China’s other very long and rarely remembered wall
Pastoral France and England of centuries past had their ha–ha walls𖤓𖤓 but China of the Qing Dynasty had its Willow Palisade (or wall). The willow palisade (Chinese: 柳條邊; pinyin: Liǔtiáo Biān) was a system of ditches and earth embankments planted with willow trees acting as a barrier to passage. The wall, stretching a length of 1,000 miles in a northeastern direction, contained gates (men | bianmen)🅰 with wooden towers, 21 in all, at 50–mile intervals. Some sections of the palisades also had moats or dikes.
Shànhâiguan wall (arrowed in red) (image: ltl-beijing.com)
The start-point of the Willow Palisade was the terminus point of the Great Wall, the Shànhâiguan fortress, from there it wound its way up to the Northeast (Dongbei) region (formerly known as Manchuria) into the modern–day provinces of Liaoning and Jilin, terminating at the Korean border (Yalu River). The palisade consisted of three sections and like the Great Wall of China it was built in stages. The first section (Laobian, “Old Border”), together with the second section, formed the inner palisade across the Liaoning Peninsula. The third (northern) section represented the outer palisade whose purpose was to separate the traditional areas of the Manchus from those of the Mongols.
Shànhâiguan Great Wall
Willow tree (Salix Babylonia) (source: Evergreen Trees) in China is a symbol of spring and rebirth, resilience and adaptability (as well as loss and grief)
The Willow Palisade (1883 map)
The palisades as built were intended to be defensive, strategic and restrictive. Most historians and Sinologists see their primary purpose as creating a barrier to keep Chinese immigrants from entering Manchuria. The Manchu Dynasty’s desire to exclude them from the northern territories stems from a fear of its homeland being swamped by the masses of Han Chinese [Elliott, Mark C. “The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies.” The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 3 (2000): 603–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/2658945.] A restrictive policy was seen as crucial to the preservation of Manchu culture and identity [Bulag, Uradyn E. “Rethinking Borders in Empire and Nation at the Foot of the Willow Palisade.” Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border, edited by Franck Billé et al., 1st ed., Open Book Publishers, 2012, pp. 33–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjss5.6. Accessed 21 Mar. 2025.] Robert Lee and Bulag attribute the installation the wall of willows to a strategy to prevent an alliance forming between the Mongols and the Chinese…keeping the two groups apart would negate a potential threat to the ruling Manchu dynasty [Robert Lee, quoted in Bulag].
(source: Britannica)
There were economic reasons to block Chinese migrating to the Northeast. As well as wanting to relocate in the more productive agrarian lands of Manchuria, many Chinese (and some Tartars) sought to poach the region’s rich harvests of ginseng. Sable was another valuable northern resource that the Manchus wanted to keep secure from southern poachers [Kim, Seonmin. “Managing the Borderland.” Ginseng and Borderland: Territorial Boundaries and Political Relations Between Qing China and Choson Korea, 1636-1912, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2017, pp. 77–103. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1w8h1p0.11. Accessed 21 Mar. 2025.]
Another intended purpose of the Willow Palisade was to keep trespassers from Korea from venturing west into Qing Dynasty territory. Edmonds however contends that the part of the natural wall in proximity to Korea functioned more as “an internal boundary rather than the demarcation of the China/Korea border” [Richard L. Edmonds, ‘The Willow Palisade’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol 69, Issue 4, December 1979, pp.599–621].
North China Plain (photo: undp.org)
By the early part of the 18th century the ineffectiveness of the Willow Palisade was apparent. The porous palisade was failing badly in its aim of checking the transgression of Han Chinese immigrants and ginseng poachers into Manchuria which had become by the 1730s a constant flow (Bulag). The prohibition against crossing into the Chinese Pale was in any case not a watertight one, if the circumstance demanded more seasonal labourers for land cultivation or such, it was temporarily rescinded [Michael Meyer, ‘The Lesser Wall’, 06–June–2012, ChinaFile, www.chinafile.com]. Han refugees in the 1780s were imported into Manchuria and Inner Mongolia to farm produce.
Under the Manchus, by the mid–18th century control over the palisades was eroding – soldiers were now only guarding the areas near the gates. Willow Palisade maintenance was being neglected and the tree wall was deteriorating alarmingly with gaps in the willows and trees being cut or pruned for fuel as well, the dikes were wearing away and the palisade had become superfluous as a barrier of any utility. In the 20th century the Willow Palisade disappears from sight and from memory and history altogether. The 1,000–mi long, uncelebrated northern wall does not feature on any modern maps of China or the region. Very little physical evidence is left of the palisade…attempts to retrace the route have tended to rely on drawing the dots between villages in the northern provinces for the nearest approximation of location, the clue being any village name ending in –men (the word for “gate”), eg, Ying’emen (Meyer).
Early (20th Willow Palisade map: Liaoning section to Kaiyuan and points northeast
Willows in Tongli water town, Jiangsu (source: Japonica Plant Nursery)
At eye–level the Willow Palisade’s shape resembles the Chinese character representing a “person striding forward” 人 – described as “a wishbone of soil and trees” (Meyer)
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𖤓𖤓 Ha-ha wall: a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier to entry (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other, higher side (also known as a sunk fence, blind fence, ditch and fence, deer wall or foss).
The ha-ha wall
A note on the name “Manchuria”:: The oft-used name “Manchuria” is a controversial one in PRC due to its Japanese imperial associations – it derives from the Japanese exonym Manshū (from the name of the local people, the Manchus). The Northeast region of China has alternately but less commonly been referred to as “Tungpei”.
⏏️ Corporation engineer Robert Bruce (Source: Scottish field) ⨳
⨳ ⨳ ⨳ As WWII drew to a close Glasgow Corporation (the City Council) had big plans for changing the face of Scotland’s biggest city and the (British) “Empire’s Second City” in the postwar period. Determined to rid Glasgow of its unhealthy “ghettos of decay and decline”, its plague of overcrowded slums and entrenched poverty and to fix the city’s critical housing shortage, the Corporation was gearing up for a mission to transform the city-scape. In 1947 a plan for total urban renewal put forward by the city engineer and master of works, Robert Bruce, found favour with the authorities〚𝔸〛 [‘Streets in the Sky: a social history of Glasgow’s brutalist tower blocks to be documented’, Judith Duffy, The Herald, 29-Mar-2015, www.heraldscotland.com].
⏏️ Central Train station, Glasgow (Photo: Network Rail) ⨳⨳⨳ ⏏️ The Planning Committee’s eight-minute film ‘Glasgow Today and Tomorrow’ (1949) was its sales pitch for Bruce’s vision of “New Glasgow”. The rigid functionality and conformity of the estate in this model illustrates why the Bruce Plan was likened to a communist Eastern Bloc city (Screenshot from film, ‘Scotland on Screen’).
“New Glasgow:”
Bruce’s radical scheme was to wipe the slate clean in Glasgow…tear down a whole slab of the city including the run-down tenements in a wholesale slum clearance. Included in the plan for demolition were much of Glasgow’s iconic buildings, including architectural gems built by famous 19th century architects of the city, “Greek” Thomson and CR Mackintosh (Glasgow Central Railway Station, School of Arts, etc and many other historic Victorian, Georgian and Art Deco buildings). Bruce, an avid admirer of Le Corbusier modernism, wanted to fill the void at least partially with skyscrapers (“Streets in the sky”), the plan being for the city to “reinvent itself by building high and building modern”, alongside a program of urban and industrial decentralisation〚𝔹〛 [‘Canned designs: Two sides of Glasgow’, Christopher Beanland, TheLong+Short, 07-Apr-2016, www.thelongandshort.org]. Bruce also wanted to jettison the city’s familiar grid pattern in favour of straight streets and rectilinear blocks.

⏏️ Slums in the Gorbels (Photo: thesun.co.uk)
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Fixing “the worse slums in Britain”
Apparently unfazed by the horror expressed by many Glaswegians at Bruce’s brazen assault on the city’s grand architectural heritage, the Glasgow City Council had definite self-interest in mind when it endorsed the plan: Bruce’s scheme was essentially about slum clearance and re-housing people in the less densely populated parts of the city, not about re-location away from the city’s boundaries. Politically, this suited the Labour-dominated Corporation which was concerned that large scale depopulation of central Glasgow〚ℂ〛 would diminish the city’s standing in the UK. In the late 1940s Glasgow Corporation walked back its initial endorsement of the Bruce Report…shied away by the projected astronomical cost of the project while Britain was in the vice of postwar austerity. Ultimately some of its initiatives were implemented but many were never put into practice〚𝔻〛. One ‘modernisation’ initiative that did come to realisation was the M8 motorway, constructed right through the middle of Glasgow (“Glasgow Inner Ring Road” encircling the city centre). Around 230 tower blocks in the city did get built (some of the tower blocks were subsequently torn down much later), eliciting mixed opinions from the community. Most of these high-rise constructions were cheaply and quickly finished to meet the pressing exigences of public housing. While some residents were initially attracted to the features of modern convenience included—central heating, indoor toilets and hot running water—the downside for the longer term was poor quality housing stock (Duffy).
 ⏏️ Moss Heights (Source: UK Housing Wiki – Fandom)
⨳ ⨳ ⨳ Moss Heights:
Moss Heights in Cardonald was the Corporation’s debut experiment with high-rise family housing (accommodating 263 families, built 1950-1954), and one of the best known. Intended to be “superior high-density housing for the working class”, the reality was that Moss Heights was more expensive to rent or buy than the usual Glasgow Corp units, thus many of those same working class families couldn’t afford to live there [‘Moss Heights’, University of Glasgow Case Study, www.gla.ac.uk]. The radical nature of the Bruce Plan polarised the community and dismayed many Glaswegians, eventually provoking a reaction to its extreme position and an ensuing tussle between two competing bodies of technocrats, one national and one local, to determine the future shape of Glasgow. The rival plan, the Clyde Valley Regional Plan 1946 (CVRP), was backed by the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. Part 2 of ‘Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars’ will look at the CVRP and its impact on Glasgow.

Footnote: Red Road Flats
While Moss Heights was a “one-off”, Robert Bruce’s vision of clusters of high-rise buildings filling the Glasgow skyline didn’t really arrive until the 1960s, their belatedness made up for by being scattered all over the city. One of the most notoriously Brutalist of the high-rise Sixties complexes was the massive complex of eight tower blocks known as the Red Road Flats in the northeast of Glasgow〚𝔼〛 . The ageing and condemned buildings, vandalised and afflicted with asbestos and rising damp, were demolished between 2012 and 2015 [‘End of the Red Road’, Disappearing Glasgow, www.disappearing-glasgow.com]. Red Road, along with “the equally controversial and derided Hutchesontown C estate in the Gorbals”, became a symbol of “the errors of Glasgow’s ambitious post-war housing renewal policy” [‘Red River Flats’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
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〚𝔸〛officially, the “First Planning Report to the Highways and Planning Committee of the Corporation of the City of Glasgow”
〚𝔹〛Bruce’s vision was long-term, envisaging a transformation over a 50 year–span into “a healthy and beautiful city”
〚ℂ〛 the city an agglomeration of one million people at the time
〚𝔻〛 an embittered Bruce resigned his post with the Corporation in 1951
〚𝔼〛 furnished with the same set of “mod cons” as Moss Heights
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For Parts 2 and 3 of ‘Glasgow’s Planning Wars’ click on the following links:
The legacy of the renowned and influential Swiss–French architect Le Corbusier is inextricably tied up with the Chandigarh project – on his résumé it stands out as “the only urban plan of substance he (ever) implemented” [‘Chandigarh, once the future city’, Architectural Review, 6th March 2003, www.architectural–review.com.]. Inspired by the 19th century Garden City Movement, Le Corbusier’s design and planning of this new and unique town in northern India (1951–65), has been frequently lauded as one of the 20th century Modernism’s greatest experiments in architecture and urban planning [‘Le Corbusier Rediscovered: Chandigarh And Beyond’, Raynish Wattas & Deepik Gandhi (Eds.), (2018)].
Plan of grid sectors for “Chandigarh City Beautiful” (#13 was omitted because Le Corbusier was superstitious about the number)
The Chandigarh planned city captured the imagination of architects around the world. As a framework for the design Le Corbusier utilised the metaphor of the human body — head = Capitol Complex | heart = City Centre (commercial sector) | lungs = Leisure Valley (open spaces and green sectors) | intellect = Educational Zone | circulation system = network of different types of roads (the 7Vs). Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh also provided inspiration for later “utopian” city masterplans like Brasília, the new capital of Brazil𖤓 and it continues to draw praise from architects and planners both within and outside India.
Le Corbusier’s symbolic Open Hand monument, part of the Capitol Complex (photo: Fernanda Antonio/ArchDaily)
Nehru’s aspirations for a modern, forward-looking new city: The catalyst for what Le Corbusier created in Chandigarh came from India’s foundation prime minister ‘Pandit’ Nehru who envisioned the new city in an independent India as making a clear departure from the traditional model of India’s cities, overcrowded and dependent on agricultural life. In its place he wanted a modern, progressive and efficient city, one suited for a new democracy like India…and a green one, with open spaces, green landscapes and green belts①. Presented with this brief Le Corbusier produced a masterplan for Chandigarh which emphasised low-density, self-contained housing contained within an orderly grid pattern, abundant public spaces, buildings and structures which were intended to stand as symbols for freedom and aesthetic harmony as well as react well to the prevailing severe climatic conditions. His buildings in the Capitol Complex combined Brutalist elements—an opportunity to experiment with his favourite material beton brut (raw concrete)—with a sculptural form of architecture while striving for a purity of geometric form.
But has Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s magnum opus, stood the test of time? Today, 70 years on, the once fresh and vibrant modernist city is looking its age, described by one writer as being “derelict” and “glorious” at the same time, and both “visionary and anachronistic” [Jared Green, ‘Chandigarh: Where Modernism Met India’, The Dirt, 4th April 2017, www.dirt.asla.org]. Another has described Chandigarh as “a museum piece in need of protection” (Sunil Khilnani). Le Corbusier’s Capitol showpieces are now noticeably the worse for wear after exposure to Indian heatwaves and monsoons. Moreover, it is significant that Chandigarh, intended to be a universal model for a radically new type of Indian city, has not fostered any subsequent attempts to replicate Le Corbusier’s bold experiment in modernist planning anywhere else in India.
Le Corbusier (left) on his artificial Chandigarh lake with his cousin, the project’s chief architect Pierre Jeanneret (photo: Suresh Kumar)
A failure to deliver for all Chandigarh residents: Le Corbusier’s housing solution and plan to cap the size of the city’s population to give Chandigarhians some breathing space have been subverted. An influx of internal migrants has exploded the population from a planned maximum of 500,000 to more than double that. Overcrowding has led to the proliferation of shantytowns, slums and illegal food stalls on the city’s fringes, encroaching on the showcase green belt. The architect’s low-density living ideal has been compromised by the emergence of multiple occupancy, four or more families sharing the same house. For the lower/working class residents of the city have found themselves isolated in urban villages, cutoff from their destinations (shopping, educational, entertainment, etc).
Chamber of the Chief Justice (source: chinmaye.com)
Two classes of Chanigarhians: The poor are the big losers in Le Corbusier’s would-be Indian utopia…trapped on the periphery, their capacity to connect with the centre and its services, to access employment, etc is severely curtailed…representing a failure of Le Corbusier’s planning in not accommodating the social, cultural and economic problems of the lower strata of society [‘Le Corbusier’s Failed Modernism’, CRIT Magazine, the American Institute of Architects, (Tanner), March 1979, www.cknl.eu]. As put into practice, Chandigarh, though built by the poorest workers, was never intended for their use, but for the Punjabi elite (Green).
Worsening traffic is another factor to further dampen the attraction of Chandigarh as a place to live…the city has the largest number of vehicles per capita in the country and the streets and the rectangular grid pattern are unmistakably meant for automobiles rather than walkers. These are all areas of urban development where Le Corbusier fell short of his stated aim of improving the human condition.
Chandigarh city traffic (source: dailyguardian.com)
Implanting western aesthetics: Cultural insensitivity is one theme of detractors who rail against the absence of “Indianness” in the experimental city and the disregarding of the existing traditions of the Indian people. The Le Corbusier modernist experiment has been condemned as “an act of western cultural imperialism” for imposing Eurocentric ideals and a western planning ideology on a population rooted in a very different, pluralistic culture② (the grid pattern of sectors, European-style parks, hierarchical road system, etc.)[Pratyush Sarup, ‘Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh: Bold Vision or a Modernist Failure?’, AD, 13th May 2024, www.admiddleeast.com]③④.
A man and his plan
Considering the aesthetics of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh architecture—specifically the Capitol Complex—there’s a tendency among observers to see the functionalist buildings as cold, rigid and uninviting⑤ [Scott Harper, ‘Appetite for Construction: Le Corbusier’, The Rake, October 2024, www.therake.com]. Brutalist architecture and a preoccupation with concrete can be alienating for some people.
𖤓 for the story of Brazil’s experiment with modernist urban planning and architecture for the new capital of Brasília, go to https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2022/02/03/brasilia-brazils-modernist-capital-in-the-interior-an-unliveable-utopian-showcase/
① “a new town, symbolic of freedom of India unfettered by traditions of the past…(an) expression of faith in the future”
② Le Corbusier never stayed permanently in Chandigarh during the project’s lifespan and, most tellingly, never consulted with the local inhabitants about their needs and wants
③ this perspective also questions why outsiders and no native Indian architects were offered the project
④ Sarup: it was a planning failure because it “didn’t take into account the nation’s unique urban fabric”
⑤ and the large empty spaces between the key buildings conveys a sense of unconnectedness and a sterile atmosphere
Leaving aside the small percentage of the population who are by nature petracolous𖤓, who in the West hasn’t heard something described as a “Trojan Horse” at some time or other, even if they may not grasp that its a reference to the fabled Trojan Horse of Greek mythology? Its usage in the modern world—signifying a trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place—makes it one of the great, storied metaphors of human interaction and existence. In the age of IT the term has also crossed over into computing jargon to describe any malicious computer program that fools users into willingly running it (often called simply a “Trojan”). But let’s get back to the origin story, the literary-mythical “Trojan Horse” (Troia hippos or douráteos hippos) of antiquity upon which its metaphorical longevity of currency rests.
The Greeks’ gift(sic) of the gigantic wooden horse
The ancient sources of the classical world—principally Virgil’s Aeneid, Quintus of Smyrna’s The Fall of Troy and Homer’s Odyssey (but not the Iliad!)—gave us the legendary Trojan Horse story, an audacious ruse by the Achaeans§ to penetrate the impenetrable walls of Troy with the crafty “gift” of a deceptive and catastrophe-bringing equine decoy. The master-scheme, masterminded by Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, succeeded spectacularly, bringing the ten long years of a Hellenic-Trojan war, hitherto thought to be utterly inconclusive, to a swift and definitive conclusion.
Unsurprisingly in a story about great heroic warriors, all of the kudos for the triumph of the wooden horse gets lavished on Odysseus’ head, with the wily king of Ithaca being described by tradition as “the architect of the Trojan Horse”. The problem with this exalted tag being ascribed solely to Odysseus is that it completely glosses over the vital role of Epeius of Phocis who can stake a comparable (and literal) claim to the title in the Trojan Horse episode. The germ of the idea was the genius master-stroke of Odysseus, yes, but he still needed a highly skilled artisan–builder to bring the oversized horse decoy into being. Epeius, a soldier and pugilist in the Achaean ranks had been a master carpenter in his civilian life before the war, and the task was down to him, not Odysseus, to make the Wooden Horse a reality. Epeius designed and built the gigantic super-sized model of a horse with a hollow belly large enough to hold 30 warriors and their armour and weapons, making his creation a plausible structure, well-constructed and finely detailed…and he did all this in just three days – apparently with some help or inspiration from the goddess Athena. Without Epeius’ Herculean labour of monolithic scale carpentry, Odysseus would not have the Trojan Horse which is synonymous in Greek mythology with his name, the very instrument which proved a total game-breaker ending the stalemate in the decade-long war between Agamemnon’s Achaeans and Priam’s Trojans.
Commercialised modern Troy
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𖤓 ie, living under a rock
§ the name Homer (or “Homer”) used in referring to the ancient Greeks
Through the arboreal jungle: Road to juvenile remand
In the West Connex neighbourhood that is Parramatta Road, Haberfield, there’s an entire block on Cadigal land with the street frontage almost completely camouflaged by a dense outgrowth of foliage, overgrown Moreton Bay figs and other assorted large trees. If you stop and peer through the ancient but imposing gates, beyond the locked high wire fence, you’ll see a deserted, winding driveway, bisecting the sprawling green maze. At the end of this serpentine path is Yasmar House in the inner west suburb of Haberfield. The name sounds vaguely Middle Eastern (Arabic female name?), but is actually less exotic than it sounds, “Yasmar” is simply “Ramsay” spelt backwards. Ramsay is the name of an early 19th century landowner in what was originally called the Dobroyde Estate, David Ramsay𖤓. Ramsay’s son-in-law Alexander Learmonth and daughter Mary Louisa Ramsay commissioned architect John Bibb to design their Yasmar House as their family residence on a parcel of the estate land.
(source: Stanton & Son)
Yasmar House (1854–56), still extant today, is the sole remaining villa estate on Parramatta Road, Australia’s oldest and busiest road. The once grand building is U-shaped with rear wings (originally servants’ quarters and service rooms) and stables, the buildings set well back from the front entrance…architecturally, it is a Regency designed villa in the Greek Revival Style (John Bibb’s speciality). The classical gateposts, made of Italianate style sandstone with Gothic recesses and a ball motif atop them are connected to a high, ornate iron palisade fence. After Yasmarbecame a borstal the entrance was widened to accommodate prison trucks. The garden design of the arboretum and Georgian landscaping adhered to JC Loudon’s “Gardenesque” principles. During this period many exceptional and unusual species of flora were planted…to a large part this was the work of Mrs Learmonth’s brother Edward Ramsay who had a keen botanical interest. Among the rare or uncommon plantings that survive are palo blanco trees, Chilean wine/coquito palms, Pacific kauris and a Chinese midenhair tree [Jackson-Stepowski, Sue, Yasmar, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yasmar, viewed 02 Nov 2024].
Yasmar House in its juvenile detention period
Yasmar House has had only three owners in its nearly 170-year history – the Learmonth family, the Grace family (co-founder of the iconic Grace Brothers Department Store Joseph Neal Grace and his wife Sarah Selina Smith) and the NSW state government.
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Beyond these gates… (photo: Michael Wayne)
Yasmar House has bore many names and many uses over the course of its existence, including Yasmar Hostel, Yasmar Detention Centre, Yasmar Child Welfare Home, Yasmar Shelter, Yasmar Juvenile Justice Centre, Ashfield Remand Home. It also functioned as a Sunday school in the 1860s. At one point the site included a reform school facility for girls, the Sunning Hill Education and Training Unit.
Currently, the complex operates as the Yasmar Training Centre (administered by the Department of Corrective Services). The state government acquired the villa in 1944 after it had served as army officers’ quarters during the war. In 1946 Yasmar House became a remand centre for delinquent boys, with its grand reception rooms serving as a children’s court and other rooms assigned for attending magistrates.To accommodate the increase in juvenile inmate numbers at Yasmar, timber structures were built on top of the property’s tennis courts and croquet lawns§ (Jackson-Stepowski).
183–185 Parramatta Road
In 1991 Juvenile Justice relocated away from Haberfield and Yasmar House became vacant, leading to a marked deterioration in the condition of the heritage-listed villa and the gardens. Consequently, Yasmar has been described as “a landscape at risk”, prompting locals from the Haberfield Association to volunteer their labour to try to restore the garden to its comely former state.
𖤓 nearby the Yasmar site there is both a Ramsay Street and a Yasmar Avenue
§ former inmates of the Yasmar institution from decades ago paint a picture of harsh living conditions, brutal treatment, beatings at the hands of the guards and other abuses of authority [‘Yasmar – Ashfield, NSW’, Past/Lives of the Near Future, (Michael Wayne), www.pastlivesofthenearfuture.com]
Before there was talk in the United States about a highway to span the full length of the American hemispheres, there was talk (as far back as the 1880s and even earlier) of a Pan-American railroad to make a direct connexion with its continental neighbours. This ultimately came to nothing but the idea of a Pan-American highway caught on in the 1920s. With the US pushing the proposal, the 6th International Conference of American States gave its approval in 1928.
ყą۷ıʑą (℘ɧơɬơ: ɛҳ℘ɛཞɬ ۷ąɠąცơŋɖ)
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Once work got started in the mid-Thirties on the first section of the highway—3,400 miles, connecting México to Panama1⃞—progress was slow due to multiple factors – disruption of war, the availability of money (the project increasingly depended on the injection of American funding), diplomatic issues, the problem of getting governments to cooperate. While México built and financed its own part of the section (opened 1950), the smaller Central American states required US aid to complete their’s (opened 1963)…and even then the Chepo to Yaviza (the Panama terminus point) stretch, a distance of 139 miles, took 20 years to build [Miller, Shawn W. “Minding the Gap: Pan-Americanism’s Highway, American Environmentalism, and Remembering the Failure to Close the Darién Gap.” Environmental History 19, no. 2 (2014): 189–216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24690556.].
Road trippers on the PAH who make it as far as Yaviza find that the highway comes abruptly to an end where it meets to the Darién Gap, 66-mile strip of largely impenetrable jungle, rainforest, swamp and marsh land. If motorists want to continue on the PAH they must ship their vehicle by cargo ferry to Turbo (in northern Columbia) where the Highway resumes.
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Natural barriers of the Gap
American road builders faced a Herculean task in attempting to construct a road across the Gap. Geography and climate were a constant impediment…swamps and jungles and incessant seasonal rain produced unstable soils, making highway construction in Darién virtually an engineering “mission impossible”. Compounding the extreme topographical landform were the inherent dangers from jaguars, snakes and other poisonous creatures. Topping it off, Darién Gap’s “no man’s land” status, outside of any controlling authority, made it a haven for dangerous anti-government groups (Columbian drug cartels, leftist (FARC) guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries).
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Environmental focus
Later problems upped the degree of difficulty for the road builders. From the early Seventies they started to get a lot of heat from environmental groups. The California-based Sierra Club waged a successful campaign against the highway, raising environmental and health issues. Opponents of the road argued that it would cause irreparable harm to a sensitive area, eco-system damage, deforestation, pose biological threats and spread tropical diseases, and they were aided by the recent passage of US environmental impact laws.
Further thwarting the road builders’ plans was the realisation that the deeper threat of adverse change was not the building of a road through the Darién Gap per se. Establishing road infrastructure in the Gap would bring a raft of unwelcome by-products. Transportation access would facilitate the incursion of loggers, ranchers, farmers, cattle grazers, poachers of wild animals. Moreover, the highway would spawn the construction of many secondary roads throughout the Gap. The Sierra Club also voiced concerns for the culture of the area’s indigenous native communities—the Kuna, Emberá and Wounaan tribes—to safeguard their right to protection of their homeland (Miller).
Once the construction work on the Darién Gap actually commenced, the Atrato River Basin with its swampy wetlands proved a monumental stumbling block, the idea to build a very long bridge over it was eventually jettisoned after the failure to locate a solid earth foundation.
While the nature of the environment and taking into account the effect on local indigenous cultures were impediments to the Darién construction project’s progress, the crucial factor in the anti-highway legal case was the threat of foot-and-mouth disease being transmitted north from South America, sufficient for US federal judges to shut down highway construction for nearly two decades. The Sierra Club’s key argument was that “the Gap served as an essential prophylactic against dangerous microbes” (Miller).
Dariénistas
The absence of a road across the Darién Gap has never stopped adventurers (labelled Dariénistas) from trying to navigate vehicles over its forbidding terrain. A host of adventure junkies have attempted it with only a small number succeeding. The first automobile expedition to make it entirely overland used specialised vehicles and relied on winches, levers and help from indigenous peoples, a journey taking over two years to travel just 125 mi (Miller).
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“America’s greatest foreign development project”
Today, the PAH is somewhat of a sleeper among American history topics (with a negligible output of books on the subject cf. prolific number of narratives on that other great American enterprise overseas, the Panama Canal). A few historians recently have drawn attention to its largely-overlooked importance – at a time when America was still engaged in its official isolationist stance in foreign affairs, the PAH during the interwar period was the US’s largest global development project…more remarkedly FD Roosevelt allocated the money to kickstart the Central American highway project from New Deal funds during the Great Depression![Maureen Harmon, ‘The Story of the Pan-American Highway’, Pegasus, Summer 2019, www.ucf.edu]. US motives were mixed, PAH (together with the earlier Panama Canal project) is where “the ideals of Pan-Americanism intersected with an expansionist compulsion (by America) to reach new, foreign markets” Eric Rutkov, The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas, (2019)]. This duality runs through the history of the Highway…promoted as an example of good neighbourly cooperation and mutual advantage by successive American presidents, the blatant self-interest of the US was transparent. Making such a supra-state highway a reality was necessary to expand the lucrative market for American automobiles. The proposal by Washington to build the PAH came at a time (1920s) when the US was the dominant global force in motor vehicle production. The PAH from the American perspective was primarily about the selling of the country’s automobiles…and having the road infrastructure in place was the precondition for US automakers to reap the sales bonanza to come2⃞(Miller).
℘ɧơɬơ: ۷ıʂıɬƈɛŋɬཞơáɱɛཞıƈą.ƈơɱ
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Endnote: “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, fan of the Pan-American Highway
Richard Nixon made the PAH something of a personal project, first as vice-president he talked Eisenhower into boosting American funding for the project. “Cold warrior” Nixon saw its construction as good for regional stability and a way of guarding against the spread of communism in the Americas. As president Nixon got behind efforts to bridge the Darién Gap, even (unrealistically) calling for its completion by 1976.
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1⃞ known locally as the Inter-American Highway
2⃞ in the Seventies the US government cloaked its over-the-top endorsements of the PAH project in the guise of highway safety education programs
At the conclusion of World War Two no one was seriously of the opinion that Glasgow didn’t need to urgent address the acute housing and quality of life dilemmas besetting the city’ inhabitants. For their part, the planners focusing on the city certainly had (or at least professed) good intentions in their efforts to ameliorate what was for tens of thousands of Glaswegians a polluted, congested and thoroughly unpleasant living environment. For all the planning and the vast sums of money poured into redevelopment however, the results were and continue to be more than disappointing. As discussed in the first two parts of this blog series, the uncoordinated approach of having two rival sets of planners trying to implement conflicting visions of a new Glasgow didn’t help matters at all.
Map credit: Glasgow City Council.The Clyde Valley Regional Park Plan with the umpf of the UK government behind it got more of its planned restructure of Glasgow off the drawing board than the discredited Bruce Plan. The core of CVRP’s plan was the “overspill policy”, relocating the surplus population away from the slums of inter Glasgow to new, modern, sanitary, green and spacious accommodation far from the inner-city. There were two planks to the planners’ intended re-housing fix – the creation of five purpose-built “New Towns” outside of Glasgow, at East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Irvine and Livingston, and the establishment of four new housing ‘schemes’ (ie, estates)«A̴» on the outskirts of Glasgow — Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Easterhouse and Pollok. Irvine new town (Image: earlyooters.blogspot.com).Avoiding the city slums only to find a brand new set of problems
What looked good on paper (modern flats, heating, indoor toilets, more space, etc) transpired in reality for many of the relocated residents into a deeply dissatisfactory and frustrating experience. Flaws soon surfaced in many of the flats and houses, shoddy construction«B̴», poorly designed heating and ventilation, crumbling housing stock (eg, Castlemilk and Drumchapel). For these residents, the initial hopes and optimism floundering on what Florian Urban calls “a sculpture park of failed modern utopias”. There were grounds for hopefulness at the beginning. After the poky, dirty, overcrowded tenements of Glasgow central, the former inner city residents you imagine would have welcomed living in the housing schemes, many of which were “the equivalent size of many towns in Scotland”, but their positivity were cut asunder by infrastructure realities – there was nothing like an equivalent level of facilities provided to cope with the large implants of population. In a catastrophic piece of non-planning the areas of the schemes had hardly any places for residents to shop or to meet new people and socialise (no pubs, no dance halls, no cinemas, etc) and the promised open spaces for leisure activities failed to materialise. Public transport to take estate residents to the city centre did not run frequently enough and was relatively expensive. The promised local employment opportunities for the new estates were not forthcoming, so unemployment became a major problem for the schemes’ residents (‘Overspill Policy and the Glasgow Slum Clearance Project in the Twentieth Century: From One Nightmare to Another?’, Lauren Paice, IATL Reinvention, Vol 1 Issue 1, May 2013, http://Warwick.ac.uk; ‘Billy Connolly classically described the new estates as “deserts wi’ windaes”’, The Herald, 07-Nov-1998, www.theheraldscotland.com). Scheme in Easterhouse.Scourge of Easterhouse
Easterhouse has the unwanted distinction of embodying the most dire consequences of the failings of Glasgow scheme planning. Physically isolated on the eastern edge of Glasgow, the severity of Easterhouse’s housing estate social problems and their persistence in the 21st century, has drawn a lot of concerned celebrity attention…. Princess Diana, PM Tony Blair and French President Chirac et al all made special visits to its notorious “sink-estates” (‘What’s Happened To Easterhouse: the Most Notorious Housing Scheme in Glasgow’, Francisco Garcia, Vice, 14-Nov-2016, www.vice.com). So depleted was its basic amenities, so lacking in a sense of community spirit, its infrastructure and housing problems magnified by a unemployment rate calamitously high (31.9% cf. a national average of 13.7% Hansard, 3 May 1985), the suburb’s schemes became a case study for social planners on what not to do to create a successful housing development (Paice). Easterhouse’s continuing woes have been compounded seemingly by a corresponding lack of political will to effect meaningful change (Hansard). Rather than leaving their problems and worries behind in the toxic slum tenements of the city, the dispersed Glaswegians found in the peripheral, facilities-deficient housing estates and towns a raft of new social problems…spikes in incidences of drunkenness and family violence, suicide, etc. Alienated and bored youth reacted to the lack of things to do by engaging in vandalism and petty crime (with young gangs perhaps no where active in the late Sixties than in Easterhouse and it’s so-called “Ned culture”)..
Family dislocation
Relocation to the edges from the city led to other unforeseen or unaddressed problems, including a major disruption to the extended family network…many residents in the new projects were now too far away from their past abodes and cut off from their extended families and friends, resulting in a heightening of a sense of isolation (Paice). This outcome was even more perturbing for those Glasgow citizens who had been forced into relocating to the schemes and New Towns.
Cumbernauld Town Centre: “the rabbit warren on stilts”.Though the Glasgow schemes and the New Town project have been widely maligned as abject failures and disasters by both observers and residents, not everyone has come away with a negative perception: the people of Cumbernauld in a 1980s poll gave the program an 87% approval (of course some schemes and some New Towns did better than other). At the very least, the housing experiments did free thousands and thousands of Glaswegians from the abomination of slum life in the city and transported them into new and better if still far from perfect living conditions… certainly anywhere after the Glasgow slum tenements had to be a step up, although some would argue that after fifty or sixty years, the New Towns with their persisting ailments, no longer new, were showing the clear signs of the foundations of new Glasgow slums«C̴» [‘Neighbourhoods New Towns’, (W Hamish Fraser), The Glasgow Story,www.theglasgowstory.com]. Craigshill 1960s (image: Livingston Devlt Corp).Divine right of technocrats
Nonetheless, a deep sense of dissatisfaction was and continues to be the general feeling about the two housing programs. Both plans for Glasgow’s regeneration, both the Scottish Office and Glasgow Corporation, were guilty (unsurprisingly) of taking a technocratic, “top-down’ approach to the re-housing solution. Both groups of planners failed to consult the residents themselves on what they wanted, the very people whose futures were riding on the experiments’ success and would be most affected by the results…a blind “focus on processes and numbers rather than people and their lives” (‘Modernizing Glasgow – Tower Blocks, Motorways, and New Towns 1940-2010’, Florian Urban, Glasgow School of Arts,www.radar.gsa.ac.uk). In hindsight, had they done so, at least some of the chronic and systemic problems may have been averted.
Social engineering, the “Glasgow Effect”
Glasgow’s 20th century standing as the British Empire’s “Second City” and an economic and industrial powerhouse in the region came at a cost. Studies have long revealed that Glaswegians have a proportionately higher early death-rate—and not accountable by poverty alone—than other comparable great cities«D̴». A 2016 report by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (‘History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality’) concluded that the combined historic effects of overcrowding, poor city planning (1960s-’80s) and “a democratic deficit–a lack of an ability to control decisions that affect their lives”—were the causes of the city’s susceptibility to premature death (“Revealed: ‘Glasgow effect’ mortality rate blamed on Westminster social engineering”, Karin Goodwin, The Herald, 16-May-2016, www.heraldscotland.com). The SO took this tact, the GCPH asserted, knowing full-well that the policy would be damaging to the long-term health of Glaswegians (Goodwin).
Castlemilk ca.1965 (Source: Gordon Waddell (Pinterest))
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“Skimming the cream”
The evidence points to a deliberate government policy of social engineering experiments in Glasgow…Scottish Office documents released under the 30-year rule reveal a calculated policy in determining which inner city residents were relocated where. ”Skimming the cream” (rehousing the best preferred preferred citizens in the choices parts of the new settlements) was practiced. Skilled workforce and young families were chosen to reside in East Kilbride and the other New Towns while the centre was left with “the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable”. This tactic and the steering of economic investment away from Glasgow resulted in a “serious population imbalance” (Goodwin) and putting the vulnerable ’stayers’ in a jeopardy.
Murray Drive (Photo: Stonehouse Heritage Group)
Postscript: Belatedly aborted Stonehouse – New Towns become surplus to needs
There was meant to be a sixth New Town built to absorb overspill population from Glasgow…the small village of Stonehouse was slated to accommodate 22,000 new homes and 35,000 people, in fact local farmers had their land compulsorily purchased and the first 96 homes in Murray Drive were not only constructed«E̴» but in 1976 the first residents were already two days in occupancy before the Scottish Office suddenly got “cold feat” and pulled the plug on the development! Why was Stonehouse New Town axed and why did it occur so late in the process? Originally proposed in the early Sixties when planners had identified a continuing need for new houses on the periphery, by 1973 two developments had prompted a policy change — Glasgow city had depopulated dramatically as a result of the dispersals (1970-73: 58,000 Glaswegians left) and the authorities were concerned that too many young people were leaving the centre. The emphasis for the inner city refocused on renovating rather than demolishing and rebuilding and the SO began redeploying resources towards regenerating and rehabilitating the East End of Glasgow. Roger Smith’s answer to the obvious question of why the authorities still kept going with Stonehouse after it was apparent by 1973 that the project was a “no-goer” is that the government machine at both the centralised and local level was simply incapable of “respond(ing) quickly to changing events and new understandings of existing situations”…which seems to sum up many of the urban planning missteps made in postwar Glasgow (Roger Smith (1978) Stonehouse—an obituary for a new town, Local Government Studies, 4:2, 57-64, DOI: 10.1080/03003937808432733; ‘The Scottish town that never was’, Alison Campsie, The Scotsman, Upd. 04-Jun-2020, www.scotsman.com.au).
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«A̴» which initially were unfortunately called “townships” until someone pointed out Apartheid South Africa’s use of the same term to delineate non-white homelands
«B̴» the haste of the estate building program contributed to this
«C̴» as a result of multiple factors including lack of investment, cost-cutting on building materials and techniques, poorly maintained estates, apathy and neglect, pollution, loss of community pride, etc.
«D̴» 30% greater risk of dying before 65 than comparable deindustrialised cities like Liverpool and Manchester (Goodwin)
«E̴» everything else planned remained unbuilt, schools, swimming pools, sports centre, factories, etc.
In Part 1 of ‘Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars’ we saw how decades of neglect and torpor had resulted in a concentration of Victorian slums and a chronic housing crisis that Glasgow authorities coming out of World War 2 were forced to confront. This prompted the 1945 Bruce Report, proposing that what Glasgow needed to regenerate its overpopulated metropolis was a new approach which was in the words of its author Robert Bruce, ‘surgical’ and ‘bold’. While Bruce’s scheme emphasised slum clearance and a mega-sized re-building project within the city limits, other planners from outside Glasgow put forward a competing plan, one with a very different vision of Glasgow and its solution for the city’s problems.
Patrick Abercrombie (Source: alchetron.com)
The alternative model: ”New Towns” In 1949 the Scottish Office (in Edinburgh) presented the city of Glasgow with an alternate blueprint for improving living standards and renewing the city, the “Clyde Valley Regional Plan 1946” (CVRP), Advocacy of the CVRP model was spearheaded by English town planner Patrick Abercrombie〚𝔸〛, whose town planning CV included the City of London, Hong Kong and Addis Ababa. The Abercrombie Plan recommended rehousing much of the population outside the city largely in “New Towns” which would function as overspill areas for overcrowded central Glasgow…it proposed not Bruce’s skyscrapers but low-rise living, expanding out to spread the density beyond the city limits [‘Scotland from the Sky’, BBC One, Series 1, Episode 2, (TV documentary, 2018)]. Integral to the plan was the presence of green belts in unbuilt areas, establishing buffer zones between the city and the New Towns – an idea the CVRP got from the earlier Garden Cities Movement〚𝔹〛. The outcome of the authorities’ attempts to transform Glasgow’s urban landscape into New Towns and “Peripheral Housing Estates” will be outlined in detail in ‘Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars, Part 3’.
Scottish New Town (Source: Pinterest)
New Towns phenomena New Towns were not novel to Glasgow and Scotland, the new towns movement was an international one (from the 1950s on, spreading to developing and de-colonising countries in Africa, Middle East and Asia) [’New towns on the Cold War frontier’, (Michelle Provoost), Eurozone, 28-Jun-2006, www.eurozine.com]). Pioneered in Britain, the movement followed the passage of the 1946 New Towns Act—handing the UK government power to designate areas of land for new town development—kick-starting an ambitious program of new peripheral and outlying settlements across the Home Countries [‘New towns’, UK Parliament, www.parliament.uk].
Schism Over Glasgow: two distinct planning strategies Academic Florian Urban sees the contest to shape postwar Glasgow as one of national ’planners’ versus local ’housers’. The Scottish Office’s CVRP was national policy, Westminster’s optimal regional fix for the poverty, overcrowding and unsanitary nature of Glasgow’s urban inner core. Bruce’s plan was to be the intended local fix, the solution to Glasgow Corporation’s objective of eradicating the city’s slums and ghettos. The first group was advocating dispersal away from the centre and the other containment in newly configured but in some cases even denser concentrations within the metropolis. The schism between the planning philosophies of the planners and the housers tapped into other existing tensions at the time – Tory national government (1951-55) versus Labour Glasgow City Council〚ℂ〛; ’refined’ Edinburgh versus “gritty industrial” Glasgow [‘Modernizing Glasgow – Tower Blocks, Motorways, and New Towns 1940-2010’, (Florian Urban), Glasgow School of Arts, www.radar.gsa.ac.uk]. The Corporation’s opposition to the Scottish Office’s interference (as it saw it) was couched in existential terms…loss of population was equated with the Glasgow authority’s loss of political prestige [‘Building and Cityscape Council Housing’, (Ranald McInnes), The Glasgow Story, www.theglasgowstory.com].
Photo: the sun.co.uk
Regionalisation v Containment: the first as advocated by the Scottish Office and Abercrombie entailed first and foremost the creation of new towns (low-rise housing consisting of “detached, semi-detached or terraced houses surrounded by ample green space”)…contrasting with the containment approach of Bruce and the Glasgow City Council which sought to create “an architecture based on the principles of the existing city (3 to 4-storey modern tenements and corridor streets)” (Urban).
