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The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney. By Grace Karskens. (Carlton, Aust.: Melbourne University Press, 1997. xx, 304 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-52284722-6.)
Grace Karskens, an Australian archaeologist and historian, has meticulously reconstructed the social history of a fascinating and distinctive neighborhood of Sydney-the small waterfront community known as the Rocks. Originally settled by the very first shiploads of convicts from Britain in the 1780s, the Rocks quickly became "a streetless neighborhood of jumbled houses" rising up from the shore of Sydney Cove, providing housing and work for successive waves of newcomers up to 1830. A hilly topography of sandstone outcrops kept the neighborhood irregular and inhospitable for middle-class housing or large-scale commercial building, and continued poverty ensured the nonreplacement of many original if dilapidated structures. As a result, the Rocks today...