This Is Sydney [antikvár]

Profile of Sydney From a height of some 8 kilometres (5 miles), the passengers aboard a jumbo jet flying through a cloudless ultramarine sky look down over a vast striated plain, the ochre-coloured landscape that comprises the greater part of Australia. Hours later, the first road, like a line drawn with a ruler, appears; then sporadic homesteads are glimpsed, their postage-stamp tin roofs glinting in the sun and looking far too small to be the hub of cattle stations larger than some European countries. Later, the farms shrink, the rolling plains grow greener, and the plane begins to descend over the box canyons of the bush-cloaked Blue Mountains. Grids of suburbia finally appear. Red-roofed houses swathe the plains below and cluster more densely until, like the finale of a stage show, Sydney Harbour is revealed. The city sparkles in the sunshine by the jewellike waterway, aptly dubbed 'the finest harbour in the world' by Sydney's founding father. Captain Arthur Phillip. Sydney Harbour is a spectacular vista. The cobalt-blue water, across which arches the majestic steel span of the Harbour Bridge, is speckled with yachts; sunlight bounces off the gleaming sails of the Opera House; a cluster of glass and metal skyscrapers marks the central business district; and Victorian terrace This aerial view of Sydney Harbour is a refiection of why Sydneysiders are so proud of their city and why it is Australia's major tourist destination. houses, apartments and bungalows tumble down the hillsides to boat-filled bays and secluded sandy coves. It is little wonder that Sydney lures 2 million international visitors each year and over 4 million local tourists. Australia has other notable cities, but the firstborn is still the most magnificent. Sydney is the New York of Australia. It is bigger, taller, brasher, livelier, and of course, when the sun is shining - which it usually is - it is breathtakingly beautiful. The majority of the first European arrivals were convicts transported to the other side of the world to ease the overcrowded prisons of England. But even when they had acquired their tickets of leave, most stayed on in the new land as wages were higher and there were boundless opportunities, unlike in their motherland where the lower classes had little hope of bettering their situation. Sydney's story began on 26 January 1788 when a group of indigenous Aborigines watched in astonishment as a fleet of British ships anchored at a small cove. Strange white-skinned men stepped ashore and took possession. The newcomers named the place Sydney, after Thomas Townshend Sydney, the English public servant who had first mooted the idea of establishing a penal colony in the Antipodes. Very few of these first intrepid settlers could ever have imagined that just over two centuries later Sydney would boast almost 1000 suburbs encompassing an urban area six times that of Rome with a population of just over 3.7 million.