Image: Google Earth
Even after Glasgow Corporation withdrew its approval of Bruce’s proposals (too radical, too expensive), it never formally adopted the Clyde Valley Plan in its place…it did however accept many of the CVRP’s principles. In 1954 the Corporation made key concessions to the planners, agreeing to the creation of green belts around the city and accepting the inevitability of decentralisation (the need for 100,000 new flats outside the metropolis to alleviate the centralised overcrowding). The planners’ objectives were aided by the appointment of Archibald Jury as city architect〚𝔻〛 who was fully on board with the goals of (British) national planning (Urban).
Photo: architectsjournal.co.uk
A mishmash of “divergent visions” In the end the Corporation sat on the fence and opted for “two bob each way”…cherry-picking from both rival schemes — so that both modernist tower blocks and low-rise buildings got erected concurrently and haphazardly, oodles of high-rise and low-rise housing all mingled in together. This confused juggling of opposing plans by the Glasgow authorities led to construction delays and made for erratic even schizophrenic urban planning in the three decades after the late 1940s, contributing to high levels of dissatisfaction felt by many Glaswegians with their reassigned housing arrangements〚𝔼〛.
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〚𝔸〛 together with co-author Robert Matthew 〚𝔹〛 the New Towns movement can trace its British lineage to the “Garden cities movement” of the turn-of-the-Twentieth-century – to the pioneering experiments with Welwyn (later the first of the British New Towns), Letchworth and Cadbury’s Bournville 〚ℂ〛 Glasgow Corporation, still trading on its earlier status as an economic powerhouse within the British Empire, was staunchly committed to resist any attempt by Westminster to curtail its municipal powers (Urban) 〚𝔻〛 replacing Robert Bruce as Glasgow chief planner after he resigned in pique in 1951 following the rejection of his plan 〚𝔼〛 many of the residents removed (some forcibly) from inner Glasgow and relocated in the New Towns and the peripheral estates were sufficiently disenchanted with their new lot that they requested to be transferred to alternate accommodation
⏏️ Corporation engineer Robert Bruce (Source: Scottish field) ⨳
⨳ ⨳ ⨳ As WWII drew to a close Glasgow Corporation (City Council) had big plans for changing the face of Scotland’s biggest city and the (British) “Empire’s Second City” in the postwar period. Determined to rid Glasgow of its unhealthy “ghettos of decay and decline”, its plague of overcrowded slums and entrenched poverty and to fix the city’s critical housing shortage, the Corporation was gearing up for a mission to transform the city-scape. In 1947 a plan for total urban renewal put forward by the city engineer and master of works, Robert Bruce, found favour with the authorities〚𝔸〛 [‘Streets in the Sky: a social history of Glasgow’s brutalist tower blocks to be documented’, Judith Duffy, The Herald, 29-Mar-2015, www.heraldscotland.com].
⏏️ Central Train station, Glasgow (Photo: Network Rail) ⨳ ⏏️ The Planning Committee’s eight-minute film ‘Glasgow Today and Tomorrow’ (1949) was its sales pitch for Bruce’s vision of “New Glasgow”. The functionality and conformity of the estate in this model illustrates why the Bruce Plan was likened to a communist Eastern Bloc city (Screenshot, ‘Scotland on Screen’)⨳⨳⨳“New Glasgow”
Footnote
♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾ 〚𝔸〛officially, the “First Planning Report to the Highways and Planning Committee of the Corporation of the City of Glasgow” 〚𝔹〛Bruce’s vision was long-term, envisaging a transformation over a 50 year-span into “a healthy and beautiful city” 〚ℂ〛 the city an agglomeration of one million people at the time 〚𝔻〛 an embittered Bruce resigned his post with the Corporation in 1951 〚𝔼〛 furnished with the same set of “mod cons” as Moss Heights
〝 The principle of preventing the spread of infectious disease by which people, baggage…likely to be infected or coming form an infected place are isolated at frontiers or ports until their harmlessness has been proven…〞 ~ Port Nepean Q-Station‘s definition of ’Quarantine‘
Since the initial strains of Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out early last year, the word ‘quarantine’ has found a renewed vigour in the lexicon. In a previous blog the history of Sydney’s early animal quarantine station for imported livestock was outlined – ‘Sydney Foreshore’s Animal House of Detention and Segregation on Hen and Chicken Bay’, 21-Apr-2018. Human quarantine in Sydney has a much longer history. The story starts with governor of the colony of New South Wales Ralph Darling. In response to the cholera pandemic sweeping Europe and the risks of ship-borne disease being transported on vessels coming to the colony, Darling initiated a Quarantine Act in 1832 “subjecting Vessels coming to New South Wales from certain places to the performance of Quarantine”❅.
(Source: researchgate.net / Peter Freeman Pty. 2000)
Darling set aside the entire North Head peninsula (277 hectares)—on indigenous Gayamagal country in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches—for the grounds of the quarantine processing centre. The exact site chosen for the Q-station, Spring Cove, overlooking Sydney Harbour, was already housing an infected and quarantined merchant ship, the Bussorah Merchant.
In the early years of the station’s operation, the practice was to keep sick passengers on board the vessels on arrival at Spring Cove. After complaints from the merchants about the delay and cost of keeping the ships tied up at North Head, the authorities started bringing the sick onshore to free up the transport ships, this required the construction of more substantial permanent accommodation and storage facilities at the Q-Station to replace the original makeshift buildings [‘North Head Quarantine Station’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Passengers disembarking at North Head Q-Station, 1940s (Photo: State Library of NSW)
Q-Station longevity
The old Quarantine Station enjoyed a surprisingly long lifespan at the North Head site, surviving albeit with decreasing utilisation until 1984⌖, this despite periodical calls for its closure…as far back as 1923 Manly Council alderman and later mayor Percy Nolan was advocating for the Q-Station’s removal in favour of open public space [Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Quarantine Station. Proposed Removal’, 31-May-1923 (Trove)].
Slabs of cut sandstone near the station’s wharf bear the markings of passengers detailing the dates and ship names of their journey to North Head
First class expectations
Conditions and facilities at the Q-station were regularly under scrutiny from the better-off passengers. First class passengers were not slow in bringing deficiencies in housing to the attention of the authorities, leading in the 1870s to the building of a new section of Q-Station passenger accommodation in what was known as “the Healthy Grounds” (Wiki).
A 1881 smallpox epidemic resulting in a large number of internee deaths❧ at North Head facility exposed major shortcomings in the management of the Q-Station, including the lack ofa medical superintendent with a grasp of infection control; no clean linen and towels, soap or medical supplies for patients isolated with smallpox [Allen, Raelene, Smallpox epidemic 1881, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881, viewed 06 Sep 2021].
Aerial view of Nth Head Q-Station – c.1930 (Image: Office of Environment & Heritage)
Bulwark against plagues, viruses, bacteria, etc.
Over the decades the Q-Station at Manly has housed the victims of numerous diseases including smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, measles and the bubonic plague, as well as victims of natural disasters. The Q-Station provided a refuge for returning WWI veterans suffering from TB and VD. At war’s end it served as the frontline defence against the lethal assault of the Spanish Flu.
(Photo: environment.
nsw.gov.au)
Gradual obsolescence
Post-WWII, as air travel gradually replaced passenger ships, the Q-Station’s role diminished in importance. In its final decades of operation the quarantine station was put to diverse use…housing the unvaccinated (eg, pregnant immigrants), accommodating Vietnamese orphans and as a temporary abode for women and children evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy decimated that city in 1974 [‘The plague, smallpox and Spanish flu: How Sydney quarantined sick travellers throughout history’, Sarah Swain, 9 News, 2020, www.9news.com.au; ’Q Station on Manly’s North Head echoes with history of pandemics past’, Kathy Sharpe, Mandurah Mail, 21-Jul-2021, www.mandurahmail.com.au].
The stairway (connecting the wharf with the housing) replaced the funicular in use during Q-Station period (Photo: Sydney Coast Walks)
No longer a quarantine station, the surviving 65 heritage buildings are set against the beautiful natural bush land of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Today the old Q-station is converted into a hotel complex (104 rooms including nine self-contained cottages, managed by Accor) with all the tourist trappings, including sleepovers and nocturnal “Ghost and Paranormal tours”.
Pt Nepean Q-Station (Photo: Parks Vic)
Footnote: Port Nepean, North Head’s counterpart In Melbourne, that city’s historic quarantine station can be found on the Heads of Port Phillip Bay. Port Nepean Quarantine Station can point to a similar eventful history to that of the North Head facility. Like it, the Melbourne Q-Station owes it’s existence to an infected immigrant ship…the arrival of the SS Ticonderoga in 1852 with 300 passengers stricken from disease, necessitating the ship’s quarantining at Port Nepean, which led to it’s establishment as a Quarantine Station (originally called “the Sanitary Station”). By the 20th century Port Nepean Q-Station had developed a number of innovative processing features including the memorably named “Foul Luggage Receiving Store”. The station’s Disinfectant and Boiler buildings also became models for other quarantine stations in Australia [‘Quarantine Station’, Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au]. At one point animals were also quarantined at the location. By 1978 Port Nepean had ceased operating as a quarantine facility and was closed in 1980. Subsequent uses of the site and holdings include a military encampment and a temporary refuge for 400 Kosovar refugees fleeing the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.
➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿
❅ “to prevent the introduction of the disease called the malignant Cholera and other infectious disease”
⌖ during that one-and-a-half centuries the Q-Station was the initial home in Sydney for an estimated 13,000 passengers
❧ and the need to build a third Q-Station cemetery to accommodate the rise in mortality
A quieter side of Moscow to visit—a diversion away from the tourist central of St Basil’s, GUM and the Kremlin¹—can be found at the Russian State Library (RSL) in Vozdvizhenka Street in the Arbat neighbourhood. Moskva’s huge public library (founded 1862) back in the USSR days was called with Soviet originality the VI Lenin Library (with the nickname the ‘Leninka’ or the ‘Leninski’). The library’s facade has the standard CCCP look, monolithic and imposing.
(Photo: rsl.ru)
Modern security, antiquated catalogue
Once inside the entrance we are faced with a surprising level of security…a security cordon more in keeping with Fort Knox or at the very least a central bank, rather than a library – electronic gates and guards in police-type flak jackets. The way the culturally-proud Moscovites look at, it is a house of treasures that can’t be valued in roubles! The Guinness Book of Records ranks RSL as the largest in Europe and the second-largest library in the world behind the Library of Congress, Washington DC². RSL holds upward of 30 million book items (books, magazines, periodicals and other publications (a smaller but very significant number are in other than the Russian language)³.
(Photo: Pinterest)
But everything is big in RSL, collections of rare, historic maps, musical scores, art folios, etc, 36 separate reading rooms, the card catalogue system. Card catalogues? Yes RSL is holding 21st century technology at bay by clinging to row upon row of wooden card catalogue cabinets (Gen Ys and Millennials must puzzle over this furniture from Mars?)…some may scoff at the retention of the “old school” system but I found it quaint, a nostalgic throwback to less sophisticated methodology (although it should be added that the library maintains a digital catalogue system as well).
RSL is part library, part book and document museum. The 160 thousand item-strong maps collection is a cartographer’s “wet dream”, rare historic maps dating back to the 16th century. Rare books, early printed editions, are RSL’s forte, including manuscripts of ancient Slavonic codices.
RSL’s Ottoman collection (Photo: TRT World)
As Russia’s national library–a status comparable to the Library of Congress–RSL has a special role as the nation’s book depository (the recipient of legal deposit copies of all publications in Russia). No cost to enter RSL but tourists have to get a visitor’s badge at the entry gate, cameras and photography inside the library are “no-nos”.
‘Russian State Library’ publication
_____________________________ ¹ actually not far at all from the Kremlin walls, but out of sight and earshot of the throng of tourist queues
²measured by catalogue size (number of items)
³ all holdings and collections in the library amount to over 47 million items
About one kilometre north of Shanghai’s famous riverside Bund, at No. 10 Shajing Road, Hongkou District, is a most unusual building. Grey, monolithic and coldly forbidding in countenance, it is known today as Shanghai 1933 (上海1933老场坊) or “Old Millfun”…here in Shanghai’s former “International Settlement” is what was once “Slaughterhouse No. 1”, the Far East’s largest slaughterhouse.
(Source: Flickr)
The 31,700 sq m circular roof landmark building has been described as an “eerie Gotham-Deco achievement in concrete, glass and steel” (Atlas Obscura). In 2021 it is home to a fashionable collection of boutique shops, offices, restaurants and cafes, and an event venue, though for some wary locals the reputation of its past convinces them it is haunted by bad spirits (‘1933: The Slaughterhouse of Shanghai’, Monica Luau, Culture Trip, 05-Dec-2017, www.theculturetrip.com).
Architecture
The slaughterhouse was designed in the Art Deco style with Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus influences. This was a marked departure from hitherto abattoir designs which had studiously avoided any suggestion of decoration or aesthetics (‘From slaughter to laughter: the renovation of a slaughterhouse in Shanghai by IPPR’, Austin Williams, Architectural Review, 22-Oct-2018, www.architectural-review.com; ‘A Brief History of Shanghai’s Old Slaughterhouse 1933’, Emily Wetzki, that’s Shanghai, 03-Jul-2014, www.thatsmag.com). The primary building material used was poured concrete (Portland cement) imported from Britain.
🔺 “The gigantic parasol” (Photo credit: Architectural Review)
The unorthodox basic form of the Shanghai Slaughterhouse comprises an outer four-storey high square building enclosing a round inner building—with a 24-sided dome roof—the core of which is a central atrium into which light is admitted. The facade consists of iconic lattice windows with circular motifs. The stylised geometry of the lattice windows allows for much-needed ventilation and natural cooling (Williams)
🔺 A multiplicity of interlocking staircases & ramps (Source: Shanghai Art Deco)
The congested and convoluted interior presents a seemingly Byzantine confusion of elements obscuring what was in fact a revolutionary abattoir design. The interior was an Escheresque¶ maze of compartments, winding passages and corridors, scattered rooms, narrow spiral interlocking staircases, bridged walkways (26 sky bridges), twisting ramps, 50cm-thick walls, (300) Gothic columns and (four) verandahs (‘Shanghai’s charmed revealed’, Mu Qian, China Daily, 27-Oct-2011, www.chinadaily.com.cn; Williams).
🔺 Labyrinthine work of MC Escher
The “state-of-the-art” (for its day) slaughterhouse had many advanced features: the latticework exterior circulated air and, along with the extra thick walls, made the building cooler in Shanghai’s summers; safety measures were incorporated into the design – textured floors in the ramp made them slip-proof, and built-in escape niches for workers to jump into in the event of a cattle stampede (‘1933 Shanghai Slaughterhouse’, Hidden Architecture, www.hiddenarchitecture.net).
The abattoir’s design controlled the speed and flow of cattle from one area to the next. The unique multi-storey slaughterhouse made for a rational and hygienic method of working – situating the killing spaces on the highest level “allowed gravity to drain the blood, to lower the carcasses, to drop the waste, collect the hide” below. Such efficiency allowed for more than 1,200 heads of cattle, sheep and pigs to be processed in a single day (producing 130 tons of meat for human consumption) (Williams).
(Photo: Flickr)
Building history
The slaughterhouse continued to function until the 1960s, although between 1937 and 1945 it fell under the control of the occupying Japanese military. After the communist takeover of China in 1949 it officially became “Slaughterhouse # 1”. After the abattoir was closed, the building was converted into a cold storage facility and then a medicine factory.
(Source: Randomwire)
Reborn as a “creative industry zone” Abandoned in 2002, the Old Millfun building was heading for decay and destruction when it was saved in 2008 by a RMB100 million renovation [Architect: IPPR (Shanghai) – Engineering and Design Research Institute] and eventually transformation into a trendy entertainment❂ and shopping hub (Mu).
Architect: Balfours Master Architects (UK). Some sources attribute the building design to CH Stableford, Shanghai Municipal Council architect at the time (construction by Yu Hong Ki Construction Co).
𓃟 𓃟 𓃟 𓃟𓃟𓃟𓃟𓃟𓃟𓃟𓃟
✥ China before 1933 used the unit of weight, the tael applied to silver, as the unit of currency. A tael was usually equivalent to 1.3 ounces of silver
¶ bringing to mind the intricate, implausibly dense lithographic prints and drawings of Dutch graphic artist MC Escher
❂ among its upmarket tenants is the Ferrari Owners’ Club of China
Eighty Druitt Street is a prominently located, heritage building in the Town Hall precinct of Sydney’s CBD. It’s colourful history owes its origins to an 1888 competition conducted by the Excelsior Land Investment and Building Company (and Bank Ltd) to design a hotel and banking premises on the corner of Druitt and York Streets (opposite the QVB – Queen Victoria Building). The contest was won by architect Ambrose Thornley and the completed commercial construction (circa 1890) adopted the name suggested by Thornley, “Central Hotel”.
(at left Central Hotel, circa 1900 – dwarfed by the massive QVB building)
Along the York Street frontage of the building was a separate “banking chamber”. In 1896 this became a branch of the City Bank of Sydney. The CBS banking company folded in 1918 and its branches were taken over by the Australian Bank of Commerce. By 1931 the ABS including York Street branch was absorbed into the Bank of NSW (original name of Westpac).
Meanwhile, the Central Hotel was bought in 1904 by a “Mr Roberts” who had apparently previous done a sterling job of value-adding and enhancing the nearby Criterion Family Hotel (The Newsletter (Sydney), 17-Dec-1904)✱. During the first decade of the 20th century the hotel was renamed the Gresham Hotel. In 1925 the hotel was bought by leading brewery Tooth and Co (‘Gresham Hotel: Sold for £47,000’, The Sun (Sydney), 20-Nov-1925).
In the 1980s the Gresham was converted into offices and in 1995 the building was purchased by the Government of Hong Kong. It has operated as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Sydney, representing China’s Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. The building is also used to promote Hong Kong tourism under the aegis of the HK Tourism Board.
✱ located on the corner of Pitt and Park Streets, the hotel was part of the Criterion Theatre complex. The Sydney newspaper report of this reads like a glowing advertisement for the mysterious “Mr Roberts’” business
Summer Hill, seven kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, is a small suburb with a village feel to it. Since the 1970s it has seen an increase in the concentration of medium density apartment blocks, though many Federation-era houses have been retained. One of the largest heritage properties, 46–56 Liverpool Road, a historic mansion converted into an exclusive estate, represents one of the suburb’s most interesting back stories.
In 2014 this former grand residence-cum-hospital underwent redevelopment as the Carleton Estate, the mansion, stables and grounds, were converted into 78 individual apartments located in four buildings. The gated estate offered residents a communal garden (and the option of garden plots to grow vegetables), billiards room, swimming pool, gymnasium and parklands.
What interests us though is the one hundred and thirty years preceding the creation of Carleton Estate. In 1879 Summer Hill got its own railway station on the main suburban line, prompting an influx of new residents to the suburb✱. One of these was Charles Carleton Skarratt, a prominent local hotelier (Royal Hotel, Sydney) with diverse business interests in transport, mining, insurance and a brewery. After the land here (part of the Underwood Estate) was subdivided, Skarratt amalgamated nine of the suburban lots and built the original mansion (1884) on this 12,000 sq m block on the corner of Liverpool and Gower Streets (RPA Heritage News , Vol III, Issue III (Oct 2012).
Prior to Skarratt acquiring the property it was part of the old Ashfield Racecourse, and going right back to origins this was part of Cadigal (Eora) land before 1788. The first white owner was ex-convict and jailor Henry Kable who was the recipient of early land grants (1794, 1804). Kable’s Farm was located on this property. Kable, like Skarratt, had diverse interests, merchant trading, other land holdings, a hotel, etc and was at one stage in partnership with James Underwood, an early owner of the Summer Hill estate.
CC Skarratt
After Skarratt’s death in 1900 ownership of the Victorian Italianate mansion and grounds passed from the family to leading Sydney surgeon Henry Hinder. Just after the Great War it was purchased by the Benevolent Society of NSW as the new site for its Renwick Hospital, to replace the old premises in Thomas Street, Ultimo. Officially opened in 1921 as a “lying-in hospital and a hospital for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their medical care” (‘Renwick Hospital for Infants, Summer Hill, 1921 – 1965’, https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nsw). Patient care centred round the main building and an auxiliary building in nearby Grosvenor Crescent (“Queen’s College”). Two more treatment buildings were added to the complex in 1928 and 1930. By 1937, it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the hospital at Summer Hill had treated as many as 20,000 children (‘New Block at Renwick Hospital for Children, SMH, 24-June-1937).
In 1964 the state government bought the hospital from the Benevolent Society…from 1965 it was renamed the Grosvenor Hospital. It had a dual function – as an in-patients facility for children, and as an out-patients facility which “provided for the diagnosis and assessment of mentally retarded persons of all ages” (‘Find and Connect’).
There were sweeping changes to the institutional approach to the mentally ill in NSW following the Richmond Report and subsequent Mental Health Act in 1983. The new emphasis was on downsizing to small community resident units. The Summer Hill hospital was streamlined with a progressive reduction over the following years in the number of patient admitted. Renamed the Grosvenor Centre in 1985, the facility’s stated mission was the treatment of children with a “developmental disability of mind” (www.records.nsw.gov.au).
The NSW government was committed to a policy of deinstitutionalisation by 2010 and the writing was on the board for the Grosvenor Centre. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s responsibility for the Centre was shuffled from one government department to another – Health to Community Services to Ageing, The coup de grâce came in 2009…disregarding appeals by parents of the Centre’s 20 remaining child residents for a “stay of execution”, the governmenttransferred the residents to purpose-built houses and the institution was closed (‘Find and Connect’). The path was now clear for redevelopment of the post-hospital space and the eventual creation of a gated community in the Carleton Estate.
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✱ the three decades from 1880-1910 saw the Summer Hill populace take on more of an upper class character with a stream of professionals especially from the fields of banking and finance moving to the suburb (‘Summer Hill’, Wikipedia)
If you take a stroll down the 1.7km-long Sussex Street in Sydney’s CBD, distinct commercial patterns soon become evident. From it’s starting point around Barangaroo South, Sussex Street has more than its fair share of old heritage-listed pubs, parking stations, convenience shops and serviced apartments, along with the occasional more upmarket accommodation providers like the Hyatt Regency and Crowne Plaza.
Starting from the north end the first of the heritage-listed pubs we come to is the Sussex (20 Sussex Street). Built 1913-15, the hotel went through a variety of names, New Hunter River Hotel, Big House Hotel, Napoleon’s Hotel, Moreton’s Hotel, before settling on its present and self-explanatory moniker. The pub’s outdoor beer garden is probably its most appealing asset.
At 81 Sussex Street we find the small but compact Bristol Arms Hotel, a Federation Free Classical building which dates from ca.1898 (an earlier “Bristol Arms Tavern” was located at 69 Sussex St). At different times it went by the name Keyes Hotel and then later the Welcome Inn Hotel. During the 1970s the Bristol Arms was notoriously known as a roughhouse pub. Close to the Bristol Arms is another pub which predates BA’s vintage, the Slip Inn (No 111). Originally called the Royal George Hotel (built ca.1858), the pub’s main claim to fame is that it was the venue where Mary met Frederick, the prelude to the Danish royal family acquiring an Australian connexion.
The next heritage hotel in Sussex Street is the Dundee Arms (No 161, one down from the Corn Exchange – see below). The compact little Victorian Regency-style pub was built in 1860 at a time when Darling Harbour commerce was overwhelmingly industrial and maritime. The pub serviced the working class, locals and blue collar workers as well as sailors from the ships docked close by in the harbour (‘Dundee Arms Hotel’, Wikipedia). Thomas Ricketts was the best known of the early publicans (1870s-1880s). In modern times the Dundee Arms was incorporated into the Nikko Hotel and now operates as part of the Hyatt Regency Darling Harbour. The passageway on one side of the Dundee Arms has the name “Wharf Lane” imprinted into the ground, a further reminder of the street’s historic association with shipping. A block further south on the corner of Market Street is the Shelbourne Hotel (No 200). This pub with its once grand exterior now looking a bit tired was built in 1902. Architecturally, the building is “an elaborate example of commercial Federation architecture with elements of the ‘American Romanesque’ style popular in the 1890s” (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority). For 25 years (1975-2000) the Shelbourne operated as a restaurant before reverting to its original, hotel purpose.
The Corn Exchange
A good number of the original Victorian warehouse buildings in Sussex Street survive, most notably the Corn Exchange (Nos 173-185), whose location afforded it easy access to the wharves of Darling Harbour. Designed by George McRae and built in 1887 in the Queen Anne style, this building is presently occupied by an urban planning company☯.
As we approach the southern end of the street Sussex’s complexion changes. We see a few modern semi-high residential suite complexes with names like Millennial Towers and Maestri Towers. There’s a Anthroposophy Society/Rudolf Steiner bookshop which seems philosophically a bit out of place in a street with such constant material hustle and bustle. Another educational property in this block with an interesting past is the public school building (1874), 320 Sussex St. In 1945 the Sussex Street Public School was acquired by Sydney Technical College. 45 years later it was sold to the Sydney Bethel Union who ran it as a home for retired seafarers (initially known unfortunately as the “Mission for Seamen”) till it closed permanently in 2011 (Michael Wayne, ‘Sussex Street Public School/Flying Angel Seafarers Centre/For Sale – Sydney, NSW’, Past Lives of the Near Future, 2011).
Increasingly we come upon noodle houses, hot pot eateries, Chinese bars and pubs like Charlie Chan’s, Chinese jewellery stores and dual language parking signs, all unequivocal signs that we are entering the Chinatown/Haymarket precinct. Appropriately, considering the concentrated Chinese commercial presence in this end of the street, at the junction where Sussex Street terminates, stands the Bank of China Haymarket branch. But the southern portion of Sussex Street is also organised labour turf. 377 Sussex Street is the stronghold of political labour in NSW. Here you’ll find Trades Hall and the Labor Council NSW and the headquarters of the state Labor Party⚘. Just further along Sussex Street is the famous Star Hotel, traditional drinking hole, discussion ground for labour politics and home away from home for generations of trade unionists (now under Chinese ownership).
Footnote: Sussex Street derives its name from a member of Britain’s ruling House of Hanover rather than from any direct references to the southern English county. It is named after the reformist-minded youngest son of George III, Prince Augustus Frederick, the Duke of Sussex.
Fmr Bank of NSW branch, cnr King & Sussex Sts (in the Victorian era it was the King Street Post Office)
𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝𖤝
☯ the preserved Corn Exchange building has fared better than the Hawker and Vance Produce Exchange (95-99 Sussex St) which retains only its original facade after a 1989 demolition
⚘ “Sussex Street” is a metonym for NSW Labor, used especially when referring to the dominant right wing party machine on that side of politics
Sydenham is a tiny inner suburb of Sydney which sits on traditional Cadigal land, part of the Eora nation, some eight kilometres south-west of the CBD. In the formative colonial period Sydenham was subsumed under a wider area known as Bulanaming which stretched from Petersham to Cook’s River and includeda chunk of undesirable swampy land(Gumbramorra Swamp).
Early map (pre-airport) (image: www.dictionaryofsydney.org/)
Grand designs Sydenham From the 1850s on, the better land on the eastern part of the suburb was turned into grand estates for well-to-do colonial businessmen. These large villa estates occupied an area from Unwins Bridge Road back to Cooks River Road (later renamed Princes Highway). Perhaps the pick of these “large country retreats” in Sydenham, located between Reilly and Grove Streets, was the Grove Estate, with its two-storey Georgian villa, owned by John George Church. Adjoining the Grove Estate was ironmonger Richard Reilly’s Tivoli Estate with a similarly impressive Georgian villa➀ [Meader, Chrys, Sydenham, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydenham, viewed 25 Dec 2020].
The working class swamped Commencing in the 1880s, the grand estates started to be broken up by subdivision and the suburb’s complexion took on a recognisable working class character. Rows of Victorian cottages sprang up, many occupied by workers at the nearby Albion and other brickworks in nearby St Peters. At the same time developers sold cheap, unviable land in the swamp area to the working class. This was the notorious Tramvale Estate—badly designed, lacking in basic sewerage facilities, low-lying, prone to flooding and poor drainage—resulting in the spread of disease, plagues of mosquitos in summer and an all-pervasive, persistent stench, leaving the owners holding what amounted to a “white elephant” they couldn’t re-sell (Meader).
🔻 Adjoining suburb: Cooks River Road, St Peters (1935) (photo: State Library of NSW)
Industrial landscape and dichotomy The swamp was finally drained in the 1890s and the land on it repurposed for heavy industry and engineering works. Factories took root, such as Australian Woollen Mills and the Sydney Steel Company (supplier of steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction)➁. By the early 20th century Sydenham had taken on a twofold complexion: an industrial western part and a primarily residential eastern part (Meader)
The post-WWII period brought an influx of migrants to the inner west suburb, mostly Greeks, Macedonians, Croatians, Serbs and Slovenes from the former Yugoslavia, Turks and later Vietnamese. In the 1950s and 60s Sydenham proved a good recruiting ground for young athletic Aboriginal men who would go on to play rugby league for the Newtown club (Meader).
🔺 Sydenham farms
Sydenham cultural and entertainment ‘hub’ Sydenham has at best been only modestly endowed with shopping options(a handful of shops trailing off from the railway station➂) in comparison withsurrounding urban hubs like Marrickville, the local Sydenham community could boast a pub (the General Gordon) and a cinema, the Sydenham Picture Palace, later superseded by the art deco Rex Theatre (47 Unwins Bridge Rd) closed in 1959 and converted into a roller-drome in 1960. Sydenham at one point also had its own live theatre venue, Norman McVicker’s Pocket Playhouse (94 Terry Street), which operated from 1957 to 1973 [‘Pocket Playhouse’, www.budgeebudgee.wordpress.com].
Leading Hollywood actress Vivien Leigh, attending the Pocket Playhouse with proprietor Norman McVicker, 1961 🔻
From under the radar to under the runway In the early 1990s the Federal government spearheaded a plan to add a third runway to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airportwhich presaged irreparable change to Sydenham’s (eastern) residential zone. The scheme was vigorously opposed at a grass-roots level and supported by a Coalition of (thirteen) Sydney Councils including Marrickville Council (although it later did a volte-face and sided with the government). Although supposed to be ‘voluntary’, some Sydenham residents who were reluctant to sell and move were ‘persuaded’ to comply by intolerable noise levels for residents from the airport just 2km away and from adjacent demolition work in progress [‘The fight to save Sydenham’, (Tom Wilson), Green Left Review, 24-Oct-1995, Issue 208, www.greenleftreview.org.au].When the dust had settled, in excess of over 120 Sydenham houses had been acquired and demolished for the runway go-ahead…this clean-out were described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the airport “gobbling up a whole suburb”. Only a solitary cottage of the row of historic dwellings in the frontline Railway Road survived the decimation, No 19, “Stone Villa” (now an artists’ studio)➃. ⇩
PostScript: Sydenham Green By way of compensation for the demolished houses in Railway Rd, Marrickville Council was handed back the land in 1994…after deliberation the Council turned it into Sydenham Green, apublic park with ‘funky’ community sculptures and a skate park—and being directly under the flight path of the third runway—a quirky arch monument of sorts recounting the local community’s valiant efforts to stop its realisation. By its very presence, Sydenham Green stands as an “everyday reminder of how aircraft noise tore the heart out of a suburb” (Meader).
🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠
➀ both the Grove and the Tivoli villas were demolished during WWI
➁ largest employer in the Marrickville Municipality, >7,500 staff
➂ known as Marrickville Station until 1895 when the Bankstown line opened and Marrickville got its own railway station
➃a later casualty was Australia’s first Coptic Church (24A Railway Road), which had dodged the authorities’ demolition plans for two decades only to see a fire reduce its survival efforts to ashes in 2017
AdolfHitler was born in the small Upper Austrian town Braunau am Inn on the border with the German state of Bavaria. The future Germanführer’s association with Braunau am Inn was only a fleeting one…after Adolf’s birth in the three-story yellow corner house—agasthaus(guesthouse) which later was agasthof (ale house)—the Hitler family only stayed in Braunau am Inn until 1892, when Hitler’s father’s work as a customs official took them to Passau, further down the Inn River border but on the German side.
(Archival image: Stadtverein Braunau)
When the Nazis annexed the Austrian state in 1938 the street of Hitler’s birth Salzburger Vorstadt was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße, in time for the führer’s one and only return to the town of his birth since he left at aged three – passing swiftly through Braunau am Inn on the way to Vienna to celebrate the Anschluß. From this time Hitler’s birthplace became a cult centre attracting hordes of fawning devotes to Hitler, creating a pilgrimage site for the Nazi “true-believers”. At the end of WWII the town surrendered to the US Army and No 15 as part of the historic city centre was eventually granted heritage status➀. Rented since the Fifties by the Austrian republic, the building had provided makeshift premises for a public library, a bank, technical high school classes, a day centre for people with learning difficulties.
(Photo: The Guardian)
During the last decade the Austrian government, still renting Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its original family owner (Gerlinde Pommer), has kept it unoccupied, fearful that it was in danger of becoming a shrine for Neo-Nazi sympathisers (and their regular visits were also bringing anti-fascist protestors to the site as well) [‘Austria wants to appropriate Hitler’s birth house to stop it from becoming neo-Nazi shrine’, Daily Sabah, 09-Apr-2016, www.dailysabah.com]. The building has no identifiable signage on it but a concentration camp stone memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism stands in front (Hitler is not mentioned in the inscription).
Braunauers, saddled with the legacy of their quiet, backwater town being forever associated with the Nazi führer, have long held divided opinions over what to do with the property locals refer to as the “Hitler-haus”. Some wanted to demolish all trace of it, to replace it with a new purpose-built building (a refugee centre, a museum dedicated to the Austrian liberation from Nazi rule, etc), or to leave it as an empty, amorphous space (an option extensively criticised because it could infer that Austria was trying to bury a part of its dark past). With such heat generated over the controversial site, its not surprising that the government in Vienna too has vacillated over what to do with it➁ [Adolf Hitler’s first home set to be demolished for new buildings, The Guardian, 17-Oct-2016, www.theguardian.com].
(Artist’s impression of the renovation)
In 2016, the Austrian government, frustrated at the owner’s refusal to renovate the property to make it suitable to desirable tenants, or to negotiate the building’s future, indicated its intent to demolish it and rebuild anew. In 2017 after a court ruling in the government’s favour the building was expropriated…this year Vienna has flipped the 2016 decision, now deciding that the existing structure will stay in place but will undergo significant change to its outward appearance and be given a new life. The change of plan will see the renovated building becoming a police station for Braunau and the district (slated for completion at end 2022 at a cost of €2 million) [‘Adolf Hitler’s birthhouse to be remodeled by architects’, DW, 05-Jul-2020, www.dw.com]. Repurposing Salzburger Vorstadt 15 as a police station with a (1750 townhouse style) design that predates the period of Hitler’s residence, according to the authorities, has the intention to deter Neo-Nazis from congregating at the site in the future and trying to turn it into a shrine to the head Nazi [‘Adolf Hitler’s Birthplace Will be Transformed Into a Police Station to ‘Neutralize’ Its Appeal as a Pilgrimage Site for Neo-Fascists’, (Kate Brown), Artnet News, 03-Jun-2020, www.artnet.com].
Postscript: The decision to radically makeover the four centuries-old building that was Hitler’s birthplace won’t please the cultural and heritage groups in Upper Austria, but that the building has not been obliterated leaving only a blank, anonymous space has been welcomed by others. As one architecture professor notes, the creation of ”a void into which any kind of meaning can be projected” does not necessarily solve the dilemma, witness the aftermath of the 1952 dynamiting of Berghof (Hitler’s Bavarian mountain hideaway). Despite there being nothing to see any more, tourists kept coming in droves, as did Neo-Nazis who left their calling cards [‘The house where Hitler was born could be demolished soon. Here’s why it should stay standing’, (Despina Stratigakos), Quartz, 31-Oct-2016, www.quartz.com].
(Photo: The Guardian)
ᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕᔕ
➀ in the decades following the war, along with curious tourists, Austrian and German veterans, especially on Hitler’s birthday, made the trek to the house [‘Hitler’s Birth Home in Austria to Become a Police Station’, (Melissa Eddy), New York Times, 20-Nov-2019, www.nytimes.com]
➁the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna was also under flack from the media and the public for the extravagance of paying Frau Pommer nearly €5,000 every month to rent a space it was putting to no practical use [‘Why the Austrian government won’t tear down Adolf Hitler’s birth home’, (Bianca Bharti), National Post, 05-Sep-2019, www.nationalpost.com]
Few places in Germany and Berlin have experienced the journey of change and transition that Tempelhof Airport (Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof) has. The Nazis commenced the construction of its colossal showcase airport in 1936 on the site of a pre-existing (Weimar Republic-built) airport. Even in its pre-airport days, it’s land use had a nexus with aviation – from 1887 it was home to a balloon detachment of the Prussian Army.
⇡der Berliner Garnison
Prior to it becoming an airport in the 1920s Tempelhof Field was used primarily as a military parade ground, and in addition it played an early role in the development of Berlin football (the pioneering BFC Fortuna club). It’s next brush with aeronautical endeavour came in 1909 when US aviator Orville Wright took the brothers’ bi-plane, the ‘Wright Flyer’, for a spin around the field.
A mega-scale marvel of civil engineering Built on a scale❋to be in synch with the values of strength and power projected by the rest of Hitler’s Germania building ‘Fantasia’^^, Tempelhof—the name derives from it having originally been land occupied by the medieval Order of Knights Templars—was an “icon of Nazi architecture: (with a complex of) huge austere buildings in totalitarian style (in the shape of a quadrant up to 1.2 km in length), replete with imposing imperial eagles made from stone” [‘Berlin: A historic airport reinvents itself’, (Eric Johnson), Julius Bär, 28-May-2019, www.juliusbar.com]. Designed for the Führer by Ernst Sagebiel, the out of all proportion complex boasted 9,000 rooms, multiple entrance doors, reliefs and sculptures including a giant aluminium eagle head◰.
Located just four kilometres south of Berlin’s central Tiergarten, the Nazi airport was notably innovative in its day – eg, separate levels for passengers and luggage; windows spanning the floor-to-ceiling to convey as much light as possible inside the terminal [‘The story of Berlin’s WWII Tempelhof Airport which is now Germany’s largest refugee shelter’, (Sam Shead), The Independent, 20-Jun-2017, www.independent.co.uk].
⇡ The vast and cavernous main hall
(Tempelhof Projekt GmbH,www.thf-Berlin.de)
Tempelhof Airport was only ever 80% completed (constructed halted in 1939 with the outbreak of war), and ironically, never used by the Nazis as an airport (they continued to use the original terminal for flights). Instead, the regime used it for armament production and storage, and during the war it served as a prison and a forced-labour plane assembly factory [‘A brief history of Tempelhofer Feld’, (Ian Farrell), Slow Travel Berlin,www.slowtravelberlin.com].
Cold War Tempelhof After WWII the airport was placed under the jurisdiction of the occupying American forces (under the term of the Potsdam Agreement which formally divided Berlin into four distinct occupation sectors). The airport played a key role in the Berlin Airlift (1948/49) and throughout the Cold War was the main terminal used by the US military to enter West Berlin. To increase Tempelhof’s civil aviation capacity US engineers constructed new runways. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification, the American military presence in Berlin wound up (formally deactivated in 1994). Tempelhof continued to be used as a commercial airport but increasingly it was being used primarily for small commuter flights to and from regional destinations [‘Berlin Tempelhof Airport’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
(Photo: www.urban75.org/)
A post-aviation future space In 2008 Tempelhof, partly derelict, was discontinued as an airport. Berliners were polled about its future with the majority wanting to keep it free from redevelopment, a free space for the community. Accordingly, the land was given over to public use. Once a symbol of Nazi brutalist architecture, today its grounds are open to the citizenry as an expression of their freedom. The place is regularly a hive of multi-purpose activity, Berliners engaging in a range of leisure, exercise and cultural pursuits – jogging, cycling, roller-blading, skateboarding, kite-flying, picnicking, trade and art fairs, musical events, etc…the former airport has also been used as film locations (eg, The Bourne Supremacy, Hunger Games) and even as the venue for Formula E motor-racing⧆.
⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅ ❇ see the previous post, ‘Germania: Mega-City Stillborn: Hitler’s Utopian Architectural Dream’
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❋ the terminal is 300,000 square metres including hangar space, with an inner, 306- hectare airfield (Tempelhofer Feld)
◰ “the mother of all modern airports” (British architect Norman Foster)
⧆ at other times it has been a shelter for refugees
Sydney’s long-debated second international airport is slated to be completed—in so far as anything can be asserted with any confidence in the post-coronavirus age—by 31st December 2025❋. The site selected and given final approval by the Commonwealth government in 2014, Badgerys Creek, is on 1,780 hectares of land in greater western Sydney in indigenous Darug country.
(Source: SMH)
The saga begins in 1946. Towra Point (in Sydney’s south) is mooted by the NSW state government as a likely site for the second airport◲…over the next 40 years at least 20 sites are put forward as prospective locations for another airport to ease congestion at the existing Kingsford Smith Airport. Successive federal governments of differing political hues cast the net far and wide—to the north, south and west of Sydney—in the hope of finding a site that best meets the needs. When the government flags that it favours Somersby (Central Coast) and Galston (northwest) in the early 1970s, outbreaks of NIMBY-ism (vocal grass-roots protests from the locals) leads Canberra to back down. Another candidate, Holsworthy (southwest), is rejected because of an unknown number of unexploded military projectiles littering the site from a nearby army base and its proximity to a nuclear facility, only to be unfathomably resurrected as a prospect in the mid-1990s by the Howard government and then quickly dropped again on grounds of “environmental unsuitability”. Goulburn, 200km southwest of Sydney, too gets shelved – because of the high capital costs involved [‘Second Sydney Airport – A Chronology’, Parliament of Australia, www.aph.gov.au/].
(Source: www.aph.gov.au/)
Frustrated at the ongoing failure to resolve a viable site for the second airport, the Commonwealth toys with the idea of ditching the whole project and looks at an alternative plan sans second airport – the construction of a third runway at Kingsford Smith Airport and complimenting it with a VFT (very fast train) connecting Sydney and Canberra (the VFT never materialises). By the mid-1980s only two sites remain in the running – Wilton and Badgerys Creek⊞. By 1986 Badgerys Creek is ”last man standing” and the Crown purchases land there.
Even after settling on the location, progress on the second airport mimics the more inane capers of TV’s Yes Minister – a stop-start pattern of self-limiting actions, deferment of decisions, vacillations. Feasibility and EIS studies come and go, budgetary problems always loom, the Commonwealth and the state government bickers over what form the airport should take, engaging in political points-scoring, etc. The achievement of anything tangible, actual progress, is grotesquely underwhelming. One example will suffice: 1988, the incumbent government proposes to fast track the construction of Badgerys Creek, but no action follows the words. In 1991 another study contradicts this, finding there’s “no pressing need” to rush the second airport. Three more years on and fast tracking is back on the agenda, the new urgency is the 2000 Olympics. But in 1995 it is reported there “has been little or no development at Badgerys Creek” (“token construction works to date”) and later that year the Commonwealth announces that “the airport won’t be ready for the Sydney Olympics”… and so it goes (‘Second Sydney Airport’).
⌂ Blue Mountains anti-airport bumper sticker
Consistent with the past fraught nature of the second airport issue, the choice of Badgerys Creek is far from consensual. Opposition from Blue Mountains Council and its residents’ groups is particularly vocal – the litany of objections include its likely impact on the national park’s ecology, the threat to its UNESCO World Heritage site status, health hazards, air and noise pollution, [‘Council study finds airport noise on natural areas overlooked’, WSROC, 08-Dec-2017, www.wsroc.com.au]. Some have again raised the question of whether a second airport is really necessary, arguing that existing airport capacity at Bankstown and Richmond airports could be expanded to lighten the domestic passenger and cargo transport burden on Kingsford Smith [‘Is a new airport at Badgerys Creek really needed?’, (Peter Martin), Sydney Morning Herald, 15-Apr-2014, www.smh.com.au].
