RAHS Day Lecture – A (Virtual) Walk Around Sydney in June 1790

Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 1 October 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000

Cost: Free

Event Description:

Gary Sturgess takes us on a virtual walk around the settlement in Sydney Cove at the end of the First Fleet period, just before the Second Fleet arrived. Using contemporary paintings, charts and documentary sources, he recreates the physical environment of ‘the camp’, enabling us to better understand key events in the early settlement, and the shape of Georgian Sydney today.

About the speaker:

Gary L. Sturgess is an academic and former public servant who has closely studied the legal, financial and managerial foundations of the transportation system. In preparing to write a social history of the First Fleet period, he has explored the physical layout of the early settlement. Sturgess is the author of numerous articles on the convict system in peer-reviewed journals, and much of his work is published on his website, BotanyBaymen.com.