What did the land look like when the first fleet arrived?

Answer 1

When the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Harbour (having moved on from the seemingly unproductive botany Bay), the land was completely untouched by European influence. There were abundant trees - eucalypts, tea trees, melaleucas, bottle-brushes, grevilleas, etc. The smell of eucalyptus would have been strong in the air. There was little grassland, and acres of trees had to be felled before crops could be planted. The animals roamed freely - wallabies, kangaroos, koalas (not that the Europeans even knew of the koala for at least ten years after settlement), wombats, echidnas and so on. The skies were full of flocks of screeching galahs and cockatoos, the sound of which would have been unlike any of the Europeans had ever heard before. Then there were the kookaburras - strange, laughing birds sitting high in the trees.

The insects were unlike anything the British had ever seen before, Captain Arthur Phillip described the ants as "black and red ants of a most enormous size". There are also more poisonous snakes in Australia than any other country, while the sight of tree-climbing goannas up to three feet in lentgh (or more) would have been sure to frighten even the more hardened convicts.

Sydney Cove was somewhat more promising than Botany Bay had been. Captain Arthur Phillip wrote of Botany Bay:

There are great numbers of very large and lofty trees, reaching almost to the water's edge, and every vacant spot between the trees appears to be covered with verdure; but upon a nearer inspection, the grass is found long and coarse, the trees very large and in general hollow and the wood itself fit for no purposes of building, or anything but the fire. The soil to a great depth is nothing but a black sand which, when exposed to the intense heat of the sun by removing the srrounding trees, is not fit for the vegetation of anything even of the grass itself..."