Sydney is graced with natural beauty - a vast and ancient flooded valley, it is a waterscape of beaches, rivers, bays and harbour with sandstone beneath and eucalyptus around its shores. Sydney's European history covers scarcely more than 200 years, however it was home to a number of Aboriginal clans for centuries before that. There is a complex story of interaction between the urban and the natural. A unique sense of place has evolved over time with fragments of the past intertwined with the bold and the new. Most of the historic photos in this book catch Sydney scenes of about a century ago, in the decades just before and after the Federation of the British colonies to form Australia. Sydney's development mirrored Australia's growth in confidence and affluence, producing an impressive display of public architecture and civic spaces. While the old photos capture Sydney at the end of a grand period of city building, when it had just overtaken Melbourne as Australia's most populous city, they also display a metropolis burdened by many of the problems attendant on metropolitan size. The photos of today's Sydney are a continuation of that story; of a city still booming, the foundations still there, but now congested with skyscrapers and transport connections; its former maritime history rewritten in the form of luxury apartments, office buildings and restaurants, all struggling to make the most of the perfect, glistening location.