Sydney Coast Australia

Coast is on its biggest expedition ever.

After traversing the coastline of Britain and Europe for eight years,

I've arrived in Australia.

What a place!

I'm on an epic journey, in a land so defined

by its ancient, sculpted coastline.

It's a coastline that's blessed

with outrageously beautiful natural wonders.

Unearthing stories of a people hewn from isolation,

resourcefulness and the extremes of climate and scale.

In all my travels, this is some of the wildest,

most edge-of-the-world feeling coastline I think I've ever seen.

When the first fleet rounded that headland in the January of 1788,

life for the Aboriginal people already living here

would never be the same again, and for the convicts aboard the ships,

this was supposed to be a life sentence.

Sydney is a modern city with an ancient heartbeat.

It's been window-dressed to perfection.

The birth of a whole nation is wrapped around

these cliffs and coves.

But for all her brash beauty,

this harbour is a place of immense complexity and surprise.

In this episode, anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett

discovers some ingenious colonial DIY.

Oh! Wahey! Look at that!

Palaeontologist Professor Tim Flannery

solves a 200-year-old geomorphic mystery.

And it's flooded Sydney Harbour

-and this is what we've got!

-Yep!

-This is the story!

Marine ecologist Dr Emma Johnston tries finding Nemo.

Brendan Moar traces the stories

behind Australia's most iconic landmark.

So, two halves coming together from opposite sides of the harbour,

how close were they? Were they spot on?

And I discover how a battle played out in this tranquil harbour.

I thought it was incredible that a submarine would be there.

This is Coast Australia.

In this episode we travel from Botany Bay,

up the coast to South Head,

deep into the harbour at Balmain and around to North Head.

The story of Australia as it is today

begins right here, in Botany Bay.

I'm about to go on one of the most significant coastal journeys

in all of modern Australian history.

It's a tale of risk, chance and ultimate reward.

Hi, Rowan.

Rowan Brownette is an avid history buff.

He's also the Chief Pilot here on Botany Bay.

-Permission to come aboard.

-Welcome aboard.

Thank you.

We're setting off on a sea-route that's been almost continuously

in use since the British first arrived.

How long has there been a pilot service here?

We have had a pilot service in Sydney in Port Botany since 1796.

A very proud service here.

Botany Bay is all about shipping.

It's the bustling port for Sydney, 12 nautical miles to the north.

Originally, there were quite different plans for Botany Bay.

Certainly when Captain James Cook put in here in 1770.

-So, this is Cook's buoy.

-OK, right.

This is as close as we can work out

where Captain Cook actually dropped his anchor.

-Right, so right here, right on this spot.

-In 1770.

What do you think a mariner like Cook

would've made of Botany Bay when he saw it in 1770?

Well, upon entering here, it was a big, wide open bay,

it was sheltered waters, something he hadn't seen for months.

Cook anchors here, while the scientists go ashore.

After ten days of mapping and exploration,

he sets sail to head north.

It's late afternoon, the light's against him

and that's the exact moment he spots an inlet

and names it Port Jackson and sails on!

Big mistake! Because look what he missed!

A great harbour.

All he did was spot the opening.

Spot it and named it.

-What an oversight!

-Yeah, what an oversight, yeah.

Eighteen years later, Governor Arthur Phillip arrived in Botany Bay

with the First Fleet, and orders to set up a penal colony here.

Fast forward to 1788... How does Botany Bay strike Phillip?

Well, it's a completely different place,

it's during the hottest time of the year,

you have little water, not a lot of rain...

Is that why he contemplates reconnaissance

and, you know, exploration further north?

Yes, because he had Cook's journals

and he knew that Cook had found a port,

12 nautical miles to the north of here,

which was called Port Jackson.

Phillip had everything to lose.

His orders were to stay put, but he couldn't afford to.

Survival was at stake.

Add to that, the French were also dangerously close.

Phillip set off for Port Jackson in three rowing boats

on what would be one of THE most momentous journeys

in Australian history.

