Sydney has a history starting from the prehistoric era. The Sydney Harbor, previously known as Port Jackson was inhabited by the Aborigines for over forty thousand years. You can still find evidences of their existence through the carvings on the rocks at various places. Despite a lot of development that the city has undergone over the years these rocks still bear those marks and are considered to be worth seeing due to the sandstone content of the rocks rendering it convenient for those carvings.

The latter part of the 19th century saw huge digging to set up a canal in an area called Alexandria which threw up more proofs of the dwellings of the Aborigines and some more evidences sprung up when caves bearing some carvings were discovered in Glenbrook, indicating that the Aborigines had inhabited that place twenty thousand years ago.

Sydney beckoned the Europeans with the discovery of Botany Bay by Captain James Cook in the year 1770 and very soon Arthur Phillip formed the first colony in 1788 following orders from the British. Arthur Phillip actually arrived at Sydney Cove which was also known as Port Harbor and now the modern Sydney.

This incursion by the Europeans was obviously not well received by the Aborigines and the spread of diseases like measles, smallpox and chicken pox only added to their woes. This was because the Aborigines had yet to develop immunity to these diseases and despite the best efforts of Governor Phillip to limit interactions between the Aborigines and the settlers, there was no relief from these diseases.
In 1789, the worst catastrophe in the form of small pox spread rapidly taking a heavy toll of the Aborigines and belief has it that the epidemic was caused due to one of the Aborigines unsettling the death place of one of the French sailor who had expired of small pox. This has however been debated at length and has been found to be untrue. This epidemic meant that by the beginning of the 19th century, the Aborigines had lost 90% of their population that existed in 1788.

Thanks to the rush for gold to Australia in the middle of the 19th century, Sydney saw the influx of huge numbers of miners to tap into the gold resources leading to the population surging from about 40,000 to over 200,000 in just two decades. This also meant that the city infrastructure had to cope up and led to drastic improvements in the city’s port and rail networks. This continued till the middle of the 19th century and when people saw the opportunity in Victoria for gold, they started moving towards Victoria and thus began a period of competition between Melbourne and Sydney.

Australia became a federation and the question now was about recognizing one city as the capital and despite hectic lobbying from both Sydney and Melbourne, the country named Canberra which was a new city created as the capital and effectively settled the debate.
Rapid industrialization thereafter ensured the progress of Sydney and its population grew fast to cross the one million mark by the beginning of the 20th century.