Sydney Harbour, the drowned river valley of Port Jackson, is the natural amphitheatre that made Sydney possible and still shapes how the city is experienced. For tens of thousands of years its coves and headlands were, and remain, Country for the Gadigal and other Eora peoples. In 1788 the First Fleet entered these deep waters, beginning a colonial port that tied Australia to global trade and conflict. Today ferries, former docklands, the Harbour Bridge (1932), and the Opera House (1973) turn the inlet into a shared civic stage, most vividly on New Year’s night.