City of Sydney: History
The name Sydney comes from "Sydney Cove" which is where Governor Arthur Phillip established the first British settlement, after arriving with the First Fleet. On 26 January 1788, he named it after Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, who was the Home Secretary at the time, and the man responsible for the plan for the convict colony in Australia.
The "City of Sydney" was established on 20 July 1842 by the New South Wales Government under the City of Sydney Act 1842 No. 16a. The area encompasses present-day Woolloomooloo, Surry Hills, Chippendale and Pyrmont, an area of 11.65 km2. There were six wards established by boundary posts. These wards were: Gipps, Brisbane, Macquarie, Bourke, Cook and Phillip. A boundary post still exists in front of Sydney Square.
The boundaries of the City of Sydney have changed fairly regularly since 1900. The bankrupt Municipality of Camperdown was merged with the city in 1909. As a result of the Local Government (Areas) Act 1948, the municipalities of Alexandria, Darlington, Erskineville, Newtown, Redfern, The Glebe, Waterloo, and Paddington were added to the city. In 1968 the boundaries were changed and many of these suburbs moved to be part of a new municipality of South Sydney. South Sydney was brought back into the city in 1982, but became separate again under the City of Sydney Act of 1988 and then became smaller than its original size at 6.19 km2. It grew again in February 2004 with the merger of the two council areas, and now has a population of approximately 170,000 people.
These changes in boundaries have often resulted in control of the council by the governing party in the Parliament of New South Wales at the time; the Labor Party often sought to have traditional working-class suburbs like Redfern, Erskineville, Alexandria and Waterloo included in the council area, and the Liberal Party and its predecessors often desired a smaller council area focused on inner-Sydney or a limited/broader voting franchise. A 1987 re-organisation initiated by a Labor state government and completed in 1989 under a Liberal Coalition government saw the City of Sydney split again, with southern suburbs forming the City of South Sydney, a moved that advantaged the government of the day, as the southern suburbs now in South Sydney Council had traditionally voted Labor.
On 8 May 2003 the Labor state Government partially undid this change, when approximately 40% of the South Sydney City Council area was merged back into the City of Sydney including Camperdown, Chippendale, Darlington, East Sydney, Kings Cross and Woolloomooloo. Glebe was also transferred back from Leichhardt Council to the City of Sydney. On 6 February 2004, the remaining parts of the South Sydney City Council were merged into the City of Sydney. Critics claimed that this was performed with the intention of creating a "super-council" which would be under the control of Labor, which also controlled the NSW Government. Subsequent to this merger, an election took place on 27 March 2004 which resulted in the independent candidate Clover Moore defeating the high-profile Labor candidate, former federal minister Michael Lee and winning the position of Lord Mayor.
The current City of Sydney Local Government Area (LGA) covers about 26.15 square kilometres (281,500,000 sq ft).
City of Sydney provides an official map of the LGA. Alternatively the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales provides an interactive map of the Sydney LGA. …