Sidney


Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and with a population of over four million people is the most populous city in Australia. Sydney is located on the east coast of Australia and was established in 1788 when Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove and claimed Australia for the British. Built around Sydney Harbour, Sydney is known in Australia as the "Harbour City", and structures on the Harbour such as the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge are globally recognised icons of the city.
Sydney is the financial capital of Australia and is also a significant domestic and international tourist destination and is regularly declared to be one of the most beautiful and liveable cities in the world. Sydney significantly raised its global profile in recent years as the host city of the 2000 Olympics.

History
The Sydney region has been occupied by Indigenous Australians for at least 30 000 years, and at the time of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, 4000 - 8000 Aboriginal people lived in the region. There were three different language groups in the Sydney region, these were further refined into dialects spoken by smaller clans. The principle languages were Darug; the Cadigal, the original inhabitants of the City of Sydney, spoke a coastal dialect of Darug; Dharawal and Guringai. Each clan had a territory, the location of that territory determined the resources available. Although urbanisation has destroyed most evidence of these settlements (such as shell middens), there are still rock carvings in several locations.
European interest in Australia arose with the sighting of Botany Bay by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. Under instruction from the British government, a convict settlement was founded by Arthur Phillip in 1788. Phillip founded the colony at Sydney Cove on Port Jackson. He named it after the British Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, in recognition of Sydney's role in issuing the charter authorising Phillip to establish a colony. In April 1789 a disease, thought to be smallpox decimated the Indigenous population of Sydney; a conservative estimate says that 500 to 1000 Aboriginal people died in the area between Broken and Botany Bay affecting Kuringgai and Darug. There was violent resistance to British settlement, notably by the warrior Pemulwuy in the area around Botany Bay, and conflicts were common in the area surrounding the Hawkesbury River. By 1820 there were only a few hundred Aborigines and Governor Macquarie had begun initiatives to 'civilise, christianise and educate' the Aborigines by removing them from their clans.
Macquarie's tenure as Governor of New South Wales was a period when Sydney was improved from its basic beginnings. Roads, bridges, wharves and public buildings were constructed by convicts, and by 1822 the town had banks, markets, well-established thoroughfares and an organised constabulary. The 1830s and 1840s were periods of urban development, including the development of the first suburbs, as the town grew rapidly when ships began arriving from Britain and Ireland with immigrants looking to start a new life in a new country. The first of several gold rushes started in 1851, and the port of Sydney has since seen many waves of people arriving from around the world. Rapid suburban development began in the last quarter of the 19th century with the advent of steam powered tramways and railways. With industrialisation Sydney expanded rapidly, and by the early 20th century it had a population well in excess of one million.
Throughout the 20th century Sydney continued to expand with various new waves of European and (later) Asian immigration, resulting in its highly cosmopolitan atmosphere. Indeed, Sydney has the second highest immigrant population of any major world city, with 45% of the population being either migrants or children of migrants.

Geography
Sydney is located in a coastal basin between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Blue Mountains to the west. The city features the largest natural harbour in the world, Port Jackson, and more than 70 harbour and ocean beaches, including the famous Bondi Beach. Sydney's urban area of 1,687 km² (651 mi²) is similar to that of Greater London, although it has less than half of that city's population. The metropolitan area (Sydney Statistical Division) is 12,145 km² (4,689 mi²); a significant portion of this area is national park and other unsettled land.
Sydney occupies two geographical regions: the Cumberland Plain, a relatively flat or rolling region lying to the south and west of the harbour, and the Hornsby Plateau, a plateau north of the harbour, up to 200 metres (656 ft) in elevation, dissected by forested valleys. The oldest parts of the city are located in the flat areas; the Hornsby Plateau, known as the North Shore, was slower to develop because of its hilly topography, and was mostly a quiet backwater until the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932, linking it to the rest of the city.

Climate
Sydney's climate is temperate, with rainfall spread throughout the year and a warm summer. The weather is moderated by proximity to the ocean, and more extreme temperatures are recorded in the inland western suburbs. The warmest month is January, with an average temperature range on the coast of 18.6 °C - 25.8 °C and an average of 14.6 days a year over 30 °C. The highest recorded temperature is 45.3 °C on 1939-01-14 at the end of a 4 day nationwide heatwave. The winter is mild, with temperatures rarely dropping below 5 °C in coastal areas. The coldest month is June, with an average range of 8.0 °C - 16.2 °C. The lowest recorded minimum is 2.1 °C. Rainfall is fairly evenly divided between summer and winter, but is slight higher during the first half of the year, when easterly winds dominate. The average annual rainfall, with moderate to low variability, is 1217.0 mm, falling on an average 138.0 days a year.[4][5]
Although the city does not suffer from cyclones or significant earthquakes, the El Niño Southern Oscillation plays an important role in determining Sydney's weather patterns: drought and bushfire on the one hand, and storms and flooding on the other, associated with the opposite phases of the oscillation. Many areas of the city bordering bushland have experienced bushfires, notably in 1994 and 2002 – these tend to occur during the spring and summer. The city is subject to infrequent severe hail storms and wind storms.