⌂ Future aerotropolis?
✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑
Sorting out the nomenclature Once the Commonwealth red-inks the Badgerys Creek site in 2014, a media debate ensues over whose name the new airport should bear. The early favourite is Sydney Harbour Bridge engineer John JC Bradfield, strongly lobbied for by politicians from both sides (LNP prime minister and premier, Labor state opposition leader, etc) [‘Bradfield Airport has universal approval’, (Danile Meers), Daily Telegraph, 06-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au]. Others including Wollongong councillors and the Royal Aeronautical Society plump for Lawrence Hargrave, a seminal figure associated with advances in the field of aeronautical pioneering (unlike Bradfield). From a western Sydney viewpoint, a Penrith City councillor makes a pitch for William ‘Billy’ Hart, who flew a box-kite plane (based on Hargrave’s earlier breakthrough invention) from Penrith to Parramatta in 1911 [‘Penrith Council defer naming of Western Sydney Airport site’, (Krystyna Pollard), Liverpool City Champion, 02-Mar-2017, www.liverpoolcitychampion.com.au].
Badgery of Badgerys Creek The most intriguing candidate, is one with both pioneering credentials like Hargrave and Hart, and real geographical “skin in the game”…(Andrew) Delfosse Badgery, whose family gives its name to the suburb encompassing the airport site—great-grandfather James Badgery settled the area in 1799—was the first person to fly a plane of his own construction in Australia. Badgery flew from Sutton Forest to Goulburn, a distance of less than 50 miles, in 1914)❂. The case for “Delfosse Badgery Airport” is supported by the aviator’s family and the St Marys Historical Society [‘Pilot’s claims has wings: Aviation pioneer Andrew Delfosse Badgery built the first plane in Australia at Badgery’s Creek…and Flew It!’, (Ian Walker), Daily Telegraph, 12-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au].
⌂ Del Badgery & his 1914 bi-plane (Picture: Liverpool City Council)
And the winner is? With one eye on gender-inclusiveness and PC “brownie points”, and a nod perhaps to North American precedents◗, the Morrison government in 2019 opts to name Sydney’s second international airport after Nancy Bird-Walton, a pioneer aviatrix icon of Australia – for a brief summary of Bird-Walton’s achievements in flight see my blog dated 27-May-2017, ‘Equality at 10,000 Feet: The Pioneer Aviatrix in the Golden Age of Aviation – Part I’.
__________________________________________
❋ no bets on the chances of this being a lay down misère, given the vicissitudes of the second airport story
◲ after opposition from the Sutherland Shire local government over concern about noise levels, the Gorton government kills off the scheme in 1969, citing “environmental difficulties”
⊞ indicative of government indecisiveness, Badgerys Creek is on and off the short list of candidates several times over a span of 45 years before the final take-up by the Abbott government
❂ it is a matter of uncertainty whether Badgery built the plane (a Cauldron bi-plane) on the family farm at Badgerys Creek or at Sutton Forest in the Southern Highlands (Pollard)
◗ airports in Niagara-Ontario and Kansas named (respectively) after pioneering aviatrixesDorothy Rungeling and Amelia Earhart
Mention “The Ten Commandments” to cinephiles and almost invariably they’ll think of the 1956 epic with Chuck Heston as the resolute Moses. But that was Cecil B DeMille’s second attempt at filming the Old Testament story, or his (Cold War-inspired) interpretation of it at least. Back when Hollywood was still in it’s adolescence, 1923, DeMille made a silent version of The Ten Commandments, in black and white with some sequences in Technicolor.
(Image: www.bestplaces.com)
The location chosen by DeMille for his first go at shooting the biblical epic was a barren 18-mile stretch of sand some 170 miles north of LA, at Guadalupe on California’s central coast. Today, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as they are called, are a protected sea coast and wildlife refuge (eg, for the endangered western snowy plover) and largely unchanged, but for three months in 1923 it was a hive of mega-budget movie-making activity as DeMille transformed the empty dunes into a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian city. DeMille chose the Guadalupe dunes for the movie set because he thought it might pass for the Egyptian desert (or at least the Sahara Desert) [‘Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes’, Atlas Obscura, www.altasobscura.com].
𐅉 ‘10 Commandments’ of California in glorious “techni-tint”
Hollywood scale extravaganza
The set was massive scale, destined to become the director’s trademark – 120 foot high by 720 feet wide, erected by 1,500 construction workers, a twelve-story tall “Egyptian city” of plaster, wood and straw. The city’s human population comprised a further 3,500 actors✖and technicians plus 125 cooks to feed the assembled masses. Add to these impressive numbers some 5,000 animals, 300 chariots and 21 plaster sphinxes. Statues of Pharaoh Rameses were eleven metres tall and the facade had a 110-foot high gate enclosure✧[‘The Ten Commandments, (1923 film)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, (2013); www.lostcitydemille.com].
(Source: G-N Dune Center)
A Virtuous Camp DeMille?
DeMille had a huge makeshift tent city erected (nicknamed “Camp DeMille”) to house all of the personnel on the set. Perhaps, in keeping with the overtly religious theme of the film⊡, DeMille laid down strict rules of non-engagement for everyone involved on the production…men and women were billeted separately with no fraternisation allowed, no gambling, no alcohol and no coarse language [‘The Ten Commandments of 1923: The Exodus, Take One’, Patheos, 20-Apr-2012, www.patheos.com]. The alcohol ban adhered to the Prohibition rules in place in America at the time, but subsequent generations of beach-combing visitors to Guadalupe’s dunes have discovered evidence that participants on the movie set found a way round that…the debris of empty bottles of alcohol-laced cough syrup strewn all over the dunes [PJ Grisar, ‘How DeMille made his ‘Ten Commandments’ Jewish again’, Forward, 08-Apr-2020, www.forward.com].
A vanishing “Egyptian metropolis”
After filming of The Ten Commandments on the Central Coast finished in August 1923✥, what DeMille did next astounds. Instead of dismantling and hauling the costly set (the overall budget for the movie was a staggering $1.5M or more) back to Hollywood, DeMille had it bulldozed and buried in the Guadalupe dunes. The film-maker just didn’t want to be bothered with the logistics or expense of an enormous removal task and/or he didn’t want rival Hollywood film-makers or studios to get their hands on the set.
(Photo:www.fws.gov)
Unearthing cinematic artefacts
And there it sat—or shifted around in the constantly swirling winds of the dunes—for sixty years, one of Hollywood’s most expensive-ever film sets. Then in 1983 film-maker Peter Brosnan became intrigued after a chance encounter with the story, got hooked on it and spent the next 30 years searching for the site, finding it and trying (frustratingly) to excavate it. The project is ongoing, and has taken this length of time due to a combination of factors – local “red tape” (jurisdiction of the dunes falls under two separate counties); the site is a bird-life sanctuary with limited, seasonal access; plus there’s the extremely high cost of funding excavations. Over the years, archaeologists, both professional and amateur, have joined the quest to dig up DeMille’s treasure-trove. Buried replicas from DeMille’s Lost City have been unearthed including a 300-pound plaster sphinx which now resides in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center [‘There’s a Fake Egyptian City Buried in California’, (Marissa Fessenden), Smithsonian Magazine, 15-Oct-2015, www.smithsonianmag.com]. Brosnan compiled his years of research, including interviews with surviving actors, extras and other crew members, into a documentary film, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, screened in 2016.
✖DeMille also bused in some 250 Orthodox Jews as extras to give the movie a more authentic Hebrew look
✧ Rameses’ ‘temple’ contained recreations of hieroglyphics copied from the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922
⊡ certainly in keeping with the sternly moralising tone of DeMille’s film
✥ only part of the film was made on the Guadalupe dunes, the wonky parting of the Red Sea scene was shot at Seal Beach in Orange County, and a modern-day morality tale DeMille tacked on to the film was shot back at the studios
Bridge Street in the city is one of Sydney’s oldest streets dating back to the formative days of the colony. Where Bridge Street is today, 500 metres south of the Circular Quay railway station and ferry terminus, was the site of the first bridge in the Port Jackson settlement. It was a simple log construction, erected in October 1788 just months after the colony was founded, and allowing passage over the Tank Stream, the source of Sydney’s main fresh water supply in the early days.
After several timber bridges came and went, they eventually put up a more substantial (supposedly ‘permanent’) stone bridge in its place (near the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets), which also had to be replaced owing to it being considerably less substantial than first thought and not permanent at all◵. Bridge Street at that time was called Governors Row as it housed the colony’s first seat of government and the governor’s residence (on the corner of Phillip Street). A commemorative stone on the site (now housing the Museum of Sydney) marks the historic location.
An early painting of the city (a facsimile of which can be viewed on a wall in The Rocks) shows Governors Row (Bridge Street) extending all the way from the water at Darling Harbour up the hill to the first Government House.
Governors Row became Bridge Street when Lachlan Macquarie took over the colony’s governorship in 1810 and initiated a renaming project of Sydney’s streets as part of his reform program. In 1846 Bridge Street was extended up to Macquarie Street and Government House was relocated to its present location as a domain within the Botanic Gardens.
Lower Bridge Street: Residential to Commercial
Early on, the lower part of Bridge Street contained many fine houses, but these were gradually replaced by the head offices of shipping and trading companies because of the advantage of being close to the harbour.
Upper Bridge St: Chock-full of Heritage sites
From the mid 19th to the early 20th century construction in the upper part of Bridge Street formed the architectural character that distinguishes it today. A series of government buildings—grand in scale and elegance and richly elaborate—were built using sandstone quarried from nearby Pyrmont.
Treasury and Audit Office building (1849-51)
Corner of Macquarie and Bridge Sts. Architect: Mortimer Lewis. During the NSW gold rush shipments of gold were stored here. Today the building with a high vertical extension added is the huge, 580-room Intercontinental Hotel with a section housing the Sydney annex of Southern Cross University.
Chief Secretary‘s Office⍟ (1869)
Victorian Italianate building directly opposite the Treasury building. Architect: James Barnet. Equally impressive sandstone block. One of the most aesthetically endearing features are the five carved figures of women on the corner of the facade. The megasized building block wraps around into the western corner Phillip Street.
Department of Education (1914) and Lands Department (1877-90) buildings
These two havens of state bureaucrats, further down Bridge St, round out the classical sandstone quartet. The Lands Dept block, built to the design of James Barnet, is a Classical Revival style building. Like many of the public buildings of the era it’s built from Pyrmont sandstone. The Education building (Architect: George McRae) is of a later architectural trend reflecting the popular Beaux-Arts fashion.
Commercial buildings dominate the lower end of Bridge St. The Royal Exchange Building (1967) at № 21 Bridge St stands on the original site of the Royal Exchange building (1857) – the first home of the Sydney Stock Exchange. Numerically next to the REB (at № 17-19) is the Singapore Airlines House (1925), an elegant example of the Commercial Palazzo style of architecture.
Perhaps the standout architectural piece of the lower commercial sector is the old Burns Philip and Co head office building (1898-1901) close to George Street, with its elaborate sandstone and brick Neo-Romanesque facade. Architect: Arthur Anderson. Burns Philip were big players in the Australian shipping and trading business. Originally, a convict lumber yard sat on this site.
The pick of the rest of the commercial buildings for compact elegance are probably the brace of adjoining buildings, № 4 Cliveden and № 6, (across the road from BP&Co). The street’s first commercial high-rise building, constructed 1913 in the Federation Free Classical style. Next door to the left of Cliveden is Anchor House (1960), for many years the HQs of the NSW Liberal Party. The site in the early Colonial period contained a female orphan’s asylum which later relocated to a site in Parramatta (now part of a Western Sydney University campus).
Postscript: Macquarie Place
Halfway up Bridge Street,making a refreshing break of greenery from all the high monolithic buildings dominating the streetscape, is Macquarie Place. A diminutive triangular park which in colonial times was part of the governor’s garden. The park which now backs on to a trendy bar frequented by big-end-of-town ‘suits’ contains some gear salvaged from the First Fleet (anchor and cannon of HMS Sirius). A feature of interest of the park for passionate monarchists are two plane trees planted by the Royal duo Liz and Phil back in 1954(now very tall and expansive).Macquarie Place as it was in the early colonial period, unrecognisable today (Source: http://dictionaryofsydney.org/)
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◵ the bridge was finally demolished in the 1840s when the Tank Stream got channelled into an underground tunnel where it remains, what’s left of it that is
★ The genesis of this piece resides in my curiosity about the street name’s origin. The first association anyone has with Sydney, especially the city itself (ie, the CBD), is the Harbour Bridge. The city is the Harbour Bridge! It’s part of its lifeblood. So I guess I’d always just took it for granted that the street was named in honour of THE Bridge and thought no more about it. Then one day I was casually flicking through the pages of a 1922 Sydney street directory —as you do—when I had the (mini) eureka moment, Bridge Street was listed, it was there on the map, a good ten years before the Harbour Bridge made its debut! That set me off searching for what actually lay behind the naming of the street.
Birkenhead Point Factory Outlet Centre (BPFOC), on the western side of Sydney’s Port Jackson, is a bit of a sleeper as far as shopping centres and malls go. Recently, it ‘celebrated’ (sic) it’s forty-year anniversary (opened 26 July 1979), but it was an anniversary bereft of any fanfare whatsoever! The centre has 170 stores or services including two anchor tenants but can’t attract a major department store chain. In recent times it has tried to lure more paying punters by introducing a “shopper hopper” ferry service from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour. Thursday night shopping is virtually a non-event with most of the vendors not bothering to stay open. The only shoppers you are likely to see at night are those grocery shopping at Coles and Aldi✾.
The reasons for BPFOC’s low-key status among the large retail outlets and malls of Sydney are manifold. It’s relatively small size and its distance away from the Sydney rail network are contributing factors. Likewise, the proximity of Burwood Westfield (a few kilometres away) and the Broadway Centre to name two, gives these shopping complexes a comparative advantage.
BirkenheadPoint before it was a shoppers’ haven
The area around the point was originally part of a land grant made to John Harris, the colony’s first surgeon (circa 1800). By the late 1830s Harris’ land on the point, having shifted ownership several times, was a brick-making operation. This business didn’t apparently succeed as the owner, a Mr Dutton, went bankrupt in the early 1840s. At this time Birkenhead Point went under the name of Duttons Point, then part of Five Dock Farm.
(source: Dictionary of Sydney)
“Abercrombie’s Point”
Charles Abercrombie, the next man of capital to acquire Birkenhead Point, turned it into a race track (Abercrombie’s Racecourse). The first Australian steeplechase was held here on 19 September 1844. The horse racing caper failed to produce a worthwhile dividend for Abercrombie, prompting him to transform the site into a “salting and boiling down works” in the mid 1840s. This business as well was apparently not sufficiently profitable and Abercrombie resold the land.
New industry, rubber works
In the following years the land on the point again changed hands several times. In 1885 the property was bought by the Perdriau brothers (Henry and George) who started a business to make rubber engine packing for their ferry service (With a single work shed at Birkenhead Point). In 1899 under the leadership of Henry Perdriau, the brothers established the Perdriau Rubber Company (PRC) and began manufacturing rubber products in 1904. Coinciding with the rise of the automobile, the company launched itself into the manufacture of rubber tyres, sufficiently successfully that PRC took over the whole 7.7 hectare site (by 1928 it was producing somewhere between 500,000 and 780,000 tyres annually)⍟.
DunlopRubber plant
In 1929✩ the Perdriau Company merged with the English firm Dunlop (forming Dunlop-Perdriau Rubber Co) and the new enterprise at Drummoyne became the Dunlop Rubber Company (DRC)❂. By the 1960s Dunlop’s Birkenhead Point factory employed 1,600 workers. By the 1970s the complex comprised eight brick buildings⌺ and a number of auxiliary structures (sawtooth roofed sheds). The brick buildings were substantial, being between two and four storey high.Perdriau‘s rubber hose line
From industrial to commercial
In 1977 the Birkenhead Point tyre plant closed its operation with the site being acquired by major Australian retailer/department store chain David Jones for $21M. DJs converted the brick and rust-red tyre factory into a waterfront shopping centre, retaining 40% of the original factory buildings. The shops were eventually replaced by designer brand clothing outlets (including a David Jones factory outlet and a Fletcher Jones factory outlet). In the 1990s apartments were added to the site. A long glass ceiling was installed on the top floor in 2010 and the decade saw the centre undergo a number of extensions and renovations.
Over the last thirty-plus years the Birkenhead Head complex has undergone several changes of ownership. Most prominently in 2004 it was bought by Singapore tycoon Denis Jen for $111M (later unloaded). Currently, Birkenhead Point Outlet Centre is owned and managed by the Mirvac Group.
BP Marina
The prime location of the factory outlet centre fronts on to a marina which caters for over 300 mostly pleasure watercrafts (as well NSW Marine Rescue and Divers maintain operational vessels at the marina). There are also Marine Rescue and maritime industry association offices below the shopping centre at wharf level. The Birkenhead Point complex originally planned to include a series of museums in the site (car, fishing and maritime) but these ventures have never apparently gotten off the drawing board.
Publications and websites consulted:
‘Dunlop Factory Buildings At Birkenhead Point (Former)’, www.environment.nsw.gov.au
‘Five Dock racecourse’, Dictionary of Sydney, www.dictionaryofsydney.org
Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney:Walks into Sydney’s Unexpected and Endangered Places (1991)
Brian & Barbara Kennedy,Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Descriptions, (1982)
‘The Names of Sydney: Suburbs D to G’, Pocket Oz Sydney, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au
‘Roaming Roy Goes Shopping For History – Birkenhead Point’, The Tingle Factor Box, 24-Feb-2013, www.tinglefactor.typepad.com
Josephine Tovey, ‘Resurrected shopping centre up for sale’, Sydney Morning Herald, 06-Mar-2010
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✾ late night shopping at Birkenhead Point in any case would be a misnomer as the centre’s closing time on Thursday is 7:30pm
✩a couple of sources give the date as 1928
⍟ shoes were the other mainstay of Perdriau Bros’ production business…in 1928 just prior to the merger they were still producing 50,000 shoes per week
❂ although some of the company’s advertising in the day referred to the business as the “Dunlin Rubber Co”
⌺architect Peter Hickey’s design of the commercial project allowed the extant brick buildings to retain their former industrial character whilst integrating the centre into the maritime setting of the waterfront…the original buildings are listed by Heritage NSW as being of Federation warehouse design
Chaoyang Street in the Imperial Palace district of Shenyang, overshadowed by the proximity of the city’s most illustrious tourist drawcard, the Gu Gong Palace itself, doesn’t get the interest it perhaps deserves. Visitors to Shenyang tend to be drawn to Gu Gong and with equal magnetic force to the “shoppers’ paradise” of the Middle Street Pedestrian Mall. But if you divert some of that time to exploring Chaoyang Street, you might happily discover some less known little treats it has to offer.
Fengtian office of Southern Manchurian Railways (131 Chaoyang Street)
It’s hard to credit that this rundown building with its faded facade and peeling paintwork, and the roof vegetation, was once the Fengtian※ office of the powerful Japanese Southern Manchurian Railway organisation, known as Mantetsu. Japanese’s control of the railways network in China’s Northeast came about after Japan defeated Russia in the 1904-05 war. The railway line, running from Harbin in the north to Port Arthur (Lüshan) in the south, was acquired by the Japanese in 1906. The premises on Chaoyang Street were clearly still occupied and padlocked from the outside (apparently, currently a training centre for a children’s library system). However, the organic outgrowth of the roof resembling someone’s unkempt backyard, suggested that the property was not a candidate for the local tourist circuit.
Shenyang Huangchengli Cultural Industrial Park (129 Chaoyang Street)
Shenyang and Chaoyang Jie’s penchant for turning the ordinary and mundane into something fresh and different is ably illustrated by the makeover given this old industrial complex. Situated like the ex-Manchurian Railways depot in the 皇城社区 (Huangcheng neighbourhood), a narrow entrance lane from the street leads to a small square. A new project, still presently in the process of completion, is to transform what was a drab old industrial site into a visually more appealing urban landscape. An attractive and classy new arch adorns the entrance to the square and historically and culturally relevant murals and other artworks including elegant carved relief panels decorate the walls. A subject figuring prominently in the industrial park’s paintings is local celebrity and 1930s Dongbei martial strongman Marshal Zhang (“the younger”). The artistic facelift of the old industrial complex on Chaoyang Street is a refreshing innovation in Shenyang, but one for which the city has precedents, eg, Shenyang’s 1905 Cultural and Creative Park taps into that same artistic and aesthetic potential for transforming a depressed industrial wasteland.
Marshal Zhang Mansion (Shaoshuaifu Alley, off Chaoyang Street)
Marshal Mansion, located down a short lane off Chaoyang Street, is the former residence of the “Two Zhangs”, Northeast warlords from the Chinese Republic era – father Zhang Zuolin and son Zhang Xueliang. The mansion now a museum comprises several buildings connected by courtyards. The main building, the family mansion itself, is neo-Gothic in style and is fronted by a body of large stones which have a prehistoric resemblance. The other buildings include an amalgam of different architectural styles (eg, traditional Siheyuan buildings, South China pavilions and Chinese–Western mixed styles). There’s lots of military stuff and a good collection of material and photos from the younger Zhang’s life after his fall from power and emigration to Hawaii. Other items of interest at the museum include the Zhang family carriage used to ferry the Zhang kids to school, and one of China’s very earliest motor vehicles. Admission is ¥60 adult and ¥30 concession.
⇩ Cobb & Co coach at Scarborough, NSW(Photo: Powerhouse Museum, Sydney) ⇧
See also the preceding post The Rise and Decline of Cobb & Co – Part I
By the 1880s Cobb & Co’s coach lines had become so successful in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland that most of its competitors had been either relegated to the ranks of commercial obscurity, gone out of business altogether or been swallowed up by the ubiquitous, dominant transport market leader (or all three!)
Overreach and eventual decline
Cobb & Co’s foray in new areas of enterprise led it, and specifically company boss James Rutherford, into more and more diverse fields – everything from gold and copper mines to horse-breeding to newspapers. The inevitable downside of over-diversification was diminishing success…moreover the failures were often the result of bad and even disastrous investments (a Lithgow iron ore mine, a 1880s railway construction project connecting Glen Innes and Tenterfield)💮and in this the blame lay squarely with Rutherford. Rutherford as GM had some glaring shortcomings – he was often impetuous in business when he should have been measured, and made important (and increasingly unwise) decisions without consulting his partners [Kathy Riley), Australian Geographic, 18-Oct-2011, www.australian geographic.com.au].
⇩ A fully loaded six-horse Cobb & Co coach
(Photo: www.visityuleba.com.au) ⇧
Other factors contributing to Cobb & Co’s downfall
In addition to the instability of taking on too muchconcurrently, the company was a victim of misfortune and circumstance. The 1890s was a decade that brought drought and a depression to the colonies. The drought hit Cobb & Co like a sledgehammer – the cost of feed for their thousands of horses sky-rocketed! During just the four years from 1898-1902, the cost was £70,000, which was nearly half of Cobb & Co’s total revenue. Compounding this was further devastation arising from the drought – losses of livestock, plummeting of the values of company’s properties [ibid.].
The introduction of commercial railways in the inland regions of Australia from the 1870s was a forewarning that the demise of coach transport was on the horizon. Cobb & Co in Victoria and NSW survived the new competition from the railroad for a time – in part because the coach line adopted the strategy of providing a complimentary service to it (joining the dots between the rail routes)✪. It also pushed its operations further westwards into NSW to service new localities and communities beyond the rail terminus [‘Coaching days in NSW’, (Cobb & Co in NSW), http://www.orange.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Cobb-Co-Resource.pdf].
UltimatelythoughCobb & Co was simply delaying the inevitable in the two southern colonies…Victoriaceased its company operations in 1890. The NSW operations’ decline led to itsBathurst and Bourke factories closing down not long after…all later coach-making was done through the CharlevilleCoachPlant in Queensland. By 1897 all the NSW lines ceased except those in the Bourke area [ibid.]. In 1902 Cobb & Co experienced a net loss of over £18,000 and owed considerably more than that to bankers and creditors [Riley, op.cit.]. Liquidation of the company soon followed. The following year the company was reformed but this wasn’t able to revive its flagging fortunes.
Queensland, the last outpost for Cobb & Co coaches
Only “vast and untrammelled” Queensland held out against the railways’ dominance, maintaining “a solid demand for coaching” beyond Federation and into the new century, with routes in the colony peaking at more than 7000km in 1900. Queensland Cobb & Co lines lingered on, gradually losing business to the railways, their routes shrivelling up bit by bit. The advent of motor vehicles, while still at a rudimentary stage, foreshadowed that horse coaches were dinosaurs as a long-term prospect. Cobb & Co itself dabbled in automobiles and in store-keeping, but these ventures brought it no success [ibid.].
Air mail anyone?
The embryonic development of commercial air travel was another sign of the imminent end of the road for Cobb & Co. In 1922 QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services) launched its inaugural air mail and passenger flying service (based in central west Queensland). Cobb & Co made its final trip in 1924 on the Yuleba to Surat (Qld) route. Thus the curtain was drawn for good on what had been Australia’s first ever privately-owned public transport system [ibid; Simpson, loc.cit.].
Endnote: A television series rip-off
In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a fictionalised TV take on the Cobb & Co story…made in Australia by ITV Britain♚. A fairly unexceptional piece of television adventure and light on historical accuracy, Whiplash was marketed in Australia and the US as “an Australianised Western”, it starred the serviceable American TV actor Peter Graves as the fictional “Chris(sic) Cobb”. Some of the episodes were written by the future creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry [‘Whiplash’, Classic Australian Television, www.classicaustraliantv.com].
⇧ ‘Whiplash’: Peter Graves in a scene (Photo: www.nostalgiacentral.com)
Fittingly, given that Queensland was the state that maintained the Cobb & Co tradition the longest, it has a museum dedicated to the memory of the Cobb & Co pioneers. Located in country Toowoomba, the museum houses historic Cobb & Co coaches as part of an extended collection of horse-drawn vehicles – the ‘National Carriage Collection’. (Source: www.queensland.com)
⥰⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽─⤽⥰
💮 which left Cobb and Co a very sizeable £130,000 in debt
♚ filmed on location at Scone, NSW, and at Artransa ParkStudios in French’s Forest, (northern Sydney) which then contained a suitably bushy backdrop
✪ this contrasted markedly with the fate of coach transport in England – where the introduction of railways, occurring from the 1830s, killed off the coaches in quick time [‘Cobb and Co coach’, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, (Margaret Simpson, Curator, Transport), 12-Jun-2013, http://maas.museum]
❝Such days as when the Royal Mail was run by Cobb & Co❞ ~ Henry Lawson
🌀-🌀-🌀
Cobb and Co is a name that still has much currency within Australian and New Zealand society. In New South Wales in the rural tourist industry there is the “Cobb & Co Heritage Trail” which invites travellers to take the “historical self-drive” following the outback route from Bathurst to Bourke that the celebrated erstwhile coach service once trekked. Queensland holds a Cobb & Co festival each year to honour the historic Surat to Yuleba route. There are touring bus and coach businesses operating that have also appropriated the name…in addition there are “Cobb & Co hotels” and “Cobb and Co bottle shops” scattered around regional areas of the eastern states※.
⇓ Cobb & Co Heritage Trail
All of this is testimony to the fame of the original Cobb & Company which was once a household transport name, etching for itself a place in the folklore of Australia’s outback regions. The company’s story begins in the goldfields of Victoria in the 1850s. In 1853 the American Adams & Co coach firm despatched Freeman Cobb and three American colleagues⚀ to Melbourne with the objective of establishing a local operation which would capitalise on the hordes of fortune seekers flocking to the Victorian gold rushes. As things transpired, Cobb ended up starting his own coach service together with the other Americans🔰, thus was born Cobb & Co.
Freeman Cobb ⇑ (Photo: www.geni.com)
The first trip (January 1854) of Cobb & Co carrying passengers, goods and equipment went from Collins Street (Melbourne city) to the Forest Creek goldfields (now Castlemaine) and to Bendigo✫. Cobb & Co was a winner pretty much from the outset…by 1856 the company was worth £16,000 (in 2011 values around $2.1 million). Freeman Cobb however didn’t stick around to see the full flowering of it’s success, after three years he sold out of his eponymous company, moving on to other (less successful) ventures. Cobb & Co changed hands a couple of times, and then in 1861 it was purchased by a consortium of nine US and Canadian businessmen for £23,000 ($3.4m in 2011) [‘Cobb & Co: historical transport’, (Kathy Riley), Australian Geographic, 18-Oct-2011, www.australian geographic.com.au].
The driving force of the firm under the consortium was another American immigrant, James Rutherford. Rutherford began by organising all of the company’s lines (the different routes), making them more profitable concerns. Under his leadership Cobb & Co expanded into NSW and Queensland (the NSW operations were based at Bathurst). At the company’s peak in the 1870s, it’s coaches were covering a distance of nearly 45,000km a week with routes stretching from the very top of Queensland (the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cooktown) down to southern Victoria [ibid.; ‘In the Days of Cobb & Co’, Sydney Mail, 20-Apr-1921, www.trove.nla.gov.au]. As one one chronicler of the iconic transport company’s story observed, Cobb & Co was many things combined – “the Qantas, the Australia Post, the TNT and the Holden of its day” [Sam Everingham, Wild Ride, The Rise and Fall of Cobb and Co, (2007)].
James Rutherford⇓
(Photo source: State Library of Queensland)
What accounted for Cobb & Co’s spectacular success in the coach transportation business?
The decisive factors were manifold but basically Cobb & Co beat it’s competitors in several logistical areas. It’s coaches were faster and more efficient…while the rivals used heavy, rigid English coaches for their runs, Cobb imported American Concord coaches (made in New Hampshire and used in the American West) which were rounded and lightweight and had supple coach bodies – far more suited to the rugged Australian landscape than the cumbersome English coaches. Consequently Cobb & Co’s coaches gave a smoother, faster ride [Riley, loc.cit.] (the Concords, though superior, apparently didn’t always deliver that smooth a ride as they were known colloquially as the “red bone-shakers”).
A replica C & C Concord coach on display at Timbertown, NSW ⇓
The Concord coaches were fitted with leather braces and straps in place of the inflexible iron ones used on other horse-drawn vehicles which had a tendency to snap too easily (leather also provided greatly superior suspension for the carriage). Concord coaches were made to last the rugged journey and so contributed to a reputation for reliability that the Cobb service was able to establish [‘Days of Cobb & Co’, loc.cit.].
A master stroke by Cobb was to establish a series of changing stations every 16-32km along the routes. This gave Cobb & Co journeys the big advantage of always having fresh horses, enabling the drivers to maintain high speeds over long distances.
Cobb & Co coachmen – risky adventures, pitfalls and hazards of the job
The drivers themselves employed by the company were possessed of extraordinary skills in managing their horses and vehicles. They had to be to negotiate all the difficulties and obstacles in their paths and still keep on schedule…atrocious roads made worse by inclement weather, flooding of creeks and rivers, and unpredictable encounters with dangerous bushrangers◘, were all recurring events that challenged the mettle of the coach drivers. The dangers aside, experiencing the thrills and (near) spills and the full-on ‘wildness’ of a Cobb & Co journey through “the bush”, must have been an exhilarating experience for colonial travellers in the day.
Many of the drivers, some of which Cobb and (later) Rutherford recruited from the US, were colourful characters in addition to being accomplished horse handlers…blokes such as Dick Houston, Jim Conroy, ‘Silent’ Bob Bates, H Barnes, and not least “Cabbage Tree” Ned Devine. Devine, with his team of distinctive light grey horses, was by all accounts a particularly exceptional driver (earning himself a very good wage of £17 a week)…when the first English cricket team toured Australia (HH Stephenson’s, 1862), Devine was their driver on the Victorian leg of the tour [K. A. Austin, ‘Devine, Edward (Ned) (1833–1908)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/devine-edward-ned-3405/text5169, published first in hardcopy 1972, accessed online 31 May 2019].
Ned ‘Cabbage Tree’ Devine ⇓
(Photo source: State Library of Victoria)
Similarly, Cobb & Co’s grooms played an integral role in the highly organised operation…each groom was personally responsible for eight to ten horses and for their gear. The clockwork operation saw the drivers sound a bugle when they were one mile from the next staging post, this alerted the grooms to have the fresh team of horses primed and ready the minute the coach arrived. The pay-off for such a high level of efficiency, superior speed and dependability was that Cobb & Co scored lucrative mail contracts from the colonial governments [ibid.].
Cobb diversifies from its passenger and goods transport base
General manager Rutherford was the catalyst for Cobb & Co’s diversification into new businesses. Initially this payed dividends with its first move, appropriately enough, into coach and buggy building at Bathurst, NSW. Just four years into this activity Cobb & Co could boast that it was the largest coach-maker in Australia [ibid.].
Rutherford also acquired pastoral properties for the company, another profitably step for Cobb & Co. By 1877 they had nine sheep and cattle stations across NSW and Queensland covering an area of 11,000 square kilometres and turning a net profit of £77,500 (equivalent to $11.3M in 2011)…this was at a time that the company’s revenue from coaching – the principal business – was yielding only £11,500 ($1.7M) a year by comparison [ibid.].
By the end of the 1870s Cobb & Co had been in business for 25 years and had already established itself in the eastern mainland states as something of an institution in the “wide, brown land”. It had undergone diversification and experienced growth, but as I will show in Part II, the remarkable good fortunes of Cobb & Co was about to take a decided turn for the worse.
💫–💫–💫
PostScript: Exporting the Cobb & Co model
Unsurprisingly, the spectacular trajectory of Cobb & Co’s rise in fortune and fame drew imitators elsewhere. A number of coaching services, some using the same name (although totally unrelated to the original eastern Australian company), sprang up independently in South Australia, Western Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Africa. This last concern was started up by Freeman Cobb himself in 1871, hoping to cash in on the discoveries of diamonds and gold in the Kimberley and the Transvaal (unfortunately Cobb couldn’t reproduce his Australian success, dying in South Africa still in his 40s) [K. A. Austin, ‘Cobb, Freeman (1830–1878)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cobb-freeman-3237/text4883, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 29 May 2019].
‘Kiwi’ Cobb & Co
The New Zealand version was begun by Charles Cole, who’d previously ran Cobb & Co’s Smyth’s Creek to Ballarat line in Australia❎. As in Victoria and NSW the impetus for the initiative in NZ was the gold rush in Otago (1861). Cole’s Otago coach proprietorship was in partnership with the Hoyts brothers (operating as Cole, Hoyt & Co., proprietors of Cobb & Co. Telegraph Line of Coaches)…later the service was extended to Christchurch and Canterbury. The legendary Ned ‘Cabbage Tree’ Devine worked at one time for the New Zealand outfit, driving the Dunedin to Palmerston and Oamaru routes [Austin, ‘Ned Devine’, loc.cit.; ‘Cobb & Co (New Zealand)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛⏛
※ in fact there are all manner of commercial enterprises in Australasia using the “Cobb & Co” handle as a trading name – restaurants, bars, B ‘n Bs, screen printers, clockmakers, kitchen manufacturers, etc.
⚀ the others were James Swanson, Anthony Blake and John Murray Peck (who later became a successful stock and station agent in Melbourne and a vice-president of the Essendon Australian Football Club)
🔰 the average age of the four American founders was just 22 – although they did have combined experience working for Adams, Wells Fargo and other coach companies in the US
✫ Cobb charged £5 per passenger for the roughly 110 ml journey [‘Days of Cobb & Co’, loc.cit.]
◘ one of the best known bushranging incidents involving Cobb & Co was the 1863 holdup at Eugowra (in the NSW central west)…notorious bushranging gang led by Frank Gardiner and Ben Hall robbed a Ford & Co coach (the firm was takes over by Cobb & Co one week later) of £14,000 in gold and banknotes from the goldfields [‘Details of the Robbery’, (Welcome to Eugowra in the heart of bushranger country), www.eugowra.aus.net]
❎ Colebrought one of the custom built Concord coaches across the Tasman with him to Otago
I first happened upon the name of ‘Capability’ Brown several years ago when I was researching the Kirkbride buildings complex in Sydney✼. I guess it was the jokey sounding name that first caught my interest. I found his name historically associated with the popularising of “Ha-Ha” Walls (another hard-to-take-serious concept when you first encounter it without context) which is an architectural feature of Kirkbride. Brown acquired his nickname from his habit of telling clients that their land had capability for improvement [‘Highclere Castle: The real-life Downton Abbey’, (Steve McKenna), SMH, 17-Apr-2016, www.traveller.com.au].
Highclere ⇓
Capability (Christian name Lancelot) Brown’s career as a landscape gardener and designer in the 18th century was a wildly successful one. Lofty accolades cast in his direction describe him as “England’s greatest gardener” and “the Shakespeare of Gardening”. He rose from humble origins to become master gardener to George III at Hampton Court Palace, receiving over 250 commissions in his lifetime and designing in excess of 170 parks (the majority of which survive) [‘Capability Brown’, Wikipedia, http:/:en.m.wikipedia.org]. His vast oeuvre stretches over 30 counties in England and Wales, greater London and even one garden project in Germany. As artistic creators of grand physical structures go, the fecund Brown was the landscaping and gardening equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright of his day – minus the ego!
Portrait of the “rockstar” landscape gardener
And like that prolific and seminal 20th century American architect he was very well remunerated for his efforts. From the 1760s Brown was earning £6,000 per annum (equivalent to £806,000 in 2018 money!) and £500 for a single commission [ibid.].
Classical v Romantic
As Brown was starting to learn the trade in the late 1730s, there was a fundamental change going on with landscape gardens England. The formally patterned garden with its strict geometrical order and adherence to the classical style (the embodiment of the Palladian ideal) was giving way to a new, more informal type of garden landscape✥…romantic, irregular, not conforming to order, the appearance of a natural landform [Bassin, Joan. “The English Landscape Garden in the Eighteenth Century: The Cultural Importance of an English Institution.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 1979, pp. 15–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4048315].
William Kent ⇓
The new style
In the forefront of this movement towards the natural and informal was WilliamKent (Brown’s mentor), Charles Bridgeman and others, as well as prominent literary figures of the day like Alexander Pope. What Kent et al started, Capability Brown would go on to elevate to a higher plane.
Typical features of the Brown garden
(see also “Ha-Ha Wall” in end-note) Brown honed his landscaping style while working under Kent at Stowe (Bucks). Trademark features: smooth, undulating grass running straight to the house; the grand sweeping drive (eg, Ashridge Estate, Berrington Hall, Wimpole Estate); the woodland belt (eg, Basildon Park, Dinefwr, Ickworth); clumps and scatterings of trees (eg, Petworth Park, Stowe, Croome); the picturesque stone bridge (eg, Prior Park, Wallington, Stowe): and serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers (eg, Hatfield Forest, Stowe, Wimpole Estate); decorative garden buildings (monuments, temples, rotundas and follies◙) (eg, Clandon Park, Petworth Park, Stowe, Wallington); cedars of Lebanon🌲 (eg, Croome, Charlecote Park) [National Trust (#1) , www.nationaltrust.org.uk; ‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.]
Era of the picturesque
The picturesque was a 18th century movement in art and architecture which was a reaction to Neo–classicism with its fixation on order, proportion and exactitude. In Georgian England the picturesque influenced landscape designers like Brown (and his successor HumphryRepton) who sought to replicate the romanticised country scenes of Italian paintings in their garden projects. The features in Brown’s ‘natural’✪ garden landscapes – long vistas to lakes, bridges, lawns, ruins, groves of trees and Ha-Ha walls – were a case of real life imitating (sublime) art [‘Lancelot “Capability” Brown and Humphrey Repton and the Picturesque’, (Janice Mills Fine Artist), (Jan-Dec 2016), http://janicemillsfineartist.wordpress.com]◇.
Social purpose
The new informal gardens in 18th century England, as typified in Brown’s landscapes, were created to underscore the growing affluence of the landowningclass…showingEngland through their properties as they wished it to be seen, “a wealthy, educatedandfertile centre of the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment”. Thus Brown’s beautiful, idyllic estate gardens were intended to resemble a romantic painted scene through the “use of local natural elements and English architecture” [ibid.].
Dinefwr Castle (Carmarthenshire) – in this Welsh estate LCB was engaged as a visiting consultant, makingrecommendations to the landowners
(Photo: National Trust) ⇓
Multitasker extraordinaire
Capability Brown was able to complete a vast sum of landscape projects in this career. On average, at any one time he had six projects going simultaneously, this testifies to Brown being able to work fast…an accomplished horseback rider, he could ride from site to site, survey it and knock up a rough design, all within a couple of hours. Of course even with his exceptional capacity he could only spread himself so far, when he couldn’t personally oversee projects, he would delegate to his hand-picked team of foremen, assistant surveyors and landscapers to be “hands-on” on-site and ensure that his designs were implemented properly [‘Our great ‘Capability’ Brown landscapes’, National Trust, (#2), www.nationaltrust.org.uk; ‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.].
Brown’s success as a landscape architect owed a lot to different factors…one of his virtues was his ability to choose assistants for his projects – he had a knack of picking the right people to work with, such as William Donn, John Hobcroft and Nathaniel Richmond. Brown also kept himself informed of the latest technologies. His awareness of hydraulic devices led him to utilise steam pumps employed in mining for the water features of his landscapes [Shields, Steffie. “’Mr Brown Engineer’: Lancelot Brown’s Early Work at Grimsthorpe Castle and Stowe.” Garden History, vol. 34, no. 2, 2006, pp. 174–191. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25472339].
Dissenting voices – ‘Culpability’ Brown
Despite the popularity Brown attracted for his landscape work, the Northumberland garden designer had his detractors… both from contemporaries and from critics after his time. Typical among these was Uvedale Price who criticised Brown for sweeping away all of the older trees and formal garden features in wholesale fashion (destroying the aesthetic of the classical of earlier landscapes). Similarly, architect William Chambers thought the “new manner of gardens” (code for Brown’s work) as little improvement on “common fields and vulgar nature” [‘Brown’, Wiki, op.cit.]. Certainly for these critics, the subject of their censure may have better been labelled ‘Culpability’ Brown!
Some of the invective aimed on Brown’s direction however would have derived from a more base source. Class snobbery would have been a motive for some given Brown’s modest origins – the language often used was a giveaway, detractors like architect Reginald Blomfield disparaged him as “a peasant slave from the melon ground” and having once been (allegedly) a “kitchen gardener” [Shields, loc.cit.]. Some of the opprobrium also was no doubt born out of sheer jealousy at Brown’s immense fame and financial success.
In 2016a collection of Royal Mail stamps were issued to mark the tercentenary of LCB’s birth ⇓
A “single shaping hand”
For the many true believers though, no praise for the man known as ‘Capability’ seems high enough…one observer noted of his Highclere Castle (Hants) gardens: the location has been a designed landscape for over 1,200 years, yet Brown’s stamp is so much on the place. The remarkable result of one person imposing “his vision with sufficient force for it to have endured indefinitely” [Phipp, loc.cit.].
So successful was Capability Brown in popularising the informal garden, and so imitated was he, that he played a revolutionary role in changing the face and character of English gardens forever. In creating naturalistic landscapes he ‘copied’ nature so skilfully that “his work is often mistaken for natural landscapes” [‘How to spot a Capability Brown landscape’,[National Trust, (#1), loc.cit.].
The English Ha-Ha⇓
End-note: The Ha-Ha: “Invisible boundaries”
The Ha-Ha Wall (AKA the sunken wall) was a defining features of a typical Capability Brown landscape garden. The Ha-Ha (French in origin)was devised to keep grazing animals out of the more formal areas of a garden, doing away with the need for a fence while creating the illusion of openness. Brown et al used it to provide unbroken vista views – from the house and garden to the parkland or countryside beyond (eg, Petworth Park, Charlecote Park, Stowe) [‘Garden Features: What are Ha-Has?’, The English Garden, 29-Oct-2014, www.theenglishgarden.co.uk].
