SYDNEY

city, capital of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Located on Australia's southeastern coast, Sydney is a major port in the South Pacific and is noted for its beautiful harbour. The city was established as a penal colony in the late 18th century and had become a major trading centre even before the first pioneers pushed inland. It is now the largest metropolitan area in Australia. The metropolitan area of Sydney stretches from the Blue Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east and from the Hawkesbury River in the north to south of Botany Bay. The city itself was built on the low hills surrounding the harbour. Sydney's climate is temperate, with a mean temperature in February, the warmest month, of 72 F (22 C); the coolest month, July, averages 54 F (12 C). Rainfall averages 45 inches (1,140 mm) annually, and much of it occurs during the summer months. About one-third of Sydney's workforce is engaged in manufacturing. No single industry predominates, though oil refining has grown in importance. The government sector is also economically important, as is the port. A second port has been developed in Botany Bay. Sydney is widely known both for its water sports and recreational facilities and for its cultural life. The universities of Sydney and New South Wales are located there, as is Macquarie University. The world-renowned Sydney Opera House, set on a promontory southeast of the Harbour Bridge, is a major centre for the performing arts, with theatres and recording, concert, and exhibition halls. It is the home of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Opera, dance and theatre companies, and a library. Rapid development of suburban Sydney and the absence of major highways that bypass the city have caused a persistent transport problem that is only partially mitigated by commuter ferry boats, an underground railway, and extensive metropolitan bus service. Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport is on the northern shore of Botany Bay. Area city, 5 square miles (13 square km); metropolitan area, 4,790 square miles (12,407 square km). Pop. (1986) city, 86,311; (1991) city, 3,097,956; (1994 est.) metropolitan area, 3,738,500. city, capital of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Located on Australia's southeastern coast, Sydney is the country's largest city and, with its magnificent harbour and strategic position, is also one of the most important ports in the South Pacific. In the early 19th century, when it was still a small convict settlement and the first settlers had barely penetrated the interior, it had already established trade with the Pacific Islands, India, China, South Africa, and the Americas. The first sight of Sydney, whether from the sea or the air, is always spectacular. Built on low hills surrounding a huge harbour with innumerable bays and inlets, the city is dominated by the bulk of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, one of the longest steel-arch bridges in the world, and the Opera House, with its glittering white shell-shaped roofs that seem to echo the sails of the many yachts in the adjacent harbour. The intricate confusion of water and buildings makes a striking impression either by day or by night. Because of its history as a great port and its status as the site of the country's main international air terminal, Sydney is perhaps the only city in Australia with a genuinely international atmosphere. Yet it remains a very Australian city, with a nice compromise between the Anglo-Saxon efficiency of its British heritage and the South Seas attractions of its climate and environment. Area City of Sydney, 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km); Sydney Statistical Division, 4,790 square miles (12,407 square km). Pop. (1996) City of Sydney, 24,883; Sydney Statistical Division, 3,741,290. city and ocean port, seat of Cape Breton county, northeastern Nova Scotia, Canada. It lies on the southeastern arm of Sydney Harbour at the mouth of the Sydney River, on eastern Cape Breton Island. Founded in 1783 as a haven for United Empire Loyalists and named for Thomas Townshend, Baron Sydney (later Viscount Sydney; then colonial secretary), it served as the capital of Cape Breton Island until 1820, when the island was united with Nova Scotia. The city's population was greatly increased during the early 18th century by the influx of large numbers of immigrants, especially from the Highlands of Scotland, and again in the early 19th century after the erection of a major steel plant. Situated in the heart of an extensive coal-mining region, on an excellent harbour, Sydney and the nearby towns of North Sydney, Sydney Mines, and Glace Bay form the province's second largest industrial complex (after Halifax). There are also aluminum, auto-assembly, concrete, and woodworking plants, fishing (including lobster) industries, and a ship-repairing drydock. The Sydney area is the eastern terminus of the mainland portions of the Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian National Railway; there also are ferry connections to Newfoundland. Sydney is the seat of St. Francis Xavier Junior College (1952); the Canadian Coast Guard College (1965) is at nearby Point Edward. Inc. town, 1886; city, 1904. Pop. (1991) 26,063. Additional reading General orientations are offered by Michael Poulsen and Peter Spearritt, Sydney: A Social and Political Atlas (1981); and Shirley Fitzgerald, Sydney: A Story of a City (1999). The best sources for facts and figures about Sydney are New South Wales State Planning Authority, Sydney Region: Outline Plan, 19702000 A.D. (1968); Sydney City Planning