This stone is natural art. It has colours that defy an artists’s palette and a story for the ages. It is called yellow gold for a reason. This is Sydney sandstone and the city is built on an enormous slab of it. Stone was quarried from under the colonists’ feet, to build the original city, but this was eventually replaced with modern building materials. Today, the many road tunnels are drilled straight through the sandstone under the city. The natural overhangs of stone gave shelter to the aboriginal Gadigal people who lived here for many thousands of years before the arrival of the British in 1788. The stone was a canvas for aboriginal carvings which survive today, because of the stone’s strength.