CitiesAustralia
Sydney is at its second address. The First Fleet made Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 carrying several hundred convicts, found it exposed and short of fresh water, and Arthur Phillip moved the whole expedition north within days. They landed at Sydney Cove on 26 January. Everything since has been shaped by that harbour rather than by the bay the plan called for: a drowned river valley with more shoreline than a young colony knew what to do with.
Jørn Utzon won the competition for it in 1957 and resigned in 1966, worn down by disputes with the state government. He was never invited back, never returned to Australia, and died in 2008 without seeing the finished building. The interiors were completed by others and are not his, which is why they surprise people who know the roofline.
The steel arch of 1932, known locally as the coathanger, carrying road, rail, cycles and pedestrians. It was so expensive that the state was still paying it off decades later. The southern pylons contain a museum and a lookout; the pylons themselves are decorative stone cladding and carry no structural load at all.
The sandstone quarter beside the bridge where the convict settlement actually began, all narrow lanes and cut-stone warehouses. It was slated for demolition in the 1970s and saved by construction unions imposing green bans, refusing to do the work. The oldest surviving European district in Australia exists because builders declined to knock it down.
Not a bay but a drowned river valley, flooded when sea levels rose after the last glaciation, which is why it branches so intricately and runs so deep. The shape is why the colony survived: Phillip needed anchorage and fresh water, and this had both where Botany Bay had neither.
A convict barracks of 1819 designed by Francis Greenway, himself transported for forgery, who became the colony's architect. A convicted forger designing the government's public buildings is the early colony in one fact. The building later held immigrant women and then a court, and its floor cavities preserved thousands of objects dropped by inhabitants.
Gardens running along the harbour beside the Opera House, on the site of the colony's first attempted farm. That farm largely failed: the soil was poor and the fleet had brought seed suited to another hemisphere. The colony came close to starving in its first years, on ground now planted as ornamental lawn.
The most photographed beach in the country, with a rock pool at the southern end and a coastal walk to Coogee. It is also where surf lifesaving as an organised movement took shape in the early twentieth century. The flags are not decorative and swimming outside them is how most rescues start.
An 1898 sandstone market hall covering a city block, converted to offices, nearly demolished in the twentieth century, then restored as a shopping arcade. Its scale was justified as make-work during a depression. The glass dome and tiled floors survived a period when Sydney was demolishing Victorian buildings at speed.
A harbour island that was a convict penal site, then a reformatory, then one of Australia's largest shipyards, with the industrial machinery still standing. You can camp on it. Layers of institutional use are legible on the same small piece of rock, which is unusual and mostly unvisited.
Sydney was founded eight days late and in the wrong place.
The First Fleet reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, as planned, and Arthur Phillip judged it unsuitable — exposed, poor soil, inadequate fresh water. He moved north to Port Jackson and landed at Sydney Cove on 26 January.
The harbour is a flooded river valley, not a bay.
Port Jackson was carved as a river system and then drowned when sea levels rose after the last ice age. That is why it branches so intricately, runs deep close to shore, and gave Phillip the anchorage Botany Bay could not.
The Opera House's architect never saw it finished.
Jørn Utzon won the 1957 competition and resigned in 1966 after prolonged conflict with the state government. He was not invited back, never returned to Australia, and died in 2008. The interiors were finished by other hands.
The Harbour Bridge's pylons hold up nothing.
The four stone towers at the ends of the arch are decorative cladding, added for visual reassurance rather than structure. The steel arch carries the load on its own. One pylon now contains a museum and a lookout.
The oldest European quarter in Australia survives because builders refused to demolish it.
The Rocks was scheduled for redevelopment in the early 1970s. Construction unions imposed green bans, declining to carry out the work, and the historic district was saved by the people who would have had to knock it down.
The colony's public buildings were designed by a convicted forger.
Francis Greenway was transported for forgery and became the colonial architect, responsible for the Hyde Park Barracks among others. A man convicted of faking documents was put in charge of the government's official architecture.
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