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Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney
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Sydney from the North Shore c1817

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

Sydney from the North Shore c1817

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From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[a928333 / ML 52]

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Built environment North Sydney Transport

Subjects

Aboriginal Boats Colonial architecture Mills and windmills Ships

Natural features

Bennelong Point Dawes Point Sydney Cove Sydney Harbour

Places

Kirribilli McMahons Point Milsons Point North Sydney The Rocks

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Lycett, Joseph

State Library of New South Wales

Built environment

Built over tracks, campsites, rock art and middens used for thousands of years before the dispossession of the Aboriginal people, Sydney's early haphazard development was given form by public buildings. As public transport developed, suburbs spread, and throughout the twentieth century, town planners struggled with developers to direct the form and extent of the city. After World War II, city buildings got taller, outer suburbs sprang up ever further away, and issues of heritage and architecture were contested. In the twenty-first century, concerns about environment, urban density, public transport and renewed infrastructure are driving change.

Transport

Sydney's transport has been shaped by the geography of the city, changing economic and social needs, technological limitations and advances, and political considerations. From walking tracks and animal haulage to the commuting city of today, transport has also shaped the city itself, opening up new areas and choking others. Carts, ferries, trains, trams, buses and cars have all figured in Sydney's transport history.

North Sydney

Part of Cammeraygal country, North Sydney was established by the 1840s as a township on the northern shore of the harbour. It became popular with professionals and skilled tradespeople, developing as a commercial centre for the north shore. Postwar development transformed the central business district with high rise and the loss of many nineteenth-century buildings.

Aboriginal

Boats

Colonial architecture

Ships

Mills and windmills

Sydney Harbour

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The largest arm of Port Jackson, which extends west from the Heads past Balmain and meets the estuaries of the Lane Cove and Parramatta rivers.

Sydney Cove

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Small bay on the southern shore of Port Jackson, which became the site for the European settlement in Sydney.

Bennelong Point

Rocky outcrop to the east of Sydney Cove, which was a tidal island when Europeans arrived, but was joined to the mainland with rocky rubble in 1818 to provide a basis for Fort Macquarie to be built there. The point is named for Bennelong, who lived in a house on the point in the 1790s.

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Dawes Point

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Headland on the western side of Sydney Cove.

The Rocks

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Suburb located north of the central business district on the western shore of Sydney Cove. Characterised by a precinct of restored nineteenth-century buildings which are a major tourist attraction, it was recognised as a separate suburb in 1993.

North Sydney

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Sydney's second high-rise business district, at the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, result of a building boom from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Kirribilli

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North Shore residential suburb built on Cammeraygal land in North Sydney local government area. Now containing the residences of the Prime Minister (Kirribilli House) and the Governor-General (Admiralty House), its uninterrupted views across the Harbour make it one of Sydney's most desirable suburbs.

Milsons Point

Located on Sydney Harbour, adjacent to the northern approaches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Milsons Point played an important role in the development of the lower north shore.

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McMahons Point

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North shore harbourside suburb immediately to the west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, named for Michael McMahon, a brush and comb manufacturer who settled there in the 1860s. Before the bridge was built, ferries from Circular Quay would meet trams there.