After the disappointment of Botany Bay,

I can well imagine Phillip's excitement

as this spectacular, shimmering inlet gradually revealed itself.

It must have been breathtaking!

He's just discovered what I have to say

is one of the most dazzling harbours in the world.

Not a bad find!

The colony had been established here in the harbour

but one vexing problem remained...

Back in England, no-one knew that Phillip had moved camp.

And that's where this place, South Head

and the old signal station becomes a key player in this story.

Local historian Peter Poland is the go-to man about that.

What is the significance of this?

Well, Neil, this place is in fact

one of the most significant sites in Australia.

Phillip comes up here in three little boats,

finds the cove, but of course, they've got a problem.

Nobody in England knows anything about Sydney Harbour.

So, they've now disappeared off the face of the earth?

They've disappeared, so ships coming to Botany Bay...

Where are they?

They've been eaten, you know... Goodness knows!

So, a flag pole was dug in to ensure that ships far and wide

could see exactly where they were and deliver much-needed supplies.

There's been a flagstaff up here for 223 years.

This site has been continuously manned since 20 January, 1790.

All ships, all ships, this is Marine Rescue Port Jackson,

-Marine Rescue Port Jackson.

-With the forecast for Sydney coastal...

I doubt if there are very many places in the world

where you could say, this site has been continuously manned.

So, it's this place here that mattered

to the lives in Sydney Harbour?

Oh, this was crucial, absolutely crucial.

From the earliest days, this signal station

was the first point of contact with the outside world

for the early settlers.

Imagine the thrill when the flag went up!

Ships on the horizon with news of home!

And eventually...

the supply ships arrived just here,

just off the coast, but fortunately, for all concerned,

they didn't stop there.

They kept on coming up the coast,

until they could take this very inviting left-hand turn,

which finally brought them into contact with the good folk of Sydney

and from that moment, the fate of the settlement was sealed,

all based around this spectacular and hidden harbour

that's now home to almost five million people.

With the colony established,

next came the job of building a great city.

But from what?

Anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett

discovers that the new locals had a knack for innovation.

Sydney. A wonderland of glass and steel but, of course,

200 years ago, the plan was for a settlement of bricks and mortar.

But soon after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove

in January 1788, a major gap appeared in the supply chain for building.

In a word, lime.

You need lime to make mortar and that generally comes from limestone.

But Sydney didn't have any limestone.

A solution was needed, and fast,

if the city was to grow. But where to find it?

Looking for answers, I'm travelling to Goat Island,

the largest island in Sydney Harbour,

to meet Jacqui Goddard, a heritage expert at Sydney's Lime Forum.

So, what have we actually got here?

What we have here is, very basically,

we've got some sand and some water.

But what we're missing is a good source of calcium carbonate,

which is the basic form of the lime,

that we would then use to make the mortar.

So, where would I find that?

The most common source of calcium carbonate

in Sydney Harbour itself is shell. Mainly oyster shell.

And a good source of that is, in fact, at Cockle Bay,

traditionally and even now, because now Cockle Bay

is full of really good restaurants.

Traditional Aboriginal feeding grounds provided a ready supply.

Heaps of discarded shells - or middens -

piled up over thousands of years.

Oysters were a staple for indigenous Australians here.

Most people have never seen a midden now,

but when Philip and his cohort arrived,

the Sydney foreshore would have been dotted with them,

from Lane Cove in the west to here at Cockle Bay. That's the name.

Back then, such was the demand to build

that the shell was more valuable than the meat.

So, who was eating oysters?

Hello, Jacqui?

I'll ask Colonial Gastronomer Jacqui Newling

from Sydney Living Museums.

-Oh, look what you've brought with you.

-Yes.

OK, let's have a look at one of these little delicacies.

Here we go.

Yum.

When the Europeans came here to settle,

fresh food was important to them,

because they could really only bring what they called salt provisions.

So, salt, pork, flour to make bread, that kind of thing.

So, they had to supplement their diet with the local produce

-and that included shellfish.

-Just wealthy people, or everybody?

