As Australia's currency soars to unprecedented heights, we thought we'd remind readers that currency used to be much more of a do-it-yourself arrangement. When the first fleet arrived in 1788, currency was the least of their worries -- supplies came from the Commissariat Stores, where all the food and other goods were held, property of the government, until they were doled out to convicts or soldiers alike. The Commissariat was the sole customer for the food grown in the new colony. Once merchant ships started arriving with scarce goods, any sterling currency in the colony was used to buy things, and so ended up leaving the colony in the coffers and pockets of ships' captains and crews. Commissariat store receipts and bills of exchange were used as currency for many years, along with rum (which gave its name to the Rum Rebellion against Governor Bligh in 1808), until the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie as governor in 1810. He arranged for a shipment of 40,000 Spanish dollars, silver coins, from Bengal, and had them punched, producing two coins for local use, one with a hole in the middle, and one small round 'dump'. These were not legal tender anywhere else, so were less likely to be taken out of the colony. The 'holey dollar' remained part of the colony's currency until 1829.

It is estimated that only 350 holey dollars remain, of the nearly  40,000 originally produced. They can now fetch more than $100,000 each. Many are in collecting institutions, such as the State Library of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum and Museum of Victoria, so they don't often come up for sale. If you happen upon one, ring a fancy auction house, pronto!

Windswept and bedraggled as we are, we thought we'd have a look at some other soggy Sydneysiders:

Dreary as it may be to get around, Sydney can look beautiful in wet weather. Photographers have known this for a long time, notably Harold Cazneaux, who especially loved rainy and misty conditions.

Too much rain though causes havoc and disaster (and not just to public transport). Windsor suffered dreadful flooding when the Hawkesbury burst its banks (not for the last time)  in 1816. The Sydney Gazette reported that 'a watery waste presented itself on every side'.

Rain in the city centre was always a problem, especially around unpaved areas on reclaimed tidal flats:

Residents in the Tramvale estate near Sydenham had to be rescued from their houses in 1889 after five days of heavy rain caused flooding in the Cooks River:

But Sydneysiders have always been able to rise above the weather.

Stay dry!

We're thrilled to see the new issue of Inside History, just out, which includes an article from the Dictionary of Sydney. 'The decorated footpath' by Megan Hicks has been in the Dictionary for some time, focussing on the ground beneath our feet. Footpaths were really important in the early colony, when so many more people walked everywhere, and shoes and boots were expensive and hard to come by. And as they are today, paved footpaths quickly became sites for advertising, ornamentation and city beautification. Whether it was the evangelism of Mr Eternity, Arthur Stace, advertisements for boots or beer, or the chalk art of screevers, footpaths provided a canvas for communication.

This month's Inside History also includes an article by another of our authors, Mark St Leon, whose work on circus history is so well known. His article in the Dictionary covers Sydney's part in this colourful story, and his new book takes a wider view. Inside History's cover story is an interesting piece about the upcoming 2011 Census, and its usefulness to future historians. We can see this clearly in the Dictionary of Sydney's material from the last three Censuses, organised by suburb.

Click on the Demographics link in the middle of any suburb page to see a huge range of information about the changing populations of over 600 suburbs. We'll be adding the figures from the 2011 Census as soon as they are available, making it four sets of data. Already, you can see trends and changes in many suburbs. An example is  Eastwood, which in 1996 had 3.2% of its population born in China, and 5.7 % born in Hong Kong. In 2006, 14% of Eastwood residents were born in China, and 6% in Hong Kong, with a sizeable population of 5.7 % of Koreans arriving during the decade. As our article on Eastwood describes, this increase in diversity has brought a new phase in Eastwood's cultural and commercial development. In other countries, notably Ireland, historic census material is available online and provides a fascinating snapshot of life as well as a boon for family historians. Inside History makes the interesting suggestion that you copy and file your Census return, so that your descendants can see it long before the 99-year release. I had never thought of that, but I'll certainly do it this year.

We'll be working with Inside History over the next 12 months to bring some of our content to their readers, as well as our online audience. Decorating the footpath is just the beginning!