PostScript: The test of timeRemarkable also are the number of country gardens sculpted by Brown that have remained intact (or at least partly so). Around 150 survive – including Alnwick Castle (Northumberland), Blenheim Palace (Oxfds), Basildon Park (Berks), Croome Park (Worcs), Stowe House and Stoke Park (Bucks), Berrington Hall (Hertfds), MiltonAbbey and Abbas (Dorset), Clandon Park (Surrey), Charlecote Park (Warws), Chatsworth House (Derbys), Petworth Park (Sussex), Warwick Castle (Warws), Wimpole Estate (Cambs), Wallington (East Yorks), Hatfield Forrest (Essex), Harewood House (West Yorks), Ashridge Estate (Hertfds), Appuldurcombe House (Isle of Wight), Ickworth (Suffolk), Belvoir Castle (Leics), Dinefwr Castle (Wales), Kew Gardens (Lond) and of course Highclere, these days more famous for the location of the TV series “Downton Abbey”.⇑Brown’s penchant for lakes & bridges (Photo: National Trust)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
✼ ‘Callan Park: The Kirkbride Experiment, a Microcosm of “Good Intentions” ‘, December 2015 blog
✥ this trend had a paradoxical component to it…as the born-to-rule gentry were opting for country homes which were smaller, the gardens were becoming larger [Bassin, loc.cit.] – which of course suited landscape gardeners like Brown given to broad canvasses
◙ follies are decorative, usually non-functional, buildings that enhance the planned landscape, Brown used mock Roman villas, Medieval ruins, etc
🌲 evergreen conifers
✪Brown’s gardens were of course not natural in any organically occurring sense, but carefully and meticulously contrived to both look natural and to convey “a sense of informality” [‘Capability Brown’, Britain Express, www.britainexpress.com
◇ Brown’s vistas contained no clear delineation between house, parkland and natural environment giving the landscapesa seamless appearance [Mills, op.cit.]
Cinesound is a name that resonates brightly in the history of Australia’s film industry – it harks back to a time when the indigenous industry still had a place of some significance in the pecking order of world cinema. The establishment of Cinesound Studios (in 1931) to make talking motion pictures, evolved out of a group of movie exhibiting companies (including Australasian Films and Union Theatres) which had coalesced into Greater Union Theatres in the Twenties.
In 1925 Australasian Films purchased a roller skating rink at 65 Ebley Street, Bondi Junction, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Australasian converted part of the premises into a film studio but maintained the skating rink as an ongoing commercial concern to help finance the studios’ film production (by day a film studio, by night a skating rink) [‘Cinesound: From roller rink to sound stage’, (Waverley Library), www.waverley.nsw.gov.au].
# 1 Studios Bondi Junction ⬇
Greater Union (henceforth GUT) was involved in all forms of the movie business – production, distribution and exhibition. The Bondi Studios made a few silent films in the late 1920s, like The Adorable Outcast and most notably The Term of His Natural Life which cost £60,000 and bombed badly at the box office [‘Cinesound Productions’, Sydney Morning Herald, 06-Aug-1934 (Trove).
Stuart F Doyle, GUT managing director, appointed former film publicist Ken G Hall as general manager of the newly formed Cinesound Productions. Two more Cinesound studio locations were opened, one at nearby Rushcutters Bay and the other at St Kilda (in Melbourne). Over an eight-year period (1932-40), with Hall at the helm as producer-director, Cinesound produced 17 feature films (16 of which were directed by Hall). The first of the sequence, On Our Selection, revolved round the adventures of one of Australian cinema’s most popular characters, Dad Rudd and his family. The film, benefiting from a new sound-recording system invented in Tasmania, was a box office triumph for Cinesound, earning £46,000 in Australia and New Zealand by the end of 1933, providing a tremendous fillip for the fledgling studios [Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900-1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, (1998)].
Studios # 1 at Bondi Junction※ provided a large interior space for film production, over 20,000 square feet…with more than 100 craftsmen on the staff, the facility was equipped to complete “all stages of production, processing and sound recording, in the preparation of topical, scenic, educational, industrial, and microscopic films” [SMH, 06-Aug-1934, loc.cit.]. Some newspapers of the day erroneously referred to the main studios as being #3 and the location as Waverley (an adjoining suburb of Bondi Junction).
Cinesound and Hall exploited On Our Selection’s popularity with a series of sequels, Grandad Rudd, Dad and Dave Come to Town and Dad Rudd, MP. Of these the ‘Dad and Dave’ entry especially proved a hit, matching the profitability of the original movie.
↗ Ken G Hall (centre) with American actress Helen Twelvetrees during filming of ‘Thoroughbred’ (photo: Mitchell Library)
Sydney’s ‘Little Hollywood’ While Ken G Hall’s cinematic canvas was unmistakably Australian (only one of the Cinesound movies was not set in Australia), his approach to film-making saw Hollywood clearly as the model. With the characteristic “spirit of a showman”✺, Hall wanted to shape Cinesound Studios in the Hollywood mould⊡…to create a “Little Hollywood” with a star system, hyped-up promotion of the studios’ movies, etc. [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].
↗ Twelvetrees outside Cinesound Studios
FT and Efftee Studios Sydney-based Cinesound’s domestic rival in the film-making caper was Melbourne’s Efftee Studios, started by theatrical entrepreneur Frank W Thring (FT) in 1930. Thring produced the first commercially-viable sound feature-length film in Australia, Diggers (1931) in collaboration with Pat Hanna. Efftee, unlike Cinesound though, had to import the optical sound system for its movies from the USA. [‘Efftee Studios’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Other notable Efftee films of the Thirties include an adaption of CJ Dennis’ The Sentimental Bloke to the screen, and several George Wallace vehicles, His Royal Highness, Harmony Row and A Ticket in Tatts. Thring’s premature death in 1935 put paid to Efftee Studios’ productions.
⬆️ Australian cinema’s long tradition of Bushranger flicks beginning with the original 1906 feature film
The outlawing of bushranger films A 1930s Cinesound project for a film based on the popular Australian novel, Robbery Under Arms was quashed as it would have transgressed the standing prohibition by the NSW government (in force since 1912), banning movies about bushrangers✪ [‘Bonuses for Films’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20-Oct-1934 (Trove); ‘Bushranger ban’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Shirley Ann Richards: Cinesound’s contract female star In accordance with Ken G Hall’s star-making approach, he fostered the career of actress Shirley Ann Richards, starring her in several of his films (It Isn’t Done, Tall Timbers, Lovers and Luggers and Dad and Dave Come to Town). Richards, Cinesound’s only star under long-term contract, later emigrated to America and had a reasonably high profile Hollywood career (under the name Ann Richards).
The Kellaway brothers and Cinesound Alec Kellaway and his more famous brother Cecil were feature players for Hall and Cinesound. Alec was a regular performer, appearing in a raft of the studio’s movies including The Broken Melody, Mr Chedworth Steps Out and several of the Dad Rudd series. South African-born Cecil Kellaway started his acting career on the Australian stage, establishing himself first as a top Australian theatre star before appearing in two Cinesound films where his performances opened studio doors in Hollywood for him…Kellaway subsequently carved out a career as a major character actor in numerous US films.
George Wallace, Aussie “king of comedy” In addition to being a prominent actor in Efftee Studios musical-comedies, George Wallace was Ken G Hall’s “go-to” favourite comic performer, starring in two late 1930s Cinesound films directed by Hall – Let George Do It and Gone to the Dogs.With the outbreak of world war Cinesound called a halt on feature film production. During the war years the studios directed all energies into making newsreels, initially covering the war against Japan and beyond that on all aspects of Australiana.
Newsreel rivalry: Cinesound Vs Movietone: the focus on newsreels by Cinesound was not a novel innovation. From its outset Cinesound produced newsreels – short documentary films containing news stories and items of topical interest – in competition with the rival Fox Movietone company. The two newsreels differed in content, Cinesound concentrated on Australian only topics while Movietone covered a mix of international and national news✤.
Newsreels in Australia prior to 1956 occupied a unique place in media and communications. Before the introduction of television, cinema-goers’ exposure to newsreels (part of the “warm-up” for the main feature) were the only images Australians saw of their land – the footage of elections, natural disasters and other such events [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.]. Thus, newsreels like the Cinesound Review, with its distinctive red kangaroo symbol, were an important source of news and current affairs, and were an integral part of the cinema program [‘Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreels’, (ASO) (Poppy De Souza), www.aso.gov.au]✙. According to Anthony Buckley, the newsreels reflected Ken G Hall’s “pride and spirited nationalism” [Buckley, A, ‘Obituary: Ken G. Hall’, The Independent (London), 17-Feb-1994].
The studios site post-Cinesound In 1951 Cinesound sold off the Ebley Street building which became a factory manufacturing American soft drink. However, between 1956 and 1973 the building reverted to the world of visual communications, housing various film and television production companies including Ajax Films. Following that, it housed a furniture retailer. Today it is the home of a Spotlight store (fabrics and home interiors) [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].
Ken G Hall in his autobiography contended that Cinesound Productions never lost money on any feature films. Some did very well – crime drama The Silence of Dean Maitland, for instance, for an outlay of £10,000 returned takings of more than £70,000 in Australia and the UK [Graham Shirley & Brian Adams, Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, (1989)]. One Cinesound movie however, strictly-speaking, probably did lose money…Roy Rene’s single venture into celluloid, Strike Me Lucky, in which ‘Mo’s’ humour, robbed of it’s spontaneity in live performance didn’t translate well to the big screen and was reflected in negative critical reviews and at the box office [Film Review: ‘Strike Me Lucky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19-Nov-1934 (Trove)]. Despite Hall’s faith in the studios’ films, from 1937 there was a decline in box office returns (prompting GUT head Doyle to resign). Another (external) factor affecting Cinesound profitability occurred in 1938 with the passing of the Cinematograph Films Act in the UK…under this legislation Australian films no longer counted as local, their removal from the British quota meant a loss of market for Cinesound and other Australian movie producers [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].
The war resulted in a temporary halt to Cinesound feature films, however the studios made only one more (postwar) feature film, Smithy, a biopic about pioneering aviator Charles Kingsford Smith in 1946. Another blow to Cinesound’s future prospects at this time was a move by Rank Organisation – the British film giant purchased a controlling interest in Greater Union, preferring to use it to exhibit its own UK films in Australia [‘The first wave of Australian feature film production FROM EARLY PROMISE TO FADING HOPES’, http://afcarchive.screenaustralia.gov.au].
⬆️ ‘Smithy’ star Ron Randell later pursued a career in Hollywood
Stuart Doyle’s contribution WWII took all the impetus out of the Australian industry, there was a shortage of performers and crew due to recruitment and conscription. Stock available for film was also in short supply, what there was directed first and foremost to making propaganda and news films in support of the allies’ side. More particular to Cinesound’s challenges, the loss of MD Stuart Doyle before the war was especially telling. Film production is high cost (especially sound which proved massively more expensive) and high risk…Hall’s ability to pursue a good number of projects in the Thirties, depended on Doyle’s willingness to take a risk with Cinesound. When he departed, he was replaced by a “risk-adverse accountant who favoured real estate over film production” [ibid.].
Footnote: Cinesound Talent School The Cinesound people eventually established its own talent school for young actors. Run by George Cross and Alec Kellaway (a regular player in Cinesound movies)…offering training in “deportment, enunciation, miming, microphone technique and limbering”✥. By 1940 the school had had over 200 students including Grant Taylor, later a prominent actor in Australian movies and TV dramas [‘Cinesound Talent School, SMH, 02-Feb-1939, (Trove); Cinesound Productions’, Wiki, op.cit.].
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※ In 2002 GUT merged with Village Roadshow, these days Greater Union picture theatres go under the name ‘Event Cinemas’
✺ a trait shared by Greater Union boss Doyle ⊡ the company even closed down production at Bondi for several months in 1935 to let Hall go off to Hollywood to study American film techniques
✪ the state authorities felt that the popularity of the bushranger film genre would exert an ‘unhealthy’ influence on Australians, especially on the young, and make them more resistant to authority
✤ the two newsreel providers merged in 1970, forming the Australian Movie Magazine which folded in 1975
✙ the 1978 film drama Newsfront is a fictionalised account of newsreel makers in Australia between the late Forties and mid Fifties which includes actual newsreel footage from the period
✥ school director Kellaway’s brief was teaching dramatics and mic technique
Barely four kilometres south of Apia Town, just off the Cross Island Road, is Samoa’s finest residential building, Villa Vailima (1891), the home away from the (Northern) cold built by Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (see FN below).
⌂ RLS ‘Treasure Island’ Samoan stamp
Anyone with a passing acquaintance of mainstream Western literature will have some familiarity with Stevenson’s work. Author of a host of illustrious juvenile adventure classics like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae✲, and one Gothic novella, Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, offering deep psychological insights into the human mind.
Stevenson’s voluntary exile from Britain in search of a climate less injurious to his fragile health led him to the Pacific. After sailing around the islands on an extended ‘odyssey’ (Hawaii, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia, Marshall Islands, etc), Stevenson (accompanied by his American wife) settled on Samoa as a hoped-for antidote to his chronic bronchial condition✥.
RLS in local politics
When Stevenson set anchor in Samoa the islands were in the midst of a civil war over succession to the Samoan throne. Behind the stand-off between rival chieftains was a three-way struggle for control between the colonial powers, Germany, the US and Britain, each of which had despatched warships to the Samoan islands to protect it’s commercial interests. While building the Vailima home RLS embroiled himself in the political conflict, taking the islanders’ side against the colonialists…so much so that he became a sort of political advisor to the indigenous factions [‘History of Samoa’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
By the conclusion of a second civil war in 1899, the colonial powers under a Tripartite Convention divided up the islands between them – Germany retained the western islands of Upolu and Savai’i, and the US got American Samoa (Britain did a trade for the Northern Solomons) [ibid.]
The Stevenson family at the Vailima homestead ⥥
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Tusitala’s kudos
Stevenson’s whole-hearted embrace of the Samoan people was reciprocated…though a palagi (white-skinned person) they afforded him a special status in Samoan society. The Samoans attributed the quality of mana (“heaven-sent” supernatural powers) to the writer. And the craft of his story-telling which he had mastered so expertly in his novels led Samoans to bestow on him the title of Tusitala, the “teller of tales” [‘Samoans Honor Adopted Son, The Teller of Tales’, (Lawrence Van Gelder], New York Times, 08-Dec-1994, www.nytimes.com]. Samoans however were nonplussed as to how RLS earned his living (being at a loss to comprehend how the activity of story-telling could amount to paid work!).
Centennary British banknote with images of RLS & Vailima ⥥
After RLS’s death of a stroke in December 1894 after decades of ill-health, his widow sold up and returned to California. Since then, Villa Vailima initially housed the German colonial administrators followed by the New Zealand ones. After decolonisation it became the residence of the Western Samoan head of state. Finally, restored to its impecable state, it was transformed into its present incarnation as the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum on the anniversary of the novelist’s death.
Recreating RLS’ treasured island haven
A visit to Villa Vailima today will discover a slendid, elegant mansion of a building. A tour will reveal the scope of the interior which includes five bedrooms, a large living room, a smoking room, a library/ study and a ballroom big enough to accommodate 100 dancers. In his time there Stevenson made several additions and extensions…I was informed by our guide that the east wing of the building was added later as separate living quarters for RLS’s mother-in-law who had come to live with them◙.
The walls of some of the Villa’s rooms were adorned with incongruous items, like the bow-and-arrow set in this bedroom⥥
RSL’s study and the smoking room are probably the highlights of the tour for several reasons…on display in the former is a bookcase full of original translations of RL Stevenson works. Even more impressive, it contains the novelist ’s original, solid wood writing desk (on which he wrote his last four novels). The pièce de résistance for me though was in the downstairs smoking room – a double fireplace had been installed (and never used!) It seems that the Scot wanted the “feel-good” reassurance of having a quintessential feature of his former Northern hemisphere life – irrespective of how incongruously impractical it seemed (and how puzzling to Stevenson’s Samoan attendants!), located in the steamy tropical climes of the South Pacific. RL’s wife Fanny had her own familiar reminder of home at the Vailima house, she had the walls of her bedroom lined with polished Californian redwood [Lonely Planet Samoan Islands, (M Bennett et al) (2003)].
⥥ The smoking room
I was also intrigued by the contents of the spacious living room…what caught my eye immediately was this massive mega-safe in the middle of the room (too big I thought even for the XXL-proportioned Samoans to move!). The very large portrait of RLS (by Sargent?) next to it looked broodingly dark and foreboding. The guide recounted to us how Stevenson was brought into this room by his servants after he was fatally stricken out on the front lawns of the property.
Ascending Mt Vaea
It is very fitting once you’ve toured the RLS residence and learnt some of his Samoan story to take in the final chapter by making the 472m trek up Mt Vaea to glimpse the “teller of tales’” final resting place. It’s a short but a very steep climb and can get very hazardous after heavy rain (I have first-hand experience of how slippery it can get having slid right off the quagmire of a track on the return descent!). When you reach the beautiful high plateau where Stevenson’s tomb is located you will appreciate just how irenic and tranquil the setting is. The great views of the island from the top are also well worth the effort of getting there.
Footnote on ‘Vailima’: There are two interpretations of the name’s etymology – in Samoan ‘vai’ means ‘water’ so Vailima is commonly rendered as “Five Waters”, however the suffix ‘lima’ can mean ‘hand’ or ‘arm’ (as well as the number ‘five), so an alternate (literal) explanation for Vailima is “water in the hand” [Theroux, J. (1981). ‘Some Misconceptions about RLS’. The Journal of Pacific History, 16(3), 164-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168472]
PostScript: RLS in Sydney
From his Samoa base Stevenson made several trips to Sydney, staying mainly at the city’s Union Club (Bent Street) and at the Oxford Club (Darlinghurst). On one visit he stopped over in Auckland where he met the former governor and premier of NZ, Sir George Grey. Stevenson occupied his time in Sydney by mainly working on various manuscripts of novels and stories (including The Wrecker, Ebb-Tide and In The South Seas)✪ [‘RLS Website’, (2018), www.robert-louis-stevenson.org].
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✲ not to neglect the personal favourite “Boys Own” RLS book of my 11-year-old self, The Black Arrow ➳
✥ the choice of Samoa as home was desirable on pragmatic terms because it had a regular mail service (allowing RLS the professional author to connect with agents, editors and publishers). He was also attracted to the place because it was not too ‘civilised’ [Prof Richard Dury, ‘RLS Website’]
◙ the anecdote goes that Stevenson sent her off to Sydney for a few months and upon her return had the new wing built so he could put some (much sought-after) distance between them!
✪ these last two books plus The Wrong Box (1889) were co-written with his American stepson (S) Lloyd Osbourne
To the east of Farm Cove the contours of Sydney Harbour’s south shore pass several peninsulas that traverse through the scenic and exclusive Eastern Suburbs. The most affluent of these small peninsula suburbs are probably Point Piper (home of the most recent Australian prime minister to be deposed by his party) and Darling Point. Personifying Point Piper’s claim to suburban exclusivity is Wolseley Road, envied by realty obsessives for being the most expensive street or road for residential property in Australia, its status stands to those who care about such things as “the nation’s ultimate address” (sixteen of Sydney’s top 100 most expensive houses are located on this road) [‘Point Piper’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Darling Point (McKell’s) occasional wharf⇓
Neighbouring Darling Point✲ rates almost as highly as ‘PP’ in the affluential stakes and has a history that is even more illustrious! The suburb retains many fine mansions from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it is a mansion that is no more, that is the focus of this blog. The serene little, two-tiered park at the northern tip of Yarranabbe Point✤, McKell Park (named after a former state premier and governor-general) is the picturesque site that once housed Canonbury, a well-presented Gothic style mansion.
Canonbury (above), built in 1904 on the site of an earlier residence, Lansdowne, is a short 9-iron from another celebrated mansion, Lindesay – a villa in the Gothic Revival style named after a little known acting governor of the early colony and still standing. Lansdowne and (subsequently) Canonbury passed through many hands after the original grant of 6.9 hectare of land to James Holt in 1833.
Among the notable resident/owners of the properties at Yarranabbe Point have been Thomas Mitchell (explorer, colonial surveyor-general, 1820s-1830s), Charles Nicholson (statesman and early provost of Sydney University) and Harry Rickards (Vaudevillian theatre entrepreneur). Rickards gave the mansion the name ‘Canonbury’ after the suburb in North London where he had lived before emigrating to Sydney.
One of the many heritage-listed Yarranabbe gateposts⇓
In 1919 Canonbury was purchased by the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) which charitably turned the property into a convalescent hospital for returning servicemen from the Great War. This theme continued during WWII when it was used as a naval hospital. After the war Canonbury was acquired by the NSW Government and became an annexe of the Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Surry Hills.
By the end of the Seventies, with the annexe now surplus to Crown Street’s needs, the government decided to sell the site for redevelopment. The decision met with strong opposition from locals and after an earnest debate over its fate, custodianship of Canonbury was transferred to the Woollahra Municipal Council in 1983. Canonbury was demolished❂ and in 1985 the site remade as a public park with neat, box-shaped hedges and terraced lawns falling away to the shoreline [Jacobsen, Patricia, ‘McKell Park’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2016, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/mckell_park, viewed 28 Feb 2019]
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✲ named to honour the wife of the NSW colony’s 7th governor Ralph Darling…in the 19th century it was tagged as the “Mayfair of Australia”, [Anne-Maree Whitaker, ‘Darling Point: The Mayfair of Australia’ (unpublished MA Thesis, University of Sydney, 1983), 50, 51]
✤ pre-European settlement, the traditional owners of the peninsula were the Birrabirrgal people
❂ the small, on-site historic cottage (formerly the caretaker’s quarters) was preserved, along with archaeological remnants of Canonbury’s and Lansdowne’s foundations
If you mention the name Harrods today to any self-respecting ‘shopaholic’, don’t be surprised to see them salivate at the prospect of exploring a shoppers’ paradise which boasts 330 different outlets – names such as Adidas by Stella McCartney, Armani, Christian Lacroix, Givency, Hugo Boss, Polo Ralph Lauren, R.M. Williams and Yves Saint Laurent all on the one site! It’s an appeal that has massive international traction too, visitors to London with just a minimal amount of shopping curiosity in their DNA will ink in a trip to the Knightsbridge SW3 store on their “must do” lists (even if only to pick out the least expensive souvenir gift they can find, or failing that the green and gold Harrods carrier bag!). But Harrods is more than a high street mega-store, it is an institution with staying power and expensive tastes – its intriguing backstory reaches nearly 170 years into the past to the early days of Victorian Britain.
Harrods was the brain-child of London draper Charles Henry Harrod…from the 1820s he had small drapery and grocery businesses in the East End but the salient year for the company’s future trajectory was 1849. In this year Harrod moved his business to Brompton Road (Knightsbridge), its present and ultimate location. Harrods’ mid-19th century relocation to Knightsbridge was strategic in its timing and advantageous to the company. Knightsbridge and Western London were areas just being opened up to development at the time. Most opportune, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was held in nearby Hyde Park and Henry Harrod was able to capitalise on its drawing power to increase the store’s trade. After some formative years on Brompton Road, the Harrods business bounded ahead especially after the founder’s son Charles Digby Harrod succeeded him in the 1860s. Under the energy and drive of Digby’s leadership Harrod expanded in piecemeal manner, accumulating neighbouring properties and land through astute purchases. A fire in 1883 razed Harrods to the ground, a calamity which Digby turned into an opportunity to rebuild the department store on a larger scale. Architecturally, the new Harrods was palatial in style with a terracotta tile facade decorated with cherubs and swirling Art Nouveau windows and a Baroque-style dome [‘Harrods’, (Civitatis London),www.londonbreak.com].
Control of Harrods stayed in the Harrod family until 1894✱ when Richard Burbridge took over the running of the department store. Among Burbridge’s store innovations was the introduction of the first escalator in England in 1898. The escalator caused quite a stir among patrons, shock and horror even for some perhaps…so much so that precautionary measures were taken by staff, Harrods shopmen would perch themselves at the top of the escalator ready with brandy and smelling salts at hand for any customers who found the strange and novel experience of riding on the “moving staircase” (as it was oft called in the early days) too much! [‘Harrods’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
It was under Burbridge’s reign that Harrods’ profitability escalated⌻and the business established its brand and retail style…high-end quality, expensive products but the best quality and value for money. And it was during this time that Harrods gained a reputation for the purveyance of goods and merchandise that was not easily obtainable elsewhere, hence the firm’s motto, Omnia Omnibus Ubique (Latin for “All things for all people, everywhere”). The other constant in the Harrods ethos and credo is service, the retailer has always prided itself on the advice and assistance given to customers, as the tag-line on Harrods’ home page seeks to stress: “Enjoy exemplary personal service and an experience that can only be found at Harrods.”
Pets are us! That penchant for providing the unusual and unexpected led Harrods to diversify into the pet supply business in 1917, but not just offering the commonplace, suburban garden-variety “moggies and mutts”. Harrods’ Pet Kingdom went for the real exotica in animals. For those exclusive customers who could afford it, Harrods acquired tigers, panthers, camels and the like. Who wanted such an exotic pet? In the main customers tended to be politicians, actors and celebrities. Noël Coward was the recipient of just such a gift, a friend purchasing an alligator for the playwright/composer/director/ actor/singer. Ronald Reagan, when running for California governor in the 1960s, contacted the store seeking a baby elephant (elephants being the symbol and mascot of the US Republican Party). Harrods’ legend has it that the staff assistant who took the call from America, replied to the future US president’s enquiry with the words, “Would that be African or Indian, sir?”✥ [‘Harrods’ pet department to shut after nearly 100 years’, (Pat Sawer), The Telegraph, 10-Jan-2014, www.telegraph.co.uk]
Pet shop boys By far the most celebrated of Harrod pet stories is that of Christian the lion cub. Spotted by two young Australian backpackers in a cage in Harrods in 1969, the three-month-old lion ended up back in the boys’ trendy Chelsea flat. A year later through the agency of actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, the rapidly growing lion was repatriated to Africa and set free by wildlife conservationist George Adamson in Kenya. Most people are aware of the story as a result of the video made documenting the two backpackers’ later reunion with Christian in Kenya (see also Footnote).
The extraordinary state of affairs that created Harrod’s zoo of wild animals could not last for ever. The passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1976 signified the end of this trade. After that, Harrods’ Pet Kingdom had to satisfy itself with selling more conventional household pets, cats, dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs and the like. In 2014 Harrods’ management pulled the plug altogether on the pet shop, the space was given over to an expansion of the store’s womenswear department [Sawer].
Harrods of Manchester and Buenos Aires After WWI Harrods entered an expansion period, acquiring other smaller retail outlets, most notably Kendals in (Deansgate) Manchester. After the takeover the name was changed to Harrods Manchester, but this met with strong disapproval from Mancunians, both staff and customers, and the name reverted to Kendals Milne in the 1920s [‘Kendals name dropped forever’, (David Ottewell), Manchester Evening News, 28-Oct-2005,www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk. Harrods no longer own Kendals, in 1958 ownership passed to department chain House of Fraser, and as of 2018, is owned by Sports Direct. Before the venture in Manchester, Harrods opened its one and only overseas outlet in Buenos Aires (1914). The Downtown BA store stayed in Harrods’ hands only until 1922 when it was bought by Argentinian retailers. Harrods Buenos Aires continues to operate independently under that name but a legal injunction prevents it from using the name ‘Harrods’ outside of Argentina [‘Harrods Buenos Aires’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Ownership passes offshore As the 20th century progressed, Harrods’ rising prestige and continued growth made it a desirable retail takeover target (despite a terrorist attack by the IRA outside the store in 1983 which killed six bystanders). In 1985 Egyptian shipping magnate Mohamed Al Fayed and his brothers gained control of the House of Fraser group which included Harrods (at a cost of £615M). Under Fayed Harrods’ growth proceeded and added his own personal touches to the store, nothing more personifies that than the (some would say) garishly lavish and cluttered Egyptian Hall✫. An even more personal touch is Fayed’s staircase memorial to his son Dodi and (Lady) Di (replete with a bronze statue of the couple with symbolic seagull). In 2010 Fayed sold Harrods to another foreign concern, Qatar Holdings (ie, the Qatari Royal family) for £1.5bn, citing as his reason ‘frustrations’ over government delays re a Harrods “pension scheme” [Mohamed Al Fayed reveals why he sold Harrods’, (Andy Bloxham), The Telegraph, 27-May-2010, www.telegraph.co.uk].
The Harrods dress code In 1989 Harrods introduced a dress code to the store (in Harrodspeak its called “Visitors’ guidelines”). The code specifies that the following are not permitted within the store – beachwear, Bermuda shorts, ripped jeans, bare mid-rifts or revealing clothing, uniforms of any description, thongs or flip-flops, cycling gear✦. In addition no visible tattoos are allowed, nor are clothing which have lettering with “objectionable language or design” (not exactly a formula to maximise Harrod’s sales potential with Gen-X’ers and Gen-Y’ers!). Backpacks must be carried in front of visitors, not worn on the shoulders⋇. Harrods a beacon of good deportment and presentation seeking to keep out the “riff-raff”? Wanting its patrons to all look like posh, debonair types? Snobbish elitism aside, management’s decision was arguably a rational response (albeit with a degree of overkill!) to the views expressed by Harrods’ core clientele (traditionally 60 per cent of Harrods customers live within three miles of the shop in the so-called Tiara Triangle of affluent Knightsbridge and Kensington). Harrods’ feedback from local clients, its rich ‘sophisticates’, was that they were increasingly unhappy shopping side-by-side with people who were dressed scruffily or in bad taste [‘Don’t come as you are: There is only Harrods dress code’, (Louise Levene), The Independent, 18-Jul-1994, www.independent.co.uk]. The Chinese are coming By 2017 the basis of Harrods’ profitability had shifted – internationally. The firm’s efforts in courting the growing Chinese Middle class over the previous decade had paid off (managing director Michael Ward has been making four trips a year to China over that period to develop the budding relationship). Chinese shoppers, with their focus firmly on high-end fashion and accessories, were now outspending British ones in this most English of department stores, Ward disclosed that the Chinese made more than £200M worth of purchases at Harrods in 2016 [‘Chinese customers heralded as Harrods’ biggest spenders’, (Bo Leung), China Daily, 28-Nov-2017, www.chinadaily.com.cn].
Safe in Harrods’ hands A less well-known service that Harrods has provided for over 120 years is located at basement level in the store. Since 1897 the mega-rich of different nationalities (foreign royals, VIPs, movie stars, etc) have entrusted Harrods with their money and their assets – works of art, antiques, collectibles and other valuables. These are held in secure safe deposit boxes and strong rooms within the Harrods building [‘What You Don’t Know About Harrods (But the Rich and Famous Do)’, (Michael Levin), Huffington Post, 22-Feb-2017, www.huffingtonpost.com].
Harrods as you see it today in 2018 is five million square feet of department store, eight levels x 330 individual departments and 5,000 staff, with additional outlets in Greater London (airport stores at Heathrow and Gatwick). As well as the Egyptian Hall, there is a Crystal Room, a large and showy Food Hall (the Arts and Crafts tilework is a standout), a Wellness Clinic, 28 separate dining and drinking establishments, interior decorators, a travel shop, Waterstone’s book shop et al, Bespoke tailoring, a Floral Couturier, a Toy Concierge (who will help you source out the world’s most expensive toys – of course!) and much, much more.
Footnote: Harrod’s Pet Exotica was in synch with a prevailing vibe in European culture, especially in the interwar period. It was a vogue for the fashionable and chic of society (actors, artists, musical performers, etc) to have (and be seen in public having) exotic animals, singer Josephine Baker had her pet cheetah, artist Frida Kahlo had a granizo (a fawn), actress June Havoc a toucan, artist Salvador Dali an ocelot. Even later, after the war, the exotic pet was a fashion accessory de jour for the famous. Sometimes the pairings were undisguisedly and unashamedly publicity-driven, eg, Salvador Dali walking an anteater on a lease in a London subway. Harrods itself has been known to resort to blatant PR stunts involving animals to promote itself, eg, the pop group ‘The Small Faces’ were photographed in the 1960s walking baby crocodiles in Belgravia borrowed from nearby Harrods! Recently, Harrods promoted its reputation for extravagance by using a live cobra to ‘guard’ a display of ruby and diamond-encrusted sandals valued at £62,000 [‘Eleven secrets of Harrods’, (Laura Reynolds – The Londonist), 12-Apr-2016, www.londonist.com]Retailer with a shady past: CH Harrod ▲
PostScript: A skeleton in the merchant’s cupboard One aspect of the Harrods story that doesn’t get a mention whenever Harrods promotes its long tradition of luxury merchandising and commodity versatility, concerns a dark chapter in the founder’s early career. In 1836 (when the business was still at Cable Street, Whitechapel) Charles Henry Harrod was convicted of receiving stolen goods (and of trying to bribe a policeman) and sentenced to transportation to Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) for seven years. Fortunately for Harrod, the court defence presented by his lawyer and a raft of supporting character references got the grocer’s sentence commuted to one year in Millbank Prison. Had Harrod been transported to the Tasmanian penal colony, the illustrious retail history of Harrods would never have come to fruition [(Robin Harrod) ‘A brief history of Harrods’, BBC History Magazine, 23-Mar-2017, www.historyextra.com].
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✱ although in 1889 Harrods became a public company, and remained so until Mohamed Al Fayed’s takeover in 1985 when it reverted to being a private company
⌻ from when Burbridge became managing director in 1894 to 1916, Harrods’ profits increased from £16,000 to in excess of £200,000 [‘Richard Burbridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
✥ this anecdote has a “urban myth” feel to it…and it verges on the realm of apocrypha when you take into account the similar sounding variations on it that were doing the rounds, eg, in the early days of Harrod’s Pet Kingdom it was said that a lady phoned the store asking for a camel, to which the assistant also in this case replied, “Would that be one hump or two, madam?” Slightly surprising not to hear Elton John’s name among the celebrity owners of Harrods’ exotic animals, it sounds like it would have been Reggie’s kind of thing to do in the Seventies
✫ to get the full effect of the “full-on” Egyptian motifs you are supposed to ascend the Egyptian escalator and take in the view from there – which includes faux-hieroglyphics, a sphinx with the head of Mo Fayad(?!) and a zodiac-design ‘night’ ceiling. While you are in the vicinity you can hop off the escalator on the first floor to avail yourself of the ultra-swish “luxury washrooms”, in the presence of an attentive attendant ready to pass you an unused hand towel at the appropriate time
✦ among the famous to be barred entry on dress grounds include singers Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Others excluded include a young woman with a Mohican haircut and a soldier in uniform
⋇ Harrods are a bit funny also about where exactly you can and can’t take photographs within the store
The suburbs immediately to the south of the City of Sydney have traditionally housed much of the city’s industrial and commercial activity. But in recent decades land use in suburbs like Alexandria, Zetland and Waterloo has undergone a remarkable transformation…a lot of the old industries and factories have closed down or decentralised to Western Sydney. In their place high-density residential estates have emerged, modern housing complexes on the streets and blocks where light industry once monopolised the urban landscape. The industrial “desert wastelands” have gradually been replaced by new residential ‘precincts’… glossy property ads for these gentrified zones of inner-Sydney suburbia tend to emphasise the modern lifestyle attractions for home-seekers – “green-linked” neighbourhoods, “bike and pedestrian friendly”, “close to the city”, etc.
The suburb of Rosebery, six kilometres from the CBD, is part of the modern makeover of the once dominant industrial landscape of South Sydney. One of the suburb’s newer buildings, known as ‘The Cannery” (a former warehouse and cyclone fencing factory), gives a clue to a very different Rosebery 100 years ago. One of the building’s new tenants is a restaurant called Stanton & Co, the name references the man who was instrumental in developing the suburb in the early 20th century, Richard Stanton.
(Source: Broadsheet)
Market garden, cattle holdings and a midweek racecourse
The area of Rosebery was part of Cooper’s Estate (Daniel Cooper, 19th century property ‘baron’, owner of the Waterloo Estate amongst others), prior to 1912 had developed in a rather spasmodic fashion…’Rosebery’ comprised a “hodge-podge” of different enterprises and activities – “dairymen and gardeners” with their market gardens peopled much of the sand-soaked terrain, the occasional factory was scattered here and there interspersed with some isolated houses. The south side of Rosebery was the venue for a popular racecourse.
Stanton & Son’s slice of Rosebery
In 1912 Sydney estate agent Richard Stanton, fresh from creating his Haberfield garden suburb “model estate”, (see Planning for Suburban Bliss, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Haberfield, NSW — July 2018 blog), came to Rosebery with big plans. Stanton’s company, the Town Planning Company of Australia (TPCA), acquired for an outlay of £24,000 some 273 acres from within the greater Waterloo (Cooper’s) Estate, which he called the ‘Rosebery Workingman’s Estate’✱. The initial layout of the estate was planned by noted architect John Sulman using the land’s contours as a basis for design (once again reprising the ‘team’ of Stanton and Sulman who had done the ‘spadework’ for the earlier development of Haberfield) [‘Special Precincts’, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au].
An all-purpose suburb?
Stanton’s scheme envisaged turning Rosebery into a model suburb which harmonised industrial production with space for living. The estate would entail both industrial and factory employment sites with worker housing. The work force for the new industrial enterprises would be situated close by for easy access. The scheme also allowed for the creation of shops and other commercial outlets within the estate, as well as community and recreational facilities. Stanton envisaged that workers could walk to their work place, which was intended to be separated from their homes by parks [‘Sydney City Council’, www.sydneyyoursay.com.au; Craig Vaughan, ‘Obscure 1912 covenant protects pocket of Rosebery from overdevelopment’, Southern Courier, 30-Jul-2014].
⍐ Rosebery: Arts & Crafts/Californian bungalow
Californian bungalow village
After TPCA subdivided the Rosebery Estate in 1914, the early dwellings tended to be Federation style (single-storey, face brick exterior walls, terracotta roof tiles) although there was not many houses constructed until the early Twenties because of the outbreak of the World War. Increasingly though, the domestic building of choice for the “Rosebery Model and Industrial Suburb” was the Californian bungalow (horizontal overreaching roof forms, flat verandah roofs in asymmetrical composition, decorative front gables, roughcast masonry contrasting with dark brickwork). On a visit to the USA Stanton became enamoured with the “Cali-bungalow” and introduced it into his Sydney estates, especially in Haberfield and Rosebery [‘Special Precincts’, loc.cit.].
Stanton’s Rosebery covenant Stanton established a covenant for the estate (cf. Haberfield) which provided a framework for house construction which gave the cottages a distinctive neighbourhood pattern and character…eschewing a rigid homogeneity Stanton allowed for individual differences between houses (no two cottages in Stanton’s estate were exactly the same!) [ibid.]. The covenant bound the buyer of residential lots to its adherence (it was codified into the deed of sale) – all cottages built in the estate had to be one-storey and double-fronted. Houses were to have (back)yards and to be divided by lanes. A 1913 prospectus on the estate released by TPCA heralded the estate as “the ideal of the manufacturer and mechanic alike”, offering the best of both worlds “modern factories and model homes” [Sydney Living Museums, (Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection), www.collection.hht.net.au].
A bulwark against overdevelopment
The detail of the covenant contains a clause inserted by Stanton which safeguards the core of the estate from being too built-up…the safety clause applies to a 121ha area bounded by Botany Rd in the west to Gardeners Rd in the south, to Dalmeny Ave and Kimberley Grove in the east, to Cressy St in the north, comprising in all some 3,353 homes. The covenant is particularly germane to the present as developers have saturated the areas surrounding the covenant’s jurisdiction with bulky, high-density apartments and units – which the covenant prohibits! [Vaughan, op.cit.].
Stanton’s 1922 ad for the new Rosebery estate – don’t spare the hyperbole! ⍗
Selling Rosebery to the punters
To drum up interest for the Rosebery Estate, the Town Planning Company of Australia launched a street-naming competition, inviting the public to come up with a name for each street planned for the model suburb. Stanton offered a first and second prize (valued at £10 and £5 respectively) for the best names – with himself to be sole arbiter of the entries. The newspaper promo was unrestrained in heralding the ‘unique’ venture in Sydney property: “Rosebery Model and Industrial Suburb – never before attempted in Australia!” Despite being a site dedicated to light industry, the advert interestingly depicted the new estate as “undulating beautiful grasslands and sand dunes” (used for) “pastoral purposes” [‘Rosebery Street-naming Competition. First Prize £10’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13-Jul-1912, www.trove.nla.gov.au].
⍐ Estate cottage in Tweedmouth Ave
(Photo: Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection)
⍐ Sweetacres of Rosebery: “It’s moments like these…you need Minties!”
Under these arrangements the private sector was not slow in establishing plants and factories in the new estate. One of the first to set up (1917-18) was ‘Sweetacres’✱, owned by a confectionary manufacturer, James Stedman-Henderson’s Sweets Ltd (makers of the iconic ‘Minties’, ‘Jaffas’ and ‘Fantales’). The 16-acre Sweetacres complex was generously equipped with a large canteen a social hall, sports and cricket grounds, a library, band and sports clubs, to cater for 1,000-plus mainly female workforce. The factory building was designed by John Burcham Clamp [‘Sweetacres and the iconic Aussie lolly’, City of Sydney Council, www.cityofsydney,nsw.gov.au].
The old Wrigley’s Factory converted in a modern residential complex ⍗
Reviving the Garden City Movement?
Extending the local confectionary theme, Clamp also designed the Wrigley’s Gum factory in Crewe Place Rosebery (1918)…a huge Chicago-style steel-reinforced concrete structure with grid-like facade, rooftop water tower and setback landscaping. The US-owned factory made the popular chewing gum brands ‘Juicy Fruit’, ‘P.K.’ and ‘Spearmint’. With a modern fit-out and de luxe designer-gardens, the heritage protected ‘Wrigley’s building resurfaced recently as state-of-the-art accommodation (‘The Burcham’), with ads connecting it to a revival of the UK Garden City Movement [‘Built to last – an old world soul redesigned’, www.theburcham.com.au]
Other industries within the Rosebery Estate included the Commonwealth Weaving Mills (AKA Dri-Glo Towels), Dunning Ave. The premises were later acquired by Bonds Industries with part of the site becoming a warehouse in the early 1960s for Union Carbide. American multi-national chemicals and polymers giant Union Carbide also had a large plant (cnr of Rothschild St and Harcourt Ave) where it manufactured Eveready brand batteries. Other manufacturing firms operating on the Rosebery turf included the Rosella Canning Factory, Parke Davies & Co (chemicals) and Noyes Bros (makers of ‘Gypboard’) [‘City of Sydney Warehouses and Industrial Buildings. A Heritage Study Report’, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au].
These days Rosebery remains quite a mixed bag architecturally. There is still light industry in the suburb but most of the old factory buildings with zero aesthetic appeal are either gone or transformed. Much of the landscape is occupied by glistening glass monolithic structures housing telecommunications and IT outlets, modern retail outlets and a seemingly inexhaustible conveyor-belt of new residential projects constantly in the process of erection.
PostScript: Beaconsfield, Rosebery writ tiny minus the green space Beaconsfield, less than one kilometre east of Rosebery, offers an interesting point of comparison. Beaconsfield estate was hived off from Cooper’s Estate in an 1884 subdivision and promoted as a “Working Man’s Model Township”. The suburb’s potential however failed to elicit any interest from Richard Stanton, possibly due to several factors: the tiny size of the suburb (0.1 sq. ml.) which translates into a limited number of residential properties; and its topography was dotted with numerous sand hills✥. Accordingly Beaconsfield has tended to retain its industrial complexion longer – brickworks, noxious materials, soap and candle-making factories, and more recently mechanical and engineering works, a lack of green spaces. Recently though Beaconsfield, being close to Green Square, has been caught up with the process of gentrification and urban renewal affecting most of the South Sydney district [Anne-Marie Whitaker, Pictorial History South Sydney, (2002); ‘Beaconsfield, Sydney’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org].