That's what I love about oysters, they cut across all classes.

So, you have the toffs, sitting on the hill there,

in their fine houses, but you also had the convicts

and the very poor people literally gouging them

off the rocks themselves.

We know that the convicts were eating them.

For example, in Hyde Park Barracks, we found oyster shells

as part of the archaeology of that building,

hidden underneath the floorboards.

Well, I have my modern-day midden.

I'm taking that with me for my experiment. Thank you very much.

-Well, good luck with it!

-Thank you!

I'm following up Jacqui's mention of Hyde Park Barracks,

which are located at the end of Macquarie Street.

Sydney's grand old sandstone canyon.

And if we look in the wall of Hyde Park Barracks,

which was built in 1819,

we can actually see some of the shells in the mortar.

Here, for example, we've got a little piece of cockle shell

and here, we've got a bit of oyster shell.

This is a combination of ancient Aboriginal middens

and convict labour from 200 years ago.

It's extraordinary!

Back to Goat Island

and our experiment on how the humble oyster shell is turned into mortar.

And here we are.

This is where we're going to burn these shells of yours.

So, we now have everything we need, then?

We do indeed.

Back then, a kiln would burn for up to three days at about 800 degrees,

to break down the shell's calcium carbonate to calcium oxide.

Get this burner up.

To speed that up, Gary Waller, a heritage building expert,

is using a butane torch.

We just leave that for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Perfectly possible to produce lime mortar this way,

-but you'd have to do it a shell at a time.

-Yes!

-Not the best way to build a house.

-Not the best way to build a house.

We'll just leave that till the oyster glows orange.

Well, that looks about right now.

So, I'll just take it out and let it cool down.

Got some clean water in the bucket and see if we get a reaction.

There you go, it's flaking.

It's bringing itself to the boil, basically.

So, that'll turn into a putty, which we use in the building mortar.

I don't know why, but I did not expect it, actually,

to dissolve like that! That's amazing!

-Just water?

-Just water.

And then we mix it with the sand. Then it will set in the air.

-The moment of truth.

-Yes.

How long do we need to leave that now for that to set?

Probably leave that for about a week.

Will it stick if I lift that up now?

You can try!

-Well, there you go!

-Oh, look at that!

City built on blood, sweat, tears of convicts and oyster shells.

-That's right.

-Yeah, there you go.

-Fantastic.

This harbour is a safe haven, plenty of calm waters and hidden coves.

It has been Sydney's greatest strength,

but also her greatest weakness.

And it was this weakness that would ultimately lead

to one of the most daring attacks of the Second World War

and the loss of many Australian lives.

The attack left Sydneysiders stunned.

Suddenly, this faraway war was right on their doorstep.

I want to know how the enemy was able to penetrate

such a protected port and to claim so many unsuspecting victims.

My journey begins at Dawes Point.

This is where the first fort of Sydney Harbour was built in 1791.

Hugely strategic, because this is the narrowest point of the harbour

with its clear line of sight to the Heads.

As the colony grew, so did threats from the outside.

First from the Spanish, then the French, then the Russians.

So more forts were built over the next hundred years.

Here on the northern side of the harbour was an integral part

of the command post for Sydney's defence network.

It was called The George's Head Battery.

As part of the outer line of defence,

it was designed to intercept enemy ships

before they could infiltrate the harbour.

It took four months and 250 soldiers

to laboriously manoeuvre the enormous guns

along a rough track called Military Road.

So, this is our entry into the gunpit.

I'm being shown through the labyrinth of tunnels

by heritage expert, Bob Clark.

You get lost incredibly easily.

It's cut out of solid sandstone

and by the 1890s, George's Head was the command centre

for all 41 gun emplacements around the harbour

and minefields in the water below.

This form of Fortress Sydney, was it used in anger?

Did it see any action?

This site never fired either a shot or a mine in anger.

But that was never going to last,

not with the advances in submarine technology.

Sydney Harbour was about to become more vulnerable than ever.

I suppose, in fact, the sheer scale of the harbour

presents such a struggle to defend it.

