Less than fifty years after Sydney was founded, Charles Darwin visited the fledgling town. The date was January 12, 1836. Writing in The Voyage of the Beagle he had this to say: In the evening I walked through the town, and returned full of admiration at the whole scene … Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have done many times more than an equal number of centuries have effected in South America. My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman. Darwin may have been a bit chauvinistic, but he was a thoughtful…