Urban structure
The extensive area covered by urban Sydney is formally divided into more than 300 suburbs (for addressing and postal purposes), and formally administered by about 38 separate local government areas (in addition to the extensive responsibilities of the Government of New South Wales and its agencies). The City of Sydney itself covers a fairly small area comprising the central business district and neighbouring inner-city suburbs. In addition, there are a number of regional descriptions which are used informally to conveniently describe large sections of the urban area. However it should be noted that there are many suburbs which are not conveniently covered by any of the following informal regional categories. The regions are Eastern Suburbs, Hills District, Inner West, Lower North Shore, Northern Beaches, North Shore, Southern Sydney, South-eastern Sydney, South-western Sydney, Sutherland Shire and Western Sydney
Sydney's central business district (CBD) extends southwards for about 2 kilometres (1.25 mi) from Sydney Cove, the point of the first European settlement. Densely concentrated skyscrapers and other buildings including historic sandstone buildings such as the Sydney Town Hall and Queen Victoria Building are interspersed by several parks such as Wynyard and Hyde Park. The CBD is bounded on the east side by a chain of parkland that extends from Hyde Park through the Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens to Farm Cove on the harbour. The west side is bounded by Darling Harbour, a popular tourist precinct. Central Station marks the southern end of the CBD. George Street is the Sydney CBDs main north-south thoroughfare.
Although the CBD dominated the city's business and cultural life in the early days, other business/cultural districts have developed in a radial pattern since World War II. As a result, the proportion of white-collar jobs located in the CBD declined from more than 60% at the end of World War II to less than 30% in 2004. The five most significant outer business districts are Parramatta in the central-west, Blacktown in the west, Liverpool in the southwest, Chatswood to the north, and Hurstville in the south.

Arts and entertainment
Sydney boasts a full roster of musical, theatrical and artistic activity through the year, from the formal - including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Theatre Company, the Sydney Dance Company, and the Archibald Prize - to festivals, including the Sydney Festival, a celebration of free performances throughout January. Performances are often held in the iconic Sydney Opera House, which contains 5 theatres capable of hosting a wide range of performance styles. Other major arts venues include the Sydney Town Hall, City Recital Hall, the State Theatre and the Wharf Theatre.
Many internationally known Australian rock bands have had their conception in Sydney, which include most notably The Easybeats, AC/DC, Midnight Oil and INXS. Sydney has also been the inspiration for a large number of Australian indie rock and mainstream pop songs, from The Executives' classic 1968 "Summer Hill Road" to Paul Kelly's many songs about Sydney including "From St. Kilda to Kings Cross" and "Sydney From A 727", to John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong and songs like "King Street" and "Miracle in Marrickville" to The Mexican Spitfires "Sydney Town" and "Town Hall Steps" among many others.
Sydney also has been home to many visual artists, from the lush pastoralism of Lloyd Rees's depictions of Sydney Harbour to Jeffrey Smart's portraits of bleak urban alienation. Sydney has five large and many smaller museums. The biggest are the Australian Museum (natural history and anthropology), the Powerhouse Museum (science, technology and design), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Australian National Maritime Museum.
Sydney is home to several large ethnic communities throughout the greater metropolitan area, with Chinatown as a good example. There is a significant gay community which hosts the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras along Oxford Street.
Other attractions include the historic Rocks district and Hyde Park Barracks. Oceanworld, Sydney Aquarium, and Taronga Zoo are popular, as are the Harbour Bridge, Luna Park, the Sydney Mint and Sydney Tower.

Transport
Most transport in Sydney is by automobiles, and there is an extensive network of freeways and tollways (known as motorways) and roads across Sydney. The most important trunk routes in the urban area form the Metroad system. Sydney is also served by extensive train, bus and ferry networks. Sydney trains are run by CityRail, a corporation of the New South Wales State Government. Trains run as suburban commuter rail services in the outer suburbs, then converge in an underground city loop service in the CBD. In the years following the 2000 Olympics, CityRail's performance declined significantly. Public anger resulted in the introduction of a new timetable, the employment of more drivers and a large infrastructure project which is scheduled to be completed by 2010.
Sydney has one privately operated light rail line, the Metro Light Rail, running from Central Station to Lilyfield along a former goods train line. There is also a monorail which runs in a loop around the main shopping district and Darling Harbour. Sydney was formerly served by an extensive tram network, which was progressively closed in the 1950s and 1960s. Most parts of the metropolitan area are served by buses, many of which follow the pre-1963 tram routes. In the city and inner suburbs the state-owned Sydney Buses has a monopoly. In the outer suburbs, service is divided between many private bus companies. Sydney Ferries, another State government-owned organisation, runs numerous commuter and tourist ferry services on Sydney Harbour and the Parramatta River.
Kingsford Smith International Airport, located in the suburb of Mascot, is Sydney's main airport, and the oldest continuously operating commercial airport in the world. The smaller Bankstown Airport mainly serves private and general aviation. There are light aviation airfields at Hoxton Park and Camden. RAAF Base Richmond lies to the north-west of the city

 
From: www.wikipedia.org