Yes, that's right, that's right.

It's just a NIGHTMARE to look after this place!

It's just one headache after another!

Just lucky nobody really came until 1942!

It seemed like every time a new line of defence was established,

a new threat emerged.

Fast forward to 1942, the halfway mark in World War II,

and Japan is now a serious threat in the Pacific.

The Japanese were expert submariners,

so Sydney had to be protected.

But these huge gun emplacements up on the cliffs

and headlands were outmoded.

They were helpless in the face of submarines

just slipping unnoticed into the harbour.

What was needed, in effect, was a great big net!

Steven, tell me about the boom and how it operated?

Historian Steven Carruthers knows more about it than most.

A boom stretched across the harbour from that point of land

you can see in the distance.

That was where the net was placed, a permanent net.

It wasn't a net that could be moved.

It was permanently fixed to the bottom.

So, there was no way they could actually nose under.

But on the night of May 31st, 1942, the net was incomplete.

Gates on either side were open

and that's how three Japanese mini-subs slipped into the harbour.

The first one got in around about eight o'clock.

He came in through the gate here.

He finished up backing into the net.

We suspect that he actually collided with that navigation marker.

-So, he's out of action.

-He's out of action.

He lays quiet for about two hours, before a fiery, red-headed Scotsman

by the name of James Cargill saw something

suspicious in the net.

He raised the alarm but, at first, no-one believed him.

By the time they did, the trapped Japanese two-man crew aboard M-14

had scuttled their craft and killed themselves.

So, one sub down,

but two more were still out there somewhere

and one of them was dead on target.

He made his way all the way up to Naval Anchorage.

He circled the Fort Denison twice.

And then he took aim at Chicago.

Fired both his two torpedoes.

The first one past the stern of the Chicago.

M-24's second torpedo also missed,

but sank a converted ferry,

the HMAS Kuttabul, with sleeping soldiers aboard.

21 were killed.

But what if?

What if the American cruiser USS Chicago had been hit instead?

The main worry would have been the aviation fuel.

The ammunition would have made a big enough bang.

But certainly the aviation fuel could have set off a chain reaction.

There were other capital ships nearby,

heavy cruisers that were also laden with aviation fuel.

Eyewitnesses are still alive.

I'm meeting Margaret Hamilton.

She was just 17 at the time and had a ringside seat.

The force of the blast sort of pushed the house and it came back.

Gosh, so the house was actually rocked back by the force?

The house was pushed. It just went 'whoosh!' like that, and back.

And then the force of it coming back tossed my brother out of bed.

So, this is the 31st of May, 1942, right here.

I could see tracer bullets coming down the harbour this way.

So, I mean, Chicago was not that far away over in that direction.

You could hear them saying, "Ready, aim, fire!"

So, you could hear all of that?

-I think the wind was coming from there.

-OK.

And it carried the noise. To see tracer bullets going...

going down the harbour was, you know, a bit weird.

Gunfire, explosions, the last mini-sub, M-21,

was being chased down and, in desperation,

it put into Taylor's Bay, right outside Margaret's house.

And I was looking down here and I saw a periscope.

I thought, "It can't be anyone swimming at this time."

Did you realise what you were looking at?

-You knew it was a periscope.

-I knew it was a periscope

and it came in and came in and came in

and I thought it would go aground.

-So, right in here?

-Right in, down here.

And I thought it was incredible that a submarine would be there.

I just thought, "Am I really seeing things or what!?"

Both M-14 and M-21 were salvaged the next day,

both crews having committed suicide.

But M-24, the sub that sank the Kuttabul, disappeared.

Her whereabouts, a mystery for the next 60 years,

before divers found the wreck, deep off Sydney's northern beaches.

The crew died on board.

The whole thing was, for a young girl, was exciting.

For me, it was. It was so interesting.

It was a one-off, you might say.

When the attack was over,

the people of Sydney gave the Japanese submariners

a funeral with full military honours.

And for many years, Japanese nationals would come here

and spread chrysanthemums on the water to remember all the lives lost

when war came to Sydney.

