BACKGROUND CREATIVE, ELOQUENT AND VIVIDLY DESCRWIWE
Captain James Cook must have had an off day when he named
New South Wales in 1770. The man who came up with "Botany Bay," "Cape Tribulation," "Whitsunday Passage," "Glass House Mountains," and "Magnetic Island," might have been overwhelmed by the responsibility of attaching a label to the 4,000 km (2,500 miles) of lushly forested tropical and subtropical coastline, sandy coves and coral islands and cays he had spent four months navigating.
The new-found land was neither new nor more than vaguely resembled South Wales, but the misnomer stuck.
Britain showed little interest in the far-off land at first - giving the Yura and Dharuk Aboriginal people of the lands around Botany Bay and Port ski fields of the Snowy Mountains near the Victorian border, including Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciusko at 2,228 m (7,310 ft). The Great Dividing Range's proximity to the coast gives birth to broad fast-flowing rivers, carving the deep bays and magnificent harbors that are the most identifiable feature of the New South Wales coast. Along the north coast, the blue-green eucalyptus forests mingle with more extroverted of the subtropical rainforest. Cooler coastal weather patterns rarely make it across the divide; sudden downpours are common in Sydney - when it rains it pours - but over the rains, the dry western plains of the wheat belt gradually merge into the legendary outback.
Canberra may be Australia's capital, but Sydney is its heart. Most flights to
Australia arrive at its Kingsford-Smith Airport, looping down over the city on their final descent towards runways that jut into Botany Bay. On a clear day, this is the best introduction to Australia. Against a backdrop of densely forested mountains and fronted by the Pacific Ocean, leafy suburbs and red-tiled rooftops gradually give way to the urban landscape of inner Sydney.
The first fingers of water seem unconnected:spotsofdeep blue edged with parkland that break up the concrete and traffic. But quickly the water widens out to the expanse of Port Jackson, held together at its narrowest point by the arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Near the bridge, flashes of sunlight on the oversized seashell that is the Sydney Opera House shine white against the blue of the harbor's deep waters, which are dotted with islands and peppered with sailing boats, ferries, windsurfers, motorboats and tilting seaplanes.
Sydney is a sprawling city with over four million inhabitants.
It was
Australia's first city and remains its largest, measuring 70 km (43.5 miles) from north to south and 55 km (34 miles) east to west. To the rest of Australia it's a fast-paced urban jungle. By international standards, however, Sydney is definitely laid-back, Far more San Francisco than New York, and with a better bay. Sydneysiders enjoy almost year-round sunshine, without the tropical humidity of Brisbane and Cairns - or only rarely. With such a combination of climate and topography, it's hardly surprising they are such outdoors fanatics.
The never-ending estuaries, coves, islands and inlets of Port Jackson (or Sydney Harbor) form a watery maze that divides the city in two, and today's Sydneysiders live by, on, in, above and occasionally below the sparkling waters of its harbor. They commute by ferry or drive over its soaring bridge. They roller blade, skateboard, cycle, jog or simply lunch along its banks. Office parties and even weddings are frequently held on boats, and cafes along Bondi and Manly beaches open early to serve coffee and breakfast to the body-conscious who brave the surf from sunrise year-round. For its legitimate claims as a cosmopolitan, multicultural, innovative and exciting city, Sydney is above all, the best this planet has to illustrate the maxim most dear to sun-seekers: "life's a beach." It has 70 of them, Jackson few years grace. But by the mid-1780s, following the loss of their colonies in the 1776 American War of Independence,
London's prisons and workhouses were overflowing. The solution chosen by the British dramatically and irrevocably altered Aboriginal history.
The first fleet of convicts and settlers arrived at Sydney Cove in 1788, and the colony of New South Wales grew rapidly to cover over half of Australia -encompassing modern-day Queensland, Victoria and parts of South Australia. Although today the state occupies only 10°;', of the continent - it's roughly the size of California - over a third of Australia's population live here, 96% of them within an hour’s drive of the coast. Geographically, New South Wales has a bit of everything.
The rugged Great Dividing Range stretches along the state's eastern seaboard.
Marked by vertiginous outcrops, deep gorges, and rich soil supporting diverse cultivation, it rises to form the 74 For many visitors New South Wales is a land of perfect beaches, great surf and outstanding nature (its 70 national parks cover nearly 40,000 SQ km or 15,400 SQ miles). Yet the state has a rich, multi-faceted and often brutal history. Archeological relics, Dreamtime stories, and rock paintings remind visitors of the complex culture of the numerous Aboriginal clans who lived freely on these lands until 1770. The early penal colony, which eventually became the city of Sydney, constructed solid Georgian buildings that remain today - inmates' quarters, churches, and government buildings.
The subsequent era of exploration, free settlement and westward expansion, followed by the colorful
gold rush years, left in its wake historic townships and tall tales throughout the state.
BACKGROUND Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1770, naming it after botanist Joseph Banks' excitement at the strange and lush plant growth. Cook noted what he thought was a smaller harboring a little further north, .1I1d named this Port Jackson.
