Port Jackson

Port Jackson, now part of Sydney Harbour, was 'discovered' and named by Captain Cook although Aborigines had lived in the area for 50,000 years or so. He did not land here and it was left to Captain Arthur Phillip to explore the area in January 1788. A flag raising ceremony was held to proclaim the Colony of New South Wales as a territory of the British Crown on 26 January. Phillip named the bay in which they landed as Sydney Cove. 'Cove' was later dropped in the name and the area became known as Sydney.

Phillip was the first Governor of New South Wales and established Port Jackson first as a penal colony. Scottish immigration to the area was encouraged principally by John Dunmore Lang, a Scottish presbyterian minister, who came to the area himself in 1823. His bounty scheme resulted in the first group of "Scottish mechanics" arriving in 1831. He travelled between Australia and Britain several times himself and, on his 1833 voyage, wrote An historical and statistical account of New South Wales: both as a penal settlement and as a British colony. This is a glowing report of the area, not least because he wanted to encourage further immigration:

'The capital of the colony, and the seat of the colonial government is Sydney. The town of Sydney is beautifully situated on Sydney Cove, one of the numerous and romantic inlets of Port Jackson, about seven miles from the entrance of the harbour.

Many of the most interesting localities on the shores of Port Jackson, between Sydney and the Heads, are in the hands of private proprietors; and the richly and endlessly diversified beauties of nature, which they uniformly exhibit, are in some instances enhanced by the manner in which they appear contrasted with the tasteful habitations of men. Several neat cottages have been erected by the pilots of Sydney, on a sandy beach immediately behind the South Head. A little nearer the town is the picturesque cottage of Vaucluse, the residence of Mr. Wentworth the barrister; and somewhat nearer still is the splendid villa of Point Piper .... most of the civil officers of the colony have built houses of respectable appearance, on allotments granted them for the purpose by the late Governor, the view of which from the water is highly interesting and enlivening. And on the opposite side of the harbour, or what is called the North Shore, a few handsome cottages have also been erected'

These attractive residences might well be sighted by the Scottish emigrants arriving in Sydney but they would soon be dispersed to the hinterland and the work to which they were 'disposed'.

Voyages