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Mount Colah

suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ4179774
Source-derived summary

Mount Colah is an outer suburb of Northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia 24 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Hornsby Shire.

Mount Colah is 5 km north of Hornsby, the nearest major town centre. It is one of the most northerly suburbs of Sydney and is where the "Welcome to Sydney" sign is located. Mount Colah is the second highest suburb in Sydney by elevation. Considered one of Sydney's leafier suburbs, streets are clustered around the Pacific Highway. Mount Colah is bordered to the east by the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

Mount Colah varies in altitude from 68 m to about 206-217 m above sea level.

History

Mount Colah was originally known as Colah - the name first used by naturalist George Caley to describe a koala in a letter to botanist Sir Joseph Banks. Colah Post Office opened on 29 September 1905 and was renamed Mount Colah in 1906, following the proclamation of Hornsby Shire in March of that year.

The Pacific Motorway (Sydney–Newcastle) was built through Mount Colah in 1988 and opened in March 1989.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mount Colah” is suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mount, Colah and suburb, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1905, 1906, 1988, 1989—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Mount, Colah and suburb is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4179774. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1906, 1988 and 1989.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mount Colah”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mount Colah primary sources, Mount Colah archive and Mount research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mount Colah”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mount Colah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.