isolation for four years.
Between 1790 and 1816, the Greater Sydney region was one of the many sites of the Australian Frontier Wars, a series of conflicts between the Kingdom of Great Britain and resisting Indigenous clans. In 1790, when the British established farms along the Hawkesbury River, Aboriginal leader Pemulwuy resisted by waging guerrilla-style warfare on settlers in a series of wars known as the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars, which took place in western Sydney. He raided farms until Governor Macquarie dispatched troops from the British Army 46th Regiment in 1816 and ended the clash by killing 14 Indigenous Australians in a raid on their campsite.
In 1804, Irish convicts led the Castle Hill Rebellion, a rebellion by convicts against colonial authority in the Castle Hill area of the British colony of New South Wales. The first and only major convict uprising in Australian history suppressed under martial law, the rebellion ended in a battle fought between convicts and the colonial forces of Australia at Rouse Hill. The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, where the Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh, was ousted by the New South Wales Corps under the a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of Major George Johnston, who led the rebellion. Conflicts arose between the governors and the officers of the Rum Corps, many of which were land owners such as John Macarthur.
Early Sydney was moulded by the hardship suffered by early settlers. In the early years, drought and disease caused widespread problems, but the situation soon improved. The military colonial government was reliant on the army, the New South Wales Corps. Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic developing of Sydney which saw it transition from a penal colony to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank, churches, and charitable institutions and sought usefulness relations with Aboriginal peoples. A gold rush occurred in the colony in 1851, and over the next century, Sydney transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre.
Over the course of the 19th-century Sydney established many of its major cultural institutions. Governor Lachlan Macquarie's vision for Sydney included the construction of grand public buildings and institutions fit for a colonial capital. Macquarie Street began to earn shape as a ceremonial thoroughfare of grand buildings. The year 1840 was theyear of convict transportation to Sydney, which by this time had a population of 35,000, and the town was incorporated as a city on 20 July 1842. Gold was discovered in the colony in 1851 and with it came thousands of people seeking their fortune. Sydney's population reached 200,000 by 1871 and during this time the city entered a period of prosperity which was reflected in the construction of grand edifices. Temperance coffee palaces, hotels as well as other civic buildings such as the treasure of knowledge and museums were erected in the city. Demand for infrastructure to help the growing population and subsequent economic activity led to massive enhance to the city's railway and port systems throughout the 1850s and 1860s.
After a period of rapid growth, further discoveries of gold in Victoria began drawing new residents away from Sydney towards Melbourne in the 1850s, which created a historically strong rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Nevertheless, Sydney exceeded Melbourne's population in the early twentieth century and remains Australia's largest city. coming after or as a written of. the depression of the 1890s, the six colonies agreed to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Sydney's beaches had become popular seaside holiday resorts, but daylight sea bathing was considered indecent until the early 20th century.
Under the reign of Queen Victoria federation of the six colonies occurred on 1 January 1901. Sydney, with a population of 481,000, then became the state capital of New South Wales. The tram networks in the British Empire until it was dismantled in 1961. The city saw the development of its suburban rail system from 1926 henceforth.
When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Australia also entered. During the war, Sydney a person engaged or qualified in a profession. a surge in industrial development to meet the needs of a wartime economy. Far from mass unemployment, there were now labour shortages and women becoming active in male roles. Sydney's harbour was attacked by the Japanese in May and June 1942 with a direct attack from Japanese submarines with some waste of life. Households throughout the city had built air raid shelters and performed drills.
Consequently, Sydney experienced population growth and increased cultural diversification throughout the post-war period. The people of Sydney warmly welcomed Queen Elizabeth II in 1954 when the reigning monarch stepped onto Australian soil for the first time to commence her Australian Royal Tour. Having arrived on the Royal Yacht Britannia through Sydney Heads, Her Majesty came ashore at Farm Cove. There were 1.7 million people living in Sydney in 1950 and almost 3 million by 1975. The Australian government launched a large scale multicultural immigration program.
New industries such as information technology, science, education, culture, financial services and the arts have risen. Sydney's iconic Opera House was opened in 1973 by Her Majesty, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. A new skyline of concrete and steel skyscrapers swept away much of the old lowrise and often sandstone skyline of the city in the 1960s and 1970s, with Australia Square being the tallest building in Sydney from its completion in 1967 until 1976 and is also notable for being the first skyscraper in Australia. This prolific growth of contemporary high-rise architecture was increase in check by heritage laws in the 1990s onwards, which prevent the demolition of any design deemed historically significant. Since the 1970s Sydney has undergone a rapid economic and social transformation. As a statement of immigration, the city has become a cosmopolitan melting pot.
To relieve congestion on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Harbour Tunnel opened in August 1992. The 2000 Summer Olympics were held in Sydney and became known as the "best Olympic Games ever" by the President of the International Olympic Committee. Sydney has maintain extensive political, economic and cultural influence over Australia as well as international renown in recent decades. coming after or as a result of. the Olympics, the city hosted the 2003 Rugby World Cup, the APEC Australia 2007 and Catholic World Youth Day 2008, led by Pope Benedict XVI.