History of New South Wales
Fast facts
- Aboriginal people have lived here for 45,000 years
- The colony became state in 1901
- More than 2000 Aboriginal rock engraving sites remain today
- Sydney suburbs with Aboriginal names include Woolloomooloo, Parramatta and Yagoona
Early Sydney
Before the arrival of Europeans, New South Wales had been inhabited for many thousands of years by Aboriginal people. Aboriginal Australia is not one country, but up to 300 Aboriginal nation-states, speaking more than 250 languages and many more dialects. As hunter-gatherers who lived off the natural abundance of the land and sea around them, they developed a profound relationship with the land they inhabited, and a unique knowledge of its plants and animals.
When the British arrived in January 1788, there were more than 1500 Aboriginal people belonging to many clans living in the area from Botany Bay to Broken Bay and as far west as Parramatta. View a map of Aboriginal clan names in coastal Sydney.
Europeans settled after Sydney was chosen as a penal colony for prisoners shipped out from the overflowing jails of England. Two decades later Governor Lachlan Macquarie, charted a new course for New South Wales as a society of free men and women.
At about the same time, it was discovered that the broad plains of New South Wales were eminently suitable for the production of fine merino wool, and the country’s economic future was assured.
Sydney today
Over the past half century, Sydney’s character has been transformed from a predominantly Anglo-Irish population to one of the world’s most ethnically diverse cities as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia have migrated to the city.
People from more than 180 nations live within Sydney’s limits (2007 Australian Bureau of Statistics). Almost one-quarter of Sydney’s residents speak a language other than English at home, and some 140 languages in total are spoken in the city.
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