History of Sydney
With the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901, Sydney ceased to be a colonial capital and became the capital of the Australian state of New South Wales. With industrialisation, Sydney expanded rapidly, and by the early 20th century it had a population well in excess of one million.
Australian pound
The first European settlement of Australia took place on 26 January 1788 at Port Jackson (modern Sydney, New South Wales). The colony of New South Wales barely survived its first years and was largely neglected for much of the following quarter-century while the British government was preoccupied until 1815 with the Napoleonic Wars. One very important British oversight during this period was the provision of adequate coinage for the new colony and, because of the shortage of any sort of money, the real means of exchange during the first 25 years of settlement was rum, the access to which was controlled by the officers of the New South Wales Corps, who benefited most from access to land and imported goods.