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The original settlers of Sydney Harbour, the Aboriginal Eora people, arrived almost 50,000 years ago. They fished in the summer months, and during winter they sought food inland and north towards the Hawkesbury River. At the time of white settlement, 1,500 Eora were estimated to live around the Sydney Harbour area.

After observing the Transit of Venus in Tahiti for the Royal Society, Captain James Cook was instructed by the British Admiralty in 1769 to discover and claim the “Great South Continent”. He arrived at Botany Bay on 28 April 1770.

Governor Phillip and the First Fleet of 11 ships, carrying 1,500 convicts, guards, military officials and their families, arrived at Botany Bay in 1788. Unable to find sufficient fresh water, Phillip sailed north and found one of the world’s “finest harb-ours”. The colony was established at a small cove named in honour of Phillip’s neighbour, Viscount Sydney.

The irascible and disliked Governor Bligh threatened to curtail the privileges enjoyed by officers of the NSW “Rum Corps”, so named for their use of liquor as a form of currency. They “arrested” Bligh as retaliation in 1808, but their coup was short-lived as they were soon ordered back home to England.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie took charge of the colony in 1810 and restored order. During his 12-year governance, he managed to transform the outpost from a ramshackle penal colony into a town with regular roads and civic amenities. He also encouraged Emancipists, convicts who had served their time, to stay and contribute to the colony’s growth, thus ensuring a thriving future for Sydney.

On a wild night in 1857, the migrant ship Dunbar, en route to Sydney from England, struck rocks near the Heads. Only one passenger survived, while 121 others drowned. It remains Australia’s worst ever maritime disaster and came as a bitter blow to the young colony.

The first of Australia’s World War I volunteers set sail from Sydney Harbour on 1 November 1914, destined for battlefields in Europe and the Middle Almost 330,000 Australian troops served overseas and 60,000 died, which was the highest death rate per head of population of all nations involved in the war.

Several areas, including The Rocks and Woolloomooloo, were saved from developers’ wrecking balls in the 1970s. Fortunately for Sydney’s future, the Builders’ Labourers Federation imposed “Green Bans” on projects that clearly threatened environmen- tally or historically significant buildings and precincts.

Over 1,000 gay rights activists took to Sydney’s streets demanding equal rights in 1978. Several protestors were arrest-ed, but they vowed to return the following year. The parade that followed in 1979 established an annual event that is now a major tourist attraction (see Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras).

With increasingly more citizens calling for reconciliation between black and white Australia, many rose to their feet when champion Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic flame to signal the start of the first Olympic Games of the new millennium in September 2000.