Today marks 223 years since the transport ship Pitt arrived in Sydney Cove under Captain Manning. Despite the poor state of the settlement and the shortage of food required to cope with the arrival of almost 400 convicts, as well as many soldiers and their families, Major Francis Grose was impressed with the colony. Living at Sydney without daily contact with the convicts working at Parramatta, he obviously had a very limited knowledge of the real state of living conditions for so many.
I am at last, Thank God, safely landed with my family at this place, and to my great astonishment, instead of the rock I expected to see, I find myself surrounded with gardens that flourish and produce fruit of every description. Vegetables are here in abundance and I live in as good a house as I wish for...
(Historical Records, vol. 1, part 2, p.613)
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