Sydney is the capital of the state of New South Wales and the largest city in Australia. The urban area surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about 60 kilometres (37 mi) from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the escarpment of the Blue Mountains in the west, and at a maximum about 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Palm Beach in the north-east, to Camden in the south-west. Greater Sydney consists of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are colloquially known as "Sydneysiders". The estimated population in June 2025 was 5,638,830, which is about 66% of the state's population. The city's nicknames include the Emerald City and the Harbour City.
There is evidence that Aboriginal Australians inhabited the Greater Sydney region at least 30,000 years ago, and their engravings and cultural sites are common. The traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, James Cook charted the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay. In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. After World War II, Sydney experienced mass migration and by 2021 over 40 per cent of the population was born overseas. Foreign countries of birth with the greatest representation are mainland China, India, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, Sydney frequently ranks in the top ten most liveable cities. It is classified as an Alpha+ city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has an advanced market economy with strengths in education, finance, manufacturing and tourism. The University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales are ranked 18th and 19th in the world respectively.
Sydney has hosted major international sporting events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics, the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final, and the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup Final. The city is among the top fifteen most-visited cities worldwide, with millions of tourists coming each year to see the city's landmarks. The city has over 1,000,000 hectares (2,500,000 acres) of nature reserves and parks, and its notable natural features include Sydney Harbour and Royal National Park. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House are major tourist attractions. Central Station is the hub of Sydney's suburban train, metro and light rail networks and longer-distance services. The main passenger airport serving the city is Kingsford Smith Airport, one of the world's oldest continually operating airports.
Toponymy
In 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, named the cove where the first British settlement was established Sydney Cove after Home Secretary Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney. The cove was called Warrane by the Aboriginal inhabitants. Phillip considered naming the settlement Albion, but this name was never officially used. By 1790 Phillip and other officials were regularly calling the township "Sydney". Sydney was declared a city in 1842.
The Gadigal (Cadigal) clan, whose territory stretches along the southern shore of Port Jackson from South Head to Darling Harbour, are the traditional owners of the land on which the British settlement was initially established, and call their territory Gadi (Cadi). Aboriginal clan names within the Sydney region were often formed by adding the suffix "-gal" to a word denoting the name for their territory, a specific place in their territory, a food source, or totem. Greater Sydney covers the traditional lands of 28 known Aboriginal clans.
History
First inhabitants of the region
The first people to inhabit the area now known as Sydney were Aboriginal Australians who had migrated from southeast Asia via northern Australia. Flaked pebbles found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments might indicate human occupation from 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, while radiocarbon dating has shown evidence of human activity in the region from around 30,000 years ago. Prior to the arrival of the British, there were 4,000 to 8,000 Aboriginal people in the greater Sydney region.
The inhabitants subsisted on fishing, hunting, and gathering plants and shellfish. The diet of the coastal clans was more reliant on seafood whereas hinterland clans ate more forest animals and plants. The clans had distinctive equipment and weapons mostly made of stone, wood, plant materials, bone and shell. They also differed in their body decorations, hairstyles, songs and dances. Aboriginal clans had a rich ceremonial life, part of a belief system centring on ancestral, totemic and supernatural beings. People from different clans and language groups came together to participate in initiation and other ceremonies. These occasions fostered trade, marriages and clan alliances.
The earliest British settlers recorded the word 'Eora' as an Aboriginal term meaning either 'people' or 'from this place'. The clans of the Sydney area occupied land with traditional boundaries. There is debate, however, about which group or nation these clans belonged to, and the extent of differences in language and rites. The major groups were the coastal Eora people, the Dharug (Darug) occupying the inland area from Parramatta to the Blue Mountains, and the Dharawal people south of Botany Bay. Darginung and Gundungurra languages were spoken on the fringes of the Sydney area.
The first meeting between Aboriginals and British explorers occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay (Kamay) and encountered the Gweagal clan. Two Gweagal men opposed the landing party and one was shot and wounded. Cook and his crew stayed at Botany Bay for a week, collecting water, timber, fodder and botanical specimens and exploring the surrounding area. Cook sought to establish relations with the Aboriginal population without success.
Convict town (1788–1840)
Britain had been sending convicts to its American colonies for most of the eighteenth century, and the loss of these colonies in 1783 was the impetus to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay. Proponents of colonisation also pointed to the strategic importance of a new base in the Asia-Pacific region and its potential to provide much-needed timber and flax for the navy.
The First Fleet of 11 ships under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788. It comprised more than a thousand settlers, including 736 convicts. The fleet soon moved to the more suitable Port Jackson where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788. The colony of New South Wales was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Philip described as "the finest Harbour in the World ... Here a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security".
The settlement was planned to be a self-sufficient penal colony based on subsistence agriculture. Trade and shipbuilding were banned in order to keep the convicts isolated. However, the soil around the settlement proved poor and the first crops failed, leading to several years of hunger and strict rationing. The food crisis was relieved with the arrival of the Second Fleet in mid-1790 and the Third Fleet in 1791. Former convicts received small grants of land, and government and private farms spread to the more fertile lands around Parramatta, Windsor and Camden on the Cumberland Plain. By 1804, the colony was self-sufficient in food.