From the recent past, we're journeying

to the farthest recesses of history

and the story of Sydney Harbour itself.

What of those defining sandstone cliffs that embrace it?

How were they formed? How DID the Harbour come about?

There's a great mystery to this place

and palaeontologist Professor Tim Flanney is going to unravel it.

When Governor Phillip entered Sydney harbour here, over 200 years ago,

he was expecting to find a massive river feeding into this harbour.

It looks like the estuary of a very large river indeed.

But he found nothing of the sort.

It turns out that Phillip was thousands of years too late.

The river was long gone.

But why?

It's an intriguing puzzle that dates back 300 million years.

But in order to get the big picture about how the harbour formed,

we need to resort to a cake, believe it or not.

A cake representing the ancient super-continent of Gondwana.

It really comprises three pieces.

The part that would become New Zealand,

the part that was to become Antarctica off to the South

and here's Australia. Let's mark Sydney in there.

An enormous river, a river the likes of which

just doesn't exist on the planet today,

started to flow from the Trans-Antarctic mountains

along the East Coast of Australia and through the Sydney Basin.

Soon after that, this great super-continent began to break up.

New Zealand began to drift off to the East,

but Australia began moving north at a cracking pace for a lump of rock,

to come to rest where it is today.

That's the story of Gondwana, told by cake.

I'm meeting a mate of mine, Professor Bruce Thom.

He's an expert in coastal geology.

So, Bruce, what evidence do you see here

for this ancient river system that came from Antarctica?

Tim, if you look at the rocks, the rocks give you the story

and down here, we see the layers and particularly we see the layers

of what we call cross-bedding.

These are the layers of sand that were laid down

as great big sand-waves, as the river flowed towards the north-east

and then built itself up like a cake.

Like the cake was getting layered up.

The stratified sandstone cliffs that define Sydney Harbour today

are formed by layer upon layer of hard quartz sand,

washed down from the Antarctic by that mighty river.

Not that Governor Phillip was to know that, back in the day.

Phillip put into idyllic Camp Cove here in 1788.

He needed to find a ready source of freshwater desperately.

But what he did find, Tim, but trickles.

-Creeks, you might call them.

-Yeah, creeks.

The little trickles of water and that... One of them he selected

and that became the base for the first settlement of Australia.

-Right, but he never found that river?

-No, he never did.

The best was creeks, but he found something better

than he had in Botany Bay, so he decided to move.

It didn't make sense to Phillip.

He could see that three waterways fed into the harbour.

The Parramatta River, Lane Cove River and Middle Harbour.

But Phillip was expecting something much bigger.

Where was a Danube or an Amazon?

To answer that, Bruce has brought his sandpit to time-travel back

to the way the land used to look.

-So, this is the continental shelf?

-This is the continental shelf here

and this is the continental slope

and the continental shelf goes up

and comes up towards the present shoreline

and then rises up into the area which is now the catchments

that feed into Sydney Harbour.

These three rivers that are coming down like so,

and they join together, forming a river valley.

This system drained right out onto the continental shelf

when sea levels were much lower.

All right, so a river system that over millions of years

carved out the shape of the harbour as we see it today.

But by around 20,000 years ago, everything was about to change.

The ice is melting. The sea is rising?

-It starts to rise.

-'Post Ice-Age, sea levels were on the rise.'

This whole channel that was carved out millions of years ago

and re-carved when the sea level was lower,

that valley has now been flooded by the sea.

-Yes.

-The remnants of it can still be found.

But, of course, now the sea has risen

and by 6000 years ago, it's right up there

and it's flooded Sydney Harbour and this is what we've got.

-Yes.

-This is the story. Here it all is before you.

From the moment Europeans saw this harbour,

they've been enchanted by its beauty.

But had they known what Bruce has just told me

about its geological history, I think they would have been astonished!

The sand here coming all the way from the Transantarctic mountains,

the ice sheets of Europe and North America melting

and flooding this valley, drowning the mystery river of Sydney Harbour.

