Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

Sydney Harbour

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.

-33.85872725237, 151.24770927359

Name
Alternate
Port Jackson
Aboriginal
Tobologul
Property
Tributary
Type

Aboriginal life around Port Jackson after 1822

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2011

Aboriginal people continued to live around Sydney's harbour for more than a century after Europeans arrived, adapting their traditional life to their new conditions of dispossession and displacement, and maintaining, in scattered campsites, some of their skills and culture.

Sydney Harbour: A Cultural Landscape

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2013

Known worldwide for its beauty, Sydney Harbour has been a source of inspiration for thousands of years. First Aboriginal, then European peoples settled the shores, naming and renaming the coves, headlands and points. Artists and writers have explored the harbour's people, landscape, animals and plants. As Sydney has grown and changed, the harbour surrounding the city has evolved from a working waterway into a one of leisure and entertainment. Parts of the old working waterfront, once dismissed as redundant, have become case studies of adaptive reuse with vibrant cultural precincts emerging along the harbour foreshore.

Building the Sydney Harbour Bridge

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2015

When the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in 1932 it was the epitome of modern bridge design and engineering ingenuity. The iconic design was the creation of Dr JCC Bradfield, of the New South Wales Department of Public Works, Ralph Freeman, consulting engineer for the builders, Dorman, Long and Co, and thousands of workers who toiled on it through the Great Depression.