History
The land around Port Jackson was occupied at the time of European discovery and colonisation by various tribes including the Gadigal, Cammeraygal, Eora and Wangal peoples. The Gadigal people are said to have occupied the land stretching along the south side of Port Jackson from what is now South Head, in an arc west through to Petersham. The Cammeraygal lived on the northern side of the harbour. The area along the southern banks of the Parramatta River, west of Petersham to Rose Hill, was reported to belong to the Wanegal. The Eora people lived on the southern side of the harbour, close to where the First Fleet settled.
The first recorded European discovery of Sydney Harbour, was by Lt James Cook in 1770 - Cook named the inlet after Sir George Jackson, (one of the Lord Commissioners of the British Admiralty, and Judge Advocate of the Fleet). His ship's log notation states "at noon we where...about 2 or 3 miles from the land and abrest of a bay or harbour within there appeared to be a safe anchorage which I called Port Jackson."
Eighteen years later, on 21 January 1788, after arriving at Botany Bay, Governor Arthur Phillip took a longboat and two cutters up the coast to examine Cook's Port Jackson. Phillip first stayed over night at Camp Cove, then moved down the harbour, landing at Sydney Cove and then Manly Cove before returning to Botany Bay on the afternoon of the 24th.
Phillip returned to Sydney Cove in H.M. Armed Tender Supply on 26 January 1788, where he established the first colony in Australia, later to become the city of Sydney.
In his first dispatch from the colony back to England, Governor Phillip noted that "...we had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security..."
In 1942, to protect Sydney Harbour from a submarine attack, the 'Sydney Harbour anti-submarine boom net' was constructed. It spanned the harbour from Green (Laings) Point, Watsons Bay to Georges Head, Mosman, which is on the other side of the harbour. On the night of 31 May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines attempted to enter the harbour, one of which became entangled in the western end of the boom net's central section. Unable to free their submarine, the crew detonated charges to destroy it, killing themselves in the process. The anti-submarine boom net was demolished soon after World War II, and all that remains are the foundations of the old boom net winch house, which can be viewed on Green (Laings) Point, Watsons Bay. Today, that Japanese midget submarine remains on static display at the Australian War Memorial.
Read more about this topic: Port Jackson
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)