Sydney – The Tank Stream

Tank Stream, 1842 by John Skinner Prout, courtesy State Library of NSW

The Tank Stream was Sydney’s first water supply in the early days of the colony. When Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney he was searching for a place to develop the new colony and chose Circular Quay in part due to the freshwater stream running through it, which had been used by the Gadigal people for thousands of years. The small village of Sydney relied on water from this stream as its main water source for the next 40 years.