Port Jackson
Port Jackson (also Sydney Harbor ) is Sydney's natural harbor in Australia . There you will find the city's landmarks, the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge .
geography
Port Jackson forms the main arm with an area of 50 square kilometers and 19 kilometers in length. Other inlets such as Middle Harbor branch off from it. The coastline of the estuary is 317 kilometers. Geologically, Port Jackson is a ria , a type of coast with a narrow and long sea bay that penetrates deep into the land. The Parramatta River flows into this .
There are numerous islands in the harbor , including Shark Island , Clark Island , Fort Denison Island , Goat Island , Cockatoo Island , Spectacle Island , Snapper Island and Rodd Island .
Some earlier islands ( Bennelong Island , Garden Island and Berry Island ) are now permanently connected to the mainland as a result of land reclamation measures .
To the south and west of the harbor is the flat to slightly hilly Cumberland Plain . North of the harbor is the Hornsby Plateau , a hill country up to 200 meters high, which is criss-crossed by wooded valleys.
history
The area of what is now Port Jackson was settled by Aborigines about 40,000 years ago . At the beginning of the colonization there were about 4,000 to 8,000 indigenous people who belonged to three different tribes. These were the Darug , the Dharawal, and the Guringai . Although their settlements have largely disappeared, petroglyphs have survived in some places.
In 1770, James Cook explored the area on his first voyage to the South Seas. On January 26, 1788, British ships of the First Fleet with around 1,000 men and women, about three-quarters of them convicts , arrived in Port Jackson under the leadership of Arthur Phillip . They founded Australia's first white settlement at the harbor. The new settlement was named Sydney , in honor of Lord Sydney, the then British Interior Minister . In 2006, almost four million people lived in around 450 suburbs in the city.
Economy and Infrastructure
The construction of the first port facilities took place at the instigation of Lachlan Macquarie (1762-1824), the governor of the British colony of New South Wales . Today the port has modern facilities for container ships. Most of Australia's foreign trade was through Port Jackson until the 1980s. Meat, wheat and wool were the main export products. After a long transition phase, container ship traffic is now docking in Botany Bay . Ferry services in the harbor are operated by Sydney Ferries , a state company owned by the New South Wales government.
Sports
The swimming triathlon competitions took place here at the 2000 Summer Olympics .
literature
- Watkin Tench : History of Port Jackson in New Holland from 1788 to 1792 , Hoffmann, Hamburg 1794 ( digitized version )
Web links
Coordinates: 33 ° 51 ′ 30 ″ S , 151 ° 14 ′ 0 ″ E