It's a symphony of geological action that involves the entire planet

and what it's done is created what I think

is the most beautiful harbour on earth.

As much as anything else, for Australians

the Sydney Harbour Bridge says, "This is us."

As Brendan Moar discovers, this gigantic Mecccano set

speaks to the very heart of the Australian identity.

It's humbling, the size and strength.

And sense of permanence, like it's always been there.

But the way it looks today was never a given.

Had history taken another course,

this view would have been very different.

From the 1850s through to the turn of the century,

all manner of suspension, and cantilevered designs were considered.

How's this?

Or this one from a couple of years later?

Finally, a steel arch design was settled on

by chief engineer Dr John Bradfield and I'm meeting his grandson, Jim.

G'day, Jim. How are you going? What sort of man was your grandfather?

He was a man of great vision, but even more a man of great passion.

He was passionate about the bridge.

He was passionate about Sydney,

he was sure that it had to be a grand bridge.

It just couldn't be a simple bridge, it had to be grand.

Was he a grand man himself?

Well, he sort of was, but he was small in stature.

He was quite a short man, but he had a very large head,

which I think was part of his, the brains were all in there, y'know?

In 1923, work began on the massive foundations and columns.

Sydney was abuzz,

but getting barely a second thought were whole communities

that had to make way for it.

The majority of those were over here on the north shore

and I've come to find out more about these forgotten victims of progress.

I'm in North Sydney, meeting historian, Ian Hoskins.

Back in the day, it was all housing, streets going here and there...

and cheek-by-jowl terraced housing.

This was the first area settled on the north side.

It would have been a mix of working class

and more substantial middle class.

Whole neighbourhoods were marked red for demolition.

By the end of 1925, some 500 houses and around 2000 people were gone.

It was bad news for everyone.

If you owned the property, you at least got compensation

for the value of the land and the value of the building.

Most people here, however, rented,

so they didn't get any compensation at all.

Most Sydneysiders, though, were utterly focused

on the two mighty half arches, creeping towards each other.

It's a lot to take in, 5 million rivets, 53,000 tonnes of steel

assembled with hardly a nod to health and safety.

These days, being on the bridge is a very safely controlled affair.

I am firmly attached to the bridge.

But, back in the day, when the bridge was being built,

it could not have been more different.

No harnesses, no helmets and just lucky to have a job

in the Depression era.

'1,000 men were employed, all doubts whether Australians

'were equal to the task were soon dispelled.'

Sixteen men died, six of them falling to their deaths.

Despite that, in August 1930, both sides met with absolute precision.

'Dr Bradfield, the chief engineer for the bridge,

'and Mr Innis anxiously inspect the joins.'

I'm 134 metres up with modern day engineer, James Reynolds.

So, two halves coming together from opposite sides of the harbour.

How close were they? Were they spot on?

Well, it's surprising and without computers, it was an amazing feat.

They were only 13ml apart, so smaller than your pinkie finger

in alignment when they actually came together.

So, an incredible feat of engineering.

The bridge was finally ready for the grand opening in March 1932.

'The dream was realised at last.

'Sydney rightly claims the greatest and heaviest

'arch-type bridge in the world.'

You know this is more than a bridge, it's more than a landmark.

Because, as much as anything,

this a symbol of what Sydneysiders could do in truly testing times.

Not far from the bridge, in Balmain, is another Sydney institution.

Built 130 years ago, The Dawn Fraser Baths are a haven

for some very fortunate ex-wharfies,

still doing it hard every morning.

To be in a city of Balmain,

spend your retirement days down on the water, what could be better?

That one! Get that one into ya!

We're all retired blokes. We had our childhood down here

and we've all congregated here on our retirement.

I enjoy their company. You know, they're generous and everything.

They're all about me.

Take the milk out of your tea, they would!

The boys play cards. I do crosswords, read the paper.

You know, it's just a... beats work.

You get out of the house and get away from your missus.

It's a well spent four hours every day.

It's actually the oldest tidal pool in Australia.

