General Background
Sydney has an attraction for the entire Oceania region. For Polynesia, Melanesia, young New Zealanders, and inhabitants of Western Australia, Sydney is the New York of Oceania. Sydney has three major openings to the sea. They are Broken Bay to the north, Port Jackson or Sydney Harbor in the center (seen above), and Botany Bay to the South. Sydney Cove was the site of the first European settlement in Oceania. "Three quarters of Sydney's people live within five miles of tidewater. Within 70 miles of Sydney Cove live one-quarter of Australia's population." 1
Sydney was founded in 1788. As the original convict settlement, it is Australia's oldest and largest city. Sydney was the base for the explorers and pastoralists who first penetrated the uncharted inner Australia. It went unchallenged as the premier city until 1851, when gold was discovered in Victoria and Melbourne grew at a phenomenal rate. In the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Sydney reclaimed its title as the first rank in population size of Australia. Despite commercial inroads into the surrounding territory of New South Wales, Sydney still maintains trading leadership over the most productive and diverse hinterland of any Australian primate city. It is rich in wheat, wool, and meat. Its harbour is the best of the colonial port-harbours, possibly with the exception of the harbour in Hobart. As the original settlement, Sydney's street pattern is not as regular as the other capital cities of Australia.The City of Sydney is surrounded by a ring of older, densely crowded suburbs, which have significant numbers of rows of terraces, more than one will find in any other Australian city. The result of this original development is that Sydney has the greatest urban residential density of all capital cities. There is an east-west discontinuous belt of low social status areas through the middle of the metropolitan area which roughly relates to the concentrations of ethnic immigrants to Australia. Sydney is Australia's most active industrial city due to its volume of value added production. It has more than twice the available office space than its rival Melbourne. It is the seat of the largest Australian firms, and has the greatest amount of banking services in the country. Sydney has made an important step by tapping into various modern growth industries and services such as data processing and transmission, as well as high technology and communication.
As the settlement grew, it spread up the valley and along the ridge lines. Transportation development was directly influenced by Sydney's topographical location. Roads extended west, southwest, and east. By 1850 the rail system began to grow quickly and dominated until automobile usage grew in the 1930s. Immigration led to growth and expansion of Sydney. In 1947 the Australians began a sustained drive to obtain immigrants from Europe, initially as a relief measure for war refugees and then as a general policy to increase national numbers. Natural growth was healthy, and the primate cities of Australia were aided by a steady rural-to-urban migration. Sydney has seen an average increase of about 500,000 people each decade since the end of World War II. Its population as of 1990 is about 3.5 million.2
General picture of Central Sydney. Click Here
