Thai massage in Sydney, Australia

A harbour that became Australia’s first city

Sydney began as a British penal colony in 1788 on Gadigal land around a sandstone harbour. The Opera House and the Bridge are late decorations on a much older cove.

The Eora nations fished this harbour for thousands of years. The colony clustered around Sydney Cove, then climbed the ridges. Thai massage arrived with late-twentieth-century migration and with a visitor economy that still types the city name before the suburb. CBD, Surry Hills and Bondi are different queries with the same harbour light behind them.

This lander uses harbour blue over Australian gold because Sydney should not inherit Melbourne’s laneway palette. The photography is the real skyline at dusk — sails and steel — so the page is unmistakably this city.