The settlement of Sydney is said to have begun on the afternoon of
26 January 1788, when the 11 ships of the "First Fleet" dropped
anchor at Sydney Cove, one of the loveliest harbours in the world.
But the human cargo that arrived in those ships was not lovely. The
aim was not to build a great city, but to establish a prison
settlement for British convicts. Soldiers and prisoners worked to
carve out a rough and ready settlement, using European knowledge and
ignoring the skills of the local people who had lived in this place
for so long, and who were now being decimated by new European
diseases. On several occasions the little settlement came close to
starvation.
Today, there are clear signs of these early years in the landscape
of the City of Sydney. The original tracks hewn through the bush
form some of the city’s main thoroughfares. The eastern, "official"
side of the original settlement still contains the buildings that
denote power and control - government offices, the governor’s
residence, the houses of parliament. In the historical imagination,
the old convict barracks near Hyde Park still reverberate with the
swish of the lash and the clang of the chain gangs.
Some of the finest buildings of this early convict period were built
during the time Lachlan Macquarie was governor (1810 - 1821).
Governor Macquarie wanted to build a city and got himself recalled
to London for his troubles, accused of spending too much money on
the place. But against all the odds, Sydney was becoming a city, as
free settlers began to arrive and convicts began to be free. A more
complex place evolved as the economy grew. To the stench of the tar
blackened ships’ whaling and sealing were added the cargoes of the
new and lucrative wool trade. To the gaol buildings were added
increasing numbers of schools, churches, markets, stores, theatres
and a library.
Government, gold and growth
By the time transportation of convicts ended in 1840, there were
about 30,000 people living in Sydney. In 1842 the City of Sydney was
established, with elections, offices and all the trappings of a free
society. When gold was discovered in 1851, people began pouring into
the city, not only from Europe and California, but from China as
well. There was a flurry of building in the city, much of it shonky,
as people improvised with scarce building materials and anyone could
claim to be a builder. It was a more certain way of making money
than digging for gold. Many did make fortunes, however, and the
history of the city at this time is rich in stories of wild parties
and extravagant celebrations that would have been unimaginable a few
years earlier.
Exuberance in architecture is a legacy of the prosperous decades
that followed, with great piles of Victorian edifices being built to
house a burgeoning society that not only wanted all the good things
of the older European society, but had the money to build and
consume to excess. The public symbol of this period of enthusiastic
growth is the mellow golden local Sydney sandstone that was used to
build places like the Town Hall, the General Post Office and the
rapidly multiplying offices of the civil service in the official,
eastern side of the city. Lesser buildings, "handsome villa
residences, match-box cottages, toy-houses, and flimsy habitations
studded the slopes in all directions around the city", (James
Inglis, 1880s) indicating in varying degrees the participation of
ordinary people in this city bonanza. As with all societies, some
could afford none of these.
By the end of the nineteenth century Sydney was one of the largest
cities in the Western world, with a population of half a million
people. It has not maintained that position in the twentieth
century, but Sydneysiders have long known that it is quality, not
quantity that counted. The fact that the quality of this harbour
city is largely due to the generosity of nature does not stop its
inhabitants claiming all this as their due. Ever since the first
governor recorded his responses to "the finest harbour in the
world", artists and writers have never stopped trying to capture the
essence of the city with paint brush, camera and pen. These records
contribute to the rich history of the city.
The Flagstaff at Fort Phillip is certainly one of the most
airy of the scenes about Sydney - situated on an eminence so
lofty that a person looking from it can see the mighty City,
and a portion of the countryside around it, spread out like a
rich panorama; where roofs of houses and church steeples are
crowded together... How grand, how sublime ... (1847).
Twentieth century additions to the view, in the form of the 1930s
Sydney Harbour Bridge and the 1960s Opera House have become part of
the cultural overlay of this rich natural inheritance. Nature and
culture together created and continue to create a city described by
the writer Jan Morris in 1992 as a place with:
"... the grand-slam look, the whole hog, flag-and-fireworks
look few cities on earth can offer so operatic an
approach...something grand, famous and preferably glittering
left on the shores of history by Empire’s receding tide... not
I think the best of the cities the British Empire created, not
the most beautiful either, but the most hyperbolic, the
youngest at heart, the shiniest ..."
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