City of Sydney

The City of Sydney carries the soul of a nurturer that loves to be seen, and its chart says so beautifully. Chartered by Act of Parliament in 1842, it is the oldest surviving local government in New South Wales, and it was born under a Cancer Sun, that most emotional and maternal of luminaries, the mama bear whose whole vitality is protection, harbour and shelter. With that Sun in the first house, Sydney is the star of its own solar system, born to be on the stage, shining simply by being itself: the glittering face Australia shows the world. Yet its Moon lives in Sagittarius in the seventh house, so its heart is found in others and in openness, a freedom-loving, worldly psyche most at peace when hosting travellers, cultures and the endless coming-and-going of the harbour. The Gemini Ascendant is the quicksilver mask, the restless messenger city forever remaking its own boundaries, its constitution and its suburbs, endlessly talkative and versatile. That the boundaries have shifted so many times, absorbing South Sydney in 2004 under Lord Mayor Clover Moore, is pure Gemini rising: a place that refuses to be cornered, always reinventing who it is as it walks down the street.