Sydney Harbour

Where it is

Sydney Harbour is a ria — a river valley drowned when sea level rose after the last glacial maximum, roughly 20,000 to 6,000 years ago. That origin explains its shape: deep water reaching far inland, a branching outline with many sheltered coves and headlands, and steep sandstone sides. It is the country of the Eora, including the Gadigal, whose name for the cove where the First Fleet anchored is Warrane.

The land and water around it

• The drowned valleyharbour

  Port Jackson: deep, branching and sheltered because it is a river valley the sea came into rather than a bay the sea carved.

• The Hawkesbury sandstoneplateau

  The rock the harbour is cut into. It is soft enough to carve, which is why the region holds so many rock engravings, and it weathers into the overhangs that were used as shelters.

• Parramatta Riverriver

  The harbour's upper reach, running west to the fresher water and better farmland the colony moved to when Sydney Cove's soil proved inadequate.

Its history, in short

People lived on and around this harbour for many thousands of years, leaving rock engravings, shell middens and a continuing cultural connection. In January 1788 the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay, found it inadequate, and moved north to this harbour within days. Within about a year a smallpox epidemic killed a very large proportion of the Aboriginal population around it. The harbour then became a working port, a naval base, and — after container shipping moved the freight elsewhere in the late twentieth century — increasingly a recreational and residential waterfront with the Opera House on one of its most conspicuous points.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• Bennelong PointContinuous

  Named for Woollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal man taken captive in 1789 who became an intermediary, travelled to Britain and returned. The Opera House stands on the point; the name carries a much longer and more complicated story than the building.

• Eora countryPre-colonial, continuing

  The harbour's shores are the country of the Eora, among them the Gadigal at Warrane and the Wangal upriver. The clan names are also the language geography: the boundaries that mattered here were linguistic and kin-based rather than territorial in the sense the colony assumed.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereSydney Harbour is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• How did Sydney Harbour form?

  A river valley drowned by post-glacial sea-level rise

  A ria — which is why it is deep, branching and sheltered, and why the First Fleet moved here from Botany Bay.

• Which aspect of the 1789 epidemic is genuinely contested?

  Where the smallpox came from

  The mortality is established; the source of the outbreak remains an open historical question.

Worth arguing about

• The harbour was named, used and carved for thousands of years before 1788. How should a city present a place whose history predates it by that much?
• The Opera House was late, over budget, and cost its architect the job. What does that suggest about how we judge projects while they are running?

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