SYDNEY GENERAL INFORMATION
Britain later decided to establish a penal colony in New Holland, as Australia was then known, Cook proposed Botany Bay as an ideal site. But on arriving with the First Fleet in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip was apparently not convinced of Cook's choice. The fleet waited six days while Phillip explored the surrounding coastline, until finally, on January 26, 1788, he declared Port Jackson to be "the finest harbor in the world" and sailed the fleet through its headlands.
Once ashore, Phillip raised the Union Jack and proclaimed the Colony of New South Wales in the name of King George, and himself Governor of it. Phillip established his colony on lands controlled by Yura (alternatively spelt Eora or lora) clans some of the rock carvings in Sydney are over 40,000 years old. Although he endorsed a policy of non-violence towards the Aborigines, the settlers cleared the Yura's forests, restricted their access to traditional hunting and fishing grounds, and even pilfered their fishing nets and baskets and eventually their women.
Retaliation was inevitable. Isolated attacks were prevented from escalating into full-blown warfare by a smallpox epidemic in'1789, which almost annihilated the Aboriginal population (influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis added to the devastation). Guerrilla attacks continued, though, led by angered warriors likePemulway, who speared the Governor's gamekeeper in 1790 and fought against the New South Wales Corps until he was killed in 1802. Although Britain continued to transport convicts to Sydney until 1840, the colony's steady growth owed more to land grants and other schemes that attracted thousands of free settlers. Convicts provided necessary labor (just below convicts on the social scale, young Aborigines were employed as servants and farmhands). Pioneers built homesteads up and down the coast, and in 1813 a track was finally cleared through the Blue Mountains, opening up the ferThe plains to the west.
In 1850-1851, the news of sizeable nuggets of gold found near Bathurst changed the face of the new colony. Fortune-seekers the world over set sail for Sydney Harbor. Sydney’s population doubled over the next 10 years.
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, multifaceted 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.
