Sydney

Sydney grew from a speck of European settlement pegged down on the edge of the deep, drowned valley, Sydney Harbour. The Parramatta River, flowing into the harbour from the west, is fed by a web of smaller rivers and creeks draining the flat and undulating lands of tall forests and open woodlands of the Cumberland Plain. To the south, water flowed from the Paddington ridge through a vast area of wetlands and sand dunes into Sydney's other great harbour, Botany Bay. Perhaps most strikingly, the plain is boxed in on three sides by the massive sandstone escarpments of the Blue Mountains in the west, and the Hornsby and Woronora plateaux in the north and south. In John Birminham's memorable words: "It was as though an irascible God, unhappy with his first try, had reached down and pressed his thumb onto the coast, leaving a rim at the edge of the land just high enough to keep out the sea."