Beaconsfield, NSW
⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤⌤
✱ ‘Sweetacres’ was later acquired by Nestlés (via Hoadley’s and Rowntree’s) and the plant was closed and replaced by high-rise housing…however a park nearby in Mentmore Street commemorates Sweetacres’ historic presence in Rosebery
✥ an observer in 1904 described the Beaconsfield estate as “among the dreariest parts of the environments of Sydney since the primitive sandhills remain”. So much sand that Sydneysiders would commute to Beaconsfield to engage in the pursuit of “sand-shifting” (ie, collecting bags of sand for free to take home)[Whitaker, ibid.]
At the tail end of the decade that the Haberfield model suburb (1901) made its appearance, the southern Sydney suburb of Daceyville was on the cusp of undergoing a comparable urban planning experiment. Like Haberfield, Dacey Model Suburb drew inspiration and impetus from the BritishGarden City and Arts and Crafts Movement which advocated new urban centres with an emphasis on better and genuinely innovative planning to create self-contained communities comprising ‘greenbelt’ areas (farming one’s own crops, community beautification programs, aesthetically designed formal gardens and so on)✱.
Whereas the creative and financial impetus driving the Haberfield project [see ‘Planning for Suburban Bliss, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Haberfield, NSW’] was private enterprise and it was targeted at a market of middle class clients, the Dacey “Model Suburb” was a government-funded program, public planning aimed at improving the lot of the working class. Both though were born out of a desire to provide a social reform model to planners to avoid the trap of overcrowded, slum suburbs which were plaguing Sydney’s inner city at the turn of the 20th century. ⍐ Dacey Model Suburb (Sydney), map circa 1920
JR Dacey MLA, catalyst for change
State Labor MLA (Member for Legislative Assembly) for Botany John Rowland Dacey worked tirelessly for much of his parliamentary term to create a low-cost housing community for the working class in his electorate. Dacey urged that Sydney adopt the British Garden City model introduced in Letchworth in the West Midlands✥. In 1909 there was a Royal Commission “for the improvement of Sydney” which pointed the way, the following year’s election of the first NSW Labor Government clinched it! In 1912 the newly created NSW Housing Board’s⍟ first task was to construct a new, model suburb seven kilometres south of the city. Unfortunately it occurred too late for Dacey to see its completion, the MP died that in April of that year, posthumously the suburb was named Daceyville in recognition of Dacey’s efforts to make it a reality [Sinnayah, Samantha, ‘Daceyville’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/daceyville, viewed 25 Jul 2018].
⍐ The land allocated for the Garden City prior to the project’s commencement
⍗ Solander Road, DGS (www.records.nsw.gov.au)
Dacey Garden Suburb
Dacey Garden Suburb was Australia’s first (low-cost) public housing scheme, promising to free those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder from the spectre of exorbitantly high rents and woefully sub-standard accommodation, giving members of the working class a better quality of life. Not everyone in public life approved of the Daceyville project…the conservative forces in state parliament labelled it ‘Audaciousville’, arguing, predictably, that government should not be in the public rental market. Led by Charles Wade, the outgoing premier and leader of the NSW Liberal Reform Party, the dissenters vigorously but unsuccessfully opposed the 1912 Housing Bill that brought the Daceyville estate into being [ibid.].
A profusion of blueprints
Three distinct street layouts were drawn up for the Dacey Garden housing experiment. The first was a Public Works plan, the second by John Sulman (who also had a guiding hand in the early planning of Haberfield) in association with John Hennessy. After outside criticism was voiced about the scheme by Charles Reade (from the British Garden Cities and Town Planning Association), government architect William H Foggitt was called in to produce a third, extensively revised street plan. Viewed today, Daceyville bears the distinguishing marks of both architects: the layout of the broadly expansive Cook and Banks Avenues (designed by Sulman) are in sharp contract with the smaller, more curvy lines of the streets to their east (designed by Foggitt)❂ [ibid].
As a new and novel planning project Dacey Garden Suburb (DGS) was ambitious and broad in its scale…intended to occupy 443 acres with a density of seven cottages per acre. It was to be a self-contained residential unit and made provision for shops, schools, churches, amusement halls, police and fire stations and a technical college. A tram line was connected to Daceyville in 1913. Industrial and manufacturing activity was to be excluded from the site [‘Federation-House – Dacey Garden Suburb’, https://federationhouse.wikispaces.com/].
The first task facing the government and its contractors was preparing the land which proved a surmountable task but one that was particularly formidable. Sand dunes and sandy scrub soil had first to be removed before work could commence on shaping the streets into an orderly pattern. Constructing a giant stormwater drain was also a preliminary step. After these obstacles were overcome, things went ahead with some 67 houses finished by June 1913 [‘Daceyville – The Creation of a Garden Suburb’, NSW Anzac Centenary, www.nswanzaccentenary.records.nsw.gov.au
A prescriptive suburb The first families to move in were selected by ballot. The Housing Board, with JD (Jack) Fitzgerald directing the bureaucratic wheels, determined that the Garden Suburb would adhere to certain, strict principles (somewhat analogous to Richard Stanton’s ‘covenant’ for his Haberfield estates): someheterogeneity in cottage designs and room sizes and arrangements but no front fences were permitted (facilitating a merging of private and public green space), residential streets were to be curved to create vistas, no back lanes or pubs – which were “synonymous with slums” [‘Dacey GardenSuburb: a report for Daceyville Heritage Conservation Area within its historical context’, (Susan Jackson-Stepowski, Botany Bay Council – 2002), www.botanybaycouncil.nsw.gov.au]
Financial encumbrances to work
House production in the estate experienced a slowdown after 1915 however due to a lack of funds available for the project. Rising building costs partly accounted for this, but officially the government cited the existence of an “acute financial position” as a result of the national commitment required for the war effort in Europe [‘Daceyville – The Creation of a Garden Suburb’, op.cit.; Sinnayah, op.cit.]
The new ‘deserving’ for Dacey’s low-cost housing The onset of the Great War eventually led to a shift in Dacey Garden Suburb’s raison d’être from workers to war veterans. It started in 1916 when 50 war widows were provided housing in the new estate…three years later resettling returning WWI servicemen became the overriding imperative in housing policy❆, relegating the needs of the working class to a secondary status [Sinnayah, ibid.]. The naming policy for the estate’s streets also reflected this trend – when the project started in 1912 DGS streets were mostly named after famous explorers (or the ships of famous explorers) from the past…there was Wills Crescent, Burke Crescent, Banks Avenue, Solander Road. After the Australian experience in Gallipoli, the street names chosen gave tribute to military figures from the campaign…Captain Jacka Crescent, Sargeant Larkin Crescent, and so on [AnzacCentenary, ibid.].
Banks Ave ⍗
A quantitative shortfall!
The difficulties (production costs, etc) meant that when the Daceyville Estate’s last rental property was finished in June 1920, only 315 out of the planned 1,473 cottages had been built. Construction of the amenities and infrastructure for the Dacey Garden Suburb also fell well short of what had been planned [Sinnayah, op.cit.].
Later Nationalist governments in NSW (forerunner of the Liberal-Country Party) did their best to undermine the Daceyville scheme by introducing private ownership in the model suburb (eg, the southern part of Daceyville, now in Pagewood, was subdivided and offered for sale to the public). Other ongoing threats came from government proposals in the 1960s to bulldoze the estate to make way for the Eastern Suburbs railway route through Kingsford, and from developers seeking to transform the suburb’s character by flooding it with high-rise, high-density buildings [Jackson-Stepowski, op.cit.].
DGS’s legacy
Despite the setbacks and checks placed on it, the Dacey Garden Suburb site has survived substantially in government hands (eg, only a tiny proportion of residents accepted the government’s offer in 1965 to buy their properties). The estate’s future character and use is protected by a strict Development Control Plan (administered by Housing NSW) and its heritage listing safeguards it from the bulldozers [Sinnayah, op.cit.].
⍗ Public housing, Gen. Bridges Cres.
DGS’s achievements were limited and the experiment failed to grow beyond its initial (Daceyville) area size and it failed to become self-sufficient (a British Garden City imperative). As well its early low-density advantages were somewhat undermined by subsequent subdivisions. However the experiment managed to achieve a number of pioneering advances in construction and urban planning…innovative building materials and techniques were employed, especially in the early cottages which incorporated tuck-pointed brick work, roughcast rendered walls, tiles roofs and local federation style joinery details. Over time, as the project’s finances ebbed, the size and quality of the houses diminished♦. Colonel Braund Crescent is one of the more innovative street features of DGS – being Australia’s first planned cul-de-sac [Jackson-Stepowski, op.cit.].
The garden suburb’s centrepiece
The very deliberate planning of DGS from the start resulted in the creation of a large garden park which formed a “central gateway’, a focal point off which the main avenues of the suburb fanned out to form a curved grid triangle. The park and other communal open spaces helped to foster a sense of civic identity among the Daceyvillites. The suburb’s commercial use facilities were grouped together near this hub to clearly separate them from the residential sector. John Sulman’s street layout reflected the architect’s predilection for wide, sweeping boulevards à la Paris. All roads were asphalted and footpaths were concreted and turfed. The public domain reserves and parks were all landscaped to match the street symmetry⊡ [ibid.].
The early residents benefitted tangibly from the delivery of services – such as sewerage connection, water, gas and electricity, curb and guttering of streets – these boons of modernity reached the Daceyville estate well before they got to many other parts of Sydney. Moreover, large verandahs and attractive backyard gardens gave residents access to fresh air and natural sunlight houses.
A win for the working class?
Dacey Garden Suburb was “a test case for state intervention in the real estate market” and it did demonstrate that the government could be “an effective provider of housing” [ibid.]. How much however individual working class families benefitted from the opening-up of DGS, is a matter of conjecture. To be eligible to participate in the ballot that determined the lucky beneficiaries of low-rent and low-density accommodation in the suburb, the sole stipulation was that applicants did not own land with a dwelling on it…being wealthy was not a barrier, the process was sorely lacking a “means test” to satisfy the criteria of financial hardship and genuine need! Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the practice after 1918 changed to one of allocating houses to war veterans and their families in preference to workers.
PostScript 1: Dacey model suburb theatre
Photo (above) (NSW Archives and Records Office) Dacey Garden Suburb had its own theatre, Daceyville ‘Little Tivoli Theatre’, General Bridges Crescent…initially it showed silent films, but later it provided ‘live’ performances of Vaudevillian style (Music Hall) entertainment with a variety of stage acts – including comedy skits, acrobats and jugglers, magic acts, kids and animals acts, musical performances and so on – as the billboard below indicates. The theatre burnt down in 1985.
Top of the bill at the Little Tivoli – tuning up for Broadway!
PostScript 2: Earlier, unsuccessful Sydney attempts at “forward-thinking” estates and subdivisions
In the late 1880s there were several attempts, both within Sydney and outside, to create a garden suburb – including San Souci (1887) (advertised to attract middle class families as “safe from the horrors of city living” (ie, the inner city slums!), Harcourt (1888) (Canterbury, NSW) and Kensington Model Suburb (1889) (which promised to combine the benefits of rural and urban life). All of these ventures came to zilch due to the prevailing conditions of (the 1890s) depression, drought and labour unrest [ibid].
︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺︺
✱ the Garden City Movement in Britain itself tapped to some extent into the contemporary City Beautiful Movement (CBM), a 1890s North American reform movement in architecture and urban planning. CBM, characterised by urban beautification and monumental grandeur, aimed at boosting quality of life in the cities and promoting a harmonious social order [‘City beautiful movement’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org]
✥ when the green light was eventually given for the Dacey model suburb, the scheme sought to faithfully adopt the Letchworth template – an overabundance of green spaces, a happy mix of town and country
⍟ forerunner of the later Housing Commission of NSW (now called Housing NSW)
❂ having several individual architects taking charge at different periods resulted in considerable variety in dwellings – free-standing cottages, attached, semi-detached, some two-storey houses, etc.
❆ already in 1916 a 40 acre soldier settlement had been established at nearby Matraville
♦ the estate’s houses reflect the range of architectural styles in use at the time – “Arts and Crafts” cottages, Californian bungalows and the adaptation of some local Federation style designs
⊡ all of which no doubt contributed to Sulman’s fulsome assessment of Daceyville as “an exemplar of what a Garden Suburb should be”
In previous blogs I described one architect’s attempt to bring his vision of an ideal garden suburb to fruition – Walter Burley Griffin’s shaping of a suburb and a community (Castlecrag) out of Sydney’s Middle Harbour bushland✱. Griffin’s Castlecrag project was in fact not the first attempt at a model suburb in Sydney. Preceding it by a decade or more were three separate experiments at Daceyville, Haberfield and Rosebery. Each were very different in nature and purpose to Griffin’s “democratic utopian” vision for the remote, leafy North Shore promontory. This post will address the first of these garden suburb concepts to be launched, in the inner-west suburb of Haberfield.
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/image-26.jpg”> Sydney’s inner city slums (Redfern)[/
Background: Slum city In the aftermath of the gold rushes in the 19th century, the larger cities in Australia, especially Sydney, experienced surges in population. This brought with it social problems and dire health and hygiene implications for the inner city urban centre. Around the city terrace buildings were flung up with masses of people corralled together within them. Sanitation issues – a lack of sewerage, dirty alleys with no drainage, poor ventilation, toxic substances, infectious diseases, systemic poverty and low wages, made for slum creation. This mirrored the same problem facing town authorities elsewhere overseas. Almost inevitably, the appalling health conditions around the overcrowded inner city led to an eruption of Bubonic plague in Sydney in 1900◈ – this starkly brought home to city planners the extreme perils of life in Sydney’s slums.
The British Garden City Movement Reformers in Britain around the turn-of-the-century, observed the Dickensian effect industrialisation was having on contemporary British cities and were determined to do something about it…the British Garden City Movement (BCM) was the outcome. As an antidote to the dystopian urban landscape of Victorian Britain, proponents of BCM advocated a new, greener type of community. Spearheading the movement was social reformer Ebenezer Howard whose influential 1898 book To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform book⊟ pointed the way.
A synthesis of town and country virtues Howard called for a new approach to urban planning, illustrated by his “Three Magnets” diagram (above) in which the best of town and countryside were combined in the one community. His radical new societal model envisaged “networks of garden cities that would break the stronghold of capitalism and lead to cooperative socialism” [‘Ebenezer Howard’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Two English garden cities based on Howard’s ideas❂ soon materialised, Letchworth Garden City (proclaimed as the world’s first garden city – from 1904) and Welwyn Garden City, both in Herefordshire (English West Midlands). Integral to BCM cities like Letchworth and Welwyn were formal garden plans. Although limited in their success they did inspire similar community projects in cities as geographically disparate as Canberra and Riga [‘Garden city movement’, Wikipedia,http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Haberfield, the Federation Suburb It was John Sulman, an immigrant architect from the UK, who was instrumental in spreading the BCM ideas in Sydney. Sulman pioneered the practice of town planning in Australia and promoted garden city principles as seen in Canberra’s Civic Centre. Real estate agent Richard Stanton sought to apply those principles to the part of the area of the old Dobroyde⌑ ‘Farm’ Estate (about 6km west of Sydney’s CBD) which he purchased from the Ramsey family⍟.
⇧ Early map of the area with Ramsey St located between the two coves, Iron & Long
Stanton’s covenant for Haberfield 1901, the year after the Sydney Plague’s initial outbreak, Stanton launched his plans for a healthy, model residential suburb free of the pernicious squalor infecting the inner city…the property agent laid down a covenant for his new garden estate which future lot-buyers had to accept⌖ – cottages would be of single-storey◘, modest but of good quality (bricks and stone, slate or tiles); allotments would be of generous size; there would be integrated drainage and a sewered system on all lots; streets would have rows of planted trees; gardens would be established before owners occupied their lots; there would be no hotels, factories or corner shops. Stanton’s catch cry for the estate was “slumless, laneless and publess!” As the estate commenced in the year of Australian Federation, 1901, and because pro-Federation Stanton named many of the early streets after contemporary politicians (comprising most of the members of the inaugural Federal (Barton) cabinet), the label Federation suburb stuck to Haberfield[‘Haberfield Heritage Conservation Area’ (Ashfield Municipal Council, Development Control Plan 2007), www.state-heritage.wa.gov.au].
⇩ Stanton & Son , Summer Hill (architect: JSE Ellis)
From a blot on the landscape to middle class dreams Stanton was clearly not trying to create a housing community for the working class, his new garden estate was intended to attract the aspirational middle class home purchaser. Turning “Ramsey’s Bush” into a better lifestyle community, a better class of suburb, made sure that it would not develop the slum-pattern at that time of much of the city to its east. The entire Dobroyd area was still only sparsely settled by 1900 (there were large chunks of bush and scrub being used as a rubbish dump). It was showing signs of becoming a haven for transients with the presence of vagrants (many made unemployed in the 1890s depression), some indigenous people and a “Gypsie camp” in Alt Street…hence Stanton’s haste to alter the landscape [Jackson-Stepowski, Sue, ‘Haberfield’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/haberfield, viewed 19 Jul 2018].
⇧ Classic Haberfield Federation (Tressider St)
To avoid the unsightly rows of tenements most everywhere else in the inner-west, dwellings had to be detached…in the original (200 hectares) estate they were characteristically double-brick and sat on their own block of land with a size minimum 50′ x 150′. Initially, total house cost was set at £40 (raised to £50 the following year). All houses had front verandahs and the roofs were either slate or Marseilles tile [‘Haberfield, New South Wales’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
To create a garden suburb along the lines of the British model, Stanton, working with his associate WH Nichols, meticulously planned estates that would deliver space and fresh air to residents who could connect with nature, the covenant decreed that fences between neighbours were to be low so as to make the effect of a continuous garden. Streets were to be relatively wide (the “no lanes” credo), houses set back from them and there was to be a strict separation between the suburb’s commercial and residential strips [‘Haberfield – The Model Garden Suburb’ (Joshua Favaloro, Haberfield Association), www.haberfield.asn.au].
⇧ Stanton & Son’s real estate reach extended across Sydney – advertisement for land at Maroubra, 1918 (State Library of NSW)
The Estate agent and councillor took a holistic view of the property business…marketing and selling properties was only part of Stanton’s business scope. In his work in developing Haberfield and other estates Stanton took a vertically integrated approach. Going beyond the standard estate agent’s purview, the company in addition provided term finance, building materials, fixtures and fittings and landscape gardeners [Jackson-Stepowski, op.cit.].
Architect on board The many dwellings erected on Stanton’s Haberfield estates were the antithesis of the “kit home”, they were all individually designed (and therefore each one was a little different, but still each was harmonious with the whole)…Stanton and Son had the services of its own company architect, John Spencer-Stansfield [ibid.]. The architectural firm of Spencer-Stansfield and Wormald constructed around 1,500 (Fed/bungalow styles) houses in Haberfield and the adjoining areas.
⇧ Memorial sculpture to RPL Stanton, Haberfield
Stanton’s success in bringing his particular vision of an ideal suburb to life, getting things done, was no doubt made easier by his twice being elected as Mayor of Ashfield (Haberfield’s council area) during this period.
Things didn’t turn out quite so well for Richard Stanton in the end. Despite his success in developing Haberfield as a desirable residential location for homebuyers and in his company’s track record in house sales right across metropolitan Sydney (by 1924 he had eight suburban offices), he took a huge hit in the Depression (like so many in business), his investments stagnated and he died in debt during WWII [Terry Kass, ‘Stanton, Richard Patrick Joseph (1862–1943)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stanton-richard-patrick-joseph-8626/text15071, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 18 July 2018].
Federation continuities A saunter through the streets of Haberfield today reveals the extent of Richard Stanton’s legacy. The 1900s bungalows – both the Californian and the Arts and Crafts style (such as the Bunyas above, in Rogers Ave) – still survive and in their original form. And unlike the neighbouring suburbs of Summer Hill and Ashfield, Federation Haberfield has avoided the blight of having block-to-block rows of multi-level units and flats dominating its streetscape.
⇧ Ramsey Street (1910s-20s) (Source: State Lib. of NSW)
PostScript: Subdividing Dobroyd Stanton followed the original Haberfield Estate with a second estate south of Ramsey Street (St David’s Estate) in 1902…by 1912 the company had opened up three more estates (including Dobroyd Point) for settlement in the suburb. In 1905 a rival land agent, the Haymarket Land, Building and Investment Company entered the turf, opening up part of its Dobroyde Estate as well as the new Northcote Estate (designed by another Sydney realty luminary of the day, Arthur Rickard, who was also involved in the selling of the Dobroyd Point Estate). Haymarket LBI Co was less prescriptive than Stanton & Son in its earlier subdivisions permitting some narrow weatherboard houses [Ramsey Family History, ‘The Dobroyde Estate’, http://belindacohen.tripod.com/ramsayfamilyhistory/].
✱ see the earlier posts ‘The Wizard of Castlecrag I: Utopia in a Garden Suburb’, ‘The Wizard of Castlecrag II: Keeping Faith with the Landscape’, ‘Dreaming the Ideal Community: the Brilliant Collaboration of Mahony and Griffin’, September 2014
◈ The Rocks and the waterfront areas of the city were the initial eruption points for the plague (Ashfield was also affected)
⊟ revised in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-Morrow
❂ Howard’s own influences were Edward Bellamy’s 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 and Henry George’s equalitarian treatise on political economy, Progress and Poverty
⌑ the ‘e‘ was later dropped
⍟ Dr David Ramsey was one of the early land-holders in what became Haberfield, known informally for many years as “Ramsey’s Bush”. Haberfield’s main road, Ramsey Street, which bisects the suburb from east to west, is named for him
⌖ prospective homeowners were given interviews in an office in Ramsey Street where they could propose what design they wanted for their home – which had to conform with the covenant to be approved to go ahead
◘ Stanton breached his own covenant designed to safeguard the single-storeyed character of Haberfield’s homes when he built the disproportionately large, two-storey ‘Bunyas’, [‘The Dobroyde Estate’, op.cit.]
The further I delved into my “war-ravaged” copy of Wilson’s 1922 Authentic Director of Sydney and Suburbs, the more snippets of hitherto unearthed information, little gems of Sydney’s yesterday, I stumbled upon.
Among the minutiae of miscellaneous info contained in the directory’s index, one item that got my attention was a list of the consuls and overseas government agents in Sydney in 1922. Interesting to see that at that time there were consulate offices established in Sydney for tiny international entities like Latvia, Nicaragua, Columbia, Ecuador, Honduras, Serbia and the Czechoslovak Republic, but being not yet four years after the cessation of the hostilities of WWI, no consulates for the countries deemed by the victors to be the “guilty parties”, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey. So much for moving on!!!…and we all know where that path catastrophically led!
Another curio I discovered was that among the State and Commonwealth government departments listed in the index, there were several with city addresses in Richmond Tce, The Domain. The questionably named Aborigines (spelt ‘Aborogines’) Protection Board, the Pharmacy Board of NSW, the Dental Board of NSW, the Medical Board of NSW, the Metropolitan Meat Industry Board and the Inspector-General of the Insane(sic) were all located in this east side of the city street…interesting in that this street, Richmond Terrace no longer exists!
Ad for the Orient Line
A total of forty-six shipping line companies were recorded as having offices in Sydney’s CBD. These included British-India SN Co, China-Australia Mail SS Line, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, the Adelaide Steamship Company, New Guinea, New Britain and the Solomon Islands (Line), the White Star Line✲ and the more contemporarily familiar P & O Line. Only one of the 46 placed a (full-paged and quite detailed) ad in the directory, the Australia to Britain Orient Line.
Royal Autos in ‘Wilson’s’
City clubs and buildings of interest
In a section of the index Wilson’s lists the various clubs, chambers, banks and arcades that formed part of the cityscape in 1922. The more ‘highbrow’ of the clubs, predominately “Gentlemen’s” establishments, tended to congregate ‘uptown’ (the end closer to Circular Quay) considered to be the smarter and more affluent part of the city. The clubs included the Australian Club (corner of Bent and Macquarie Sts)[¹], the Automobile Club of Australia (132 Phillip St)[²], the Country Club (17 Castlereagh St), the Catholic Club (107 Castlereagh St ), Masonic Club (216 Pitt St)[³], the N.S.W. Club (Bligh St)[⁴], the Soldiers’ Club (426 George St), the Union Club (2 Bligh St)[⁵], the Warrigal Club (145 Macquarie St). Also in the city were clubs associated with the sport (and business) of horse racing – these three used to be situated in the CBD, the Australian Jockey Club (now the Australian Turf Club) (8 Bligh St), the Canterbury Park Race Club (15 Castlereagh St) and the Rosehill Racing Club (32 Elizabeth St). Another city club intricately linked to horse racing is Tattersall’s Club (202-204 Pitt St). Traditionally the haunt of old style bookmakers, “City Tatts” as it is better known, still stands and operates on its original land, 123 years after its foundation.
The 1922 city’s chambers are a predictable lot with numerous entities bearing largely homogenous Anglo-(Saxon)Celtic names scattered around Phillip Street, the traditional law hub of the city. That equally upstanding and status quo affirming pillar of society in that day, the banks, are spread over a wide radius of the CBD. The only point of note about them is discovering that in the 1920s Australia financial climate, with regulation of the sector very tight, two foreign banks had Sydney branches and were allowed to trade here at that time… the French National d’Escompté de Paris, a forerunner of Banque National de Paris? (24 Hunter St) and even more surprisingly, the Japanese Bank (Falmouth Chambers, 117 Pitt St).
The original (1907) Challis House
One of the city buildings identified in Wilson’s Director with a busy and interesting history is Challis House, N⍛ 4-10 Martin Place. Eponymously named after merchant and University of Sydney benefactor John Henry Challis, the House has a long association with the University as well as many financial tenants over the decades. During WWI it was used as the recruiting campaign headquarters for New South Wales. The office building at the time of Wilson’s publication was in its original Victorian architectural state…in the Thirties it received a new (Art Deco) facade and later in 1993 it underwent major renovations [‘Challis House’, Sydney Architecture, www.sydneyarchitecture.com]
Blue Mountains – a “Tourist’s Guide”
Although it’s a street directory whose ambit is Sydney and suburbs, the Wilson’s directory ends with an extensive section (73pp) on the Blue Mountains. The entry even encompasses the town of Lithgow (also called ‘Eskbank’ in 1922) which is 15 miles west of the Blue Mountains. The book has lots of detailed information on the BM suburbs, each suburb has an entry on accommodation and the scenic natural highlights of the Mountains with select maps indicating points of interest.
The “Half-way House” of Blue Mts
The directory gives a picture of Springwood, the largest of the Lower Mountains towns✥, that suggests a warm place in an otherwise cold region – “sheltered by its westerly walls from the cooler air of the higher altitudes…pleasant sunshine all year round…in winter the climate is so equable that many families make Springwood a permanent residence”. An opinion echoed by Springwood house and land agent R.F. Harvey’s ad extolling “The Best Winter Climate in the World”. For day visitors to Springwood, the Hotel ‘Oriental’ awaits their patronage (ad, right).
Katoomba, the “largest of the mountain tourist resorts” with its “wide choice of charming and picturesque views”. Despite being 68 miles from Sydney, “horses and vehicles are always obtainable” – as this advertisement (left) on page 706 offering trips to the famous Jenolan Caves in luxury Buicks testifies.
Nearby Leura is “celebrated for the beauty of its great showpiece – the Leura Falls…in themselves alone worth the trip to the mountains”. With unfettered enthusiasm the writer goes on to laud the town in extravagant terms: “the place has been so well laid out as a tourist resort that it offers a perfect kaleidoscope of the views”. The object of Wilson’s Director is clearly to sell the Mountains to visitors from Sydney which synergises nicely with the numerous accommodation ads (funny that!) that appear such as this one (right) for Leura’s Hotel Alexandria (still in business in 2018).
The spa town of Medlow Bath, is “a pretty little village, rising rapidly in tourist favour”. The tiny Upper Mountains town is famous for its Hydro-Majestic hotel resort where in the day the better-off citizens of Sydney would periodically retreat to benefit from its therapeutic mineral waters and clean mountain air. Built by retailer Mark Foy (Jr) as a hydropathic sanatorium, the “Hydro-Maje” in the Twenties was where the cream of Sydney’s elite flocked on the weekends to socialise.
Jenolan tourer (Blackheath)
One station further west, the mountains tourist resort of Blackheath, had the writer reaching for new superlatives! The bush trails and valleys (the “Valley of the Grose” as he calls it) lead to “world-famous Govett’s Leap (waterfall), a stream which plunges headlong over a perpendicular wall of dark-tinted rock on to a mass of boulders, some 520 feet below”. Mermaid’s Cave is “like a glimpse of a fairyland…a more picturesque scene cannot be imagined”, etc. The other attraction of Blackheath in 1922 was that “there is every probability of its having a permanent water supply in the near future”. The accommodation ad below is for Blackheath’s ‘Ivanhoe Hotel’, replaced in 1938 by the now quite old-looking ‘New Ivanhoe Hotel’. Mt Victoria, 79 miles by paved road❂ from Sydney, the highest point of the Blue Mountains (the guide gives it at 3,424 feet above sea-level)⍍, is praised for the scenic countryside surrounding the town dotted with charmingly named spots like Fern Cave, Fairy Bower, Fern Tree Gully and Witch’s Glen, for the walker to explore.
Upper Blue Mts map (‘Wilson’s’)
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[¹] the Australian Club (still at the same address, 165 Macquarie St), is the oldest men-only club in the country, dating from 1838
[²] the Automobile Club changed both its name to the Royal Automobile Club of Australia (RACA), and its location to Castlereagh St North, in the year of the directory’s publication (1922)
[³] the Masonic Club still exists but the premises relocated to a new building at 169-171 Castlereagh St in 1927
[⁴] the N.S.W. Club House is still in existence at 25-31 Bligh St, but the Club itself amalgamated with the Australian Club in 1969 and the building has had a series of commercial tenants since (currently occupied by the Lowy Institute for International Affairs)
[⁵] still in operation (since 1857), these days at 25 Bent St and now called the Union, University and Schools Club
✲ of Titanic fame, White Star Line merged with Cunard in 1934 as White-Cunard, before eventually becoming defunct
✥ Blaxland and Glenbrook, two other Lower BM towns, get very short shrift from Wilson’s, relegated to brief, passing mentions only
❂ the Great Western Highway, which bisects the Blue Mountains, was still called Bathurst Road in 1922
⍍ although according to markers on the spot, One Tree Hill on the south side of Mt Victoria, is the highest point in the Blue Mountains at 3,654 feet
I remember getting my first street directory as if it was 55 years ago – which it was! It was a Gregory’s of course, it was 1963 and UBD hadn’t quite yet entered the road map reproduction game (they brought out their first street directory the following year!) I had just starting playing soccer (the St George and Southern Sydney’s A-League – Ankle-biters League!) and my parents bought it to get me to season games in tricky-to-find and awkward-to-get-to places across Sydney.
Soccer aside, the Gregory’s spent more time in my bedroom than it did in the glovebox of my father’s VW. I loved perusing its contents, examining the colourful maps, sometimes in piecemeal fashion, other times randomly, learning about all the different parts of Sydney that in most cases I never knew existed let alone had been to! I discovered all sorts of faraway places (to a 10-y-o!) with exotic, magical-sounding names like Avalon, Burraneer, Oyster Bay, Picnic Point and Chipping Norton.
The 1960s Sydney motorist’s Vade mecum
I used to spend long hours during my childhood pouring over the maps of Sydney, preparing me for the future career as a taxi driver that I never had (phew!)…instead I learned lots of useless stuff like the fact that there were two separate bushland places called Warrimo. The name is well-known to many as the small town in the Blue Mountains, but my 1963 Gregory’s showed me that it was then also a suburb adjoining St Ives. Later it was renamed St Ives Chase but Warrimo Oval and Warrimo Avenue in the suburb are reminders of its association.
I got a lot of mileage out of that vintage 1963 Sydney street directory, and continued to do so even after I brought a new Gregory’s when I got my driver’s licence and my first car in the early seventies.
Footnote: Not sure what my father did for road directions before the 1963 Gregory’s came into our family’s life. He certainly had cars before then, at one time I recall he had a crank-start relic of an Austin! Maybe he had one of those fold-out maps that in my hands often end up in a tangled mess.
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WAD: the ante-(now)dated street directory
I got my second street directory around the same time as we got the ’63 Gregory’s, and it was a very different animal to the current edition of the Gregory’s, it was in fact the nearest thing I have had to an antiquarian book. I have recounted in a previous post (Part 1) how I got handed down a 1922 edition of Wilson’s Authentic Director: Sydney and Suburbs and shared some insights into how the WAD depicted different parts of Sydney then and some of the idiosyncratic aspects of the maps contained in the book. I want to focus here on the advertisements contained in the directory which are legion in number and tell an interesting story about life in 1922 Sydney in themselves.
Ad-bonanza
In a book 735pp long, even if I count the pages comprising the indexes and maps there were considerably more pages with ads than without! Some ads were full-page, some pages contained two or more separate ads, some firms like Rickard’s’ (below) had multiple entries of ads in the book. The directory is so ad-rich that the advertisement sales alone were a nice little earner to Wilson & Co. And with each copy retailing to the public at 4/6p, there was obviously more than enough takers to warrant the cost to the advertisers to be in it.
▲ Webber’s “One stop shop”!
Who advertised in ‘Wilson’s Authentic Director’?
Well just about anybody who traded, who had a business in Sydney at the time! Professional men, financiers, engineers, builders, bakers, butchers, chemists, builders, undertakers, stationers, carriers, ironmongers, haberdashers, drapers, milliners, mercers and tailors, retailers of Manchester, furniture suppliers, lime and cement merchants, glass manufacturers, all manner of service or product providers. Where the business being advertised related more directly to the world of motorists or to moving people from place to place, was where you got the lion’s share of ads.
▲ Strathfield: free from “Influences of the Sea Air”
Purveyors of property
The footprints of the auctioneer, the valuator and the real estate agent are visible throughout the directory, often in prominently displayed ads. Some who could afford to, placed more lavish ads which mega-hyped the virtues of certain suburbs and their homes – such as the Orton Bros ad (left) pitching homes in the “favourite suburb” of Strathfield, pushing the (alleged) “health benefits” of the area, “away from the “Influences of the Sea Air”. Presumably if Orton Bros had been selling houses in Clovelly or Coogee Beach, they would have taken a different attitude to the “harmful effects of sea air”!
▲ The “Digger” Agents at Roseville
Another property heavyweight Arthur Rickard & Co, appearing and reappearing across the directory, specialised in sub-division and the creation of new estates, eg, selling as “the New Model Suburb” of Toongabbie✲. Rickard’s had a full-page ad offering a choice of two estates, Toongabbie Park (“a most promising estate, fertile soil and good rainfall”) – the buyer could opt for a large home or a Rickard Farmlet, 1 acre to 4½ acres from £50 10s. per acre; or the Portico Estate (“city water, proximity to consumers’ markets, building conveniences”) – “designed on the latest and most up-to-date town-planning – a wonderful scheme of beauty”. Some property agents like Hough and Barnard emphasised their WWI service credentials to help flog their homes, displaying ads (at right) which proudly announced their AIF associations⊡.
Newtown 1922: Hire-a-luxury wedding vehicle
Transport options a-plenty!
Up there with the estate agents and developers were advertisers for anything to do with the automobile. Hire car companies posted ads for vehicles available for any special purpose. Ads from proprietors of motor garages are liberally sprinkled through the directory, these business often rented out touring vehicles for people both wanting to explore the far reaches of Sydney using Wilson’s of course as their guide. The plentiful motor garage ads naturally catered for all the motorists’ touring and driving needs – ‘Bowserised’ (often Shell) fuel, Benzine oil, ‘vulcanised’ tyres, mechanical repairs, etc.
▲ Bulli Motors: cars, motorcycles, bicycles, for Bulli Pass
The reach of Wilson’s publication was not narrowly limited to the city and suburban district boundaries that encompassed Sydney in 1922… business advertisers buying space in the directory came from as far away as the Blue Mountains and from the Illawarra/South Coast, as evidenced by the ad at right from a Bulli motor garage who also specialised in automotive services for the motor(bike) cyclist.
▲ A horse-intensive removals firm!
The Removalists
Domestic carriers were also well represented in the ads in the street directory. Ads for businesses, describing themselves variously as removalists, carriers or furniture carters, filter through the book. The removal business ads signal an interesting crossover between the old and the new technologies…in 1922 motorised vehicles as a form of transport would still be numerically inferior to horse-drawn carts, the ads in Wilson’s show original horse-power still much in demand on Sydney streets, side-by-side with the new, motor-driven furniture vans and vehicles.
‘Tradie’ ads
Tradesmen were regular advertisers in Wilson’s Street Directory, keen to take advantage of Sydney’s growing numbers of home occupiers and new areas of urbanisation – carpenters, plumbers/gasfitters, electricians, tilers, slaters, painters and decorators, sign writers, metal workers, galvanised iron workers, etc. Some of the most refreshing and humorous ads were from 1920s tradies like the two in the directory reproduced here. ▼ ▶
A miscellany of ads
Most every other avenue of (legal) private endeavour that you’d expect to be plying its business in early 1920s seems to get a shout-out in the street directory. Several ads that popped up in the vicinity of the Lidcombe entry and maps were for stone and marble masons. Considering that Lidcombe was (and still is) home to Rookwood Cemetery, reputed to be the biggest cemetery in the Southern Hemisphere, it is of no surprise to find a troop of monumental masons showcasing their artisan wares here.▼
Rookwood handiwork
A trifecta of disparate WAD advertisers from north of the harbour:▼
▲ 1922: Home entertainment unit
The piano – pride of place in the living room of Sydney homes in 1922
Many of the domestic carrier ads that I have alluded to above emphasised “careful piano removal” as one of the fortes of their trade. This is a reminder that in the early twenties, before the advent of radio and television in Australian households, both of how valuable pianos were and the key role they played as principal providers of home entertainment.
Accommodation and pleasure at Sandringham by the seaside
The first ad below at left is for the ‘Prince of Wales’, a popular beachfront hotel on Botany Bay, a local institution in the St George district since the 1860s drawing crowds to its lavish luncheons, parties, picnics and recreational pursuits on its pleasure grounds. Proprietor in 1922 William Langton was just one of very many publicans who had a go at running (with wildly varying success) the ‘Prince’ since 1866 (the hotel was demolished in 1961). ▼
Footnote: the LJ Hooker of his day:
Of the myriad real estate admen in the directory, the company name recurring most throughout is Stanton & Son, Ltd. Stanton’s features in six separate ads (pp.92, 155, 430, 503, 622, 644) to advertise its offices at Pitt St City, Summer Hill, Haberfield, Edgecliff, Randwick, North Sydney and Rosebery. Proprietor Richard Stanton was one of the founders of the Real Estate Institute of NSW and an advocate of the Garden City Movement (see later blogs on Early 1900s Sydney Garden Suburbs).
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✲ developer Rickard was in fact busy selling property all over Sydney and beyond…such as the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains where he talked the rail authorities into building new stations at Warrimo and Bullaburra to service his new estates there, Peter Spearritt, ‘Rickard, Sir Arthur (1868–1948)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rickard-sir-arthur-8206/text14357, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 12 July 2018.
⊡ realty men were no means the only business advertisers who played the AIF card, tradesmen et al were similarly not slow in slipping into the pitch their record of loyal service to King and Empire during the Great War
I had lots of old books when I was a kid growing up, but maybe only one or two books that would possibly generate the curiosity of an antiquarian✲. One of these books was given to me by my mother when I was about ten or eleven…a most unwise move on her part as it transpired.
‘1922 Wilson’s Director’
The humble but rarely spotted 1922 street directory
This book was the Sydney street directory for the year 1922, to give it it’s correct and full title, Wilson’s Authentic Director, Sydney and Suburbs 1922. This small but squat little publication (5½” x 4½”, 735pp), the original owner of which was almost certainly my carpenter-builder maternal grandfather (an early owner of a motor vehicle I believe), came into my hands in something approaching pristine condition, notwithstanding that the directory was then already more than 40 years old!
Today although I still possess it, it is an almost unrecognisable shadow of its once immaculate state! As my juvenility slowly gave way to adolescence I managed to write (things entirely unrelated to Sydney street maps), scribble and doodle on its quasi-virginal pages. Equally as bad, I haphazardly tossed the book around with such careless abandon over the decades that the front cover (a orangey-brown hard cover) became separated from the spine and eventually disappeared forever. Of course if cornered I could sheet home part of the blame for my repeated if unintended acts of vandalism to my parents who showed such egregiously bad judgement in trusting such a historically valuable tome to a ten-year-old Visigoth in the first place! But ultimately mine was the hand that caused the damage…I suppose if I was scratching round to find any compensating factors, I might say that at the very least no one can accuse me of neglecting my parent’s gift. Far from it! As a “child-distractor” Wilson’s Street Director performed yeoman’s service! I certainly made extensive, if not good, use of it.
The directory maps
The maps of each area of Sydney are neatly and clearly drawn by hand, but lack the computerised preciseness and uniformity of a map today…the cartographers in an effort to make the street names stand out by using large, bold type, have the effect of some disproportionality in the maps…streets look a bit out of alignment with each other (refer also to Eastwood below). Moreover, a critical flaw of the maps is the absence of a distance guide.
Curiously there are some variances in the kinds of type-face used in different maps, some use a Gothic font in contrast to the classic style. ◀ The Redfern-Darlington map at left differs from the type used in most maps. On a few seldom occasions maps make reference to the traditional, nineteenth century British land concept of parishes (eg, the Parish of Gordon)…this seems extraneous as the maps and the book largely follow a division by municipalities.
Gordon Rd – in the days before the upgrade to a highway and renaming
Very many of the street names that were current then survive to this day, although with some surprising little twists – the Pacific Highway, the seminal road leading north from the harbour bridge out of Sydney, was then called Gordon or Lane Cove Road. After Wahroonga it becomes Peat’s Ridge Road. Church Street, Parramatta, traditional haunt of car yards, was at the time alternately called Sydney Road.
Similarly Liverpool Road, starting from Parramatta Road, bears the alternative name “Great Southern Road” on the map (now the Hume Highway). The Princes Highway, the longest road in South-east Australia, is not to be seen! Curiously some suburbs or parts of suburbs are not shown on the maps at all!
The colliery (deepest mine shaft ever sunk in Aust.) in the 1940s (still operating at that time)
The suburb descriptors
One of the most interesting parts of the directory are the brief summaries of individual suburbs. Newtown is described as “thickly populated suburb adjoining the city” (well, no change here!), but its “numerous works and factories” have made way for the suburb’s relatively recent gentrification of modern living spaces☸. St Peters, just to Newtown’s south, is noted in the directory as being “for years the chief brick-making centre for the city” (these days the remaining, redundant kilns and chimneys are a historical curio within the undulating, expansive Sydney Park). Balmain, aside from its “fine public buildings” is “noteworthy as being the location of the deepest coal shaft in the Southern World – 3000 ft” (Balmain Colliery, corner of Birchgrove Rd and Water St, Birchgrove; an exclusive residential estate, Hopetoun Quays, today sits atop the former mine).
The Glebe
The map on page 223 details inner city Darlington (which in 1922 included the locale “Golden Grove”), then as now a suburb most approximate to the University of Sydney…the map shows that the grounds of the University had not at that time encroached onto the eastern side of City Road. The directory describes Darlington as “essentially a workers’ suburb, and being in close proximity to the City, is favoured by workers, who chiefly preside therein”.
Mascot with a racecourse where the airport should be!
Botany and Mascot are old adjoining suburbs in South Sydney. Map 151 (of Botany) and Map 405 (of Mascot) both document the existence at that time of Ascot Racecourse in Mascot…it was located on land adjacent to Botany Bay that now forms part of Sydney Airport⌽. Drummoyne is “a picturesque suburb which has made rapid strides since the tram was opened in 1902”.