When we think of Sydney and sport, the 2000 Olympic Games tends to crowd out older events, because it was such a remarkable experience for those of us who were here. In the years leading up to the Games, preparations for the event transformed areas like Homebush Bay, Newington and Penrith Lakes, and during the event, public spaces such as Darling Harbour, Circular Quay and Martin Place became mass sport-watching venues. The city felt different because of the influx of visitors and volunteers. Even the trains ran on time! You can relive the memories with the City of Sydney's History program, who have compiled some of their oral history material here. But Sydney has hosted other international sporting events, each of which had its own effects on the city. Many of them are detailed in Richard Cashman's Dictionary article on Sport.  Richard Waterhouse's essay on Sydney's Culture and customs also shows how crucial sporting contests have been to the city's self-image. The 1938 Empire Games (forerunner of today's Commonwealth Games) was held in Sydney. It also led to the building and renovation of sporting venues, such as North Sydney Pool and Henson Park, and legendary performances by Australian athletes. Some of those athletes missed out on Olympic glory because of World War II which was to cause the cancellation of the Olympics scheduled for 1940 and 1944. Decima Norman was a star of the Sydney Empire Games, as Cathy Freeman was the local hero of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Even earlier, one of Sydney's big sporting events was the 1909 Davis Cup final, held at Double Bay. Australia was then only beginning its domination of what was then known as 'lawn tennis'. The Australasian team of Norman Brookes (from Melbourne) and Tony Wilding (from New Zealand) defended the title and beat the USA 5 rubbers to nil. This winning combination continued to hold the cup until its loss to the British Isles team in Melbourne in 1912. Wilding was killed in France in 1915, while Brookes, unfit for military service, worked for the Red Cross in Mesopotamia and later in logistics for the British Army. He returned to tennis after the war, and was a distinguished tennis administrator, largely responsible for the development of Melbourne's Kooyong tennis centre, which along with White City in Sydney, was the site of many of Australia's Davis Cup victories during the 1950s and 1960s. Other less prominent (and more commercially oriented) world champions also competed in Sydney -- a world championship sculling race was held on the Parramatta River in 1877, when Edward Trickett successfully defended his world title. Trickett was followed by 70 steamers and numerous small craft, and a crowd of over 50,000 watched from the river banks. The Sydney Morning Herald opined: 'It is not too much to say that this contest has excited more interest, both here and in the neighbouring colonies, than any event that has ever happened in the sporting world of Australia.'

In 1888, the world championship returned to the Parramatta River, when Henry Searle won, described by the Sydney Morning Herald as 'the most phenomenal sculler that has ever sat in a boat', and 'the people's favourite'. Searle defended his title in London in 1889, but contracted typhoid on the return trip to Australia and died in Melbourne. Following a public subscription, a broken marble column on a granite base was erected in his memory in Parramatta River, off Henley Point, at the finishing line of sculling events.

See what other sporting feats you can find in the Sport article!

Kick up your heels! We certainly are. The City of Sydney Council voted on Monday to support the Dictionary for four more years, continuing their generous support in both cash and kind. The City has been our major government sponsor since the project's inception, and provided a home for the Dictionary team at its Town Hall House headquarters, and we are very glad to be here for another four years. This gives us the security to keep building an innovative product that engages with our readers and the community. It's part of the City's exemplary commitment to history -- with its oral history program, historical walking tours, history publications, online exhibitions, grants and many other projects. We really benefit from working closely with our colleagues in the program, City Historian Lisa Murray, oral historian Margo Beasley, and historian Laila Ellmoos.

So  what is the City of Sydney Polka? It was written by Charles Packer,  in 1854, and dedicated to William Charles Wentworth. Packer, profiled by Graeme Skinner in the Dictionary, was quite a character -- a fine musician, he was transported to Sydney for forgery, and later imprisoned for bigamy. Despite this, he was a popular fellow, and 6,000 people attended his funeral in 1883, along with at least four bands and a number of city choirs. They didn't play the City of Sydney Polka, obviously, but, as the Herald reported: "Signor Giorza conducted the vocalists and instrumentalists, and, the throng of people around taking up the strain, rarely has such a grand swell of harmony resounded in an Australian cemetery as that which yesterday rose over the grave of Charles Packer." Our thanks to the City of Sydney for their generous support. We'll be dancing the Polka for quite a while!

The new Dictionary of Sydney is now live! There are 28 new articles, totalling over 65,000 words, and the team has uploaded and captioned 238 pictures, created and researched new 417 entities, added 1676 factoids, written 948 entity descriptions, and created 1148 new entity links. There are also new external links, and you'll notice that we've brought the demographics right into the middle of  the suburb pages, as well as linking to them in the right column. Each of those demographic pages has full stats for its suburb from the last 3 censuses. But those are just facts and figures. Let me tell you about the new content.

Among the people, are two new biographies of Aboriginal people, Caruey and Bungaree, both survivors of the first invasion, written by Keith Vincent Smith. We also have entries on educator and founder of the SMSA, Henry Carmichael, and artist and SMSA teacher Lucien Henry, by Mark Dunn, whose work was supported by our partnership with the SMSA. Jodi Frawley's entry on Joseph Maiden, scientist and director of the Botanic Gardens is also part of this ongoing project. Complex philanthropist George Ardill has been profiled by John Ramsland and guru and man of power Charles Leadbeater has been examined by Garry Wotherspoon. This upload's organisation entries are heavy on the arts and cultural sector, with two short pieces by Silas Clifford-Smith covering a twentieth century artists' group, the Australian Arts Club and a public gallery run by the Department of Education. We also have an entry on the Museum of Sydney, one of our partners in the ongoing Living Exhibitions project, funded by ARC grant.

Three event articles are newly included in the Dictionary: Mark Dunn's piece on the Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1861 is also part of the SMSA project, while Garry Wotherspoon continues the cultural theme with an account of the foundation of the Tropfest film festival. David Woodbury's colourful piece on the foundation of the Salvation Army in Sydney brings this tumultuous religious awakening to life. Seven new suburb entries go into the Dictionary in this rebuild, including a long overview, by Shirley Fitzgerald, of the idea of Sydney itself , tracing over time the development of the city's self-image.  Other suburbs include Botany and Daceyville, our first entries in the City of Botany Bay, and the north shore suburbs of Lane Cove, and Turramurra, South Turramurra and North Turramurra, by one of our most prolific contributors, Joan Rowland.

Essays range across a wide spectrum as usual. John Ramsland, Emeritus Professor of History at Newcastle University, outlines institutions of punishment and reform for both adults and children in his essays on Prisons and Children's institutions. Richard White and Justine Greenwood, of Sydney University, have examined the development and influence of tourism on Sydney. Meredith and Verity Burgmann analyse the effect of Green bans on the city, and Marie-Louise McDermott has distilled her work on Sydney's ocean baths into a lively piece. Garry Wotherspoon's series on Sydney's gateway roads, already begun in the Dictionary, continues with the southern and south-western approaches to the city. Finally, Veronica Quinteros has written an evocative essay on Sydney's Chilean community. New images are always a highlight of our regeneration process and this one is no exception. Look for new illustrations in Christian church architecture, Children, Green Park, Maori, HMS Sirius and Parramatta Park, among others. Catherine Freyne's biography of Violet McKenzie, one of our SMSA project articles, is now fully illustrated and Violet's entity page now links to Catherine's radio program about Violet, which you can download from ABC Radio National. This upload brings the Dictionary to 600 articles, over 840,000 words (about 6 volumes, if we were a print encyclopedia), over 2000 images and multimedia. Thanks as always to Steven Hayes and everyone at Arts eResearch, at the University of Sydney, for their tireless work building and supporting the Dictionary, and making it all possible. We're really pleased with this new upload, and we'd love to hear from readers, when you've had time to have a look. We'll even appreciate it if you tell us about the typos!

Dictionary staff had a most interesting lunchtime on Tuesday last, listening to Jack Mundey at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts giving a talk marking 40 years since the start of Sydney's famous Green Bans.

Jack is a giant in union, environmental and political activism in Sydney, and at 81, he is just as inspiring to listen to as he was back in the 1970s when his union, the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), joined forces with residents, environmental activists, heritage groups and many others to try and make sure that Sydney's development was socially and environmentally responsible. The first Green ban struggle was at Kelly's Bush, in Hunters Hill, a parcel of bushland that still exists. The 42 Green bans that followed saved swathes of The Rocks and Woolloomooloo, as well as individual buildings scattered across the city. The bans were a shining example of socially aware unionism, as members risked losing work in order to ensure that the work they did was worthwhile. Next week, when the new Dictionary upload goes live, you'll find a new essay on  Green Bans  by Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, showing how the BLF influenced the development of the city and suburbs, and permanently changed attitudes to Sydney's architectural and natural heritage. By the end of the 1970s, New South Wales had passed heritage protection legislation, the first in Australia. Those effects, and the transformation of Sydney during the late twentieth century, are further examined in the Dictionary's essays on Planning by Paul Ashton and Robert Freestone, and Built Environment by Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill. The SMSA is continuing the theme of transforming Sydney, with a talk by eminent architect Colin Griffiths on Tuesday 21 June at 12.30. If you are in Sydney, come along -- it's free.

