"Sydney" a Sydney Travel Page by photobf

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This fantastic view was from the Harbor Bridge
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<font size=+2 color=red><b><center>Long live cheap email!!!</center></b></font size=+2 color=red>
I liked Sydney alot. It was a little busy for my taste, but I did still like it. I swear. My hostel overlooked a super busy road, so I could people watch constantly if I felt like it. I was here for about a week before I left to go up the coast to Dubbo.<hr width="500">
<i><b>FYI</b> The below was not written by me and not claimed to be mine, however, it's kind of interesting. Read it or not, that's up to you. Enjoy either way!</i>
Sydney is, certainly to its residents, one of the world's most beautiful cities. Set on a large harbour it has the natural advantages of walks around the harbour foreshores, spectacular views bayside parks and gardens and the architectural magic of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

The English writer Anthony Trollope, when he visited Australia, wrote of Sydney: 'I despair of being able to convey to any reader my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour. I have seen nothing to equal it in the way of land-locked sea scenery.'

The best way to understand the greater Sydney region is to think of it as a huge saucer-like bowl with drowned river valleys in the north (the Hawkesbury River-Broken Bay area), the south (Port Hacking) and in the middle (Sydney Harbour). These three fine waterways were formed during the last ice age when the sea was more than 100 metres lower than its current level. When the sea level rose the river valleys were drowned. These drowned valleys can be easily seen if you fly over the city.

The centre of the greater metropolitan area is a low-lying plain which stretches west for nearly 50 kilometres until it reaches the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains. The westerly extremity of the city is drained by the Nepean River which flows along the base of the Blue Mountains and joins the Hawkesbury River near Windsor. In turn the Hawkesbury cuts a valley until it reaches the sea at Broken Bay.

Lying to the north and south of the entrance to the harbour are more than twenty excellent beaches all of which are ideal for swimming, surfing and sun-baking in the summer months.
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<b>History of the City</b>
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, a number of different groups of Aborigines lived peacefully and successfully around the harbour. Captain James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770. He entered Botany Bay and thought it suitable for a colony. He did not enter Sydney Harbour and, seeing it only from the ocean, did not recognise its unique deepwater facilities.

On 13 May 1787 a fleet of eleven vessels left Britain bound for Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. The flagship of the fleet, the 520 ton HMS Sirius, was captained by Arthur Phillip who was to become the colony's first governor. The vessels arrived at Botany Bay on the night of 19 January 1788.

Phillip quickly determined that Botany Bay was unsuitable. On 21 January, accompanied by a small detachment of marines, he rowed north. On the afternoon of 21 January, Phillip entered Port Jackson. He was later to write that it was 'one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in perfect security'. On 26 January Phillip led the fleet north to Sydney Harbour. By the middle of the day convicts were cutting down trees around the edge of Sydney Cove and, as the day came to an end, Phillip and his officers raised the Union Jack of Queen Anne and toasted the British royal family and the future of the colony.

The settlement started with nothing. Houses had to be built, streets and lanes carved out of the slopes on either side of the Tank Stream, quarters constructed for the soldiers and convicts, fields planted and the countryside explored. This was the true origin of Sydney. A dirty and desolate penal colony at the end of the world.

Conflict between Aborigines and Europeans occurred within months of the landing. As early as May 1788 a convict working beyond Sydney Cove killed an Aborigine and shortly afterwards two convicts were speared and killed while gathering rushes at the place now known as Rushcutters Bay.

The history of Sydney from 1825 until the 1860s is that of a prison slowly evolving into a society where free settlers and emancipated convicts worked together. The turning point occurred in May 1851 when Edward Hargraves brought 120 grams of gold to Sydney triggering the goldrushes. Overnight workers in Sydney downed tools and headed for the goldfields. Miners and prospectors from all over the world passed through Sydney eager to try their luck on the goldfields.

The city continued to expand throughout the 1870s and 1880s. The post-World War II development of the city has seen the construction of the Opera House, the creation of efficient urban transport, the enormous growth of suburban Sydney so that it is now a city similar in size to Los Angeles, and the modernisation of the city centre.

Modern Sydney suburbia is remarkably similar to American suburbia with large shopping complexes, huge parking lots, the majority of people driving their own cars, freeways abound and most people live in single-storey brick bungalows on neat suburban plots.

Sydneysiders enjoy the city's excellent wine bars and coffee lounges, they range widely across the city's diverse ethnic restaurants, and they display an easy tolerance towards the immigrants who have so significantly altered the city's lifestyle over the past fifty years.
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