That means the water comes in and out. Flows on the tide.

Surfs up! Where's that board?

Get me my board, the surf's up.

The fish come and go at their own pleasure.

We got stingrays, numrays in here that swim with us.

This pool, it's been part of my family's culture spanning 60 years.

It was a meeting place for all the families in Balmain.

The benefits, mentally and physically.

It keeps me alive, actually, and it gets me out of the house.

Another day in paradise.

But in the early days, the good life was out of reach

for many of the less fortunate new arrivals.

If there was one thing the young colony feared, it was disease.

Reeking convict hulks would arrive overloaded, not just with convicts

and new settlers, but also with typhoid, cholera, bubonic plague

and, in the early days, smallpox.

I'm off to find out how they dealt with that.

Before the age of modern medicine,

the only known way of protecting communities

from the outbreak of infectious diseases was to isolate sufferers.

I'm heading to the quarantine station on North Head

on the northern side of the harbour.

It's also at the quarantine station that we'll unearth an amazing story

of a rebellious mass escape by 900 Australian soldiers,

freshly returned from the First World War.

What a place to be quarantined!

It feels more like Club Med or St Tropez.

But with a difference.

In fact, this was a 32-hectare prison,

complete with security fences, armed guards and guard dogs.

There was to be no escape...

or was there?

Convicts with smallpox were first put here in 1828.

Over the next hundred years 13,000 people were processed,

but of them, 600 sadly would never leave.

It became a microcosm of the passenger liner class system,

the most luxurious accommodation naturally reserved for First Class.

But it must have been a galling sight

for freshly arriving Australian soldiers in February, 1919.

After they disembarked, they saw a bunch of jolly old chaps,

enjoying a game of cricket on this very walkway.

But in stark contrast and despite being war heroes,

they were given tents and billy cans and dispatched into the bush.

After four years of mud and misery, you can imagine how they felt.

Home just across the water and here they were

despatched into the bush.

No facilities and snakes by the dozen.

Something had to give.

After just two days, there was a full-scale revolt.

All 900 soldiers marched to confront 140 armed police guards

at the perimeter fence. They were demanding their freedom.

And the police, fearing that any attempt to resist them

would lead to slaughter, let them go!

Next, they were ferried en masse into Sydney,

despite fears that they might spread the deadly Spanish flu virus.

Locals greeted them in stony silence,

while the authorities scrambled to find somewhere

to quarantine them.

And I just love what happened next.

It is a truly Australian answer to the problem.

The government and the health authorities held crisis talks.

What was to be done with the recalcitrant soldiers?

What was the solution?

Well, the answer is, it was decided the soldiers would serve

the rest of the quarantine in the Sydney Cricket Ground!

Oh, yes, they did.

I should add there was no game on at the time.

After four days at the cricket ground they were released

with no sign of illness and later joined rousing Victory celebrations.

I'm off along the coastal walk to the surfing Mecca

of Bondi Beach!

On Bondi Beach, Sunday the 6th of February 1938 is

remembered as 'Black Sunday.'

And on that day, there were hundreds of people in the water as usual.

But over the course of just five or six seconds,

three freak waves hit the beach almost simultaneously

and 300 people were pulled out, all the way out here into deep water.

One onlooker who witnessed the event said all at once the waves

came crashing, and three seconds later hands went up everywhere.

Now the hands were up, calling for help.

And as sheer good luck would have it, there

were 70 lifeguards on the beach that day for a training exercise.

And so they were able to launch an instantaneous,

mass rescue operation.

And of the 300 people who went into the water,

all but five were pulled out alive.

Yet more testament to the bravery of the men

and women who safeguard life at sea.

As the marine centrepiece of a busy city, you'd expect

Sydney Harbour to be a challenging environment for its underwater life.

But marine ecologist

Dr Emma Johnston also knows its strengths.

It's a surprising harbour that boasts twice as many fish

species as the entire United Kingdom!

This is my back yard. It's my home and it's where I work.

I've spent my career investigating the resilience of this harbour

to all of the challenges that a big city can throw at a waterway.

