The Rocks: Where Convicts Built Australia

The sandstone neighborhood beneath the Harbour Bridge. George Street — Australia's oldest street — marks where the First Fleet landed in January 1788. Two centuries of rough waterfront (sailors, gangs, plague) before heritage preservation and tourism created today's cobblestoned pubs and markets.

The Rocks Discovery Museum (free): Gadigal people who lived here 20,000 years, convict settlement, maritime era, 1970s citizen protests that saved the neighborhood from demolition. Susannah Place Museum: 1844 terrace houses with original interiors, the most intimate view of working-class colonial life in Australia. Sydney's foundation story is convicts and sandstone and the determination of people sent to the end of the earth who decided to build something permanent.