Sydney

Sydney is a city on the east coast of Australia, the capital city of New South Wales. About five and a half million people live in Sydney, making it the biggest city in Australia and Oceania.

Sydney started in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip brought the First Fleet to settle in Australia. The settlers mainly were convicts from crowded prisons in England and Ireland, with a group of soldiers to guard them. The country is home to more than 200 spoken languages with a large population of overseas-born residents. The first people to occupy the area were Australian Aboriginals.

Sydney has many famous buildings: the Sydney Opera House, the Queen Victoria Building and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sydney has a large harbour and many beaches. The most famous beach is Bondi Beach. Some other famous beaches are Coogee Beach and Manly Beach. A popular coastal walk to do is the Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk. Well-known parts of the harbour are Darling Harbour and Circular Quay. The Royal National Park is popular and famous in southern Sydney.

Sydney has many things to see and do. These include visiting Taronga Zoo on the northern side of the harbour, eating food, looking at art or watching sports or walking down George Street, which has many nice shops. Sydney has some of Australia's best shopping, and the Blue Mountains are about a two-hour drive to the west. Many people go to Sydney City to watch fireworks over the harbour on New Year's Eve. Sydney holds events throughout the year that attract tourists worldwide, including Vivid Sydney, the Royal Easter Show, and more.

Sydney is located on the East Coast of Australia. It is currently the largest city in Australia, and the continent of Oceania. Sydney is known for having been the original landing spot for the British. It is situated next to the Blue Mountains. Sydney has more than 650 suburbs and 38 local government areas.

Sydney lies on a drowned coastline on the east coast of New South Wales, where the ocean level has risen to flood-deep river valleys carved in the Sydney Triassic sandstone, which was laid down about 200 million years ago. Sydney has over two major regions: the Cumberland Plain, a mostly flat region to the west of Sydney Harbour, and the Hornsby Plateau, a tableland north of the harbour. Sydney's native plant species are mostly eucalyptus trees with red and yellow soils. Sydney has nine rivers and just over a hundred creeks.

Sydney's main vegetation communities are grassy woodlands or savannas, open woodlands with hard-leaved shrubs, trees like eucalyptuses and acacias, and grass in the understory. Dry and wet forests are common as well, as well as very small rainforest communities.

Sydney has a humid subtropical climate with warm to hot summers and cool winters, and rainfall spreads throughout the year. Hotter temperatures are recorded inland in the western suburbs because the ocean moderates the coast. Rainfall is higher in the first half of the year when easterly winds are common and lower in late winter/early spring when winds are more westerly, but rain has been very changeable in recent years.

East coast lows bring heavy rainfall to Sydney, typically in autumn to early winter. In the warm months, rain comes in short, heavy falls in the afternoons, usually with a thunderstorm. Snow is unheard of, but major snowfall was last reported in Sydney on 28 June 1836. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation are an important feature in Sydney's weather patterns: drought and bushfire on the one hand and storms and flooding on the other.