Resilient and in a constant state of flux. At Collins Beach on the north

side of the Harbour, I'm joining Professor David Booth and his

researcher, who are monitoring some newcomers to these temperate waters.

So, Dave, what are we going to be looking for this morning?

Well, we're looking for some little jewels called tropical reef

fish that have come down the coast, probably from the southern

Great Barrier Reef, over 2,000kms and every summer these little guys

sort of grace our harbour and sights down in this direction.

Soon flashes of orange and electric blue reveal the identity of several

species of new arrivals to these now warmer waters of Sydney harbour.

They travel down on the East Australian Current,

which acts like a marine superhighway carrying huge volumes

of water and fish from the Coral Sea to Sydney and further south.

-Let's have a look.

-And here we have 'em.

Oh, it's so beautiful.

So we got a nice array of butterfly fish and damselfish there.

-Look at that.

-The bottom corner a little Neon Damsel

and a couple of different species of Sergeant Major.

So we've seen a build in numbers of this little guy here.

He's probably come in in the last week.

There's thousands of them there and they weren't there last week.

Sydney Harbour is one of the most biologically diverse

estuaries in the whole world.

One of the major reasons for that great diversity is a huge

structural complexity we get here.

And the massive range of environmental conditions.

And we also get changes in circulation depending on where

you are, changes in salinity, changes in light.

All of these things support a great diversity of habitats

and a great diversity of biological organisms.

Which makes for a unique and resilient harbour,

that still surprises with its hidden beauty.

There is an enormous Blue Groper. It's beautiful.

Look, it's eating the sponge on the rock.

I'd say it's about a metre long.

Look at this bizarre-looking underwater garden.

Sea squirts, sponges, barnacles

and huge number of animals that live in and amongst these.

This is why Sydney Harbour is so diverse

because we've got places like this that are virtually

untouched by the massive city above us.

And now I'm going topside to the leafy

eastern suburbs for a taste of the

high-life the way it used to be done.

This was Australia's first international airport right

here in Rose Bay.

And there were no terminal buildings.

There wasn't even a runway.

Instead, a little ferry used to take passengers out to the flying boats.

Before the war they were a symbol of luxury and modernity at a time when

international travel was more about the journey than the destination.

Spacious cabins, silver service and Sydney to London in 10 days!

The new QANTAS Imperial flying boats were aviation marvels

taking first-class mail

and first-class passengers to the farthest outposts of the Empire.

What must it have been like?

I'm taking a spin with pilot, Andy Gross.

Hi, Andy.

They only carried 17 passengers.

So it was a service just for the high and wealthy.

You know it cost an average salary to take the trip from here to

-London.

-What, like a year's salary?

Yeah, for the average working diggers.

Three flights a week and luxury. Oh, yes!

Even an on board putting green!

It's just a touch different in Andy's wee plane.

Fantastic.

But it's just as exciting.

This is real seat-of-the-pants flying.

Alrighty, off we go.

Back in the day, the next stop was Darwin, then Surabaya. A crew

change in Singapore then on to Bangkok, Calcutta, Karachi,

Basra, Athens and finally England, 10 days later.

This is exactly how the trip to London would start.

The take-off is so smooth.

There's no sensation of leaving the water at all.

This sparkling harbour continues to define Sydney despite all

the challenges of the past two centuries.

Resilient, defiant, diverse and surely,

as Governor Phillip said, the finest harbour in the world.

I've got a lot more of it to see. I think I've done Sydney now

so that just leaves 59,000 kilometres of coastline to go!

Can you turn right, Andy?

Next time we're off to explore the Great Barrier Reef!

Dr Emma Johnston discovers a remarkable piece of technology

that could save the world's coral reefs.

Brendan Moar uncovers

the living history of a hidden slave trade.

A lot of people are simply amazed that this actually

happened in Queensland.

Dr Xanthe Mallet hunts for a ship that

vanished without a trace.

Why did the ship go down?

And I try navigating with the Australian Navy.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I may be blind in my right eye.