A smallpox epidemic in April 1789 killed about half the region's Indigenous population. In November 1790 Bennelong led a group of survivors of the Sydney clans into the settlement, establishing a continuous presence of Aboriginal Australians in settled Sydney.
Phillip had been given no instructions for urban development, but in July 1788 submitted a plan for the new town at Sydney Cove. It included a wide central avenue, a permanent Government House, law courts, hospital and other public buildings, but no provision for warehouses, shops, or other commercial buildings. Phillip promptly ignored his own plan, and unplanned development became a feature of Sydney's topography.
After Phillip's departure in December 1792, the colony's military officers began acquiring land and importing consumer goods from visiting ships. Former convicts engaged in trade and opened small businesses. Soldiers and former convicts built houses on Crown land, with or without official permission, in what was now commonly called Sydney town. Governor William Bligh (1806–08) imposed restrictions on commerce and ordered the demolition of buildings erected on Crown land, including some owned by past and serving military officers. The resulting conflict culminated in the Rum Rebellion of 1808, in which Bligh was deposed by the New South Wales Corps.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie (1810–1821) played a leading role in the development of Sydney and New South Wales, establishing a bank, a currency and a hospital. He employed a planner to design the street layout of Sydney and commissioned the construction of roads, wharves, churches, and public buildings. Parramatta Road, linking Sydney and Parramatta, was opened in 1811, and a road across the Blue Mountains was completed in 1815, opening the way for large-scale farming and grazing west of the Great Dividing Range.
Following the departure of Macquarie, official policy encouraged the emigration of free British settlers to New South Wales. Immigration to the colony increased from 900 free settlers in 1826–30 to 29,000 in 1836–40, many of whom settled in Sydney. By the 1840s, Sydney exhibited a geographic divide between poor and working-class residents living west of the Tank Stream in areas such as The Rocks, and the more affluent residents living to its east. Free settlers, free-born residents and former convicts now represented the vast majority of the population of Sydney, leading to increasing public agitation for responsible government and an end to transportation. Transportation to New South Wales ceased in 1840.
Conflict on the Cumberland Plain
In 1804, Irish convicts led around 300 rebels in the Castle Hill Rebellion, an attempt to march on Sydney, commandeer a ship, and sail to freedom. Poorly armed, and with their leader Philip Cunningham captured, the main body of insurgents were routed by about 100 troops and volunteers at Rouse Hill. At least 39 convicts were killed in the uprising and subsequent executions.
As the colony spread to the more fertile lands around the Hawkesbury River, north-west of Sydney, conflict between the settlers and the Darug people intensified, reaching a peak from 1794 to 1810. Bands of Darug people, led by Pemulwuy and later by his son Tedbury, burned crops, killed livestock and raided settler stores in a pattern of resistance that was to be repeated as the colonial frontier expanded. A military garrison was established on the Hawkesbury in 1795. The death toll from 1794 to 1800 was 26 settlers and up to 200 Darug.
Conflict again erupted from 1814 to 1816 with the expansion of the colony into Dharawal country in the Nepean region south-west of Sydney. Following the deaths of several settlers, Governor Macquarie dispatched three military detachments into Dharawal lands, culminating in the Appin massacre (April 1816) in which at least 14 Aboriginal people were killed.
Colonial city (1841–1900)
The New South Wales Legislative Council became a semi-elected body in 1842. Sydney was declared a city the same year, and a governing council established, elected on a restrictive property franchise.
The discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851 initially caused economic disruption as men moved to the goldfields. Melbourne soon overtook Sydney as Australia's largest city, leading to an enduring rivalry between the two. However, increased immigration from overseas and wealth from gold exports increased demand for housing, consumer goods, services and urban amenities. The New South Wales government also stimulated growth by investing heavily in railways, trams, roads, ports, telegraph, schools and urban services. The population of Sydney and its suburbs grew from 95,600 in 1861 to 386,900 in 1891. The city developed many of its characteristic features. The growing population packed into rows of terrace houses in narrow streets. New public buildings of sandstone abounded, including at the University of Sydney (1854–61), the Australian Museum (1858–66), the Town Hall (1868–88), and the General Post Office (1866–92). Elaborate coffee palaces and hotels were erected. Daylight bathing at Sydney's beaches was banned, but segregated bathing at designated ocean baths was popular.
Drought, the winding down of public works and a financial crisis led to economic depression in Sydney throughout most of the 1890s. Meanwhile, the Sydney-based premier of New South Wales, George Reid, became a key figure in the process of federation.
State capital (1901–present)
When the six colonies federated on 1 January 1901, Sydney became the capital of the State of New South Wales. The spread of bubonic plague in 1900 prompted the state government to modernise the wharves and demolish inner-city slums. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 saw more Sydney males volunteer for the armed forces than the Commonwealth authorities could process, and helped reduce unemployment. Those returning from the war in 1918 were promised "homes fit for heroes" in new suburbs such as Daceyville and Matraville. "Garden suburbs" and mixed industrial and residential developments also grew along the rail and tram corridors. The population reached one million in 1926, after Sydney had regained its position as the most populous city in Australia. The government created jobs with massive public projects such as the electrification of the Sydney rail network and building the Sydney Harbour Bridge.