Sydney Trivia - Fact Sheet

• The Sydney Town Hall sits on the site of Sydney's oldest official burial ground, which by 1820 housed approximately 2,000 dead. Even though most of the bodies were exhumed and moved elsewhere, on several occasions since, excavations in the area have turned up early settlers. 
• Built in the grand Victorian manner from local sandstone, the Sydney Town Hall has been beautifully restored to its original form. Just to the north of the main entrance is a stone lion that has been carved with one eye shut. It is believed to have been a parody by one of the stonemasons of his supervisor who always checked the work with one eye shut. 
• Built in London by William Hill and Son, the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ was shipped to Australia and installed in 1890. It was then the largest organ in the world and is still the largest ever built with tubular-pneumatic action. Its 126 speaking stops and 14 couplers are spread over five manuals (Choir, Great, Swell, Solo, Echo) and pedals. There are approximately 8,700 pipes.
• Sydney enjoys average maximum temperatures around 17 degrees Celsius in winter (June - August) and 27 degrees Celsius in summer (December - February).
• Officially called Port Jackson, Sydney Harbour stretches from the headlands, 20km inland to join the mouth of the Parramatta River. It covers an area of 55 square kilometres around a shoreline of 240 kilometres and has a volume of 503,786 megalitres.
• More than 50% - approximately 13 kilometres - of the City of Sydney local government area is bordered by Sydney Harbour.
• Sydney's twin ports of Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay are the busiest in Australia, handling more then 23 million tonnes of cargo annually.
• Around 80 per cent of the Australian population lives on or near the coast.
• Sydney is one of the most multicultural and multilingual cities in the world, with people from more than 180 nations, speaking 140 languages.
• Nearly one-quarter of Sydney residents speak a language other than English at home.
• Sydney was founded on 26 January 1788, when the First Fleet arrived to establish the penal colony of New South Wales (NSW).
• Sydney officially became a city in 1842.
• Sydney's David Jones is among the oldest department stores in the world. Opening in 1838, it was a drapery "in commodious premises" opposite the General Post Office.
• The best views of the city are available from: Sydney Tower, the Harbour Bridge, Mrs Macquarie's Point and from ferries on Sydney Harbour.
• In 1932, Australia had 23,000 international visitors. Today this number of people can be accommodated in Central Sydney in one night alone.
• English actor, Robert Morley once said: "Sydney? That's a strange name for a city. Why didn't they call it Fred?" Sydney, as such, was never really officially named. The first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, thought of calling the settlement New Albion. In the end, however, by a sort of verbal osmosis, the city absorbed its name from Sydney Cove, around which it was built. Sydney Cove was named in honour of Viscount Sydney, Thomas Townshend, who was British Home Secretary at the time.
• Under the first City of Sydney Act, 1842, the Mayor had to set up boundary markers for all the wards of the city. Once a year the aldermen were supposed to walk or ride around all of these markers - "beat the bounds" - so that the boundary would become fixed in people's minds. This medieval practice evolved in the days when not many could read and no one had maps. Some of these boundary markers still exist. There's one in Sydney Square, outside the Town Hall on George Street.
• 8 out of the 10 most popular Australian tourist attractions are found in Sydney:
  • Sydney Shopping
  • Sydney Beaches
  • Sydney Opera House
  • Sydney Harbour
  • The Rocks
  • Centrepoint Tower
  • Darling Harbour
  • Chinatown
• One of Sydney's most famous beaches - Manly - was named by Captain Arthur Phillip after the "manly" physique of the Aborigines he saw there in 1788.
• Opera Australia is the third busiest opera company in the world. Based for seven months of each year at the Sydney Opera House, the company presents approximately 235 performances of some 18 operas annually.
• Internationally acclaimed, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performs more than 140 concerts per year, many at the Sydney Opera House.
• The gross economic output of the Sydney Metropolitan area exceeds A$175 billion annually.
• It is a little known fact that Sydney is older than many other great world cities including San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles, Singapore, Toronto and Johannesburg.
• Opened in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge cost A$20 million - then 10 million pounds sterling - and took until 1988 to pay off. Giving the bridge a complete new coat of paint takes 10 years.
• The Sydney Opera House cost A$102 million and was paid for through a series of lotteries.
• Public transport is used in Sydney more than in any other Australian city - 23% of Sydneysiders ride a bus, train or ferry every weekday, spending an average of one hour travelling to and from work.
• Sydney escaped World War II relatively unscathed, although on May 31 1942, several Japanese midget submarines were discovered and destroyed in Sydney Harbour.
