History of Sydney
From 1788 to 1900 Sydney was the capital of the British colony of New South Wales. An elected city council was established in 1840. In 1900, Sydney became a state capital, when New South Wales voted to join the Australian Federation. Sydney today is Australia's largest city and a major international capital of culture and finance. The city has played host to many international events, including the 2000 Summer Olympics.
History of New South Wales
In one of those peculiarities of history, New South Wales was only officially named and had its boundaries declared in 2001, two hundred and thirty-one years after James Cook first uttered the name in 1770 when taking possession of an area covering most of eastern Australia. The reason why this peculiarity arose relates to the territorial evolution of Australia. The colony of New South Wales was established and named by way of imperial proclamation in 1788 by the then Governor in Chief of New South Wales, the Royal Navy officer Arthur Phillip. At this time, New South Wales was defined (by Britain) as covering approximately half of the Australian continent. New South Wales was further increased in size to around two-thirds of the Australian continent in 1828. All the Australian states and two territories, bar Western Australia, were then created from New South Wales during the 1800s and early 1900s. Each new state and territory, bar the Australian Capital Territory, was created by Britain through letters patent and they were constitutionally connected to Britain. As the new States and the Australian Capital Territory (the Northern Territory was made from South Australia) were created, they steadily reduced the size of New South Wales. At no stage over this period of time, as New South Wales shrunk, was the boundary of New South Wales ever officially defined. The remains of New South Wales were only finally and officially defined in the New South Wales government gazette, by boundary and name, on 24 August 2001 by the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales. The results of this meant that although New South Wales was the progenitor state of Australia, the text of the gazettal defines New South Wales in terms of its borders with the other states that were created from and after it: