 Sydney, Australia Home | Festival Centre | Beach Centre | Media | Lodging FAQ Best Viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x+ at 800 x 600 Resolution or Higher. | |
| |
•  
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sydney, Australia one of the busiest ports and most densely populated areas down under.
Satellite imagery Provided Courtesy of NASA "Planetary Photo Journal" -
From the Planet Earth Gallery at NASA | Full Sized image available by clicking here
Other Sources of satellite imagery include
Microsoft TerraServer offers free zoom-able b&w satellite images - View your street via satellite.
Sydney (Australia), city and major port in
southeastern Australia, and the capital of
New South Wales. The largest city in
Australia, Sydney is centered on the southern shore of Port Jackson (an arm of
the Pacific Ocean). The city and suburbs cover about 12,406 sq km (4790 sq mi).
Sydney's metropolitan area ranges from the Hawkesbury River in the north to
beyond Botany Bay in the south and from the Blue Mountains in the west to the
Pacific Ocean in the east.
Sydney is one of Australia's leading industrial, commercial,
financial, and transportation centers. Several of the country's largest
companies are headquartered in
Sydney. These companies include News Corporation,
owned by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and Westpac Banking
Corporation. The
Sydney stock exchange is the largest in Australia. Products
manufactured in
Sydney include metals, machinery, clothing, processed food,
electronic equipment, motor vehicles, ships, and refined petroleum. The city's
port, which is concentrated along Port Jackson but includes major facilities on
Botany Bay, has modern equipment for handling containerships. Most of
Australia's foreign trade passes through
Sydney; the main exports handled here
are wheat, wool, and meat. Other transportation facilities include Kingsford
Smith International Airport, Australia's busiest air terminal; several
railroads; major highways; and ferry and hydrofoil services.
Sydney has a temperate climate, with warm summers and mild
winters. The city has large parks and sparkling sand beaches, such as Bondi
Beach on the Pacific Ocean.
Sydney's principal parks include the Royal Botanic
Gardens and Taronga Zoological Gardens, both situated on Port Jackson, and Hyde
Park, near the center of the city. Royal National Park, 30 km (18 mi) south of
Sydney, is one of the oldest national parks in the world. Port Jackson, which is
spanned by the graceful, single-steel-arch
Sydney Harbour Bridge, is a favorite
spot for yacht owners. The central city has numerous skyscrapers, including one
of the country's tallest, Australia Square Tower (172 m/565 ft), but the rest of
Sydney is made up largely of small structures. Most inhabitants, who are called Sydneysiders, live in one- or two-story houses.
The population of greater
Sydney totaled 3,538,749 in 1991. Most of
Sydney's
population descends from
British or
Irish immigrants, but there are also many
people of Asian,
Greek, and
Italian descent.
Sydney has many cultural facilities. Educational institutions
include Macquarie University (1964), the University of New South Wales (1948),
the University of
Sydney (1850), the University of Technology,
Sydney (1990;
founded in 1965 as the
New South
Wales Institute of Technology), the
New South
Wales Conservatorium of Music, and several campuses of the University of Western
Sydney. Sydney also has several fine museums, notably the Art Gallery of
New South
Wales, the Australian Museum (featuring exhibits on natural history), the
Church Missionary Society Aboriginal Art Gallery, the Geological and Mining
Museum, and the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences of the Powerhouse Museum.
Other cultural features include the State Library of
New South
Wales, with a
collection of almost 2 million volumes, and the strikingly designed
Sydney Opera
House (1973), located on a point jutting into Port Jackson. The city is also the
location of both Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals.
British explorer and navigator Captain James Cook sighted and
named Port Jackson in 1770. The first European settlement in Australia was
established on the site of modern Sydney by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788. He
named it Sydney Cove, after the British home secretary, Thomas Townshend, 1st
Viscount Sydney. Most of the early inhabitants were convicts sent out from Great
Britain, but increasing numbers of free settlers arrived during the first half
of the 1800s as New South
Wales was developed by sheep and cattle raisers and
wheat farmers.
After the discovery of gold in the southeastern Australian
state of Victoria in 1851, the population of
Sydney grew rapidly, increasing
from about 60,000 in 1850 to almost 400,000 in 1890. The city's population
passed 1 million in the 1920s, by which time settlement had spread far beyond
the shores of Port Jackson. By the 1970s, when
Sydney had become Australia's
largest city, it faced the need to reduce water and air pollution and to equip
its many outlying districts with adequate sewerage.
In 1991 the Australian government approved plans to build a
third runway at
Sydney's Kingsford Smith International Airport in an attempt to
relieve congestion there. In January 1994 bushfires swept through
New South
Wales, destroying several hundred homes in suburban
Sydney. Chosen as the site
of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, the city announced plans to construct several
new facilities for the event, including a 80,000-seat stadium, a velodrome, and
a gymnastic arena.
Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 97 Encyclopedia.
(c) 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Past Images from this page
•Home •Up •Anchorage, Alaska •Florida Keys •Gulf of Mexico Coast •Surf City, CA •Ireland Satellite •Mississippi Delta •Mt Shasta, CA, USA •North Carolina •Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada •Panama Canal •San Diego, CA •Sneads Ferry, NC •Sydney, Australia •Terra, Sol III •
or
Information about the New Theme & Owners
Meet Ova | Terra, Sol III
|
|
•
Last Revised: October 11, 2006 11:21 PM.
|
Hotel rates displayed in our listings are for comparative purposes only, the actual rates change daily. |
Full Color
