This is a brilliant portrait of Australia's principal metropolis, tracing Sydney's story from long before the arrival of the First Fleet loaded with convicts in 1788, to the preparation for the Olympic Games in 2000.
Moorhouse describes the vitality of the modern city with its Royal Easter Show, the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and ANZAC Day. He also tells the story of Sydney's original aboriginal community and wealth of prehistoric art, its complex racial mix, its great sporting traditions, its cultural aspirations which produced the glorious Opera House, its crucial function as a seaport, its authoritarian and intolerant streak, its long political loyalty to the Australian Labor Party, its cherished rivalry with Melbourne, and the city's greatest and most incomparable heirloom - the greatest working harbour in the world.