Killara on Sydney’s leafy North Shore earns itself a stellar wrap that would make the burghers of the suburb today glow with pride: “(Killara) may justly claim to be both attractive and select. There are many substantial residences, the homes of the well-to-do citizen, and altogether the dwellings are of a superior class” (but not entirely exclusive because prestigious Hunters Hill also had “well-to-do citizens”).
East Subs’ residential paradise
Not to be outdone by the North Shore, the Eastern Suburbs gets even more of a ringing endorsement…the directory goes overboard with Vaucluse, and especially Watson’s Bay, lavishly portrayed as a “romantic looking and historical region, (standing) perhaps highest on the list of Australian ‘beauty spots’ “. Waxing lyrical, the writer ends with a frenzy of capitalisation extolling “the FORTIFICATIONS, LIGHTHOUSES, LIFEBOAT, SIGNAL STATION, and the WORLD-FAMED GAP, near the scene of the wreck of the ill-fated Dunbar” (a disastrous shipwreck occurring off South Head in 1857).
The other side of Strathfield municipality
Strathfield, seven miles west of the GPO, was lauded for its “numerous magnificent and substantially built dwellings (today we wouldn’t hold back, we’d simply say ‘mansions’), the homes of the wealthy citizen”. Strathfield’s maps include the locale of ‘Druitt Town’, now called South Strathfield. The map on page 583 includes the less salubrious side of the municipality (the Government Abattoirs and Rookwood Necropolis), a striking contrast with the world of Strathfield’s croquet-playing set.
Eastwood map, p235: site of future MQ University just to the south of Lane Cove River
On the other side of Parramatta River, Ryde (which in 1922 encompassed present-day West Ryde, North Ryde and Macquarie Park) is described as a “famous fruit-growing district on the Parramatta River”. The present location of Macquarie University in the northern reaches of the Eastwood district (set on generous acreage between Marsfield and North Ryde) was in earlier days the site of largely Italian market gardens and (citrus) orchards, interspersed incongruously with a greyhound racing track. An interesting feature shows a preponderance of street names around the present site of the campus with a martial theme – named after overseas battles (or campaigns) including Balaclava, Waterloo, Crimea, Culloden, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Sebastopol, Khartoum. When Talavera Rd was added later, this brought the number of streets commemorating the Crimean War alone to four.
Mosman, still today a suburb whose affluence makes real estate agents salivate at the prospect of dollar symbols followed by multiple zeros, was ever thus the sought-after destination for the cashed-up aspirational denizen…”(a thriving suburb) situated on a charming arm of Port Jackson…on the abrupt sides nestle red-tiled villas in many quaint styles of architecture…but a few years since the tramway rendered its beauties easily accessible to city men”, etc.⊡
Dee Why
Freshwater (on the Northern Beaches) is depicted as being a “pleasant one-half mile walk” from the Brookvale tram stop at Curl Curl, (comprising) “permanent camps and excellent surf-bathing”. Similarly, close-by Dee Why, reflecting its use as a vacation destination in the day, is a “delightful and charmingly situated sea-side resort (with) a lot to be proud of” – one factor of which presumably is the safety of its beach of which “drowning casualties are up to now unknown”.
Manly, by 1922 already long-established as a “must go-to” day trip for Sydneysiders, is described as a “delightful (ferry) trip down the harbour”…the writer is unrestrainedly fulsome in praise of its virtues, “Few resorts offer such a diversity of attractions – bathing in surf and baths, riding, driving, cycling, and motoring; while golf, cricket, football, la crosse, rifle, rowing, sailing, tennis, croquet, bowling clubs are all in full swing. Open air entertainments and band concerts nightly, and the usual attractions of a popular watering place”.
Vying with Manly for the beachside glamour stakes (then as now) was Bondi (subsumed under Waverley in the directory). Bondi Beach, in the words of Wilson’s, was equipped with baths and municipal “surf sheds” which accommodated 4500 men and 1500 women (clear evidence that 1922 was indeed a pre-feminist era devoid of the slightest pretence to gender equality!)…the (beach) park, the writer went on, “remodelled with the construction of the sea wall” was “now a rendezvous for natural pleasure seekers”. Beach accessible suburbs are always in demand with homebuyers, as underlined in the description of Maroubra – “a favourite place for surf bathers and is advancing with lightning rapidity and they are building fast there” (no hyperbole spared!)
South Kenso & Daceyville
Page 513 illustrates how much can change over lengthy periods of time. In 1922 Sydney’s second university, the University of New South Wales, was still 27 years away, but the future UNSW site was then occupied by Kensington Racecourse✾ and Randwick Park. Nearby was Randwick Asylum, now the Prince of Wales Hospital, and the Randwick Rifle Range, further south on Avoca St, is no more. Anzac Pde runs through the present suburb of Kingsford which in 1922 was called South Kensington with a small part of this suburb forming the locale of Lilyville.
Penrith & the (“world-class”) Nepean
Even suburbs located far the city CBD were given a positive spin by Wilson’s – Penrith, 34 miles from the GPO is described as “the centre of a fertile agricultural and fruit-growing district” only one hour’s journey by rail. The township is “well lighted with electricity and excellent water supply”. Among its attractions are the Nepean River, “world famed for its championship sculling courses, which is recognised by many as the best course in the world” and beautified by its “rugged grandeur of mountain scenery (which draws in) tourists and camping parties”. It also offers short day trips to the “delightful villages” of Mulgoa, Wallacia and Luddenham for shooting and fishing.
The township of Hornsby in the north-west of Sydney is the “centre of a prosperous district”. And with its high elevation (594 ft above sea level), Wilson’s Directory talks up Hornsby as a “metropolitan sanitarium”. The country of its environs “abound with charming drives and magnificent scenery”. Galston is “seven miles north by good metal road” (the “famous Galston ZIG-ZAG”).
Hurstville is depicted as “the centre of a large and progressive district…charmingly situated nine miles south by rail from Sydney”. It includes Mortdale, a township of recent growth, most of the property owned and occupied by the working class”. Also within the Hurstville municipality, the book refers to the suburb of Dumbleton – now called Beverley Hills (conspicuous today for its plethora of restaurants favouring Cantonese Hong Kong and Guangzhou cuisines).
The cover of my edition is long gone but the 1926 edition is very approx.
Pertinent omissions
There is an arbitrariness to the scope of the 1922 directory, it doesn’t extend to most peripheral districts like Liverpool, Blacktown, Campbelltown and Windsor/Richmond, all of which are included within the perimeters of contemporary greater Sydney. This perhaps provides a pointer to the trajectory of the early development patterns and communications of Sydney. Significant population and urban infrastructure reached districts like Penrith and even to parts of the Blue Mountains before it got to Windsor for instance☉.
‘ Gregory’s’ 1st street directory of Sydney 1934
PostScript: Swallowed up by Gregory’s expanding empire of streets? ‘Gregory’s’ before there was a Gregory’s?
In 1934 Gregory’s Street Directory (of Sydney Suburbs and Streets) made its debut, it was not long after this the Wilson’s Street Directory discontinued its annual publication and went out of business. I haven’t been able to ascertain for sure but I suspect a correlation between the two…it is quite feasible that the demise of Wilson’s was linked to the rise of Gregory’s, the latter becoming a household name in metropolitan street directories (and until the advent of GPS an unwaveringly constant companion of the majority of automobile glove-boxes).
Footnote: Taking the Eastwood map (above) as an example of the deficiencies of scale of the directory’s maps, the block between Herring St and Culloden Rd bisected by Waterloo Rd, encompasses the land occupied today by the rump of the campus of Macquarie University. This is some 16 hectares in area, but due to the use of large bold fonts for streets which condenses the sizes of blocks, the area seems quite small on the map!
More nomenclature change: the maps refer to the Municipality of Prospect and Sherwood, later the council was renamed ‘Holroyd’. Prospect retains its identity as a suburb but there is no longer a ‘Sherwood’ locality.
≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘≘
✲ is Wilson’s Authentic Director, Sydney and Suburbs 1922 an antiquarian book? The key words in any definition of a antiquarian book are ‘old’ and ‘rare’. The perception of ‘what is old’ is subjective and can be related to a given individual’s experience. To me (even way back when I first got hold of it) it was old then and is ancient now! The quality of ‘rareness’ though might be harder to attribute to this book, short of conducting a survey of the remaining second-hand bookshops in this city (these days an increasingly less difficult task to accomplish) I have no earthly idea of how many copies there are in existence. It is certainly the only hardcopy of the publication that I have encountered in its physical state, however I am aware that multiple copies exist online in microfiche form. I suspect then that strictly speaking it probably falls short of the standard definition of antiquarian, so I am happy to go with any variation on a theme that retains that association…quasi-antiquarian, semi-antiquarian, even pseudo-antiquarian!
⌽ Mascot’s Ascot Racecourse (named after the premier horse-racing course in Britain) was the site from where the first aeroplane flight in Sydney took place (1911), [‘Ascot Racecourse, Sydney’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org]
⊡ appropriately enough to match its elite and exclusive status, Mosman, along with North Sydney, are afforded the only inset maps in “three colors” in an otherwise entirely black-and-white publication (alas these too were casualties of my cavalier treatment of the book during my juvenile years – the tricoloured inset maps of the two suburbs were torn off long ago!)
✾ the maps of the South Sydney area indicate how littered it was with racecourses in 1922…in addition to Kensington and Randwick, there were racecourses at Ascot (see below) and at Eastlakes (Rosebery Racecourse) now occupied by The Lakes Golf Course
☸ the locale of South Kingston gets a nod in the book but these days this name for part of the Newtown suburb has long fallen into disuse and is obsolete
☉ the Penrith and Windsor districts are both roughly equidistance from Sydney (moreover, Windsor was settled as early as 1791, a mere three years after the British takeover of the continent!). Blacktown’s omission is even more puzzling, being considerably closer to the GPO than Penrith!
On the tranquil foreshore of the Parramatta River near Abbotsford Point, some five kilometres by ferry from Sydney’s Circular Quay, sits a quiet, out-of-the-way park named Quarantine Reserve. The significance of its name relates to a unique and interesting connection it has with “four-legged immigrants” to this country…for three score-plus years (ca.1917-80) it was the quarantine station for all of Sydney’s (and New South Wales’) incoming animals from overseas. The station was located on a bluff which gently slopes down to the river at the quaintly named Hen and Chicken Bay. Prior to the animal quarantine station coming to Abbotsford, incoming animals were quarantined at Bradley’s Head on the other side of the harbour – in 1916 the site became the location for the city’s Taronga Park Zoo (hence the move to Hen and Chicken Bay in 1917).
⤴ The cow sheds on the bay side⤴ What remains of the cattle stables today⤴ As they once appeared during the station’s heyday!
Today, the animals and their rustic ambience are long gone, as is the medical equipment, the various machinery, domestic utensils, etc, but a good representation of the original property’s holdings remain, albeit in diminished condition. As you stroll through the green reserve whose name commemorates the vital role it once played in safeguarding domestic health from animal contamination, several animal enclosures are jotted across the landscape. In the centre of the reserve are two adjoining cattle stables comprising 24 separate stalls each with troughs, the doors were removed at either ends of the buildings long ago and quite a few of the panels have been vandalised or pulled out altogether. On the day I visited, the stalls had colourful balloons and ribbons appended to them, it was hosting a children’s birthday party! Next to the stables and connecting with them is the site of the cattle yard itself, now a vacant, grassless square.
⤴ The QS piggery
Just across and down the hill from the cow stables is a small faded green building with a worse-for-wear tin roof, this once functioned as a piggery…the pig pens contained food troughs and runs to allow the unfortunate porcine creatures some (very limited) mobility of movement✲. To the east of the cattle stables on the boundary of the reserve are the horse stables (10 in number). Over the years of the facility’s operation prominent international racehorses worth thousands of pounds (and later dollars) were detained here during their periods of quarantine.
⤴ What’s left of the two remaining dog kennels after a large tree fell on them
The enclosures for humans’ most favourite domestic animals (cats and dogs) have fared less well over the passage of time. The station’s dog kennels, numbered 83 when they were rebuilt in the 1950s on the side closest to the Bay, but now only two kennels remain! Even less fortunate for feline enthusiasts, the cattery has disappeared altogether! The same for the sheep runs (not really sure why in the 20th century there would still have been a need to import sheep into NSW – unless perhaps they were unusual, specialist breeds?)
⤴ QS incinerator – manifestly not one designed by Walter Burly Griffin!
A few of the quarantine station’s auxiliary buildings have also survived – including apparently a “dog’s kitchen”, a second kitchen where vegetables were cut up for the pigs, a storage block (the feed store) and a maintenance workshop. Also surviving near the eastern edge of the reserve is a rather unprepossessing structure, a scarred, sombre looking incinerator. Carcasses and animal excreta were disposed of here, although some dead animals were buried on the site including possibly a giraffe (unsubstantiated, could be a legendary urban anecdote?). At the Spring Street entrance to the quarantine reserve is the former caretaker’s cottage.
⤴ On-site info display contains a picture of ‘Hexham’
The Hen and Chicken Bay site before the quarantine station
Prior to the 2.8 hectare site being acquired by the Commonwealth Government in 1916 for the quarantine station❧, the site was occupied by the Hexham Estate with its residential landmark, ‘Hexham’, an 1880s Italianate Victorian property (originally the house was called ‘Emmaville’ by the Bell family, and later ‘Blanchlands’ by the succeeding owner, surveyor John Loxton). Around 1900 the estate was acquired by Lewy Pattison, a director of the early pharmacy chain Soul Pattison & Co. In 1982 ‘Hexham’ (located in Checkley Street on the northern fringe of the Reserve) was demolished after a fire severely damaged the property.
‘Hexham‘ ⤵
Animal quarantine station: postwar to 1980
The quarantine station operated until World War Two when it was temporarily closed because of restrictions on animal imports during the war, and reused by the military for storage purposes. Its reopening in 1945 was vocally opposed by residents in the surrounding Abbotsford streets who had long suffered the undesirable effects of the station’s proximity to them – their senses regularly assailed by the smell, the noise and the pollution (from the incinerator burnings).
In the ensuing years there were ongoing objections from residents and Council – in 1971 the local Commonwealth MP raised a request from Drummoyne Municipal Council about the prospect of the Commonwealth transferring the land to the jurisdiction of NSW Government so that the site could be converted into parkland. Despite the facility’s unpopularity with locals, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that a decision was made to move the animals out to a remoter site in Sydney’s outer west, Wallgrove. In 1980 the Abbotsford station was closed for good, and the following year it was turned into a park to commemorate the quarantine station’s historic role.
(Image source: Pinterest)
PostScript: Abbotsford’s and Nestlé’s grand mansion
Not far from the Quarantine Reserve sits an extraordinarily impressive mansion looking out on Abbotsford Bay. Fortunately this house, unlike ‘Hexham’ is still extant! Abbotsford House (situated on the Chiswick side of the suburb) has a similar heritage to ‘Hexham’, built for doctor and politician Sir Arthur Renwick around 1877-1878◘. If you approach the Victorian mansion from the waterfront reserve it is an imposing and most impressive sight, set in extensive grounds which abuts Wire Mill Park…bayside access to the palatial mansion is cut off by a artificially constructed canal running horizontally, giving the property a water frontage. The facade itself is a wonderful symmetrical design, a tour de force of dazzling architectural features (two storey front verandahs, imposing towers with tented roofs, elliptical arches and plastered columns, elegant steps and spired cupolas). Two plaster lions guard the front entrance with strategically placed classical sculptures decorating the lawns✧. “House of Nestlé” 1937 (Photo: RAHS – Adastra Aerial Photo Collection)
⤴ Abbotsford House
After Renwick was forced to relinquish the property in 1903 because of financial debts, it was bought by one of the principals of the Grace Brothers department stores. Then, just after World War I ‘Abbotsford House’ was acquired by the Nestlé company (operating at this time as the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co). Nestlé built a factory on the estate site which manufactured chocolate and the drink ‘Milo’, whilst the mansion itself served as the administrative centre of the business. The factory closed in 1991 and the whole estate was duly incorporated into a new medium-density housing complex (Abbotsford Cove).
𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢𓆢
✲ seldom ever used apparently because of fear of an outbreak of “Swine Fever”
❧ prior to the Abbotsford location, the Sydney Quarantine Station was apparently situated on the other side of Sydney Harbour at Bradley’s Head, and was required to move because what became known as Taronga Park Zoo was established on Bradley’s Head in 1916
◘ the name of Abbotsford House’s architect doesn’t appear to be recorded anywhere
✧ Abbotsford House which gave the suburb its name, derives from ‘Abbotsford’, classics author Sir Walter Scott’s home in Scotland
Abbotsford Quarantine Station (1917-1980)
๑๑๑๑๑๑ ๑๑๑๑๑๑ ๑๑๑๑๑๑ ๑๑๑๑๑๑ ๑๑๑๑๑๑ 50 Spring Street, Abbotsford, New South Wales 2046
Latitude -33.8483 Longitude 151.1228
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Publications consulted: Canada Bay Connections, (City of Canada Bay), www.canadabayconnections.com
‘Abbotsford Quarantine Station’, 04-DEC-2015, www.historyofsydney.com.au
‘Top 10 Facts About Abbotsford, Sydney’, (Canada Bay Club), www.canadabayclub.com.au
‘Abbotsford House’, (Office of Environment & Heritage), www.environment.nsw.gov.au
a href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-3.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is its Great Wall – Chángchéng 長城 – or as it is sometimes described, Wan-liCh’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall). The Great Wall is of course a global icon, one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds, extending 21,196.18 km in length from west to east. Sections of the Wall are around 2,300 years old, dating from the Warring States era. The western end of the Wall by consensus is Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province (north-central region of China), but where is the eastern end-point?(Source: Lonely Planet)
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-4.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[/capThree hundred or so kilometres due east of Beijing is Shanhaiguan (literally “mountain – sea – pass”) in Liaoning Province, one of the Great Wall’s principal passes (popularly acclaimed in China as “the first pass under Heaven”. The Great Wall at Shanhaiguan dates from the 16th century and is 7,138m long with a central fortification, Zhendong Tower, a 4.8k square wall and barbican. The region it defends traditionally has had a strategic importance to China. The section of the Wall here stands between the Yan Mountains and the Gulf of Bohai, its location being easy to hold and hard to mount an assault against made it ideal to repel any invasions from the northern nomadic tribes of Manchuria such as the Khitan, Jurchen and the Manchus. [‘Shanhai Pass’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-5.jpg”> Laolongtou[/caption‘Old Dragon’s Head’
Five kilometres east of central Shanhaiguan is the what is often commonly thought of as the ultimate stretch of the Great Wall, known as Laolongtou. The wall at Laolongtou (‘Old Dragon’s Head‘✱), built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty, has been a strategic defensive point for much of Chinese imperial history. To the north of Laolongtou Wall is Ninghai City, a (roughly) square fortress. It’s architectural features include Chenghai Pavilion and Jinglu Beacon Tower. The site also contains an archery field and a military-themed museum (uniforms, helmets, a sabre weighing 83 kilos). The far eastern section of the wall is known as Estuary Stone, on either side of the end section are long strips of sandy beach. Hushan Great Wall
虎山长城; Hǔshānchángchéng
On appearances ‘Old Dragon’s Head’ seems an appropriate point to locate the end of the Wall. Here’s where the eastward march of the Wall finally hits the sea at the Bohai Gulf, enters the water and continues some 22.4 metres and then abruptly ends⊟. Laolongtou seems a poetically apt spot for the long, long wall to end, and it seems logical, right?❂ Few would have disagreed with this before 1989…in that year another section of the Great Wall was unearthed further east and further north of Laolongtou. The wall, which extends over a mountain (Hushan or Tiger Mountain) for about 1,200m, is just north of a Chinese border city, Dandong (bordering North Korea across the Yalu River). In 2009 the Chinese government, based on the research undertaken by CASS, recognised the Hushan wall as the eastern terminus of the Great Wall. [‘Hushan Great Wall’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
Hushan Wall, Dandong (Wikipedia Commons)
Hushan or Bakjak?
The Beijing recognition of the wall earned displeasure in the neighbouring ‘Democratic People’s Republic’. The North Korean authorities claim that the wall was originally a Korean one called Bakjak Fortress which the Chinese renamed Hushan to link it in as part of the historic Chinese Great Wall. Moreover North Korean academics assert that this is part of a broader Chinese agenda, one aimed at extending Chinese cultural hegemony. [‘Goguryeo controversies’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
PostScript: Goguryeo controversy
The North Korean perspective maintains that Beijing’s identification of the Hushan wall as Chinese is a continuation of its practice of undermining the historical sovereignty of Korea’s Goguryeo Kingdom (1st century BC to 7th century AD). The background to this volatile issue lies in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’s (CASS) 2002 revision of the area’s history…CASS’s North East Project concluded that Goguryeo was not an independent state, the ‘proto-Korea’ that the Koreans affirm, it was historically merely a vassal of the ‘Middle Kingdom’. Both Koreas expressed outrage at this, feelings of nationalism were stirred up and Sino-Korean relations took a nosedive. Suspicions on both sides persist…the historic Goguryeo Kingdom encompassed an area comprising the bulk of the Korean peninsula and a portion of both Russian and Chinese Manchuria, so both Korea and China harbour fears that the other may at some point pursue irredentist claims on part of its territory. [‘How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today’s China-Korea Relations’, (Taylor Washburn) The Atlantic, 15-Apr-2013), www.theatlantic.com].
Historic map of the twin cities Dandong/Sinuiji≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣ ✱ so-called because the end part (above the sea) is thought to resemble a dragon (long) resting its head (tou) on the ground
⊟ from Laolongtou Wall’s end it is about 305km back to Beijing
❂ logical because the wall enters the sea at Bohai and the vast structure can be physically observed to end, but the issue here is that the Great Wall of China is not some unbroken, perpetually contiguous, frontier entity, it is a series of walls (sections) which meander, end then start again, right across the frontier of China
The above photo shows the well-worn, slightly scruffy and tarnished facade of an old building in the historic industrial inner city district of Sydney. The sign on the shopfront says ‘Chinese Ginsengs and Herbs Co’. Google Maps tells me the address is 4-10 Goulburn Street, although the sign above the entrance indicates the address is “75-77 Ultimo Road Haymarket”. I’m going to go with what the building says rather than what my iPhone indicates…the key point is that this building is within wok-tossing distance of Hay and Dixon Streets, the epicentre of Sydney’s traditional Chinatown.
The awning above the Ginseng shop gives the real clue to the building’s history – in faded blue and red (the colours of the Republic of China better known today as Taiwan or Chinese Taipei), are the words The Chinese Nationalist Party of Australasia. The letters ‘KMT’ and the building’s date, 1921′, at the top of the facade further emphasises its political association with China.
The Haymarket building was purchased in 1921 with funds raised by Chinese-Australian supporters of the KMT or Kuomintang, a Chinese nationalist party headed by Dr Sun-Yat-sen that gained prominence after the overthrow of the last Qing emperor and the transition to republican rule. The Australasian KMT had earlier evolved out of a grass-roots organisation in Sydney called the Young China League, the impetus for the emergence of YCL/Australian KMT came largely from Sino-Australian merchants James Ah Chuey and William Yinson Lee.
KMT Sydney’s regional leadership
Ultimo Road was KMT’s Australasian headquarters, from this building the local Party liaised with the KMT Central party in China and coordinated the activities of other regional KMT branch offices elsewhere in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Pacific Islands. The Sydney Office supervised seven branches – NSW, Victoria, WA, Wellington and Auckland (NZ), Fiji and New Guinea. It also directly administered Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin and had jurisdiction over Tahiti. Melbourne office having to defer to Sydney’s seniority and hegemony provoked KMT membership tensions between Australia’s two largest cities.
KMT and the Chinese diaspora in Australia
KMT’s Sydney branch performed several functions on behalf of the Party. One of these involved an educational role for the local émigré Chinese. The KMT association fostered modern political ideas, promoting pro-republican values and the virtues of parliamentary democracy as an antidote to the gains made by Chinese communists in courting popular support in the Chinese countryside.
Recruiting new KMT members from among the community in Sydney was part of the Australasian association’s growth strategy. To bind Chinese emigrants to the Party and its objectives, the Sydney office organised dances, dinners, social gatherings, held screenings of Chinese movies. Recreational activities were another means of incorporating the Chinese locals – gyms and sporting teams were established to encourage physical exercise.
At crunch periods in the 20th century during conflicts the KMT were embroiled in on mainland China (the National Defence War against Japan, the Nationalists/Communists Civil War), the offices in Sydney and Melbourne had an instrumental role on the ground in Australia. The two associations maintained solidarity with and mobilised support for the struggles of the Chinese Nationalists headed by Chiang Kai-shek…the local Sydney branch coordinated the collection of donations❉ that were remitted back to Nanking (the Nationalists’ Chinese capital) to finance the war effort (equip the KMT Army, buy fighter planes for the Air Force, etc).
KMT Club (pre-war)
Concurrently with the establishment of the KMT headquarters in Sydney, the Chinese Nationalists with money from Chinese benefactors resident in Melbourne (above ↥) commissioned famous Chicagoan architect Walter Burley Griffin to convert a brick warehouse at 109 Little Bourke Street into the city’s KMT association premises. Griffin’s design of a new facade for the building in 1921 was financed by Canton-born, Melbourne social reformer, Cheok Hong Cheong. Cheong had a long association with Griffin as a client and was a shareholder in the Griffins’ Greater Sydney Development Association.
KMT Club Melbourne – 1980s (Walter B Griffin design) ⬇️
Australasian Canton Club
The Australasian association role eventually extended to working for returning émigrés from Australasia and Oceania. This happened when the Australasian KMT Canton Club was set up in that southern Chinese city(office)◊…its purpose was to assist the émigrés who subsequently returned to China. This assistance took many forms such as advocacy in legal matters, providing board and lodging for members passing through Canton to and from Australia and NZ and advice on investments. The Canton office also produced the widely distributed official journal of the Australasian KMT.
Both 1920s KMT buildings, Sydney and Melbourne, are still standing (the Sydney one the recent beneficiary of a bright, fresh paint job – as can be seen below)…the two clubs continue to have social associations with the local Chinese-Australian community in their respective cities.
回÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷回
❉ this material support took on added significance and urgency for the KMT cause after imperial Japan invaded Manchuria in 1937
◊ the location was chosen mainly because of the pattern of past migration to Australia and New Zealand – most Chinese migrants had come from Canton (Guangzhou) or from the wider province of Guangdong
Sources:
Judith Brett & Mei-Fen Kuo, Unlocking the History of the Australasian Kuo-Min Tang 1911-2013, (2013)
John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (2012)
Kate Bagnall, ‘Picnics and Politics’, Inside Story, 24-Jan-2014, www.insidestory.org.au
‘Griffin’s Chinese Nationalist Party Building in Lt Bourke’ (Building & Architecture), www.walkingmelbourne.com
The beach and the seaside being such an integral part of Sydney, it is not surprising that amusement piers – following the fashion of Brighton, Blackpool, Hastings and a host of other seaside piers scattered throughout Britain – sprang up and achieved popularity for leisure-seeking Sydneysiders in the early to mid 20th century. I have previously outlined the meteoric but short-lived rise of Tamarama’s Wonderland in an October 2014 blog, ‘A Day-Trippers’ Paradise: The Vogue for Pleasure Grounds in 19th/20th Century Sydney’. In this piece I am focusing on former amusement piers at two of Sydney’s most iconic beach suburbs – Coogee and Manly.
Coogee Pier
Coogee Pier AKA Coogee Pleasure Pier took four years to construct (1924-28) but its operational lifespan was as ephemeral as Wonderland, lasting only a mere six years! (1928-1934) The pier was constructed by a private firm, the Coogee Ocean Pier Company, at a princely sum of £250 thousand…”large crowds gathered to watch the first pile being driven on 24th July 1926. Radio stations 2BL and 2KY made live broadcasts of proceedings”¹.
Coogee Amusement Pier
The Pier on the beach at Coogee, when opened was a spectacular sight, reaching out 180 metres out to sea. Built with the boardwalks of English Coastal towns in mind, the entertainment pier complex was lavishly furnished with a 1,400 seat theatre, a ballroom that could accommodate 600 dedicated foot-shufflers, a 400 seat restaurant, a penny arcade and small shops. Beach-goers flocked to the pier as illustrated in the old photograph at right, helping to establish Coogee’s credentials as a resort town. The pier also incorporated a large, netted safe swimming area for its patrons – the shark net itself, attached at one side to the pier, cost £6,750. The “occasion of the shark net’s official opening was made grander by the additional unveiling of the new Giles’ Ocean Baths and the new surf sheds. The celebration was promoted as ‘Come to Coogee’ Week and attracted a crowd of 135,000 people”².
Unfortunately the amusement pier’s fate was sealed by its precarious location in the open bay, where it was subjected to the physical onslaughts of nature. Damage to the pier by the surf’s repeated thrashings❉ took its toll and the operators eventually decided to pull the plug – in 1934 Coogee Pier was closed and subsequently demolished³.
Manly wharf & fun pier 1950s/1960s
Manly Fun Pier
Manly Fun Pier (MFP) (at one point it was referred to as Manly Amusement Pier and Aquarium) was located in Manly Cove on the wharf that had hitherto been used as a cargo wharf♦. The Pier opened to the public as a “fun parlour” in 1931, eventually adopting as its slogan, Built for Fun in ’31. Establishing itself as a local icon, MFP gradually expanded its rides and features over the years – which included the Octopus ride, the Space-Walk ride, the Mexican Whip, a tumbling house and slide, indoor mini-golf, as well as more traditional features such as a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, a ghost train, a mirror maze and a train ride. The Pier’s aquarium anticipated the Fun Pier’s debut, kicking off from the year before, 1930⁴. The distinctive feature of the aquarium was its entrance which required visitors to go through a gigantic synthetic shark mouth to get inside!⁵
Later additions to MFP included dodgem cars, scooter-boats, speedboat joy rides, Pierrot shows and a wax museum. Richard Smith rose from being in charge of the speedboats to become manager of the entire amusement pier. MFP continued to be run by Smith’s family until 1971 when a group of concession holders took over its management under the banner “Fun Pier Company”. A sygna storm in 1974 damaged the Pier necessitated repairs by the Company⁶.Manly Fun Pier & Aquarium late 60s/early 70s
By the 1980s MFP was on the wane, small suburban fun piers were passé, and it was of no surprise when the Pier closed in 1989. The old Cargo Wharf was incorporated into an expanded, modernised Manly Passenger Wharf in 1990 and new amusement rides were erected (carousel, Ferris wheel, etc). However this revival was short-lived – locals living on the eastern side of Manly Cove (East Esplanade, Little Manly) didn’t waste much time before they started voicing complaints about the noise and light coming from the new rides at night…within a short time what remained of the Manly wharf amusement park was permanently closed⁷.
Old portico entrance to Giles’ Baths
PostScript: Coogee’s “pay-to-swim” baths
As suggested above, the opening of Coogee Pier in 1928 was something of a double act for Coogee with the simultaneous opening of Giles’ Hot Sea Baths, in a natural rock pool setting off the northern headland of Coogee Beach¤. The baths (AKA “Giles’ Gym and Baths”) were built on the same site as the earlier Lloyd’s Baths. The baths’ proprietor was Oscar E Giles, a masseur who promoted health and fitness through hydrotherapy, electric and hot sea bath treatments, as well as offering a “weight-reduction massage course”⁴.
Coogee Beach’s long tradition of “pay-to-swim” baths extends to the other (southern) side of the beach, two such still operating are Wylie’s and McIver’s. Wylie’s Baths, an ocean tidal pool, was started by Henry Wylie for Olympic swimmers (including his daughter Mina (Wilhelmina Wylie) and pioneering Australian gold medallist Fanny Durack) to train. McIver’s Ladies Baths is the only women only saltwater pool in Australia. The baths have been available only to women and children since the 1880s□. Since 1922 it has been run by the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club.
Manly Marineland – was situated on the Esplanade not far from the amusement pier. The aquarium opened in 1965, underwent a number of name changes before closing at the beginning of 2018.
Over recent months Sydney “Pub Tsar” Justin Hemmes’ Merivale Group acquired the Collaroy Hotel on Pittwater Road for a reported $21 million⋇. The hotel (currently closed for renovation) is situated in one of the Northern Beaches’ finest old and best preserved buildings, the Arlington Amusement Hall✦. A hotel since the late 1990s the Arlington’s premises has traded under various names including ‘The Collaroy’ and the ‘Surf Rock Hotel’. Earlier than this the building had housed the Northern Beaches’ first wine bar called ‘1066’. The building also contains the separate Collaroy Beach Club.
(Photo: Northern Beaches Council)
The iconic building with its asymmetrical Federation brick facade has a commercial life story dating back to the First World War. It was built by Herbert Williamson for his wife Christina somewhere between 1915 and 1919. It was officially opened as the Arlington Amusement Hall in 1921 although it had already been used a cinema showing silent feature movies from 1919.
The Collaroy in 2017
At the time of the Arlington’s public opening the local newspaper described it thus: “The hall is situated right on the beach and attached to it are four shops … The hall is commodious, and is approached by a fine vestibule, a stage and dressing rooms and also a gallery add to the comfort of both entertainers and patrons …” Originally the building contained a row of (four) retail shops with attached 1st floor residences. We know that the business enterprises of three of these shops comprised a draper, a chemist and a stationer.
Collaroy, a beachhead prone to sand erosion
Arlington Amusement Hall’s location, built right on to the beachfront has made it and other buildings around it on that side of Pittwater Road susceptible to storm damage. In 1944 huge storms lashing the beach washed away some three metres of the Hall’s foundations. Fortunately the large building was spared the worst of the2016 onslaught when many nearby properties had their frontages, fences and walls uprooted in the massive winter storms…not so fortunate was the Collaroy Beach Club premises affixed to the Arlington Hall/Hotel which lost a balcony in the violent onslaught of savage nature.
The Arlington in the 1920s
PostScript: Collaroy’s other building relic
It is interesting that Arlington Hall started its life as a picture theatre because today when people associate Collaroy with cinema, they think of another old historic building on the opposite side of Pittwater Road – the still operating, independent Collaroy Cinema (trading as ‘United-Cinemas” in conjunction with Avalon and Warriewood cinemas further up the peninsula). Collaroy Cinema, an Art Deco building from the 1930s, with its garish and (to some tastes) sickly blue-painted exterior, stands out from the modern beach shopfronts around it. The Art Deco building retains its elegant design, but its tired, slightly battered appearance representing nearly 80 years of lived-in experience is in stark contrast with the “tender loving care” bestowed on The Arlington. Collaroy Cinema remains one of the relatively few surviving and operating picture houses of its kind in New South Wales.
‘Indy’ picture house in Pittwater Road
Nomenclature: the name of both the suburb and the beach derives from the paddle steamer SS Collaroy which was stranded off the beach for three years in the 19th century (1881-84).
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⋇ coming on top of Merivale’s 2016 acquisition of another Northern Beaches’ landmark, the even more historic Newport Arms (rebranded by Hemmes as ‘The Newport’)
✦ Amusement Hall seems to be a bit of a misnomer…rather than being a place where you’d expect to find penny arcade machines and games of fun and luck (the domain of English style seaside piers), these amusement halls, also common in the US in the same era, could simply be large buildings which functioned as multi-purpose community halls
References:
John Morcombe, ‘Arlington Amusement Hall a Collaroy icon for almost a century’, Manly Daily, 31-Oct-2014
‘Collaroy/Narrabeen, Voices from the Past’, Australian Heritage Festival, 01-May-2017, www.nationaltrust.org.au
‘The Collaroy hotel’, Architects Nicholas + Associates, http://anplusa.com/projects/the-collaroy-hotel/
‘Art Deco Cinemas, Picture Palaces and Movie Theaters’, www.decolish.com
The walk from The Spit to Manly is one of Sydney’s classic walks along a wild, rugged yet suburban coastline. The full journey is 10km through lush, dense bush land and spectacular lookouts. The first half of the walk (rated Grade 3 by NPWS) – Spit Bridge to about Balgowlah Heights – has a lot of up-and-down, crossing over foot bridges, winding steps but nothing too steep. The water views looking across to Little Manly, North Head and South Head are singularly impressive, and offer a sharp contrast with the contours of the walking track, through promontories dominated by a thick covering of nature.
The aesthetic significance of The Spit to Manly walk is evident to anyone who follows its sinewy trail, but it was also intriguing for me to discover little snippets of local history along the way. In my previous post (‘Sydney’s Heritage and History Trails: Manly Scenic Walkway’), I featured some of the historical points of interest pertaining to the eastern end of the Manly Scenic Walkway (Fairlight to Manly Wharf).
Spit Bridge (current)
Spit Bridge
Our starting point for the MSW walk going west to east, The Spit✥, a narrow channel of land jutting out from the northern part of affluent Mosman, was originally known as the “Sand-Spit”. Although there had been some tentative type of service earlier, Peter Ellery started the first truly effective ferry service from the Spit to Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Ellery ran the service from land he had acquired for farming in present-day Clontarf (today where Ellery’s Punt Reserve is situated) in a direct line over the water to the tip of The Spit. Ellery charged the users of his hand-operated punt ⅙d for a horse and cart and 6d for pedestrians. His service proved popular, popular enough for it to become a public ferry by 1871 (in 1888 a steam punt◙ replaced the hand-cranked boat) [‘The Spit – Historical Overview’, (Local Studies Service, Mosman Library, www.mosman.nsw.gov.au)].
The growing pressure for improved communications and transport lines between Sydney and the Manly area prompted a series of proposals (1862, 1888, 1915) for a bridge to be built across The Spit, before finally the go-ahead was given and a low timber bridge constructed and opened in 1924. Manly Council financed the bridge, and in a deal with the state government was permitted to reimburse its expenditure by collecting tolls for its use. In 1930 control of the bridge was passed to the Department of Main Roads [‘The Spit – Historical Overview’, ibid.].
The current bridge, a bascule lift span type made from steel and concrete, dates from 1958. The bridge, constructed in the same position as the erstwhile timber one, is also low-lying … consideration was given to making it a higher level bridge, but displaying a regrettable lack of foresight, the powers-that-be eventually plumped for the easier option and their legacy is still bedevilling Sydney motorists today! The Spit Bridge is believed to be the only Australian lift bridge still in operation on a major arterial road [‘Spit Bridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Clontarf Pleasure Grounds
A beautiful tranquil reserve fronting the beach sits on the land where Clontarf Pleasure Grounds once stood (owned for many years by publican Issac Moore (Sr) and his descendants). For around half-a-century from circa 1860 the Grounds was a popular venue for numerous leisure activities…including games of quoits, skittles and cricket, picnics, swimming and of course drinking! Clontarf Grounds were reputed to be “the oldest, largest, and most shady pleasure grounds in the harbour” [MacRitchie, John, ‘Clontarf’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008,http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/clontarf, viewed 31 Oct 2017]. Over the years Sydney’s Clontarf has had several associations with Ireland: the name itself derives from the Battle of Clontarf, 1014 (a town close to Dublin); in the 1800s the grounds drew huge crowds during holidays including the Catholic Young Men’s Societies on anniversary days.
Plaque in Clontarf Reserve remembering the dramatic 1868 incident
Attempted royal assassination in the Pleasure Grounds
In March 1868 a lone, mentally disturbed Irishman (and alleged Fenian sympathiser⌘) Henry O’Farrell took the opportunity during a visit by Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh to Clontarf, to shoot but not kill Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son. The British Prince was not badly wounded (the would-be assassin’s bullet was impeded by the “double thickness of the Duke’s trouser braces”). Prince Alfred was ferried to Sydney’s Government House for treatment. One unintended upshot of the incident was the establishment of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) at Camperdown through publicly subscribed funds raised to commemorate the Royal’s safe recovery◬. O’Farrell’s fate was sealed, he was summarily tried and hastily hanged within a month. His lawyer tried to run an insanity defence (entirely plausible) but in the prevailing climate of outrage O’Farrell’s case was a hopeless one. The incident had provoked pro-royal Australians into unleashing a torrent of prejudice aimed at Catholics, Fenians and Irish folks generally [MacRitchie, ibid.]
Clontarf Beach ‘Tent City’
During the Great Depression this now fashionable beachfront and reserve at Clontarf was the site of an impromptu tent city comprising several hundred homeless people down on their luck…the makeshift tent ‘homes’ were cobbled together with posts found in the bush and hessian (coated with whitewash, lime and fat as waterproofing)[MacRitchie, ibid.]
PostScript: MSW’s white sands
One of the pleasures of walking the stretch of the MSW track between Clontarf and Fairlight Beaches is coming upon the various little beaches that jot the coast. Often sheltered in bays away from the powerful ocean currents, some of these “mini-beaches” are accessible only from wooden staircases leading down from high on the promontories around Dobroyd Head and Balgowlah Heights. Bearing names like Castle Rock Beach, Forty Baskets Beach, Reef Beach and Washaway Beach, walking on these pockets of sandy white strips convey a sense of being in a remote and deserted location, despite most of the spots being a only a stone’s throw from middle class suburbia.
Grotto Point Aboriginal carvings
A short diversion off MSW onto a side track on the Dobroyd Point stage of the walk will allow you to view a number of archaic Aboriginal engravings – this part of the headland is known as Grotto Point. Enclosed in wooden pens are various depictions of whales, boomerangs and small fish carved into the rock platform.
🅰︎🅱︎ for more on Clontarf and the whole Sydney pleasure grounds era see also my 2014 post ‘A Day-Trippers’ Paradise: The Vogue for Pleasure Grounds in 19th/20th Century’
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✥ a Spit (or sandspit) is a deposition bar or beach landform that juts out from the coast
◙ the introduction of the steam punt at The Spit later on (1911) would allow the Manly trams to be carried across Middle Harbour [MacRitchie, ibid.]
¤ as a result Northern Sydney motorists continue to be plagued by traffic bottlenecks every time the Spit Bridge opens in the middle for passing water crafts
⌘ It seems to have been generally assumed at the time that the Irishman was acting on behalf of the Irish Underground Fenian Brotherhood but this remains inconclusive
◬ the adjacent Duke of Edinburgh Parade is named in honour of Prince Alfred
Of the many, many coastal walks afforded by “the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security…”(Governor Arthur Phillip’s appraisal of Port Jackson after sighting Sydney for the first time in 1788), the seaside walk on the southern side of the suburb of Manly✳ is certainly right up there with the most picturesque of them.
‘Father of Manly’
Henry Gilbert Smith
Pivotal to Manly Scenic Walkway (henceforth MSW) and to the seaside community of Manly as a whole is the historic Manly Wharf, the original of which was built by Henry Gilbert Smith in 1855⌽. Smith, known as the “Father of Manly”, had a vision of how the undeveloped bushland that dominated Manly in the 1850s could be transformed into a thriving seaside resort. Purchasing and leasing in excess of 300 acres of land, Smith built Manly’s early hotels, including one (as a sop to the local Temperance Society?) that served only soft drinks! As well the pioneer entrepreneur was responsible for planning the layout of Manly’s streets and parks as they still exist today [‘Manly Heritage Plaques Walk’, www.manlyaustralia.com.au]
(Source: Pinterest)
Carrying passengers to Manly
Creating a seaside resort a good 11.3km from Sydney (a formidable distance in the 19th century) necessitated a good transport link. Travel by water was the obvious mode of transport for the beach suburb. HG Smith started the first regular service from the wharf operated through the paddle steamer Phantom which ferried day-time visitors to Manly and night-time theatre-goers to and from Sydney in the 1860s. From the 1870s the Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Company. controlled the suburb’s ferry services. Briefly in the early 1890s the Port Jackson Co had competition from a new rival, the Manly Cooperative Steam Ferry Co which lowered fares and increased services. By 1896 the Manly Co-op business however faltered and was wound up and Port Jackson Co resumed its monopoly.
The Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Co, whose motto was “Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care”, continued to serve the public at Manly until 1972 when its role was taken over by Brambles Industries which in turn passed ownership to the state government two years later [‘The Heart of Manly Heritage Walk’, www.manly australia.com]. In the early 1990s the government operator introduced Catamaran vessels, JetCats, to replace the unreliable and costly hydrofoils…the Manly service is now operated by Bass and Flinders Cruises operating as Manly Fast Ferries.