• On 31 December 1999, Sydney was the first major international city to welcome the new millennium and its spectacular celebrations were acclaimed worldwide. At the stroke of midnight, the word "Eternity" was emblazoned across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Symbolizing the capacity for reinvention and hope for the future, this display had a special significance for Sydneysiders. For three decades, starting in the early 1930s, the word Eternity, written with chalk in a beautiful copperplate script, would appear mysteriously overnight on pavements around the city, with no clue as to the author. It was not until 1956, that The Sunday Telegraph newspaper revealed that it was the work of a local man named Arthur Stace. By then, however, the appearance of the script had become such a Sydney tradition that no one intervened and he continued more or less until his death in 1967, aged 83. A former alcoholic, Arthur had been inspired to turn his life around after hearing the word Eternity at a sermon by famous English evangelist, Reverend John Ridley in Sydney in 1930. He then began his personal crusade to share the source of his salvation with his fellow Sydneysiders, armed only with chalk and the word Eternity.
• Sydney was hit by a freak hailstorm on April 14 1999. Hailstones the size of golf balls and oranges pelted down, smashing roof tiles and damaging cars, particularly in Sydney's eastern suburbs. As a result, more than 100,000 insurance claims were made and the total damage bill was estimated to exceed one billion dollars. Amazingly, only one life was lost - a man drowned when his boat sank due to hailstone damage.
• The First Fleet's journey from Britain involved 11 sailing ships, covered 24,000 kilometres of ocean and took 8 months. Australian historian Robert Hughes has described the journey as the 18^th century equivalent of going to the moon.
• The First Fleet landed at Botany Bay in January 1788, carrying 759 male and female convicts from Britain's overcrowded jails, 400 sailors, four companies of marines, enough livestock and supplies for two years and also one stowaway on board! A few days later, disappointed with Botany Bay, the fleet sailed 25 kilometres north to Port Jackson, more commonly known as Sydney Harbour.
• The date the First Fleet landed at Port Jackson - 26 January - is now celebrated annually as Australia Day. For Indigenous Australians it is not necessarily a day of celebration.
• When the British first arrived at Sydney Cove, there were approximately 3,000 Aborigines - using three main languages - living in the Sydney area. Through contact and disease, most were wiped out in the first five years of the colony.
• Today, the Sydney Metropolitan area has the largest Aboriginal population of all Australian cities, with 30,800 Aboriginal people.
• It was not until 1967 that Aboriginal people were given Australian citizenship, via a federal referendum that was supported by 90.2% if the nation.
• Sydney's first theatre was built by convicts in 1794. Located in The Rocks, the theatre was run by Robert Sidaway, a baker. At the time, most Sydneysiders had little access to money, so they paid their entrance fee in flour, which went into making bread or spirits. Governor Hunter closed the theatre down in 1798 because he thought it had a corrupting influence on the town.
• Legend has it that when the 233 entries for the design of Australia's most famous building, the Sydney Opera House, were being judged, Joern Utzon's winning drawings were plucked from the pile of rejects by one of the judges.
• Because there was a shortage of currency in the new colony, spirits were often used as payment. The men who built the hospital (now Parliament House, Macquarie Street) were given the contract to import rum in exchange. Some of the workers were paid in rum, hence it became known as the Rum Hospital.
• Sydney's most famous government architect, Francis Greenway, arrived in the colony as a convict, sentenced to 14 years jail for forgery. Greenway's buildings include the Hyde Park Barracks, St James Church and the Supreme Court Building, which are located in Macquarie Street.
• Controversial Sydney artist Brett Whiteley, who died in 1992, was internationally celebrated for his sensual, evocative and expressive style of painting. The Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills features changing exhibitions of the artist's works - paintings, drawings, sculpture and graphics.
• Australia's most commercially successful artist/designer is Sydney-based Ken Done. Many of his works feature images central to Sydney Harbour.
• Sydney has produced many famous popular international music acts including INXS, Midnight Oil, Mental As Anything and Savage Garden.
• At noon in Sydney - daylight saving time - it's 2am in London, 3am in Rome, 9am in Bangkok, 2pm in Auckland, 6pm the previous day in Los Angeles and 9pm the previous day in New York.
• Physical evidence of Sydney's original inhabitants survives in the 2,000 Aboriginal rock painting and engraving sites in the area and in the indigenous names of many city streets and suburbs. There are extensive rock carvings at Bondi, Sydney's most famous beach, and "Bondi" is an aboriginal word, the meaning of which is uncertain. Some believe it means "water breaking over rocks" or "noise of water breaking over rocks". The Australian Museum however, records that Bondi means "place where a flight of nullas took place".
• Paddy's Market, Sydney's weekly gathering of people and stalls selling variety, bric-brac and fresh fruit, got its name not from Ireland, but from an historic market place in Merseyside, Liverpool, England. This marketplace was named after the large number of Irish immigrants living in the area.
• In January 1994, two major bush fires spread to suburbs in the Sydney metropolitan area. Two fire fighters and two civilians were killed. The fires also caused considerable property damage, with more than 200 houses destroyed and many others sustaining severe damage.
• On Christmas Day, 2001 bush fires began in the Blue Mountains and over days had spread to outer Sydney suburbs and the south and central coast of NSW. The fires lasted for over 15 days causing considerable damage to property, flora and fauna of the bushland. Fortunately nobody was killed.
• The first named piece of music performed in Sydney - "The Rogues March" - was played at the drumming out of a soldier who was caught in the female convicts' tents.
• Sydney's Australian Museum, founded in 1827, houses the most extensive natural history and anthropological collections in the Southern Hemisphere.
• Many Sydney and Australian restaurants are described as "BYO". This means that the restaurant is not licensed to serve alcohol, but that you can "Bring Your Own" wine with you.
• Sydney has had only one fatal shark attack since 1937.
• The threat of starvation hung over the settlement of Sydney for the first 16 years.
• Sydney staged the world's first "movie" projection in November 1894, a good 12-months before the Lumiere Brothers in Paris. Screened in a converted shop on Pitt Street, the 35 millimetre film ran at 40 images per second and was projected through a machine known as a kinetoscope. In the first five weeks of showing, there were 22,000 moviegoers - each paying a shilling each.
• In 1915, Sydney became the first place in the world to appoint female police officers.
• Sydneysider, Frederick Lane, was the first Australian to be awarded a gold medal, winning the 200 metre freestyle swimming event at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games.
• Sydney hosted Australia's first swimsuit beauty contest at Maroubra Beach in February 1920.
• Sydney has been the backdrop for many major international films including Mission Impossible II, The Matrix, Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge, with the last three directed by acclaimed Sydney director, Baz Luhrmann.
• One of Sydney's first Governors was William Bligh, the same Bligh who had suffered mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh faced another mutiny in Sydney during the "Rum Rebellion", when the military or "Rum Corps" ordered his arrest. In 1809, Lieutenant Colonel Lachlan Macquarie arrived in Sydney to restore order and the "Rum Corps" was ordered back to England.
• The world's first milkbar opened in Martin Place in 1933, offering "milkshakes" for fourpence.
• Featured in a mural at the new Cook and Phillip Park Aquatic Centre, swimming star Annette Kellerman was born in Sydney in 1886. Annette is best remembered as the first woman to attempt to swim the English Channel, for being arrested in Boston in 1907 for wearing a one piece skirtless bathing suit and for being the first Australian to play the lead role in an American film, Jeptah's Daughter, in 1909.
• Australia's first truly permanent theatre, The Theatre Royal, was opened in George Street, Sydney on 5 October 1833 by Barnett Levey. Reflecting colonial priorities, it was built within a warehouse behind a pub. Over the next few years the Theatre Royal staged melodrama, English classics and even opera, but performances were often sloppy and audience deportment hardly better. A production of Richard III on Boxing Day 1833 - the Royal's first attempt at Shakespeare - was followed by a pantomime and a riot. (From Literary Sydney: A Walking Guide by Jill Dimond and Peter Kirkpatrick.)
• The first concert at the Opera House itself took place during its construction, when Afro-American Paul Robeson sang to the building workers at a lunchtime concert.
• The first known concert on the site of the Sydney Opera House was in March 1791. It was hosted by an Aboriginal man named Bennelong, a member of the local Cadigal clan - in the hut Governor Phillip had built for him. On that occasion, it was reported that "24 men, women and children danced to the accompaniment of beating sticks and hands".
• Bennelong also went to a concert in London, accompanied by Governor Arthur Phillip. It is said that he put his hands over his ears to block out the hideous European music.

Other

• One of Sydney's shortest streets - Barrack Street - has a lively history. Originally called Barrack Lane, it was the side gate of the George Street military barracks. It was also the location of Sydney's first purpose-built savings bank, which opened just in time for the Gold Rush of the 1850s. The upper floors of the bank, which still stands today, were once occupied by the Imperial Service Club, where rumour has it the "unofficial" opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was planned. Captain De Groot of the New Guard cut the ribbon before NSW Premier Jack Lang could perform the ceremonial opening. At the corner of Barrack and George Streets was the store that gave rise David Jones' retail business empire in 1838. Also in Barrack Street was the Lottery Office, which in the post-war years, was both the source of funding for the construction of the Opera House and the source of hope for new migrants and other Aussie battlers hoping to "strike it rich" in "The Lucky Country". A large section of Barrack Street now forms part Sesquicentenary Square - named to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Sydney.
• Australia's first boat was built on the site of Customs House. Launched on October 5, 1789, the ten-ton Rose Hill Packet was used for carrying provisions to Parramatta, still called Rose Hill at the time. As the dense native timbers growing about Sydney Cove were highly unsuitable for boat building, the boat had little manoeuvrability and earned the name "The Lump". It sometimes took a week to complete the round trip of 48 kilometres to Parramatta and back. The Parramatta River itself was alive with multi-coloured parrots. Through constant usage, the term Rose Hill parrot was slurred to Rosehiller and then Rosella, the name of one of the most recognised Australian icons.
• In the late 1820s and early 1830s, vacant land fronting Hunter Street between Pitt and George Streets, was a favourite rendezvous of showmen and entertainers, who pitched their tents on the spot. Befittingly, it was also the site of the first circus held in Australia.
• The streets of Sydney were once filled with the sound of the newspaper criers. Perhaps the most famous was "Griffo", born Albert Griffiths, a resident of The Rocks. Long before he was recognised as Australia's first world champion feather weight boxer - he built a reputation as a news vendor down at Circular Quay and woe betide anyone who might wish to challenge his patch. Griffo's method of dealing with would-be interlopers was to draw a "kerchief" from his pocket, spread it at his feet and then, placing his feet squarely on it and with fists raised, he would yell: "Come on! Come and Take It". No one could dislodge him from the tiny square. It is reported that a world heavy weight champion later said that he "couldn't put a glove on him" in spite of the difference in their size.

Vignettes from Reminiscences From Early Life by Joseph Pearson
Born in Sydney in 1849 and died in 1939, Pearson became a compiler of city road maps, particularly for cyclists and tour guides.

• Cows at the Town Hall (about 1856): "Near to where my parents dwelt in Clarence Street, there was a dairy, kept by a man called McCrory. He owned about six cows that he used to drive from Clarence Street into Druitt Street, (past where the Town Hall now stands, although it was a burial ground then), thence across George Street, through Park Street, to the Racecourse, which is now Hyde Park, and go back and drive them by the same route at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Needless to remark, the traffic was not like what it is today."
• A Leisurely "Rock" on the City Footpath: "a Mr Moffitt kept a stationer's shop in Pitt Street near King Street. This Mr Moffitt was a very stout and elderly gentleman. Regularly everyday, when the shop was closed at six o'clock, he would get his assistant to take his easy chair into the middle of the footpath and spend an hour or two reading and smoking his pipe. There was at that time, also, a big willow tree growing on the pathway in Pitt Street near Market Street. The tree was blown down one day during a southerly 'buster' (strong wind)."
• Cricket in Pitt Street: "Many a game of cricket we youngsters had in Pitt Street. I mention this to show again the absence of much traffic in the city thoroughfare in those days. On a Saturday afternoon it was even more scarce. Our wicket would be pitched in the middle of the road. In those days, wood-blocks or macadamised roads were non-existent. The roads were dusty if dry, or muddy or clayey if wet, and at the doorway of each dwelling a foot scraper was placed, and often I would be chastised for not making use of it before entering the house.
• Buckjumping in Pitt Street: "In Pitt Street where I lived, there were no less than three Horse Bazaars or Livery Stables between Market and Park Streets. There were Driscoll's, Birt's, and Wooller's. Young, unbroken horses or colts were sent down from the country for sale. Some were very vicious, but one of the Wooller's - Tom it was- was a wonderful rider. I have seen him in Pitt Street on one of his buckjumpers and I never saw him displaced. This would take place, as remarked, in Pitt Street, between Market and Park Streets."
• Romance at a Penny a Day: "I can picture the scene, although 75 years ago. The old wooden bridge (across Darling Harbour to Pyrmont) that was built was completed in 1859. This remained in use for about 26 years. Foot passengers were charged a penny - 1d. - each way, horses with rider 3d, and vehicles 4d. to 6d., according to the size. Many a penny it cost me some years after, as my intended was a resident of Pyrmont and, of course, I frequently crossed the bridge in my courtship days." The present Pyrmont Bridge structure was completed in the year 1885. This must be one of the few times Sydney had a toll on pedestrians