Sydney - The Rocks

Immediately after the landing in 1788 the first white settlement was built on the tongue of land projecting into Port Jackson from which the Harbour Bridge now spans the harbor. The name of the Rocks no doubt comes from the rocky coast on the west side of Sydney Cove, where the first tents for the convicts were pitched. Cadman's Cottage (Historic Site) is Sydney's oldest surviving house, once occupied by John Cadman, a convict who later earned his living as a coxswain.

In the course of the 19th C the harbor area was occupied by customs depots and warehouses, and the area gained an evil reputation for its disreputable inns and bands of thugs. An outbreak of plague around the turn of the century carried the process of decline further, when whole streets of houses were pulled down. And finally around 1930 the construction of the massive piers of the Harbour Bridge led to further demolition of old houses.

Since the 1970s the surviving remains of old buildings have been restored, and the former slum area has become an attraction with its narrow paved streets, restaurants and colonial-period houses (visitor center near Cadman's Cottage; Explorer Bus stop). The existence of this lively assemblage of shops, galleries, restaurants and pubs and the preservation of more than a hundred of Sydney's oldest buildings are due to the efforts of the action groups of the 1960s and 1970s, when the government planned to demolish the Rocks and build high-rise blocks on the site.