Venetian carnivals
East Esplanade was the venue for many of Manly’s early cultural activities, such as the Venetian Carnival which flourished from around 1913 on. The carnival comprised stalls with food and entertainment (eg, “chocolate wheels and other gambling devices”), costumes, fireworks and a water pageant [‘The Heart of Manly Heritage Walk’]. By 1930 the annual Venetian Carnival was promising the greatest “new attractions, new frolics and new stunts … ever organised in the Southern Hemisphere” with the inclusion of aeroplane rides, a “night time raid”, a “monkey speedway” and participation by Manly Surf Club. The event in 1930 ran for three weeks during Summer with the proceeds pledged to Manly Hospital and other local charities [The Sydney Mail, 15-Jan-1930 (Advertisement)]
Tram, The Corso (c.1905) (Photo: State Lib. NSW)
A meander along the Esplanade
Rows of Norfolk Island pines (no surprise to learn was also the idea of HG Smith!) flank MSW with narrow strips of sand on both sides of the wharf forming beaches sheltered in the cove from the ocean. Standing in front of the wharf building opposite Manly’s famous (Italian-inspired) Corso, if you go left, past the fast food outlets on West Esplanade the walking path heads back toward the suburb of Fairlight. Right, past Aldi◘ takes you on to East Esplanade and the walkway curves around past an assortment of clubs devoted to aquatic pursuits (Manly Yacht Club, 16ft Skiff Club, etc) and connects up with the locale known as Little Manly.
If you head further east where the Esplanade ends, the road will make its way to Little Manly Beach and Point with its spectacular promontory views. Little Manly today is uniformly residential but for a very long period (1883-1964), the Manly Gas Works located at Manly Point Park met all the area’s domestic gas needs.
North Head Q-Station
Beyond Little Manly is the dense pristine heathland known as North Head, a sandstone promontory with a significant history of military and immigration activities. North Head’s surviving fortifications were strategically important to the country’s eastern coastline defence especially during WWII. The headland also functioned as Sydney’s Quarantine Station for a huge stretch of New South Wales’ history (1832-1984), isolating smallpox and other infectious diseases from entering the community.
Little penguins and large selachii
Starting back at the wharf and heading in a western direction this time, along West Esplanade, we note the first of numerous stencilled messages on the walkway alerting walkers to the presence of little penguins. Manly Wharf and its surrounds are known nesting grounds (May/June) for migrating colonies of Eudyptula minor.
Further along MSW one of the first complexes we pass is the Manly Sea Life Sanctuary, a public aquarium displaying sharks, stingrays, little penguins (easier to spot here than on the nearby shoreline!) and other refugees from the ocean. A lure for thrill-seeking visitors is the “Shark Dive Xtreme” (swimming with 3m plus grey nurse sharks). The Sanctuary has been somewhat of an institution in Manly for 52 years¤ but is now in the final chapter of its Manly story – in March this year the management announced its upcoming closure, citing that the business, in a small ageing building, was no longer viable [B Kay, ‘Manly Sea Life Sanctuary aquarium to close at the end of the year’, Manly Daily, 30-Mar-2017].
If we follow MSW walkway to its natural end-point, it would take us past magnificent, dense bushland, serene bays and scenic lookouts on a trek of 10km to the low-lying Spit Bridge – this archaic looking bridge is the curse of motorists forced to twiddle their thumbs in peak-time gridlock whilst the bridge opens in the middle to let various sea craft through its passage.
Two Manly ‘pollies’ from Federation era
The walkway passes another local landmark Manly Pavilion (a bistro/reception venue these days) and continues up the stairs. At the top two base relief bronze plaques greet walkers and joggers, these are of Federation era politicians Edmund Barton and the somewhat itinerant Henry Parkes, both residents of the area in the 19th century. Apparently these are replacement plaques as the originals were stolen from the site in 2014 [J Morcombe, ‘Federation fathers Barton and Parkes stolen from Manly’, Manly Daily, 01-Apr-2014]
Fairlight House (site)
The MSW path soon reaches the suburb of Fairlight, in the 1920s, along with Balgowlah collectively known as Manly West. Fairlight was named after Fairlight House, the mansion home of Henry Gilbert Smith (that seminal figure in Manly’s development again!). English-born Smith took the name from a village in Sussex. Built in the 1850s by colonial architect Edmund Blacket, the house was demolished in 1939. All that is left to remind us of its one-time grandeur is a plaque on the spot showing a grainy old photo of the grand house.
Fairlight Beach
Fairlight Beach Dutch submarine episode
The small beach at Fairlight with its rocky shore and unpredictable breaks holds no attractions for board surfers but its position nestled into the cove and small tidal pool makes it kid-friendly. A tourism sign on the beachfront recounts its connection with a Dutch submarine which had seen action in the world war against the Japanese (the K.12 succeeded in torpedoing several enemy warships). The K.12 sub had been residing in Manly harbour when heavy storms in 1949 prompted the leasee, the Port Jackson Co, to try to tow it to a safer haven in Neutral Bay. Unfortunately in the process it became grounded near Fairlight Beach and sat there for 18 months before being refloated early in 1951…the K.12 was salvaged for scrap and eventually finished up in a new location near Ryde Bridge where it sank again! Parts of the sub’s engine and the bow are still wedged on rocks at Fairlight Beach [G Ross, M Melliar-Phelps, A century of ships in Sydney Harbour (1980); ‘Submarine Refloated, Salvaged for Scrap’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18-Jan-1951]The grounded WWII sub at Fairlight
(Photo: Manly Municipal Library)
PostScript: Kay-ye-my, the Aboriginal name for Manly Cove and North Harbour
Long, long before the Europeans came to the area, Manly was home to two indigenous Eora peoples, the Cannalgal and Kay-ye-my (AKA Gamaragal) clans, who were the custodians of the land. On one part of the walkway overlooking North Harbour there’s information signage which celebrates the Kay-ye-my clan who for millennia contentedly inhabited the Manly region, living a traditional lifestyle of hunting and gathering.
The Gamaragal were situated on the north shore of Port Jackson – occupying the land from Karabilye (Kirribilli) to the cliffs of Garungal or Carangle (North Head) and the sandy bay of Kayyeemy (Manly Cove) [‘Gamaragal – Aboriginal People of Manly and Northern Sydney’, Dictionary of Sydney, 24-Sept-2013, www.home.dictionaryofsydney.org
Kay-ye-my Point
FootNote: Manly East and Manly West
Less than one hundred years ago Sydney cartographers divided the suburb of Manly and its greater surrounds neatly into East and West Manly…as illustrated in the following street maps taken from the 1922 Wilson’s Street Director (predecessor of the standard Sydney street directory Gregory’s). Today’s distinct suburbs of Fairlight, Clontarf, Seaforth, Manly Vale and North Manly are not identified on the maps, and ‘Balgowlah’ and ‘Dobroyd'(sic) are listed as locales only. Note also no bridge at The Spit in 1922.
Manly EastManly West
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✳ the origin of the name for the suburb can be traced back to Phillip himself…on his visit to the area the first governor described the aboriginal inhabitants as ‘manly’ in physique. As if to demonstrate the veracity of Phillip’s observation forcefully, one of the clansman in fact speared the governor over a misunderstanding at Little Manly Beach! (Phillip recovered from his wound and to his credit did not seek to inflict retribution on the native population)
⌽ later a second parallel wharf was built for cargo transport which became redundant after the construction of Spit Bridge in 1924 enabled easier road transport. In 1928 the cargo wharf was converted into a Fun Pier which operated until 1989
◘ where the Manly Fun Pier was until its closure and demolition in 1989
¤ starting in 1965 as Manly Marineland and later known as Oceanworld Manly before its present handle
Glebe Point Road is the pulse of the inner west suburb that bears its name…a leisurely stroll from the Broadway end of the road reveals the variable character of Glebe itself. To the west of the Broadway Centre are numerous eateries and bars (a few are institutions but many of these come and go fairly regularly) and more than sufficient number of coffee shops to satisfy the myriad assortment of Gen X’s, Gen Y’s, Millennials and Zennials who frequent them (about half of which appear to be university students from just across Parramatta Road at USyd). Around here are a couple of long established bookshops including the famous local bibliophiles’ ‘institution’, Gleebooks.
As we get closer to the other (water) end, Glebe Point, there is a mix of elegant old houses, isolated groups of shops and a liberal sprinkling of backpacker lodges. This built-up urbanisation a stark contrast to the era before white settlement in the 18th century when the Glebe area was a Turpentine Ironbark forest inhabited by the indigenous Wangal and Cadigal clans.
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/image-3.jpg”> ‘Florence Villa’ 1883[/The word itself, glebe (from glaeba (L), clod of earth), refers to an area of land devoted to the maintenance of an incumbent of the church. The colony of Port Jackson’s first governor, Arthur Phillip, set aside the land here for church purposes in 1789[1].
Sydney’s Broadway and Parramatta Road marks the eastern boundary of Glebe and the suburb extends west to Rozelle Bay, a body of water flowing into Johnstons Bay and eventually into Sydney Harbour. Rozelle Bay houses a bustling marina sitting on a strip of land incongruously known as “Glebe Island” (not actually an island!) which accommodates the old bridge that once linked Pyrmont to Glebe Island and Rozelle, which was replaced in the mid 1990s by the modernist looking cable-stayed new Glebe Island Bridge (name later changed to Anzac Bridge).
Although Glebe was subjected to ongoing waves of greed-fuelled demolition during the 20th century, heritage architecture still characterises a significant chunk of the suburb’s residential complexion. A representative sample of 19th century houses have been preserved despite the best efforts of developers and development-sympathetic state governments to jettison the old to make way for new dwellings and a network of freeways crisscrossing Glebe (see PostScript on Lyndhurst below)[2].
Early trends toward gentrification
The Church’s 1856 sell-off of some of its land in Glebe was the spark that started the suburb’s long spiral into an inexorable gentrification. A two strata society developed with Glebe Point (the bay end) becoming the location for many new homes of the urban gentry, these better-off citizens were clearly separated off from ‘The Glebe’ where the more numerous working class resided[3].
Multi-terraced Glebe
By 1870 the terrace had become the dominant build form in Glebe. By WWI there was several distinct types of terrace – colonial Georgian, Regency, Victorian Gothic, Italianate and Federal style – standing side by side. Terraces were the optimal solution to accommodate Glebe’s rapidly growing population, having the virtue of economical outlays on land and building materials[4].
Italianate villas and cottages like Bellevue (left) figure prominently among the residences of Glebe that have survived to this day…although this 1896 Italianate Victorian home was reprieved from the demolishers’ wrecking ball only after a flurry of local protests. Today its a cafe for walkers (with or without dogs) and cyclists on the foreshore path❈. Other Victorian Italianate buildings in the suburb include Venetia (next to ‘Bellevue’), the Glebe Court House, the Town Hall and Kerribree. Many of Glebe’s finer buildings were the work of the leading architects of colonial New South Wales (such as Barnet, Blackett and Verge). For a time Glebe was known as the architect’s suburb. 234 Glebe Point Road ⇑ ‘Owestry’ Late Victorian mansion, gem of the Toxteth Estate
As the early land use of Glebe was taking shape, the foreshore was not considered suitable for residential development, opening the way for exclusive use for marine industry – and for sporting pursuits. Glebe Rowing Club has long retained its prime position on Blackwattle Bay. Jubilee Oval, near the old tramsheds and the (newish) light rail stop, was the home ground of Glebe Cricket Club, once a team in the Sydney Grade Cricket competition[5].
Timberyards in the foreshore dress circle
The tramsheds themselves (right), a large, old hangar of a building, standing dormant for many years, has recently been transformed into a modern residential and commercial complex with fashionable eateries and restaurants and new landscaping on its western perimeter. The impetus for the wholesale Tramsheds’ refurb as residential and shops (above) was the transformation of the Harold Park harness-racing course (behind the Tramsheds) into ‘umpteen’ new high-rise blocks of residential units.
Finding Valhalla in Glebe
Back on Glebe Point Road, at about its median point on the corner of Hereford Street, sits the 1932 Astor Picture Theatre building. Closed for many years before being reopened in the late 1980s/early 1990s as the ‘Valhalla Cinema’, a “mini-plex” with two small L-shaped theatres – wider than longer – where you could enjoy the curious experience of sitting further back than the protectionist’s box to view the screen! (now refitted as a mix of residential and pocket commercial enterprises). Opposite the Astor/Valhalla is this recently painted beautiful monotoned mural recounting the locale’s past activities (below).
A walk along the foreshore from Blackwattle Bay reveals precious little of the suburb’s concentrated industrial past. Modern apartments sit hunched together close to the waterfront where once timberyards and sawmillers dominated the landscape❈. On the foreshore path a monument to those activities is a rusty old crane and winch…Sylvester Stride’s Ship-breaking Yard and Crane business used these devices to break up steamers to recycle metals. Most of the industry – which also included noxious industries like boiling down works and slaughterhouses as well as a distillery – were gone from the Bay by 1975. Hardy’s Timber Mill, an extended complex of building structures, was for a time converted into artists’ studios[6].
Remarkably, the small grassy stretch of foreshore known as Pope Paul VI Reserve was until the early eighties the only public access point on all of Blackwattle and Rozelle Bays. The papal appellation bestowed on the reserve derives from the lobbying efforts of right-wing Labor Catholic politicians in Leichhardt Council to commemorate the spot where Paul VI landed by launch during his 1970 papal visit of Australia[7].
One elderly structure remaining on Blackwattle (albeit in somewhat modified form) is Walter Burley Griffin’s Glebe incinerator dating from the early 1930s. An elegant building in the Art Deco style, in 2006 it was restored as an interpretative work with its once impressive chimney stack in skeletal form. The incinerator was one of a number in Sydney (and elsewhere) constructed by the famous Canberra Capital designer as a response to council’s need to find a more effective way to dispose of increasing amounts of consumer garbage۞.
PostScript: Georgian mansion with a varied past
A survey of Glebe’s history and heritage is not complete without noting one of its grandest, earliest and still extant old homes. Lyndhurst is a mansion with an exceptionally colourful history. The once impressive scale of the estate has been plundered by successive subdivisions over the years…if you visit it today by locating its street address (57-65 Darghan St) the big surprise is finding that the building’s back affronts the street! Lyndhurst was built in 1833 by colonial architect John Verge as a marine villa for surgeon and pastoralist Dr James Bowman, the son-in-law of wool pioneers John and Elizabeth Macarthur. In the last 100 years the Lyndhurst estate has served many purposes – from theological college to pickle factory to hospital to broom factory and in the 1960s and ’70s as the headquarters of the Australian Nazi Party (Australian National Socialist Party). Lyndhurst was one of the many great Glebe residences slated for demolition in the early seventies by Askin’s government, a fate it and many others fortunately avoided![8].
One of the many quaint and differently interesting shops in Glebe (not in Glebe Point Road but near the Glebe Light Rail stop) ⇓
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❈ the campaign to save Glebe’s heritage homes from corporate culling was spearheaded by the Glebe Society, formed by concerned local residents in 1969
today there is one remaining timber yard along the shoreline of Rozelle Bay, Crescent Timber, being actually in Annandale, adjacent to Federal Park
۞ hitherto the preferred methods of disposal were either piling garbage on to tips, burying it or carting garbage six miles out to sea on barges and jettisoning it overboard (only for the tide to return it to shore!), had met with growing public disapproval
⎈⎈⎈⎈⎈⎈
[1] B & B Kennedy, Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Descriptions, (1982)
[2] eg, the vision of long-term Liberal premier of NSW Robin (Robert) Askin, born and bred in Glebe, was to turn the suburb into a network of freeways – fortunately for Glebe’s heritage integrity this was never implemented, ‘Sir Robert Askin’ https://www.glebesociety.org.au/?person=sir-robert-askin
[3] ‘History and Heritage’, The Glebe Society Inc, www.glebesociety.org.au
[4] Solling, Max, Glebe, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/glebe, 03 Oct 2017
[5] ‘History of Glebe Foreshore parks’, (City of Sydney), www.cityofsydney.gov.au
[7] ‘Pope Paul VI Reserve (interpretative sign)’, (Glebe Walks), www.glebewalks.com.au
[8] ‘Historic Glebe Mansion Lyndhurst, Once Australia’s Nazi Party Headquarters, on Market for $7.5M’, (B Wong), 07-May 2016, www.dailytelegraph.com.au
If you drive down to the end of Fidden’s Wharf Road on the western side of Killara, park on the edge of the bush land and walk down the old stone steps built by convicts, you will reach a reserve bearing the name Fiddens Wharf – there’s virtually nothing tangible left of the wharf itself (mainly just signs and old photos of it!). Today it’s a tranquil spot on Sydney’s Lane Cove River comprising a secluded sporting field and a riverside walking track popular with bushwalkers…but it also has had a busy commercial history that goes back to the early years of the Port Jackson European settlement.
The old convict steps leading to Fiddens Wharf ⇩
The first colonial governor Arthur Phillip in 1788 identified the north shore as a rich source of timber for the colony’s construction needs (house and ship building). This area of the Lane Cove River was especially abundant with woody perennial plants of great height. The saw-milling industry thrived around Fiddens Wharf and the river – first the Government Sawing Establishment in the 1820 and 30s and later was the Lane Cove Sawmill Company just up Fiddens Wharf Road*.
Fiddens Wharf was only one of three wharves on that part of the Lane Cove River important to the burgeoning timber industry and to commerce generally in the early colony. The other two close by were Fullers Wharf and Jenkins Wharf. The notorious waterman Billy Blue ferried passengers by punt from Sydney Cove to these wharves [Edwards, Zeny, Rowland, Joan, Killara, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/killara, viewed 15 Sep 2017].
Small vineyards grew up in the early 1800s, such as in nearby Fullers Park, with many orchards scattered along the river bank. Further south on the river sat the Fairyland Tea Gardens (later Pleasure Grounds), known for its picnics, swings, slides, Ferris wheel and a dance hall [‘A Brief History of Lane Cove National Park’,www.friendsoflanecovenationalpark.org.au]
The eponymous wharf at West Killara derives from one Joseph Fidden, an ex-convict emancipated by Governor Macquarie. Fidden in 1813 was granted 40 acres of land stretching all the way from Fiddens Wharf Road west to Pennant Hills Road [‘Local History: Fiddens Wharf Road’, 17-Nov-2014, KGEX – Kuringgai Examiner]. The information kiosk on the oval states that Fiddens never actually either owned or leased the wharf named after him…nonetheless up until the 1850s he was “reportedly known to row 3,000 tons of sawn timber with the tide down the river” to Circular Quay, and then “return with the tide, delivering supplies to farms along the way”.
With the bulk of the river’s tall timber hacked down by the 1850s, quantities of citrus plants were planted in their place with the yields transported from the wharf to the city for sale. The wharf’s commercial role as a goods transport hub diminished by the 1880s after Lane Cove Road was established as the “main highway” and route for delivering goods to the ferry at Blues Point (North Sydney).
The ‘public’ wharf did go by different names over the course of its working life…an 1831 survey reveals it was known as “Hyndes Wharf”, a reference to Thomas Hyndes, a local timber merchant of the day. The survey also listed huts and a garden on the location occupied by Joseph Fiddens and others. In the early 20th century another name for it was the “Killara Jetty” derived from the spot’s increasing use for recreation – at this time the wharf was a landing-place for picnic parties and campers. The Lane Cove Ferry Co brought “holiday excursionists” just prior to the Great War, with this local leisure activity continuing into the interwar period.
The construction of a weir on the river in 1937 meant that rowing boats could no longer reach the wharf from Figtree (Hunters Hill). The weir also permanently raised the river-level at the wharf (the remnants of some of the earlier versions of the wharf can be found submerged in the river). The Bradfield Jamboree in 1938 saw 10,000 scouts swarming all over Fiddens Wharf and its bush. During WWII the RAAF used the wharf and environs as a training camp.
PostScript: Killara, once the domain of saw-millers, was transformed in the 20th century into a garden suburb with large allotments, little commercial development and devoid of industrial sites [‘Killara’, (Ku-ring-gai Historical Society Inc), www.khs.org.au]. Today it is a leafy northern suburb marked by a mix of 1950s brick cottages and new, modern residences, golf courses and its “old money” inhabitants, although its diversified ethnic mix over the past 20 years give it less of the ‘whitebread’ character that it was once known for.
* the timber-getters employed by these companies were itinerant types who fashioned crude accommodation (hardly more than “lean-to’s”) in the North Shore bush [Edwards and Rowland]
La Perouse is a quiet little coastal suburb in Sydney’s south overlooking the entrance to Botany Bay. At the end of Anzac Parade where the grassy headland starts, the 394 bus loops round and stops at the bus shed before commencing its inward journey back to Circular Quay. The sign on the side of the shed announces “La Perouse – Australia’s French Connection”.
Lapérouse
The suburb, as most Sydneysiders probably know, derives its name from the French explorer, Jean-Francois de Galaup, better known as the comte de la Perouse. Lapérouse whilst on a scientific expedition of the Pacific landed here in 1788, building a stockade, an observatory and a vegetable garden in Phillip Bay (anticipating the later Chinese residents). Lapérouse’s men explored the bay area for six weeks before sailing off north to the Solomon Islands and disappearing from sight for good❈.
The Aboriginal connection
Today La Perouse is a pleasant day trip for picknickers, beach goers and bush walkers, and a haunt for scuba divers, snorkellers and fishermen. It is also part of the traditional lands of the Dharawal people, the clans of Gweagal and Kameygal, signifying over 7,500 years of continuous indigenous occupation in La Perouse/Yarra Bay[1]. From the 1890s until deep into the 20th century Yarra Bay was the site of an aboriginal mission.
Unsurprisingly some sections of the aboriginal community have taken umbrage at what they see as white society’s recent efforts to re-brand La Perouse with the “French Connection” tag – an emphasis which they see as taking some gloss off the significance of indigenous Australia’s unbroken bond with the area. A recent manifestation of a divergence of opinion on this has concerned the content and orientation of the Lapérouse Museum on the headland (formerly a cable station connecting the telegraph to New Zealand). The La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council’s position is that rather than solely telling the (six week) Lapérouse story in Australia as intended by the French-Australian community, the Museum should reflect an integrated history, ie, the French chapter of the La Perouse story is but one part in a much longer narrative of thousands of years of indigenous occupation and land use in the area[2].
At the beginning of the 20th century La Perouse started to move ahead as a place to live. Part of the drive came from Redfern counsellor and developer George William Howe. Howe with William Rose set up the Yarra Bay Pleasure Grounds. The pleasure grounds popularity benefitted from the tram line being extended to La Perouse in 1902. Howe built 72 huts for campers and fishermen, as well as refreshment rooms[3], a boatshed and stables to accommodate 150 horses. As a result weekend visitor and holidayer numbers from the city increased.
The famous snake pit (Source: WeekendNotes)
A form of Sunday sideshow entertainment at La Perouse developed and some aboriginals earned money from the emerging tourist industry by selling boomerangs and souvenirs such as decorative shell necklaces[4]. The other prominent sideshow element at La Perouse was the snake pit show which originated near the tram loop around 1909. By 1919 the show was run by George Cann, a curator of reptiles at Taronga Zoo. Cann the snake man’s performances drew crowds from the suburbs weekly. Cann continued running the shows until 1965 and created a dynasty of “snake men” with his sons (George Jr and John) maintaining the family’s snake pit shows until 2010 (when it was taken over by the Hawkesbury Herpetological Society)[5].
Another lure for visitors from the suburbs was a kind of cultural curiosity – a chance for many to view the “native inhabitants” of La Perouse (government practice had been to remove indigenous people from the more populated parts of Sydney). This weekly influx of tourists however caused problems for Aboriginal Reserve inhabitants (leading to restrictions on their freedom of movement – eventually they were confined effectively to the Reserve). After WWII the population of La Perouse underwent further diversification with many recent refugees from the Baltic States and other war-ravished places in Europe ending up living there[6].
Bare Island: The Russians are coming? … maybe not
Captain Cook took special note of this small, rocky bluff of an island at the point just off La Perouse in 1770 (giving it its name “small, bare island” in his journal). By the 1870s the British colonial authorities started to take Sydney’s security more seriously in the context of a perceived push into the Pacific from Tsarist Russia. Botany Bay had long been thought vulnerable as a “back door” entry point to Sydney for a hostile power⊗. To protect Sydney’s southern flank from a surprise Russian invasion, a fortification was built on Bare Island in the 1880s. The emplacements on Bare Island were supplemented by a second battery at Henry Head to the east of Bare Island, a small promontory jutting out from the coast. The Bare Island fort was part of a network of foreshore military installations built by the colonial government in Sydney to deal with a Russians menace that never eventuated❦.
Henry Head emplacements
Designed by the military engineer Peter Stratchley, construction was in the hands of colonial architect James Barnet. Unfortunately the construction was a shambles, the materials were of poor quality and the structure started to crumble before it was completed. Furthermore the fort’s armaments were out-of-date by the time it became operational. A Royal Commission ensued in 1890, finding Barnet culpable of incompetence and effectively ended his architectural career. By 1902 the fort was decommissioned and its defence role wound up within a few years.
Bare Is.
By 1912 Bare Island had become (Australia’s first) war veterans home, housing retired military personnel from earlier wars that Australians saw action in (Crimean War, Maori Wars, Sudan, etc). It remained a veterans’ home until 1963 (except for 1941-1945 when the army re-occupied and re-armed it as part of the coastal defence against the Japanese threat – its guns however were never fired in anger during WWII). From 1963-1975 the fort was home to the Randwick (Council) Historical Society Museum. Since 1967 it has been administered by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (the eastern strip of the coast near the NSW Golf Club, part of Kamay Botany Bay National Park, has retained its dense bush land texture). The firing of live ammo from the fort’s nine and ten inch guns ceased in 1974[7].
La Perouse, Happy Valley, a refuge in the Depression
In 1929 La Perouse and its environs was still somewhat isolated from more central and built-up parts of Sydney. With the effects of the Great Depression hitting home in the early 1930s (pernicious levels of unemployment becoming the norm), many such affected people converged on La Perouse and Yarra Bay. Shantytowns shot up, the largest (c.3,000 occupants in 130 encampments) acquired the name Happy Valley (other camps for the poor went by names such as “Frog Hollow” and “Hill 60”). The occupants of Happy Valley scrounged the bush for materials to construct meagre huts which were hardly better than “lean-tos”유. Eventually there were calls for the squatters to be evicted, the well-heeled, socially-conscious members of the close by NSW Golf Club objected to their unsightly presence and the mayor of Randwick added his voice to the calls[8]. By 1938/39 the camps had been shutdown[9] and the state government had to create cheap public housing to cater for the unemployed.
The Chinese Presence
La Perouse with its ample supply of land established flourishing market gardens early in the colony. After the onset of the gold rushes control of the market gardens gradually shifted from European settlers to the Chinese. By 1900 La Perouse’s market gardens had largely fallen into the hands of city merchants from Dixon Street and Hay Street who were sponsoring low-paid labourers from China to do the work. By the 1920s the Chinese market gardens found themselves under pressure from large-scale agribusiness.[10]. Later when the unemployed came to La Perouse in the 1930s to live rent free in the scrub it was the Chinese gardeners and the local fishermen that they turned to for food to survive[11].
La Perouse as shown above boasts a rich and varied past, a “French connection” as the sign proclaims? … yes but the suburb is much more as well – an unbroken link of aboriginal custodianship stretching back to a Australia of an ancient age, a Chinese agricultural connection, a military installation of short-lived significance, a seaside pleasure grounds and a haven for the poor in time of economic catastrophe.
Bastille Day celebrations 2013
Postscript – the lingering French Connection:
The second European to be buried on the east coast of Australia[12] was a Frenchman, he was Pere Laurent Receveur, a member of the 1788 Lapérouse expedition. According to the La Perouse monument dedicated to his memory, he was a “Priest of Friars Minor and a scientist”. Lapérouse himself has a monument on the headland (constructed by the Baron de Bougainville in 1825 and funded by the French Republic). Every year on 14 July (Bastille Day) at La Perouse headland the local French community commemorates Lapérouse’s landing, replete with late 18th century French military uniforms, weapons and canons. The 2016 event included a dramatic touch of Napoleonic war re-enactment.
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❈ Captain James Cook (1770), and later Governor Arthur Phillip and comte de la Pérouse, all visited this spot on the northern shore of Botany Bay. Phillip, arriving a few days before Lapérouse, rejected the peninsula out of hand as a possible site of settlement, declaring it a swampy, ‘unhealthy’ place and quickly moved on up the coast, deciding on Sydney Cove as the best place to found the colony
⊗ already, earlier in the 19th century local surveillance had been a priority … a castellated watchtower (at one stage used as a customs house) on the headland was built to keep an eye on smugglers in Botany Bay
❦ the other emplacements are (or were) located at South Head, Middle Head, Georges Heights and North Head
유 a lucky minority of the unemployed managed to secure one of Howe’s huts
𐚁 𐚁 𐚁 𐚁 𐚁 𐚁
[1] the Timbery family, members of which still reside in La Perouse today, can trace their descendants back to pre-European times, Julia Kensy, ‘La Perouse’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/la_perouse, viewed 19 October 2016
[2] R Sutton, ‘La Perouśe’s unknown historical significance’, (‘SBS News’), 29-Nov-2012, www.sbs.com
[3] all the huts were demolished in the 1960s, ‘Howe Refreshment Rooms’, Dictionary of Sydney, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/
[4] Kensy, op.cit.
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] ‘Bare Island Fort’, (NSW Office of Environment & Heritage), www.environment.nsw.gov.au; ‘History of Bare Island, La Perouse’, (24-Mar-2015), www.postcardsydney.com
[8] ‘Happy Valley, Chinese Market Gardens and Migrant Camps’, (‘At the Beach, Contact, Migration and Settlement in South East Sydney’), Migrant Heritage Centre of NSW, www.migration heritage.nsw.gov.au
[9] except for Frog Hollow an aboriginal camp which was closed in 1954, Kensy, op.cit.
[10] ibid. ; ‘Chinese market gardens’, (NSW Office of Environment & Heritage), www.environment.nsw.gov.au
[11] the government’s contribution to the shantytowners’ plight was to provide one pint of milk per day provided by the Dairy Farmers’ Co-op, ‘Happy Valley, op.cit.; ‘Blast from the Past – HAPPY VALLEY’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info
[12] the first was Forby Sutherland, a Scottish seaman on Cook’s 1770 voyage to Australia. Sutherland died and was buried at Kurnell in what is now called the Sutherland Shire, named in honour of the AB seaman, ‘Forby Sutherland’, Monument Australia, www.monumentaustralia.org.au
A significant part of Budapest’s special appeal and charm lies in its plethora of natural hot springs. The “City of Spas” boasts something in the vicinity of 120 therapeutic baths … signifying a rich history of centuries of hydro-treatment and leisure for its citizens. Many of the thermal baths are a legacy of the Ottoman occupation. Király (King), Rudas and Csárzár (Veli Bej) were built as Turkish baths and still operate as such today.
The Széchenyi Medicinal Baths are the largest in Europe and one of the continent’s most famous thermal pool complexes with a history dating back over 100 years. It reminded me of the old Ramsgate Baths 50 years ago, but with a liberal measure of grandeur and style about it✦. This place really brings the punters in, all ages and types. It is open every day of the year and I reckon some locals do come every day! Its function and importance to the average Budapester is more analogous with that of the democratic beach in Summer in an Australian coastal fringe city.
Széchenyi is very large … and crowded. It is hot, a landscape of cement and water littered with people either sunbathing or standing round in small groups in pools. Many pools in fact! Three large outdoor pools plus 15 smaller indoor thermal ones all up. The configuration of the outdoor pools is a conventional rectangular pool in the middle, bookended by two half-circular ones.
I liked the Baths’ architecture a lot – grand, very ornate with arched columns with the complex as a whole set in the middle of a pleasant city park which the baths share with a circus and an amusement park. On the left side of the pool, near the Pepsi sign, groups of older men, half-immersed in water, were busying themselves attentively in games of chess.
The water was warm to quite hot in parts, up to 38°! It was very refreshing and relaxing, especially when you perch yourself for a while under one of the water spouts in the shadow of classical sculptures. But I couldn’t stay in the open for long though … too many people, far too hot and the poolside areas lacked for shaded spots.
One avenue of escape from the heat and potential sunburn was to venture inside to one of the smaller (also crowded) thermal pools where the water temperature was a more tolerable 27°. The locker system in place in the Baths seemed haphazard, rows of lockers up and down different alleys and different floors. It was very antiquated, looked like it was designed in 1913, annoyingly cumbersome and detracted a bit from the experience. When you pay to enter they give you a plastic armband to access the locker (and your gear), the object is to try not to lose it during the water-bound activities.
It was good to experience the environment of a typical Budapest thermal spring, even if I found the aesthetics of the baths more rewarding than the actual swimming, or more accurately, wading.
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✦ the Széchenyi building complex has been variously described – from: looking like a Baroque palace to a “wedding cake” building.
Staying on the Buda side of Budapest (at the Mercure) meant we had only a short walk up the hill to take in the views of Budapest from high up. Prominent on Várhegy (Castle Hill) as it is known is St Matthias Church where the kings of Hungary were crowned … just across the square from here is an imposing viewing terrace complete with towers overlooking the Danube.
Fisherman’s BastionOriginally there was a fortification here that was part of the city castle walls manned in the Middle Ages by city fishermen, who following a 13th century raid from a Mongolian army, were responsible for keeping watch on invaders (hence the name “Fisherman’s Bastion”). The present, silver/white coloured structure has a Medieval appearance but is actually Neo-Gothic (dating only from the end of the 19th century). The impression it conveys is that of a fairytale castle, like something improbable you’d find in Disneyland (some visitors have noted the similarity to it of the Walt Disney logo). The staircase has interesting old wall relief-sculptures worthy of examination. Access to the terrace is free of charge but if you want to go up to the turrets for higher views there is a fee. Below the parapet the land drops away sharply into a pleasant park close to the river. The castle viewed by night, when all lit up, is at its spectacular best!
The commercial sideWhilst we were visiting the Bastion we went downstairs into the narrow, damp, aged basement and had a viewing of a doco recounting the history of Hungary. It was very informative, especially the story of “The White Stag”, a Hungarian creation myth about how twins, Hanor and Magor, founded the Hungarian nation by accident whilst out hunting the aforementioned white stag. The stag suddenly disappeared and the two hunters found themselves in a strange land where they met, kidnapped and married two Sarmatian princesses – thus uniting three peoples – the Huns, the Magyars & the Alans. The film was an enjoyable and educational diversion.
On our first full day in Budapest we did the drive-round on the “Big Bus”, giving visitors a concise snapshot of the scope and size of Budapest. One of the things you’ll easily notice from the top deck of the bus is the contrasting physical difference between the hillier Buda side (especially around the Castle District) and its expanse of parklands and the larger Pest side with its mainly flat contours. The commercial hub of the city is concisely encapsulated within Pest.
ParliamentWe did the combined bus/boat trip with a cruise down the Danube later on. The river cruise was the standout part of the city tour. It was ideal to take in the views on either side, lots of grand architectural sights (eg, the London-influenced Parliament building, the Disneylandish Fisherman’s Bastion, etc). Many of Budapest’s most impressive buildings are clearly visible from the river. The experience of cruising along the Danube here is superior to the equivalent cruise in Vienna (or for that matter to doing a river cruise in Prague).
The free walking tour was at least equally valuable in yielding insights into Budapest. Our 25-y-o guide was very helpful, took us to many of the attractions the Pest district has to offer. Vaci Utia, the main boulevard was basically an invitation for indulgent mega-shopping for gifts and souvenirs – coupled with countless rows of seating for outdoor eating. Of course we sampled the local sweet specialities like the apple strudel (there was a bit of a Viennese feel to the pastry shops and both places seem to be “sweet tooth” zones).
The architecture in Vaci was an interesting mix of old buildings with some ultra-new glass monoliths. We went past the famous (sic) MacDonalds’ fast food place … unremarkable looking but famous, our guide informed us, because it was the first one to open ANYWHERE in the Eastern Bloc. Such was the novelty of Maccas at that time (late 1980s) it was apparently THE place to be seen in Budapest. When it opened diners actually had to make reservations to eat there, and when they did, they turned up in their finest clobber!⌖
Buda FunicularThe walking tour ended near the famous Chain Bridge (Széchenyi Lánchíd) and we walked over to the Buda side past the bridge’s ‘protective’ lions. This presented the opportunity to take a swift ride up the steep castle hill in the city’s funicular (Budavári Sikló), which reminded me of my experience ascending and descending Chile’s ascensores in Valparaíso.
Another mega-shopping place is the Grand Markets … old, multi-level hangar or gigantic barn-like structure, with merchandise ranging from fruit and veg, fish to clothing and accessories. Budapest has its own version of Aldi (Hofer) and more surprisingly a branch of the South African supermarket giant, SPAR!
I noticed that the local ‘fuzz’ wear cute if slightly ludicrous little red berets … to be honest though I doubt if the experiences of Syrian asylum seekers in 2016 found them to be at all ‘cute’.
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⌖ the guide in recounting this anecdote added that because the opening of the first MacDonalds preceded by a short time the tumultuous fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, locals like to refer to the events thus: “the Golden Arches went up before the Hammer and Sickle was torn down” (a statement with lots of symbolic resonance given the weighty extent to which Budapest and other former Eastern Bloc cities have been westernised and commercialised in the period since).
In the time of Aboriginal Australia, the indigenous clans which inhabited the Balmain peninsula, the Wan-gal and the Cadi-gal, called the chunk of land that juts out between Snails Bay and Mort’s Bay, Walama (meaning “to return”). In the 230 years since white settlement, what is today called Ballast Point has come back to a peaceful state of natureφ.
At the time the First Fleeters encountered the place it was a bushy promontory with great intrinsic value to the original inhabitants. This narrow bluff of land on Sydney Harbour has gone full circle from a spot of untouched natural beauty to (post-1788) a grimy industrial site and is now being returned to something a little reminiscent of its natural state, in time perhaps becoming a palimpsest of what it once was.
Ballast Point Park was opened as a two-and-a-half-hectare public space in 2009 (also called ‘Walama’ as a mark of respect for the traditional custodians for the area). The restoration of the Point as public land was a victory for the people of Balmain, achieved only after a long struggle of determined local activism and community support to overcome the commercial plans of developers and the vacillation of state governments.
Indigenous motifs decorate the site’s industrial remnants
Walama’s geology, a boon for the return voyages of cargo ships
Before I outline the details of how the Ballast Point story with its vicissitudes played out in the late 20th century, I should recount a little of the headland’s early history following first contacts between the indigenous and white populations. The British settlers’ first use of Ballast Point seems to have been as a fishing and hunting spot. The name “Ballast Point” is derived apparently from the occurrence of rockfalls from the high point above the shoreline crashing to the bottom of the outcrop[1]. Ships having unloaded their cargo from Europe needed to secure suitable ballast for the return journeys. Stones accumulated on the Point’s shore – some heavy but manoeuvrable, others smaller, mainly broken rocks and gravel – were deemed ideal weighty material to steady the empty hulls of the merchant vessels, providing the stability needed for the ocean voyage.
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-16.jpg”> Display remembering ‘Menevia’ which once occupied the Ballast Pt site[/captionA succession of colonial land-holders and ‘Menevia’
Part of colonial surgeon William Balmain’s early land grant, Ballast Point passed through many hands in the first half of the 19th century including Fred Parbury, James Goodsir, Henry Smith, George Cooper and John Gilchrist (who subdivided it as ‘Glenelg Crescent’ but this enticed few if any buyers)[2]. Merchant and draper Thomas Perkins acquired the promontory in 1852. By 1864 Perkins had built and occupied a large two-story, sandstone villa on the headland, which he named Menevia§. For some years after it was built Ballast Point was known as Menevia Point. After Perkins’ death the mansion became a boarding house until after World War I.
Texas Oil takeover
By 1928 Menevia had fallen into disrepair and was up for sale. Balmain Council expressed an interest but public funds were tight at the time and it couldn’t afford to buy it. Texas oil company Texaco snapped it up. Texaco, who later merged with Standard Oil of California to form Caltex, used it as a depot to store very large quantities of petroleum (and later as a grease plant).
Old Caltex sign from the 1960s retained on site: grease plant
☬
Over time Caltex built 30 large storage tanks at what became known as the Balmain Terminal. However this large scale enterprise did nothing the quality of life of local residents, with trucks coming and going through the narrow, congested streets of Balmain an ongoing irritant to those living in the, mainly humble, dwellings nearby[3].
Caltex scale-back and preparation for pull-out
Ballast Point became less important to Caltex after the company in the late sixties opened a new, larger oil terminal at Banksmeadow (South Sydney). From the late 1980s through the 1990s Caltex tried to prepare the way to unload its Balmain operations in a commercial deal, twice petitioning Leichhardt Council to have its land rezoned from waterfront industrial to residential, but without success. A struggle for the future land use of Ballast Point ensued: the local community in Balmain formed an opposition group called Ballast Point Campaign Committee (BPCC) in the mid Eighties to save Ballast Point by returning the headland to public land. Leichhardt Council eventually supported BPCC in its actions[4]. End-game: Victory for the public over developers’ profit-driven plans for the Point
The Walker Corporation (formerly McRoss Developments) sought to purchase the 2.6ha headland site from Caltex to build a 138 unit apartment complex, but the deal was blocked by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority’s (SHFA) compulsory acquisition of the land in 2002[5]. Caltex received nearly $14.4 million in compensation. Walker Corp was offered $10.1 million by the state government (as they had acquired an option on the land), which it disputed in the High Court of Australia as grossly undervalued (Walker Corporation P/L v Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (2008). Initially the developers were awarded compensation of $60M but this was overturned on appeal and the original amount of $10M reaffirmed[6].
After the SHFA took control of Ballast Point it took another seven years during which the Caltex site was remediated, followed by planning, designing and landscaping, before the post-industrial park was opened in July 2009. The design of the new park includes walls composed of recycled rubble enclosed in wire mesh gabions (cylindrical baskets), sandstone plinths, artworks commemorating the former industrial role, eg, Tank 101 (storage tanks) as well as reminiscences of Menevia – artefacts of the Victorian house excavated whilst the site was being remediated. These comprise domestic utensils (crockery, glassware, bottles, etc) mounted in a display case in the park. Unfortunately, recently the glass cabinet was smashed by mindless vandals and the damaged archeological items have been removed.
The final form of Ballast Point Park has come in for some criticism from various quarters, especially from Paul Keating (who originally championed its creation) for “its lack of romantic verdancy” and the failure of the architects to erase all reminders of the past “industrial vandalism” of Caltex (as the ex-PM described it). Opponents of this viewpoint have attacked it as representing an attitude that seeks to ‘sanitise’ history by omitting the full story of the place’s industrial past[7]. With the full passage of time, they advocate, vegetation will bring this public park back to something like the wooden headland it was prior to European colonisation.
Footnote: The Gabion, the all-purpose retaining wall
Ballast Point Park is not a place to visit if you have a “gabion phobia”, the park is positively gabion-overload! Upon arrival the ubiquity of this construction feature is all-too evident! The Gabion⋇ has become quite the go-to outdoor feature for councils and town planners in recent times. It is both highly utilitarian and cost-effective and embraces the recycling ethos. Some may also find an aesthetic appeal in the gabion’s unusual symmetry – the way it neatly packages an assortment of multi-coloured, irregular-shaped, cast-off building materials in (usually) oblong wire-mesh containers.
⋇ Gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning “big cage”; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning “cage”) is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping [Wikipedia].
