Search

Devised as a publicity event, and to raise funds for the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, the Industrial Exhibition of 1861 revealed Sydneysiders' interest in science, technology and self-education when it attracted over 500 visitors per day for nearly six weeks.…

Passenger on the Edward Lombe who was killed when the ship was wrecked in Sydney Harbour in 1834. He had a brother in Sydney, Stephen Greenhill.  He was named in all reports as being a passenger and had made other trips to Tasmania and Sydney prior to this voyage,…

The NSW Migration Heritage Centre is a virtual immigration museum which identifies, records, preserves and interprets the heritage of migration and settlement in New South Wales from 1788 to the present.

Its research program is almost completely decentralised outside…

Coffee grew in the garden at the first Government House but Sydney remained predominantly a tea-drinking colony. Despite the efforts of temperance campaigners to replace alcohol with coffee, coffee drinking remained a minority pleasure until after World War II, when coffee-…

Goat Island stands tall and proud in the centre of Sydney Harbour. It has many traces of heritage left over from the convict and industrial past.

The wife of a convict who followed her husband to Sydney with her three children as well as three of her husband's children from a previous marriage, and later became matron of the Female Orphan School.

Contralto who continued her training in London before the scandal of marriage to a bigamist hastened her return to Sydney. She recovered her career and was an early recording artist in the 1910s and 1920s.

Country retreat of W.H. Hargraves, registrar in Equity and a trustee of the Australian Museum in Sydney, son of the man who claimed credit for the discovery of gold in New South Wales in 1851

Millwright and carpenter who arrived in Sydney as a convict on the Friendship in the First Fleet. He designed and built a successful functional grinding mill, using a treadmill model operated by 9 men in March 1794. 

Autobiographical novel by Sumner Locke Elliott that was published in 1990, the year before his death. The main character is a writer coming to terms with his homosexuality in Sydney in the 1930s and 1940s.

From 1964 the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs focused on social inclusion and acceptance for Aboriginal people in Sydney, in the process fostering Aboriginal art, culture and political organisation.

First permanent fortification in Sydney constructed on the site of Dawes' observatory. The current archaeological site below the southern pylon of the Harbour Bridge reveals a powder magazine, officer quarters, guardhouse and circular battery .

Second Presbyterian Church in Sydney built near the Old Burial Ground on Bathurst Street. The foundation stone was laid in 1833 though it was several years before funds were raised for the construction.

Based on an initiative of the Labor state government of William McKell in 1945, the Scheme was designed to coordinate planning and growth between metropolitan Sydney's many councils, and preserve the 'green belt' that would prevent urban sprawl.

Considered 'the devil's work' by some and 'poetry, spoken with exquisite economy of words' by others, the Sydney Opera House quickly came to define a city, while its author drifted slowly into obscurity. Myths about Utzon and his influences abound:…

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.…

Children's book by Ruth Park about a girl who travels back in time from the 20th century to colonial Sydney. It won the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year in 1981.

Professional criminal and burglar who was hanged after his participation in the Bridge Street Affray in 1894. He had only recently arrived in Sydney from Melbourne where he had served time in Pentridge Prison. 

Professional criminal and burglar who was hanged after his participation in the Bridge Street Affray in 1894. He had only recently arrived in Sydney from Melbourne where he had served time in Pentridge Prison.

Karoo was an Aboriginal woman who became a Sydney identity, with her trademark government issue blanket, headscarf and a clay pipe. One of Bungaree's wives. She died in 1852 and was buried in Devonshire Street Cemetery.