The Birth of Sydney

Book excerpt: Sydney was born like no other city before it- 1500 souls - both convicts and their gaolers - struggled during the tempestuous summer of 1788 to establish an outpost of empire in a remote and incomprehensible new land. Tim Flannery's brilliant anthology reveals Sydney's strange and secret life from its unruly beginnings to its arrival as the 'queen of the south' a century later. Here are the stories that made a city- the riotous debauchery of the convicts as lightning crackled above, the great Eora leader Bennelong joking with Arthur Phillip moments before the governor was speared, the enigmatic love of William Dawes and Patyegarang inscribed in a forgotten diary, all the brutality, humour and unpredictable tenderness of a frontier city.