Sydney's history to go online

Sydney City Council plans to take on the ambitious task of creating an online guide to the history of Sydney.

The Dictionary of Sydney will provide locals, visitors and academics around the world with access to the city's prehistory, colonial days and modern Sydney lifecultural, phyiscal and natural history of the Harbour City.

It will answer questions like: who spent the early morning hours for many years writing 'eternity' repeatedly on the city's pavements? What is the Aboriginal name for Cockatoo Island? And, how did the Sydney Harbour ferry Greycliff sink?

The Dictionary also include new research, as well as drawing on primary sources, bibliographic material and multimedia resources. Images, maps, databases and movies, will help to illustrate the city's rich past.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said the project website has been established to allow people to lodge submissions, find out more information and volunteer to work on the project.

The University of Sydney's Professor Stephen Garton, Challis Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, said “the project was a significant historical dictionary of a city to be conceived and presented electronically.”

The project - which received a grant worth around $1 million last year from the Australian Research Council - is an ongoing collaboration between City of Sydney, University of Sydney, UTS, State Records of NSW and the State Library of NSW.