Aborigines are believed to have inhabited the area of modern Sydney for at least 40,000 years. An estimated 3,000 Aborigines from at least three “tribes”, among them the Iora, were inhabiting the area at the time of the arrival of Europeans. Captain James Cook sighted and named Port Jackson during his epic voyage up the east coast of Australia in 1770, though he missed the opportunity of discovering what Governor Phillip would later call “a noble and capacious harbour, equal if not superior to any yet known to the world”. With the First Fleet, Phillip landed, according to instructions, at Botany Bay but was moved to explore further by what he immediately saw as its unsuitability. On January 26, 1788, he raised the flag at “Sydney Cove” (the modern Circular Quay), having fixed on the new site after exploring the coast and sailing into Port Jackson. The British determination to stake a claim to Australia was justified by the arrival just six days after the First Fleet of the French explorer La Perouse at Botany Bay. More than a thousand people, the large majority of them convicts, made up the motley group that became the first European settlement in Australia. There were at the time an estimated 3,000 Aborigines in the area who were quickly driven away in ensuing months, though Phillip's personal policy and inclinations towards the indigenous inhabitants was benign and, for the times, enlightened. In the following years many Aborigines would die of introduced diseases, others would be killed resisting the intrusion of the new settlers or in “pacification” attempts by the authorities.
After early trials and near extinction because of the difficulty of growing crops in the unfamiliar climate and on unforgiving soil, free settlers arrived and the colony grew rapidly. Under the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, Sydney flowered architecturally, culturally and, it might be said, morally, since Macquarie sought to stop the use of rum as currency, and adopted humanitarian policies towards the convicts.
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Sydney Information info
|
