It is widely believed that the oldest building in Sydney and Australia's oldest building is Elizabeth Farm in the Sydney suburb of Rosehill. Built in 1793 by John Macarthur, it originally served as a property for Marcarthur and his family, making it the oldest house in Australia.
Australia's foundation building
Building commenced in May 1788 and took just over a year to complete. It was the first major European building to be erected in mainland Australia. (First Government House at Norfolk Island was built between April-May 1788).
In recent years, science has confirmed what Aboriginal Australians, the world's oldest continuous living culture, always knew: the Pilbara region of Western Australia is among the oldest places on Earth.
Hunters Hill, pioneered from 1847 as a suburb of detached houses in gardens, remains the oldest surviving example.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as New Holland, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland ) and subsequently anglicised.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
Jericho, Palestine
A small city with a population of 20,000 people, Jericho, which is located in Palestine, is believed to be the oldest city in the world.
You can count on a well-constructed house to last a lifetime — maybe even a century or longer. Some of the components that make up a house, however, tend to have shorter lifespans, and need repair or replacement to endure the test of time.
Without special care and maintenance, the maximum lifespan of a house is about 200 years. Yes, there are historical buildings that are far older, but those have received special maintenance and preventive care that few other buildings receive.
Water destroys materials that are prone to rot — increased moisture content allows bacteria, fungi, and insects to survive and to use that wood as a food source. In old houses, they used materials that were more naturally rot resistant, such as old growth pine that are full of resins and natural chemicals.
Back in 1970, you could buy a house in Sydney for $18,700. In 1980, the average house price was around $76,500. By 1990, the number had more than doubled to $184,600. In 2000, you needed around $312,000 to purchase a property in Sydney, with the number increasing to $575,900 in 2010.
The people of Brewarrina proudly call their fish traps “the oldest manmade structure in the world”. Located in north-west New South Wales, the traps lie where the Barwon river makes a curve near the largely Aboriginal town of Brewarrina.
Claims have been made that Cooladdi is Australia's smallest town by population. In 2015, the population was 3 (down from 4 in 2013), all of whom lived at the general store.
Earth's oldest known piece of continental crust dates to the era of the moon's formation. Australia holds the oldest continental crust on Earth, researchers have confirmed, hills some 4.4 billion years old.
The name Australia derives from Latin australis meaning southern, and dates back to 2nd century legends of an "unknown southern land" (that is terra australis incognita). The explorer Matthew Flinders named the land Terra Australis, which was later abbreviated to the current form.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated.
Genetics. Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.
The research also looked at the most unique first words in each country. In Australia, the word "country" was reported to be the most unique first word babbled.
There are also a number of terms for Australia, such as: Aussie, Oz, Lucky Country, and land of the long weekend. Names for regions include: dead heart, top end, the mallee, and the mulga.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.