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See how Time Out photographer Daniel Boud captured the Tank Stream Tour

To the crew of the First Fleet sailing around what is nowby Bennelong Point, the stream represented salvation. Having arrived in Botany Bay only to find no fresh water, they sighted it here - cast anchor, stepped ashore. Sydney was born.

Exploring the stream in the following days, Captain Phillip discovered its genesis in a swamp between today's Hyde Park and the Town Hall. Supplemented by springs in King and Spring Streets, it then dropped 30 metres through a series of waterfalls before hitting the saltwater of the Harbour.

Sydney began on the banks next to the stream. Phillip declared a ‘green belt' 15 metres wide either side of the stream and the fledgling city was split - to the east, lived the officers and governors. To the west, the convicts.

Within a year, the colony was in drought and Phillip ordered the stream deepened to increase the water supply. The sandstone was excavated to create three storage tanks, one adjoining Pitt and Spring Streets, two more on Bond Street. Each tank held 20,000 litres of freshwater - enough to warrant a title: The Tank Stream.

Alas, thereafter the fresh water soured. After Phillip returned to England in 1792, rum overtook water as the colony's drink and the colony - and the Tank Stream with it - became corrupt, overrun by beasts.

By 1828, the Tank Stream was an open sewer. A new tunnel from the Lachlan Swamps in Centennial Park replaced it in 1837.

Today, the Tank Stream is a stormwater drain ferrying water from the CBD to the Harbour. Although it's been bridged, diverted, built over and buried ever-deeper beneath our growing metropolis, it can be glimpsed in underground carparks, flooded basements and a final cascade to freedom at Circular Quay on the Museum of Contemporary Art side.

A bi-annual tour attracts 180 people a day, but thousands contest the ballot. They find the sweat of the city precipitous with slime on sandstone walls and the hieroglyphs of the men who carved them living on.

See how Time Out photographer Daniel Boud captured the Tank Stream Tour

More info: Sydney Water

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