Sydney Harbour: A History, new edition

Award-winning historian Ian Hoskins revisits Sydney’s glittering harbour and the people who inhabited and shaped it in this updated edition.

A sweeping history of one of the world’s most recognised landscapes, Sydney Harbour explores the story of the waterway from the time of the Gameragal and Gadigal to the highly charged contemporary debates about the future of the harbour. The story moves as seamlessly as the tides as the harbour is taken from its traditional owners and transformed from a penal colony on the outer rim of the European imagination to an international commercial hub. Along the way, the waterway is lauded for its uncommon beauty, serves as an aquatic common enjoyed and contested. It becomes a symbol of a city and, finally, of a nation.

A beautifully written, compelling book, this updated edition of Sydney Harbour lays out the interaction between the glittering harbour and the people who fish it, sail on it, build at the edges of it, fight for it, portray it and marvel at it.