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Sydney - Australia
Sydney
is situated in southeastern Australia,
located on the southern shore
of Port Jackson
(an arm
of the Pacific Ocean). Sydney is Australia’s
oldest and largest city
and is a major economic, cultural, and administrative center. It has
warm
summers and mild winters. Mean temperatures range from 12.6° to 21° C
(55° to
70° F), with an average annual rainfall of 1194 mm distributed fairly
evenly
throughout the year.
Sydney and its suburbs
cover about 12,400 sq km, from the Hawkesbury
River in the north to the southern tablelands in the south and from the
Blue
Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. Long fingers of
bush-land extend deep into Sydney’s metropolitan heart, making it
vulnerable to
bush-fires.
In
Sydney’s central business district, colonial public buildings and
handsome
terrace homes sit next to modern skyscrapers, such as Sydney Tower (305
m/1000
ft). Also downtown is Sydney Harbour Bridge, which for many years
symbolized
the city. Completed in 1932, the bridge linked northern Sydney with the
southern and eastern suburbs and was at that time the largest
single-arch
bridge in the world. The bridge was eclipsed as a symbol with the
opening, in
1973, of the multishelled Sydney Opera House. Located at Bennelong
Point, an
arm of land jutting into Port Jackson, the Opera House is now one of
the most
famous pieces of modern architecture in the world.
Sydney has a population (1993 estimate) of
3,719,000. The metropolitan area is populated mostly by descendants of
British
and Irish immigrants, but, as in other major Australian cities, Sydney
has been
transformed in recent years by migration from southern Europe and
Southeast
Asia. Sydney has large concentrations of Lebanese, Vietnamese, and
other Asian
immigrants, as well as large numbers of Italians and Greeks. The growth
of
greater Sydney has caused a continual rise in housing costs and forced
many
residents to the outer suburbs. Aborigines constitute 0.6 percent of
the city’s
total population.
Sydney is the industrial,
commercial, financial, and tourist capital of Australia
and is one of the most
significant financial centers in the Asia-Pacific region. Sixty of Australia’s
largest corporations have their headquarters in Sydney, and the Sydney stock exchange is the largest
in Australia..
Manufacturing, however, continues to be important: metals, machinery,
clothing,
processed food, electronic equipment, motor vehicles, ships, and
refined
petroleum are some of the wide range of Sydney’s
manufactured products.
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