Waiting for our new site to be regenerated every three months feels to the team like the ad break before they open the envelope at the Oscars. We know that there is great stuff in the new build, 28 new articles, hundreds of new pictures and captions, and over  1000 new entities, facts and links. But we can't show it to you till it is all ready!  I'm hoping it will be ready to go public later this week, when I'll blog about the great new material we're publishing, the authors who wrote it, and the wonderful images and links that Linda and Paul (our image researchers) and Felicity and Jenny (our research assistants) have found.

Meanwhile, our colleagues at  Arts eResearch at the University of Sydney are toiling away building over 10,000 pages of HTML from our electronic repository, with all the indexes, browse pages and navigation that a historical website could ever need. Stay tuned for exciting news about our 'light' version of the site, designed for mobile and touchscreen devices, too!

What about Sydney's coastal villages? While Aboriginal people ranged their lands along the shores of Sydney's waterways, the country was called by diverse names, some of which were appropriated by the Europeans, whether they understood them or not. Coogee, Maroubra, Narrabeen and Barrenjoey are in this category, along with many others.

As the new inhabitants spread up and down the coast, and along the bays and inlets of the Sydney basin, they constructed new localities and villages for themselves, which remain part of the mental maps of most Sydneysiders. The northern beaches, from Manly to Barrenjoey, had their development delayed by transport difficulties and also by legal difficulties after the Wentworth estates on the northern shore were tied up in the Bassett-Darley entail, as outlined by Tony Dawson.  Some areas developed because of their beachside location, both on the ocean, like Manly and Fairy Bower and on the harbour, such as Clontarf and Little Manly. All of these became pleasure resorts, with ferries, gardens and amusements to match, although Clontarf's reputation was tarnished when a Fenian tried to kill a  royal visitor there in 1868. The Corso at Manly was envisioned as a promenade with hotels, tearooms and entertainment, set along a scenic boardwalk between harbour and ocean. Further north on the peninsula, much of Dee Why was left to the Salvation Army in 1885 by  Elizabeth Jenkins, whose convict father had built up the estate from 1825.  Aboriginal people still lived on their country around the Narrabeen Lagoon, as described by Peter Read, as they did further north on the Hawkesbury's shores and islands. Warriewood and Palm Beach are among the beaches in Sydney's north-east that developed as the city grew, and began increasingly to orient itself to the sea. Many coastal villages were on Sydney's southern beaches. The most famous are Bondi where Aboriginal people had left their markers,  Bronte originally known to the Europeans as Nelson Bay,  Tamarama, site of the famous Wonderland City amusement park,  Coogee, and Maroubra. But there are also safe and well-used beaches along the shores of Botany Bay, many of which grew up as fishing villages, before becoming resorts for Sydneysiders. South of Botany Bay, Cronulla and the harbour beaches of Port Hacking offer seaside recreation to the inhabitants of the Shire, as well as providing Sydney rock oysters for the whole city.

We'll be adding more entries for Sydney's suburbs over the next few months and years, so make sure you keep coming back to see what's new!

Western Sydney is a vast area, diverse in people, landscape and built environment. Its many communities sometimes feel that the city turns its back on them, but not the Dictionary of Sydney. From Parramatta to the Blue Mountains, read about the history of the suburbs that grew from farming towns and villages like Camden, Narellan, and Minto, or about the industrial suburbs that developed along the road west, like Lidcombe, Auburn, Camellia and Granville. An essay on Western Sydney, by Gabrielle Gwyther, examines some of the cultural, social and economic history of this diverse region.

The Hills district, to the north-west, is another large local government area, which roughly corresponds to 'the Hills' in people's minds. Site of Sydney's most famous convict rebellion, as described by Anne-Maree Whitaker, Castle Hill is now a thriving outer suburb. Seven Hills, once famous for its orchards and world-leading poultry research station, is also now a suburban area. Carlingford is another Hills suburb covered in the Dictionary, and our entry on the notable historic site, Rouse Hill Estate, written by Terri McCormack, also makes an interesting read. Make sure you follow the tangled connections of the Rouse and Terry families, who were so important in this area (and other parts of Sydney).

To the south-west, is the agricultural heartland of Sydney's early development, Camden, once known as the Cowpastures. While still retaining its rural feel in Camden town itself, some of the surrounding areas have changed fast in recent decades. Read more about Elderslie, Bickley Vale, Grasmere, Spring Farm, Mount Hunter, Studley Park, Oran Park, Cawdor and more  in one of our most completely covered areas. The Camden Historical Society's writing group, with the encouragement of Ian Willis, are the reason we have so many articles on this fascinating region.