1 64 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



is more than a hundred miles in length. This Harbour, over which the citizens are 

 naturally so enthusiastic, is to them and to their heirs a perpetual possession ; it is a reserve 

 that can never be built upon ; it is a playground that can never be worn out ; a 

 training-ground for all aquatic sports ; a school of seamanship that will count its pupils 

 by the thousand. It gives to naval defence all that it can need, and to commerce more 

 than it can use, while from childhood to old age, and from generation to generation, it 

 is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. 



THE CITY AND SUBURBS. 



The streets of Sydney are not as the streets of other New World cities. They are 

 not laid out on a chess-board pattern, following some draftsman's predetermined plan, 

 irrespective of the contour of the ground. George Street is, in fact, the survival of the 

 primitive bush-track by which the bullock-drays entered and left the settlement. Its bends 

 and its irregular width bear witness to this day to its origin. The other main track, 

 Pitt Street, which lies roughly parallel to it, is straighter and more regular, but it was 

 not at first continued through to Circular Quay. Sydney began on the western shore of 

 the Cove, close to the present site of the Manly steamers' wharf, where the short street, 

 still called Queen's Wharf, leads into George Street, and its topography will best be 

 understood by studying the fall of the land at that point. The natural feature that deter- 

 mined the selection of the site of the city was the Tank Stream, which furnished an 

 immediate supply of fresh water that prime essential to a young settlement. The supply 

 was not very abundant, as the settlers soon found out, for the tide rose as far as Bridge 

 Street, and above that the Stream had a length of only a few hundred yards ; but there 

 was enough to begin with, and tanks were dug out to store that little. A reference to 

 the plan of early Sydney will show that the course of the Tank Stream is nearly north. 

 The track, which is now George Street, starting from the western side of the Cove, 

 followed the bank of this creek, then over the ridge down the slope called Brickfield 

 Hill into the valley of a water-course running into the head of Darling Harbour, and so 

 on towards Parramatta. This was the first great artery of traffic. 



Beginning as Sydney did at the mouth of the Tank Stream, its earlier streets 

 naturally occupied the two slopes leading down into the valley. On its western side the 

 ground sloped upward to the ridge, and then over it . steeply down to the waters of 

 Darling Harbour. On the eastern side the ground sloped up to another ridge, and down 

 to the waters of Woolloomooloo Bay ; but on that side so much of the land was reserved 

 for public uses that the city could not spread in that direction, and its earliest develop- 

 ment was therefore on the portion lying between the Tank Stream and Darling Harbour. 

 The highest land on this peninsula is that just abreast of the landing-place, and up 

 the slope towards this height, now occupied by the Observatory, climbed some of the 

 earlier settlers. On the top was erected one of the first windmills, the only remaining 

 memorial of which is Windmill Street leading down from Lower Fort Street to the 

 water. The roads were necessarily steep and irregular, and so they remain to this day, 

 though the original -tracks have been in some places civilized into stair-ways cut in the 

 rock. The primitive houses were perched wherever convenience dictated, and the arrange- 

 ments were not at all adapted to modern notions of sanitary science or city engineering. 



