Big smoke derivation

Does anyone know the derivation of "The Big Smoke?" Did it ever refer to just one city?

Thank you

Could you give us/me some context of how your phrase is used?
Here in the NY area groups of men rent out restaurants, drink heavily, eat steaks, watch football games and smoke cigars and these events are called "Big Smokes" but I think you must mean something else.

Smoke, the
In the days before clean-air legislation, when soot was a major component of the urban atmosphere, large metropolises came to be known, particularly to those in the provinces, as _the Smoke_, or _the Big Smoke_. More specifically, London is _the Smoke_ to Britishers, while Australia, where the nickname was first recorded as an Australian Aboriginal term for a city, it is usually applied to Melbourne or Sydney.
From _Names & Nicknames of Places & Things_ by Laurence Urdang.

Big Smoke n. 1 [mid-19C+] any town. 2 [mid-19C+] LOndon.... 3 [late 19C+] (AAus.) Sydney. 4 [late 19C+] (Aus.) Melbourne. 5 [1930+] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [the pollution and general dirt associated with a major city. OED suggest orig. Aus. trans. of Aboriginal _toom-virran_, big smoke]
From Cassell's Dictionary of Slang by Jonathon Green.

At first he has some power of choice in fixing on a resting-place for the night; but, as he gradually leaves behind him the "big smoke" (as the aborigines picturesquly call the town), the accommodations become more and more scanty. (H.W. Haygarth, _Recollections of Bush Life in Australia_, 1848)