Department, 1980 City of Sydney Strategic Plan (1980); New South Wales Department of Planning, Sydney's Future: A Discussion Paper on Planning the Greater Metropolitan Region (1993); and City of Sydney Special Projects, Sydney 1999 (2000). A charming portrait of contemporary Sydney, unencumbered by statistics, is Gavin Souter and Quinton Davis, Sydney (1965), with photographs by Davis. The early history of the convict settlement is graphically told from contemporary documents in James Johnston Auchmuty (ed.), The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (1970); and the multivolume series by John Cobley, Sydney Cove (1962 ). All early histories of Australia necessarily deal with Sydney in part. More recent histories of the city include Geoffrey Moorehouse, Sydney: The Story of a City (1999); Peter Spearritt, Sydney's Century: A History (2000); and Paul Ashton, The Accidental City: Planning Sydney since 1788 (1993), which chronicles the growth of the city. M.H. Ellis, Lachlan Macquarie: His Life, Adventures, and Times, 5th ed. (1978), and Francis Greenway: His Life and Times, 2nd ed., rev. (1953, reprinted 1966), are good biographies. The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica History Early settlement When the English admiral Arthur Phillip arrived off the coast of southeastern Australia with the First Fleet in 1788, he sailed first to Botany Bay, which had been discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770 and to which he had been directed by the British government. Finding the bay too exposed for safe anchorage and the surrounding country unsuitable for settlement, he looked farther north and soon discovered the entrance to Port Jackson only a few miles away. Phillip's first impressions of Port Jackson, which had been named but not explored by Cook, are recorded in a famous dispatch to Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, then the British home secretary, dated May 15, 1788. We got into Port Jackson early in the afternoon, and had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security. Phillip immediately decided to move the whole fleet to Port Jackson and to establish the first settlement on a cove, which had a good freshwater stream and in which his ships could anchor close to the shore in deep water. He called it Sydney Cove, for the home secretary. Present-day Sydney Cove is still the city's heart, though it is now more commonly known as Circular Quay. The early history of Sydney was grimly dominated by its existence as a British penal colony. Convicts, dumped on this alien shore, found the environment a harsh one. The soil was poor, and the land was rough and had to be cleared by hand. The little settlement was often short of food until the settlers were able to cross the Blue Mountains and find the richer land to the west of the Great Dividing Range. There were also constant troubles between the governors, the free settlers, and the convicts. With the exploration and settlement of New South Wales, Sydney grew quickly; the British government provided free land, free convict labour, free capital works, and guaranteed markets for the produce of the new colony. Trading links with the rest of the world were quickly established. Under the enlightened governorship of Lachlan Macquarie (181021), Sydney developed from a precarious penal settlement into a thriving, respectable town. Macquarie also began a program of public works, including the building of churches, hospitals, barracks, schools, and courthouses, and laid out several parks in and around the city. In this work he was aided by a convict-architect, Francis Greenway, who had been banished for forgery in England. Greenway built several fine buildings in the Georgian style, notably the Hyde Park Barracks and St. James Church (both on Macquarie Street), which have been scrupulously restored to their original state. Growth of the modern city The most astoundingly rapid growth of Sydneyfrom 60,000 to 400,000 populationtook place in the years between 1850 and 1890, as suburbs of tightly packed terrace houses were built. These houses, with their balconies and decorative cast-iron railings, are now Sydney's most attractive heritage from the past. The first railway, from Sydney to Parramatta, began as early as 1855. The financial collapse of the 1890s acted as a slight check to Sydney's growth, but population doubled again by 1914 and reached the million mark soon after. Yet during this period Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, was growing still faster, partly as a result of the gold rush in that colony in the 1850s. Temporarily overtaking Sydney in both size and importance, Melbourne became the financial centre of Australia, and it was the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia until the Federal Capital of Canberra was built in 1927 halfway between the two cities. By 1911 Sydney had once again become Australia's largest city, and after World War II it benefited from a shift in Australia's trade toward North America and Asia and away from Britain. Sydney has remained slightly more populous than Melbourne and has equaled or surpassed the other city in importance as a centre of finance, commerce, and manufacturing. In its growth it has not escaped the ills that have afflicted so many other large cities of the world, including environmental pollution, traffic congestion, and crime. Nevertheless, Sydney has become the most international and most sophisticated of Australian cities. The most striking example of this was its role as host of the 2000 Summer Olympics. John Douglas Pringle The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica