Facts On Sydney

Geography And Location

Sydney lies at 33' 55' south - similar latitude to Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Casablanca and Beirut.

By air, Sydney is 17,174km from London, 16,025km from New York and 7,821km from Tokyo.

The harbour contains over 240km of foreshore and extends over 55sqkm.

The Sydney metropolitan area's ocean coastline stretches for 60km.

History

Sydney was founded on 26 January 1788, when the 11 convict-bearing ships of the first fleet arrived from England to establish the colony of New South Wales.

The city was named after Thomas Townsend, the first Viscount Sydney, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies of Britain at the time of NSW's founding.

Convicts were transported to Sydney and New South Wales from 1788 until 1840.

Sydney was officially created a city in 1842.

Sydney's Harbour Bridge was completed in 1932, and the Opera House was opened in October 1973.

In 1993 Sydney was named the host city for the 2000 Olympic Games.

Population

Sydney's population first topped the 1 million mark in 1925, reaching 2 million in 1963.

Sydney is now home to almost 3.9 million people - well over half of the state's (NSW) total population of 6.3 million.

70 percent of Sydneysiders are a combination of two or more ethnic backgrounds, and over a third (34.5 per cent) were born overseas.

Of these overseas-born people, 16.5 per cent came from Britain and Ireland, 15.9 per cent from Southern Europe, 15.1 per cent from South-East Asia, 12.5 per cent from North-East Asia (China, Hong Kong and Korea), 8.4 per cent from the Middle East, and 5.6 per cent from New Zealand.

A total of over 200 nationalities are represented in Sydney's population.

More than 20 languages are in widespread daily use, but Sydney's major languages are English, Chinese (spoken 5.1 per cent of the population) and Arabic (3.8 per cent).

Indigenous Australians make up just 0.6 per cent (16,242 people) of the city's population.

18.7 per cent of Sydney's households earn over $75,000 a year.

University graduates represent just over 20 per cent of Sydney's workforce.

7.3 per cent of the workforce are unemployed.