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Sketch of Sydney Cove, Port Jackson in the County of Cumberland New South Wales July 1788, T Medland sculp, coastline by W Dawes, the soundings by Capt Hunter

By
Thomas Medland
Contributed By
National Library of Australia
[Rex Nan Kivell Collection Map NK 2456/124]
(from: Arthur Phillip, Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay ..., London, John Stockdale, 1789)

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Appears in
Charting the Sydney Harbour Shoreline
Subjects
Exploration Maps
Natural features
Bennelong Point Dawes Point Farm Cove Port Jackson Sydney Cove Tank Stream
Places
Circular Quay Sydney The Rocks
Artefacts
First Fleet The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay

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Medland, Thomas

National Library of Australia

Charting the Sydney Harbour Shoreline

The first charts of the shoreline of Sydney Harbour were drawn within days of the arrival of the First Fleet and surveys continued into the nineteenth century. This article compares the shorelines of four surveys with maps of the modern shoreline of Sydney Harbour, revealing the steady improvement in surveying accuracy over the eighteenth and nineteen centuries and the changing shape of Sydney Harbour

Maps

Exploration

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.

Farm Cove

Shallow bay on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, east of Sydney Cove. The flat land nearby was used by Aboriginal people as an initiation ground, and later became the first farm for the European colony.

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Port Jackson

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Drowned river valley that forms Sydney Harbour and includes North Harbour and Middle Harbour. Long inhabited by the Gadigal, Cammeraygal, Wangal and Eora people, Port Jackson was renamed by Captain Cook in 1770, although his ship did not enter the Heads.

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.

Circular Quay

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Area of Sydney's central business district that surrounds the quays built on reclaimed land from the 1830s.

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.

Tank Stream

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The fresh water course which supplied the fledgling colony, emptying into Sydney Cove. It was named for three storage tanks which were constructed in the sandstone beside the stream during a drought in 1790. By 1828 the stream had been polluted to such an extent that it could no longer be used as a source of water and was diverted into a sewer, and by the 1870s it had been completely covered. The Tank Stream still flows in a covered storm water drain.

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay

Book, including illustrations and charts, which was first published in London by John Stockdale, 1789.

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First Fleet

Fleet of eleven ships which left England in 1787 to found a penal colony in Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy Vessels, three store ships and six convict transports which carried over 1000 convicts, marines and seamen to the colony.

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Sydney

Traditional home of the Cadigal people and site of the first British colony, the city of Sydney is a cosmopolitan business and cultural centre of 25 square kilometres.

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