The Intrepid Pea

Although I consider myself to be a true Sydney local, Sydney Government House is a place that I had not heard of before last year. Upon discovering that the House is nestled in the Royal Botanic Gardens, my first notion was that it was the castle-like building that was visible from within the gardens. Turns out I was wrong; I was actually thinking of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music building, which houses the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Conservatorium High School . Sydney Government House is situated on Gadigal land in the northwest end of the Royal Botanic Gardens but is actually very difficult to notice from within the public area of the gardens. The grounds of the House are quite extensive and, due to being a still functioning government building, are divided from the rest of the Botanic Gardens by tall fencing. This, combined with the leafy arbour-like vegetation in its grounds, makes it difficult to happen upon the House unless you already know it i

It is part of human nature to differentiate between "us" and "them", and it is through this differentiation that humans define the groups that they belong to, including cultural, ethnic and language groups. This is how we form aspects of our identity.  But if we take a moment to search beyond the differences between us and look into the past, we can see that we all have common origins. The timeline below is a brief summary of some key moments since the evolution of humans that have defined how we have developed as a species.  This timeline is definitely not to scale, but rather an approximate representation of the history of humans. The left side of the timeline starts about 200 000 BCE when homo sapiens evolved, and as we progress towards the right, the scale becomes smaller and smaller, meaning that the distance between two events in human history are closer together in time. What is BCE and CE?  BCE = Before Common Era CE = Common Era BCE and CE