Stand at Circular Quay and you’re looking at Warrane — the Gadigal name for this small southern embayment of Port Jackson. Governor Arthur Phillip brought the First Fleet into Botany Bay as ordered, decided the anchorage and fresh water weren’t good enough, and chose this cove instead: deep water close inshore and a reliable freshwater creek running into its head. That creek became the Tank Stream — sandstone tanks cut beside it in drought years gave it the name — and it was the reason the camp sat here at all.
On 26 January 1788 the fleet shifted from Botany Bay and the Union Flag went up beside the stream. The cove was named for Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary. Early settlement occupied both foreshores: government and convict camps on the east and west, Tank Stream in the middle. By the later nineteenth century the stream was covered as a drain, the foreshore was pushed out by reclamation, and the head of the cove became Circular Quay. Today the Opera House sits on Bennelong Point at the eastern tip; The Rocks and Barangaroo frame the western shore.
Sydney Cove - 1788
SYDNEY COVE 1788