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φ At the time the British came in 1788, the pioneering settlers reported that indigenous hunters of the Wan-gal and Cadi-gal clans would hunt kangaroos through the densely wooden and bushy peninsula, driving them towards the north-eastern point of Balmain (down the hill into present-day Illoura Reserve) into a cul-de-sac at Peacock’s Point where they were able to trap the animals and easily kill them
§ The name ‘Menevia’ was apparently derived from a cathedral in Swansea, South Wales which bears the name
☬☬☬☬☬☬
[1] Peter Reynolds,’Ballast Point’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ballast_point,viewed 15 May 2016
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] ‘Ballast Point Park Opening’, The Peninsula Observer, Vol 44 No 3 Issue 312 (Sept 2009)
[5] Ex-PM Keating, Tom Uren, et al, apparently influenced the Carr Labor Government’s decision to make the Caltex site a public space, K Legge, ‘How Paul Keating saved Barangaroo headland park on Sydney Harbour’, The Australian, 3 October 2015
[6] B Makin, ‘Ballast Point: from oil terminal to public park’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 Oct 2005
[7] as Laura Hardin put the counter-view: Ex-PM Keating’s “interpretation of history risks replacing the gritty authenticity of these places with the deceptive, pastel languor of a Lycett watercolour…seeks to make amends by erasure, denial and the importation of the picturesque”, L Harding & S Hawken, ‘Ballast Point’, ArchitectureAU, 2 Jan 2012, www.architecture.com.au
The Balmain peninsula, just to the west of Sydney’s CBD, has a long post-settlement history of European mixed land use, both as a magnet for industry and a place for workers and their families – and room also for those financially well-heeled enough to afford the pick of the land and a waterfront property with magnificent views of Australia’s finest harbour.
Balmain’s dirty industries
From the 1840s industry had started to make inroads into the Balmain landscape, and the types of enterprises were becoming many and varied. Over the next 150 years the suburb’s diverse industry has included power stationsφ, an English-owned colliery (from 1897) located just east of Birchgrove Public School, whose long-term productivity proved disappointing. After the mine’s closure in 1931 it produced methane gas until the early 1940s. Eventually houses were built over it and today an exclusive residential complex known as Hopetoun Quays sits atop the site.
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-15.jpg”> Thames St Ferry Wharf, Mort’s Bay[/capAt Mort’s Bay a shipyard and dry dock (Australia’s first) was created in the 1850s, the shipyard was not very successful, and the business eventually morphed into a maritime engineering enterprise employing in excess of 1,000 men. Thomas S Mort, the dock owner, created ‘Mort’s Town of Waterview‘, a subdivision of land to provide housing for his dockyard workers[1]. There was also a ferry service built at Mort’s Bay c.1895. The Thames Street Wharf, with its distinctive curved shelter, transported between 20,000 and 24,000 workers to and from Circular Quay daily (it is thought to be the only Victorian era ferry still operating in the Sydney Harbour network)[2].
Balmain’s ‘clean’ industries
Other industrial enterprises on the peninsula included a saw mill at the end of Nicholson Street, owned by Alexander Burns, the location later taken over by the Adelaide Steamship Co which employed more than 600 men in its ship repair business; a coal loader; US soap and toothpaste giant Colgate-Palmolive with a factory employing over 140 operated in Broadstairs Street, later renamed Colgate Avenue (the Colgate building, which was known locally as “the Olive” is now smartly renovated apartments)[3]. Interestingly, grimy industrial Balmain had no shortage of soap as a second company, Lever and Kitchen (later morphing into the multinational corporation Unilever), also manufactured soap and glycerol in a huge (10ha) plant near Booth Street and Punch Park. At its zenith Lever and Kitchen had a workforce of over 1,250, many of whom lived locally.
The co-existence between home-maker and industry in Balmain has not always been an easy one. The peninsula developed as an industry hub and a desirable place to dwell more or less concurrently. Its proximity to Sydney Town made it attractive to industrialists and to the workforce. By 1846 Balmain housed 19.6 per cent of Sydney and was the largest residential area of the colony – predominantly working class as the workers in the main wanted to be close to where the industrial work was[4].
Notwithstanding the numerous working men (and their unpaid women folk) in the early days[5] there was also a significant middle class component, after all someone had to live in those magnificent Post-Regency and Georgian mansions. “Captains of industry” like Ewen Wallace Cameron and Robert (RW) Miller lived in such palatial homes on the peninsula, as did local developers and businessmen like Robert Blake and JJ Yeend.
The peninsula’s population in 1848 was just 1,337, however there was a spike in numbers over the remainder of the century reaching a straining 28,460 by 1895[6]. The working class parts of Balmain were clearly overcrowded and the suburb’s pattern of development disorganised and haphazard, eg, factories were springing up alongside workers’ modest houses and public schools[7].
ALP “Holy Grail”
Because of the historic heavy concentration of blue-collar industry in Balmain, a strong trade union presence (in particular the maritime industries with the Painters and Dockers Union) has always been part of the landscape. That Balmain/union nexus led to the formation of the Labor Electoral League (which changed its name to the Australian Labor Party) at the relocated Unity Hall Hotel (290 Darling Street) in 1891. The ALP has dominated state elections in the seat covering the Balmain area (in 1978 capturing 82.4 per cent of the two-party vote), although the current MP is a Greens politician, which continues the traditional left-leaning trend of peninsula politics.
Birchgrove: 1855 map 🗺
Colgate-Palm apartments
Datchett Street
Interior of Thames St Ferry shelter, Morts Bay
Birch grove btwn Snails Bay & Long Cove: 1855 map
Thames St Ferry Wharf, Mort’s Bay
From pub to friendly society to medical centre
The Louisa Road dress circle
Birchgrove in Balmain’s north-western point is thought of as the classiest (in reality values at least) area of the whole peninsula, well, not all of Birchgrove, just one street … actually just part of one street, Louisa Road, the end part. Birch Grove House, believed to be the first house built on the Balmain peninsula, was located at 67 Louisa Rd. It was constructed in 1810 for army regiment paymaster John Birch and demolished, sadly, in 1967. In the 1860s and 70s Hunters Hill developers, the Joubert brothers, subdivided Birchgrove land backing on to Snails Bay§. The estate was advertised as “a miniature Bay of Naples” but few of the villas were ever sold[8].
Home owners today in the exclusive bits of Louisa Rd (properties starting at well in excess of $3 million) include movie producers and directors, famous writers, members of platinum record-breaking rock bands, as well as the more mainstream common, garden variety” type of professionals. But it has not always been the exclusive preserve of society’s elite – 150 Louisa Rd at one time was the rented headquarters of the Bandidos bikie gang. After the 1984 Milperra Massacre involving rival Comancheros and Bandidos bikie gangs, the Bandidos members were turfed out of the 1897 Federation/Queen Anne house[9].
Darling Street: sandstone hotel precinct
The houses in East Balmain don’t overall tend to match the price tags of Federation-rich Louisa Road, but they represent some of the best and most interesting, as well as the oldest, architecture in the peninsula. Darling Street, starting from East Balmain Wharf, is dotted with 1840s-1860s sandstone hotel buildings. Some are no longer functioning as pubs, eg, the Shipwrights Arms, 1844 (10 Darling St), the original Unity Hall Hotel, c.1848 (49 Darling St), the Waterford Arms, now ‘Cahermore’ (“Fort on the Hill”) 1846 (50 Darling St). These 1840s buildings have a plain Post-Regency style to them, simple stone and wooden roofs, clean lines with little or no ornamentation. The contrast is with the later Victorian buildings, such as ‘Bootmaker’s Cottage’ 1860 (90 Darling St) which is more ornate (if restrained) with stone quoins (corner blocks) plus a combination of stone and brick materials and elegant cast-iron balustrading[10]. The enhanced use of decoration and superior materials in the grander later Victorian houses, reflect the affluence of Sydney after the colony’s Gold rushes.
Cameron’s Cove and Datchett Street
The extent to which Balmain had become an architectural zoo In the 19th century can be glimpsed from comparing Cameron’s Cove with its Victorian Italianate mansions like ‘Ewenton’ 1854-72 (1 Blake St)[11] with the delightful but ramshackled old timber cottages in little Datchett Street, a narrow, steep side lane-way just across the Cove. Some of the Datchett dwellings look a bit like holiday shacks and would not be out-of-place in a sleepy little backwater down the coast✲.
Just to the east of Ewenton in Grafton St, backing on to the fairly new White Bay Cruise Terminal, sits Hampton Villa. This 1849 Post-Regency house with its Tuscan columns is best known as the 1880s residence of Sir Henry Parkes (five times premier of NSW and “Father of Federation”).
De-industrialising the peninsula: Enter the developers
From the 1960s Balmain’s character began to change. A slow process of gentrification was occurring as property values rose and more people renovated their old houses. Industries moved out, partly because of a trend toward decentralisation, and partly because many were dying off[12]. The prospect of a waterfront home tantalisingly close to the CBD was a lure for many a “cashed-up” punter!
In the eighties and early nineties industrial areas of the peninsula were rezoned as residential by a development friendly Leichhardt Council to the glee of developers like Leda Group who were free to carve out new middle class estates from the old Unilever site and elsewhere in Balmain. All of which meant the suburb had fast become beyond the reach of most working class home-owners.
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φ strictly speaking, these two power stations, White Bay and Balmain (Cove), which book-ended the peninsula east and west, were located in Rozelle, but within the Balmain district § the Wan-gal (Aboriginal) name for the point jutting out from Birchgrove is Yurulbin which means “swift running waters” as it is the point of confluence where the two headwaters meet (Port Jackson and Parramatta River)
✲ a number of the street’s old timber cottages have gone, to be replaced with dense concrete heavily-fortified looking structures ☬☬☬☬☬☬
[1] LA Jones, ‘Housing the Worker’, (unpublished BA(Hon) thesis, University of Sydney), Oct 2011
[2] ‘History of Balmain Thames Street Ferry Wharf’, (NSW Transport), www.rms.gov.au
[3] G Spindler, ‘A Sydney Harbour Circle Walk 2011-12’ (Historic Notes & Background), Apr 2011, www.walkingcoastalsydney.com.au
[4] ‘Wyoming’ (Balmain Italianate Mansion), NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au
[5] so much so the mainstream Sydney press in 1889 described Balmain with its 5,000 dwellings as “working men’s paradise”, Illustrated Sydney News, 11 Jul 1889
[6] ‘Balmain: Local History’, Inner West Council/Leichhardt Municipal Council, www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au
[7] ‘History of Balmain’, www.balmainlodge.com.au
[8] ‘Wyoming’, op.cit.. Didier Joubert named Louisa Rd after his wife and the adjoining streets after his children
[9] Spindler, op.cit.
[10] ‘Humble to Handsome – Balmain Architecture 1840-1860s’, (Balmain Walks, Balmain Association Inc), www.balmainwalks.org.au
[11] ‘Ewenton’ itself is something of an architectural mélange with its mixture of Moorish arches and Georgian and Victorian features, ibid.
[12] eg, the 14 or so old shipyards of Balmain have all closed down, ‘Old Balmain: Paddocks and Shipyards’, Local Notes (2012), www.localnotes.net.au
I wanted to do a follow up walk to an earlier exploration of the Olympic Precinct and the Millennium Parklands, extending it into the Newington and Silverwater hinterland on the other side of the Armory. Taking the ferry wharf at Sydney Olympic Park as our starting point this time, we embark on the 3km riverfront walk to Wilson Park (near the Silverwater Bridge), our first stop.
On the left side of the path we get glimpses through the fence of the Newington Nature Reserve. This huge area (48ha), marshy with mudflats and mangroves, and long neglected before the Olympics, underwent extensive remediation in the 1990s as part of the plan to create a ‘green’ Olympics in 2000. Its native vegetation was regenerated and the land was transformed into an estuarine wetland system and a woodland rich in turpentines and ironbarks. The public is not permitted access as it is a wildlife sanctuary for eagles and frogs and sundry other fauna. An additional prohibitive factor is that the wetland area is still believed to contain an unexploded ordnance[1].
As we come towards the old Armory site a curious feature is the retention of several old disused navy buildings on the waterfront. This detritus was scattered along the water’s edge, pieces of abandoned wooden and brick buildings tagged with faded building numbers. Some had been fenced up in a valiant but doomed attempt at vandal-proofing, and others near the Naval Depot simply boarded up as best they can be.
Near the always popular Armory Cafe, reborn out of the ashes of the burnt down original building, is the Blaxland Riverside Park, set on a sloping terrain, a treat for children with its flying fox and playground. The park contains several more of those earth mounds, a feature throughout the Bay (I can only surmise that these too are hiding nasty toxic surprises like the other mounds closer to the Olympic Precinct).
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-1.jpg”> Wilson Park: walkers & cyclists[/captioWe stop at the park just before Silverwater Bridge – Wilson Park, there’s a history of toxic contamination here too. The site was occupied in the 1950s by PACCAL (Petroleum and Chemical Corporation of Australia Ltd) which refined gas from petroleum, a process which produced three tonnes of tar sludge a day. The park was where the unwanted waste products ended up! Similarly some of PACCAL’s stockpile of dioxins eventually seeped into Duck River on the other side of the Bridge[2].
We cut through the once highly contaminated Wilson Park with its athletics and soccer fields which stand where the gas processing plant used to be, and come out on to Newington Road. Halfway up the street we come to the high, ugly scarred wall of Silverwater Correction Centre. The very large prison, both minimum and maximum (remand) security inmates. The women’s prison, previously known as Mulawa (Aboriginal: in the shadow of trees), these days has mostly minimum security prisoners (in the main for crimes like fraud) but in the past it had ‘celebrity’ inmates such as Lindy Chamberlain (who unwillingly took the rap presumably for an unnamed Australian dingo for the murder of her baby daughter and was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated).
The men’s prison at Silverwater has also been the scene of one of the most daring jail escapes ever in Australia. In 1999 the Russian girlfriend of an inmate in Silverwater hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint and landed inside the prison, enabling her convict lover to get away by air. Six weeks later they were both cornered and caught and the girlfriend (dubbed “Red Lucy” by the Australian media) ended up behind bars in Mulawa as well (Note: no third person ever materialised to bust them both out of gaol!)
The history of the land the Silverwater prison occupies is a varied one and some traces of of its historic existence can still to be seen … only though if you are a prisoner or a staffer at Silverwater. Within the facility grounds are several old colonial homes, most notably ‘Newington’ built by early landowner John Blaxland§. The Newington Estate, some 520ha of land, was named after the Blaxland family home in Kent.
Newington House has been variously used over the last 180 years. Initially Blaxland’s principal home, after his death it became the hub of Newington College (established by the Methodist Church in 1863) before the preppy college was relocated to Stanmore in inner city Sydney. The Newington Estate was acquired by land-owner John Wetherill who subdivided it for residential settlement (Homebush Village) but the public didn’t clamour to take the lots on offer (even the majority of the workers at the nearby Abattoir and Brickworks were not interested in living there!).
The government purchased a part of the Newington Estate, turning it into a hospital for the mentally ill – an aged women’s asylum. Buildings named in honour of notable early colonial women (Catchpole, Chisholm, Reiby) were added to Newington House as hospital wards. Later the asylum was extended to male patients and was categorised as a “state asylum for dependent adults with infirmity or illness of “incurable character”[3].
By 1960 the hospital had closed and was handed over to the Department of Prisons. Ten years later Silverwater Gaol opened in a very large block fronting on to Holker Street and incorporating the grounds of the hospital. Newington House itself is still used as the administration wing of the corrective centre.
The entrepreneurial flair of John Blaxland led to the estate use’s in the 19th century for numerous commercial enterprises including salt production, lime kiln, flour mill, tweed mill and coal mining (this last venture proved unsuccessful)[4].
We turn off Holker Street and into Jamieson Street and walk past the newer part of the prison, these days called the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (the gaol entrance point for visitors). On the right we get a fuller view of the vast expanse of the Armory’s restricted area. About halfway up Jamieson Street we come across a fenced-off section of the Armory with a series of old military-style huts set on green pastures. This is the Sydney Olympic Park Lodge, an urban holiday camp run by the YMCA and offering school kids a mix of outdoor and educational activities drawing on the resources of the Armory. Although part of the Olympic Park accommodation portfolio these rather spartan looking dormitories are certainly not likely to be mistaken for luxury five-star accommodation for Olympics or other sports-related VIPs.
The Lodge is buffeted from Blaxland Reserve by a large nature reserve. As we come back to the Parramatta a River trail we spot some more of the artificially created earth mounds, so characteristic of the Bay area. From the impressive gatehouse of the Armory it’s only about one-and-three-quarters kilometres back to our SOP ferry wharf starting point.
§ in the earlier posts Homebush Bay Perambulations I and Homebush Bay Perambulations III I referred to the Wentworth family’s role in the early development of Homebush Bay, being the beneficiaries of the grant of a large swathe of land in the area. Blaxland’s early land acquisitions led to him and his family having a similar imprint on the western part of Homebush Bay. At around the same time, Blaxland’s younger brother, Gregory (of Blue Mountains explorer fame), purchased the Brush Farm Estate in Eastwood from the father of his exploration companion, WC Wentworth – another interaction between the two great colonial families.
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[1] ‘Management Plan for Newington Nature Reserve’, (SOPA, 2003), www.environment.nsw.gov.au
[2] ‘Industrial History’, Sydney Olympic Park Authority, www.sopa.nsw.gov.au
This walk starts from a central point in Homebush Bay, Sydney’s Olympic Park Station, and will explore some places on the periphery of the area. This will include parts of the present Olympic Park complex with a very different industrial past to its current activities.
From the station we are very close to the first stop on our walk, but when we get there we discover that a small group of linked buildings (between Dawn Fraser and Herb Elliott Avenues) is the only reminder of the area’s former industrial preoccupations. The nest of Abattoirs administration buildings are all that remains of the once vast (Homebush) State Abattoirs. This handsome brick structure, circa 1913 but maintained in good condition, now bears the name (in SOPA* speak) Abattoir Heritage Precinct. Today, it houses, appropriately enough for the surroundings, sporting bodies, eg, the NSW Rugby League Professional Players Association and the Australian Paralympics Committee. One of the smaller, adjunct buildings is used as a cafe (with the slightly melancholic and possibly perverse name (given the history) “Abattoir Blues” Cafe.
“𝔄𝔟𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔬𝔦𝔯𝔥𝔲𝔪𝔬𝔲𝔯“
There is a backhanded tribute of sorts(?) on the admin site to its former status as an abattoirs. The forecourt’s garden setting includes a series of panels trivialising the fate of the slaughtered creatures in jokey fashion…depicted as happily skipping off to the slaughterhouse as if they were on a Sunday jaunt. The painted ceramic signs portrayed cute-looking cows and pigs with captions echoing popular nursery rhymes – along the lines of “here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo, e-i-e-i-o” and “to market, to market, Jiggety Jig, Jiggety Jog”, etc. Very tasteful stuff, eh? You don’t have to be an ardent animal liberationist to find this lacking in sensitivity.
Next we walk from the Admin Precinct down Showground Road and through Cathy Freeman Park with its “Olympic Torch” Fountain (a hit with five-year-olds in summer, if not their parents) on to Kevin Coombs Avenue around the Showground block up to Australia Avenue. The Abattoirs itself was located within this broad area, and comprised at its peak 44 slaughterhouses with a capacity to kill over 20,000 animals a day … at one point it was the largest abattoir in the Commonwealth. Serviced by an industry rail link from Rookwood Station, there were saleyards and meat preserving facilities in the immediate vicinity (Homebush and Flemington).
Historic map of Homebush Bay area (1890s), then subsumed under Rookwood (source: sydneydictionary.org)
In a previous piece on Homebush Bay I mentioned the Brobdingnag-sized contribution of Union Carbide (Rhodes) and other industrial polluters to the extreme level of dioxins and other contaminants found in Haslams Creek. Well, the Abattoirs did its bit as well in the old days. The proximity of the plant to the Creek was too tempting … an easy way to dispose of the waste materials of animal carcasses resulting in algal blooms and further pollution of the waterway. This practice had the additional affect of attracting sharks to the nearby Silverwater Baths[¹].
About 500 metres along Australia Avenue, opposite the Showground, we see a mechanical relic of a bygone industry on display, rusted throughout. Here a narrow, sloping pathway starts, cutting a v-shape through the bush. At the end of the path you reach a long, elevated catwalk, caged on either side, which leads to the viewing tower of the old Brickpit, known as the Brickpit Ring. This aerial, circular structure, sitting 18.5 metres above the ground on slender metal stilts, provides a spectacular view of the former quarry with its gouged sandstone pit floor filled with viridescent-coloured water.
The Homebush Brickpit closed operations in 1988 (same year as the Abattoirs) and was destined to become one of the venues for the Olympics (earmarked as a potential site for among other things, the Olympic tennis centre) but the last-minute discovery of an endangered frog species in residence saw it converted into a habitat for the green and golden bell frog.
(Photo: SOFA)
As you walk around the 550-metre circumference of the Ring, the walls (multicoloured mesh panels interspersed with clear glass ones) double as information kiosks on the history of the brickworks (including an audio speaker with former pit workers recounting stories of their experiences). Other panels are equiped with soundscapes of frog calls.
The information walls encircling the Ring give a concise summary of the history of the State Brickworks from its establishment in 1911. It tells an interesting story of a public enterprise formed to counter the oligopolistic tendencies of private brick manufacturers. Having a state brickworks was a means of keeping prices down and of increasing the percentage of owner-occupied dwellings in Sydney (only 30% in 1911).
The story is also one of intrigue in the form of sabotage – in the Depression the Nationalist government sold off the brickworks to a consortium of private brick-making companies which did its upmost to sabotage the brickworks when it was reacquired by the NSW (Labor) government. From 1946 the reformed State Brickworks, with their kilns destroyed and the works vandalised, struggled to meet the demands of the immediate post-war housing boom before again reaching an optimal output of 63 million bricks in the mid 1950s. Technological and work practice changes to brick-making in the 1970s presented a further challenge to the Homebush operations before its inevitable closure in the 1980s[²].
We exit by the northern catwalk which is apparently the official entrance to the Brickpit and cross over Marjorie Jackson Parkway into Wentworth Common. The Common today has a sporting field, children’s play area and family picnic facilities, but in the first half of the 19th century when it was part of the Wentworth Estate, the famous explorer William Wentworth built what was claimed to be Sydney’s first racecourse on the site¥ … an apt place to position a racecourse given that the Homebush area was originally known as as “The Flats”¤. In 1859 the premier racecourse (and the home of the Australian Jockey Club) was moved to its present site Randwick[³]. The Homebush track eventually was used (ca 1910) as something euphemistically called a “resting paddock” for the Homebush Abbatoirs. When the Brickworks were in full swing the workers dug the clay for construction of the bricks from the soil where Wentworth Common is now.
At night back in the 1960s and ’70s, when the Brickworks and Abattoirs workers would go home, the back roads around the works would be taken over by testosterone-driven (and almost certainly alcohol-fuelled) local hoons who would turn it into a drag strip and stage their own ‘Brickies’ version of Mt Panorama[4].
The exploits of the suburban ‘revheads’ in the sixties and seventies, curiously, anticipated the recent conversion of Olympic Park into a street circuit for the running of V8 Supercars events from 2009. Amazingly, despite the furore caused by using such an environmentally sensitive location for this purpose, the Sydney 500 race continues to be held at Homebush (although 2016 is the last year it is scheduled to be held)[5].
Just to the north of the Common we come to a high earth mound with a circular path winding its way to the top. The Bay Marker as it is called contains the same cocktail of toxins and contaminants as the other markers and mounds in Homebush Bay. After taking in the views from atop the Bay Marker we head down Bennelong Parkway towards Bicentennial Park (a distance of about 1.4km to the park gates). On route we pass businesses of various kinds, electric power generators, fencing contractors and the occasional tertiary education centre.
Inside the gates we walk up the undulating grass slopes close to the road. The land at Bicentennial Park was once a large, de facto garbage tip with nothing aesthetic about the area to recommend it. It was a real eyesore with dumped cars, building wastes, tyres, all manner of ‘unwantables’ found their way onto the land over the years. The coming of the 200 year anniversary of white settlement in 1988 transformed the site with a makeover of the park, complete with fountain lakes, large modern sculptural pieces, bike hire facilities, ‘adventure’ playground and picnic areas.
On the walk through Olympic Park there are several interesting features to see. Near where a small footbridge crosses from the park over Bennelong Parkway there is a monument to the ancient lawgiver, the 6th century BC Shahanshah❉ Cyrus II of Persia … Iranians stumbling upon this whilst picnicking in the Park may puzzle over why his commemorative stone turned up here (NB: the footbridge is closed until November 2018 to allow for the construction of a new brickpit park).
From the Cyrus stone we walk east through the multi-fountained “water play area” to the striking structure at the highest point of the Park, the Treillage Tower. A treillage is a type of latticework that you are supposed to grow vines up, however there is not a vine in sight around this one! The structure has an oddly artificial appearance to it, a bit plasticky or cardboardish … like a cross between King Arthur’s Camelot and something you’d find at Disneyland! Unreal-looking it may be but it does afford good views of the nearby Badu Wetlands, Olympic facilities and yet another earth mound marker on the south side of Australia Avenue.
Heading east from the Treillage down the archaic-looking stone steps and over the Powells Creek bridge (with its curved steel lines which seem to mimic the Olympic Stadium) you come to the eastern entrance to the Park, flanked by two small-scale replicas of the Bicentennial tower. By walking 500 metres straight up Victoria Street you’ll reach Concord West Railway Station.
𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁𐚁
* Sydney Olympic Park Authority – the body responsible for managing and developing the 640 hectares of the Park’s area post-Olympics ¥ this claim would be under serious challenge as horse races were held on a course built in Hyde Park in the City of Sydney as early as 1810…Hyde Park ‘racecourse’ clearly predates other known claimants in Sydney. ¤ although the racecourse at Homebush was a ‘downs’ course apparently, undulating, not flat ❉ “Shah of Shahs”
PostScript: Homebush nomenclature The earliest free settler in the area then known as Liberty Plains, Thomas Laycock, chose the name “Home Bush” for his farm in the area (1794) [M Wayne, ‘NSW State Abbatoirs/Sydney Olympic Park – Homebush, NSW’, (2012)]
≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡ [1] ‘Timeline of Narawang Wetland and the Surrounding Area’, (Narawang Wetland, NSW Government Education & Communities), www.geographychallenge.nsw.edu.au)
[2] ‘Industrial History’, (History and Heritage, Sydney Olympic Park), www.sopa.nsw.gov.au
[3] The Homebush Racecourse was the home of the powerful Australian Jockey Club before the relocation to the (new) Randwick Racecourse in 1860, Cathy Jones, ‘Homebush Racecourse’, Strathfield Heritage, (2005), www.strathfield heritage.org
[4] M Wayne, ‘NSW State Brickworks/Brickpit Ring Walk – Homebush, NSW’, 14 June 2012, www.pastlivesofthenearfuture.com
[5] ‘Axe falls on Sydney Olympic Park street race’, Speedcafe, 22 March 2016.
The ferry wharf at Olympic Park is a good starting point for a ramble through Homebush Bay commencing from a ferry and ending at the rail line. From the wharf we walk down Hill Road, passing a dense concentration of light industrial businesses, turning left at either Monza or Baywater and walk through the Wentworth Point estate to the Promenade, a pleasantly wide and newish waterfront path (1km walk from the ferry).
If you take a left at the Promenade, the bay path passes large residential blocks, removals and waste disposal companies before it morphs into a very thin bush strip. The strip which doubles as a rubbish dump meanders on for a bit but ends up against a high residential fence about 100m from where workers are currently building a non-vehicular bridge across the Bay to the homogenous looking towers of Rhodes. Taking a look at the skyline on both sides of the Bay it is less than a “Sherlock Holmesian” deduction to conclude how much the newer Wentworth Point waterfront has come to resemble the Rhodes prototype – albeit there is less of it.
You can happily skip this dead-end digression and just head south from the end of Baywater Drive … the path becomes a narrow trail which swings round a bend closer to Bennelong Parkway. We pass a gated estate within touching distance of its largish but shallow communal swimming pool (at least we can touch the reinforced glass that separates the pool from the boardwalk). The pool is in a nice location but there’s zero privacy for the bathers it seems to me, right on the public boardwalk. Personally I’d be somewhat put off by the regular stream of passers-by.
꧁ 𝓢𝓢 𝓐𝔂𝓻𝓯𝓲𝓮𝓵𝓭: grounded and consumed by nature
This is the ideal spot to view one of the best examples of a distinctive feature of Homebush Bay, a number of old vessels deliberated shipwrecked and left to co-habit with nature. The steam collier SS Ayrfield was scuttled and broken up in 1972 and here sits its rusty, rotting steel hull, impressively assimilated with the water-bound vegetation and crops of mangroves. The tree growth sprouts out of the hull so luxuriantly that is looks like something organic and even artistic in its visual effect.
At the end of the trail we turn left at Bennelong and (carefully) cross the often busy road on to the right side to cross the small bridge spanning the Bay. About 30 metres after the bridge cross over Bennelong Pkwy and follow the trail into the bush. Almost immediately you come to a side track with a plaque on the ground identifying a Shipwreck Lookout. This is a dedication to the “remnant hulks” of Homebush Bay. These are abandoned, rusting wrecks resting here, like the Ayrfield, scattered along the shoreline and overrun by vegetation and mangroves✱.
The curved path continues around the Bay, and it is common to see white egrets and purplish-blue crested Puekekos (AKA Australasian swamp hens) lurking around the water’s edge. As you continue on the trail, if you keep glancing to the right you will shortly notice a bird hide camouflaged in the vegetation to allow glimpses of the waterbird refuge – the Charadriiformes population inhabiting these tidal waters include Pacific Golden Plovers, Black-winged Stilts, Bar-tailed Godwits, Red-necked Avocets, ducks and black swans. Look for the observation tower to the left of the nature strip where the path turns south…in several places in the bay’s mangroves the observation towers are useless as they are now surrounded by mangroves which have ascended above the viewing point! (note the prevalence of large spiders webbed above the pathway).
Approaching Bicentennial Park a turnoff on the right takes you on to a zig-zagging boardwalk through the Badu Mangroves, a dense patchwork of grey and olive-coloured mangrove growth which leads to the Bennelong Ponds and the western side of Bicentennial Park. If you choose not to do this diversion continue south to the next crossway and go left opposite the tinny looking Field Studies Centre building. After passing a small bridge and another of those observation towers in the mangroves you soon reach the far-eastern edge of the park and a path which heads north along the water, parallel to Homebush Bay Drive.
It’s about 1.5km from this point to Rhodes Station. When the Wentworth Point to Rhodes bridge is completed, walkers including lunchtime walkers from the Rhodes Waterside Mall and Nestlés will be able to do the walk as a loop starting at Rhodes Station and returning from Homebush Bay to the same start point.
໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱
✱ for more details of the vessels involved and the ship-breaking industry in Homebush Bay during the 1970s see G Blaxell, ‘The Wrecks of Homebush Bay’ (May 2008), www.afloat.com.au
The north-western part of Homebush Bay in Sydney’s west was once a backwater of swampy industrial and military dumping grounds and wastelands. The rubbish dumps are still there but no longer visible and the entire surface area of the Bay now boasts a diverse range of interesting walks for the enthusiastic pedestrian. The network of walkways allow you to commence a walk in Homebush Bay* from various points of the compass … we shall start with a walk from the north-west commencing at Silverwater Bridge and throw in some digressions and let’s see what we can unearth.
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The Rivercat on route to Sydney Olympic Park
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As you set off by foot on the south bank along the pathway you can see across the River the predominantly low-level housing of Ermington and Melrose Park, each one characterised by the same identikit appearance. There is not much river traffic around this part of the waterway but expect to see the sleek green-and-white Rivercat glide by at regular intervals.
1897 Gatehouse
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The first item of historic interest we encounter is the former Royal Australian Navy site, Newington Armory. There is a modern (‘Armory’) cafe, an older shop that also sells coffee and some play facilities here, near to the naval depot entrance. The entrance area is much as it was when the Navy abandoned the site in 1999 – still standing is an 1897 brick gatehouse (also known as “the Cooperage”), with a rail track leading down from the gate to where the wharf used to be. Two old, grey-toned cranes (circa 1960s) stand fixed in time on the edge of the river.
The site’s custodians, Sydney Olympic Park (S0C), Authority describes the Armory site as it exists today as “compris(ing) a range of historically significant natural and cultural features including former army and navy ammunition storehouses, workshops, offices, small gauge railway and other infrastructure associated with the operation of a naval armament depot”¹. One hundred years ago (1916) it was a military powder magazine and five years after that a munitions store for the navy.
When the navy moved out there were skiploads of old armaments and other dangerous pollutants lying around the depot, so the department simply buried them and fenced off a large section of the site from the public. Other sections of the former naval property still have limited access for commercial activities on the weekend only (eg, rides on a historic electric locomotive which had been used for moving armaments around the ordnance depot). Blaxland Riverside Park nearby has flying fox rides and tunnel slides. Not far from here is the new Newington housing estate.
Continuing down the waterfront path, you come to a side path next to a high electricity tower. This bush-lined path (named in honour of paralympian Louise Sauvage) can be either a digression to take in the view from the second highest point in the Bay (after the Treillage), or an another route to the Sydney Olympic Precinct (railway station) via the lush Narawang Wetland and Haslams Creek.
“Woo-la-ra“
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There’s a steep, linear walk up a very large conical-shaped earth mound full of dangerous chemicals and other toxins² buried under several layers of top and middle soil … atop this geographical marker (SOC calls these mounds scattered round the Homebush Precinct “Bay Markers”) is the best view around here – a 360-degree panorama incorporating the river, the uniform-shaped high-rise of Rhodes and Liberty Grove and the numerous Olympia stadia. Steeply descending the mound trail to the bottom you immediately ascend again, this second hilltop not as steep as the mound but with a plateau at the top, bears the name ascribed to it by the local, Wan-gal clan, Woo-la-ra(= lookout).
From the high ground of Woo-la-ra you have a choice (several choices in fact): you can take the path down to Hill Road where you can walk along the forest trail parallel to Hill Road**. The Sydney Olympic Park Wharf is about one kilometre away, where you can catch the ferry back to Circular Quay or west to Parramatta.
Kronos Hill
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We decide to continue the path for a further 2.5km through the Millennium Parklands down to Haslams Creek. Here on the south-eastern shore of the Creek there is another high mound known as Kronos Hill, and also full of hidden toxic surprises³. You can follow a staggered, concentric trail up to the summit and be rewarded with sweeping 360-degree views of the Olympic Precinct (Allphones Arena and ANZ Stadium are both in the immediate foreground). From atop Kronos Hill it is only about half-an-hour walk’s back to the Olympic train station.
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* “Homebush Bay” strictly historically speaking refers to the inlet, the body of water, off Parramatta River. The area that is now generally thought of as Homebush Bay (including Wentworth Point and the Sydney Olympic Park) was described in the early part of the 20th century as being part of “Lidcombe North”. The name “Homebush” itself derives from D’Arcy Wentworth who was granted a large land grant in the area in 1810, literally “his home in the bush”. ‘Homebush out to make a point’, Daily Telegraph, (Sydney), 04 January 2009, www.dailytelegraph.com.au
** Optional diversion: you might consider a side trip from the corner of Bennelong and Hill. From the intersection its about 400 metres to the Olympic Archery Field … catch a look at a bunch of wannabe “Robin Hoods” in “bow and quiver” action (not a skerrick of Lincoln green in sight though, I’m afraid!).
~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~
¹ ‘Armory History: The Military Magazine’, (Sydney Olympic Park Authority), www.sopa.nsw.gov.au. During WWII the US Navy Pacific arm had its own ammo depot at the Armory, ‘Newington Armory’ (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newington-Armory ² these include dioxins (DDT, pesticides and herbicides), hydrocarbons, lead, heavy metals, asbestos, benzenes and phenols, Sharon Beder, ‘… And what the tourists will not see’, Sunday Age, 18 June 2000
³ Haslams Creek is heavily polluted with toxins (especially dioxins) as are all of the waterways and wetlands around Homebush Bay. Largely this is a direct result of chemical pollution by the Union Carbide/Timbrol Rhodes Plant between 1949 and 1976. The giant chemicals manufacturer poured the waste by-products of dioxins as well as other toxic landfill along the shoreline of the Bay. This practice (unbelievably) was sanctioned by the Maritime Services Board on the grounds that it “reclaimed stinking wetlands for a useful industrial purpose”. Consequently the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1994 ranked Homebush Bay as one of the five worst dioxin hotspots in the world, ‘A race against toxins’, The Irish Times, 19 August 2000.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s one absolute corker of a good walk … a leisurely 8km or so saunter from Rhodes Station around the foreshore to the former estate of the fabulously rich Walkers of Concord. Whether it’s your step-counting, fitness-conscious walker, your dedicated dog-walker or your insouciant, wandering flaneur, the Concord shoreline walk is a varied and interesting stroll through rustic, undulating fields and flat, serene bayside paths bordered by mangroves and what remains of a eucalyptus forest. A walk through the erstwhile Walker estate takes you past historic reminders of grand Victorian/Edwardian homes and World War repatriation hospitals and convalescence facilities.
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/image4.jpg”> Rhodes house[/As we leave the western side of the railway station, we immediately have our first encounter with one of the local historical personages. Walker Street (next to the rail line) is named after Thomas Walker, the first of two Thomas Walkers to leave a weighty footprint on the area of Concord/Rhodes. This first Thomas Walker, an officer in charge of government stores in the early colony, purchased land at Uhrs Point, a locale which eventually became the suburb of Rhodes, named after the house Walker had built for himself.
Rhodes – a background of industrial polluters of the environment and the suburb’s homogeneous, characterless domestic makeover
Heading north along Walker Street, we pass the sites previously occupied by many commercial and industrial enterprises including the large paint manufacturer Berger’s and the multinational giant Union Carbide’s Chemicals plant…notorious first for being the site of the US company’s manufacture of devastating “Agent Orange” (the US military’s aerial terrorist weapon of choice during the Vietnam War) and then as an environmental dumper, for its reprehensible practice of discharging the dioxins that make the lethal herbicide into the Parramatta River. In their place we see the shape of the post-industrial landscape that dominates Rhodes today – masses and masses of homogeneous semi-high rise blocks of modern apartments and large clumps of new ones still going up. At the end of Walker Street there is a nice little park touching the river (Point Park) where members of the ubiquitous local Asian community perform their daily Tai chi exercises.
Walking under the railway line and passing some light industry and the big IKEA warehouse, we loop around Uhrs Point below the 1935 Ryde Bridge near the sea scouts hall and turn south in the direction of Concord. After a stretch of nondescript street we reach Brays Bay Reserve, named after the first land-owner in Rhodes, Alfred Bray, who built the now long demolished ‘Braygrove’ in ca 1800 (the pioneering Brays owned property in Rhodes from 1794 to 1909).
In the Bray Reserve we walk onto a vacant concrete pier on the edge of the river, no indication that it once housed a Philips Industries site when they were in the bike manufacturing business. On the other side of the square there is a plaque with some rusty old sides of a ship signifying the former presence of Tulloch’s Iron Works in Rhodes (during WWII it functioned as ‘Commonwealth Shipyard # 4’). The remnants of a railed track with ship names engraved on the ground … female names, all curiously enough starting with the letter ‘E’.
Kokoda commemorative walk:
The next section of the trail, densely cordoned on one side by thick mangroves, comprises the 1990s constructed Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway. The walkway is set in a rainforest tropics-themed garden with Kokoda Campaign audio ‘stations’ named after various battles and campaigns of the New Guinea conflict (Efogi, Iorabaiwa, Myola, etc) positioned at different points. There is also a memorial with two high, semi-circular walls surrounded by a rose garden in the rainforest, and a small kiosk-style cafe at the mid-way point of the track. When the path reaches the open side gate to Concord General Hospital, the Kokoda Walkway ends and we take the path deviating to the left.
The path (usually muddy here) skirts round the back of the Concord Repatriation Hospital, which itself continues the WWII theme. It was built in 1940 as the 113th Australian Army General Hospital, taking in wounded and convalescing servicemen from the War. The ground on which the hospital dominated by the huge “Multi Building” stands passed to the Crown after the death of Dame Eadith Walker, daughter of the second Thomas Walker associated with the area. This Thomas Walker was a Scottish migrant in the 19th century who made it (very) big from property and stock investment and finance in Australia (in his later years he was president of the Bank of NSW). At the time of his death his personal worth was estimated at up to £2,000,000, a staggering amount for 1886!
🔺 Walker Convalescent Hospital
Walker estate and convalescent hospital:
This is a very tranquil part of Concord, with only the occasional dog-walker or jogger to be seen on the dirt track. As we come round the bend in the path, dense bamboo woods on our left, we get our first glimpse of the first convalescent hospital on the peninsula (much, much smaller than the Concord Repat). Walker left £100,000 for the construction of what became the Thomas Walker Memorial Convalescent Hospital, designed and built by famous Australian architect John Sulman in the early 1890s after the injection of a further £50,000 from Eadith and her aunt and other relatives for the project’s completion. The hospital was an amazingly extensive complex in its day and the central core of the hospital remains, albeit a lot of the surrounding adjunct buildings have not survived.
At its height the adjoining structures included an admin block, separate dining rooms and pavilions for men and women, concert hall and servants’ quarters, with a tennis court for convalescing patients. Staying on the foreshore path we reach the distinctive Dutch bell tower (above) on the water, from where a long stepped pathway leads impressively up to the hospital entrance. In the time it was a working hospital the bell tower was the landing-point for ferries conveying patients from Circular Quay, and it also served in a secondary function as a smoking room – for male patients only!
Walker’s convalescent hospital admitted 683 patients in its first year of operation and over the following 80 years took in thousands free of charge in accordance with Walker’s bequest. During WWII it was used to house the 3rd Australian Women’s Hospital. By the 1970s however it was no longer viable as a free convalescent hospital and in 1979 it began functioning as the Rivendell Adolescent Unit for the rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed youth, and it is still operating as such today.
Following the path further south we pass coastal bush and mangroves and come to a series of stairs (down and then up again) which are behind the Mental Health Unit of Concord Hospital – a newish facility relocated from Callan Park/Rozelle in 2008. The path curves around the peninsula into Yaralla Bay and the newer buildings (mental health and drug health) give way to a series of old, very dilapidated looking buildings comprising the hospital’s engineering and works divisions.
We walk toward a clear, grassy area and take a sharp left out of the hospital grounds, near the helipad, at its south-western end where the mangroves are at their most dense. This leads into desolate bush and scrubland alongside the bay. Pretty soon the path becomes fairly marshy and prone to be boggy after rain (avoid if waterlogged during a walk by veering to the right over the higher ground of the fields which has better run-off). This field is one of a series of large, empty and fenced off paddocks in this part of the former Walker Estate. What looks like a bare and fallow piece of land has become a hotly contested bit of Canada Bay.
The Concord Agistment field (Source: New Ltd)
Agistment wars:
The paddocks had been used for decades by local horse-owners for the agistment of their steeds. The state government held an inquiry in 2012/2013 which found that the tenant in charge had mismanaged the site (fences not properly maintained leading to some horses escaping into the hospital helipad and adjoining streets, and other conditions of the agistment licence not fulfilled by the licensee). The government health authority then did a late night deal with the Mounted Unit of the NSW Police giving them the green light to move their 18 service horses from the city (Surry Hills) to the freshly vacated paddocks of Yaralla Estate. Then the government suddenly backflipped on its decision to move the police horses to Yaralla (prompting an ICAC inquiry into the whole matter of the paddocks’ usage). However it still went ahead with the revoking of the tenant’s lease and the recreational horses were turfed off the estate, causing a vociferous outcry from the aggrieved horse owners. Since then there have been signals from the government of an intention to turn the land into 18ha of parklands for future public use. However the agistment paddocks remain idle and unoccupied, giving further cause for protest from the ejected horse lovers at the current impasse. So far, a lose-lose situation!
Continuing the path south through the second Walker peninsula we come to the grand villa, Yaralla House, set up on raised land 150 metres from the shoreline. Around it are the various auxiliary buildings of the Yaralla Estate. The Walker Estate was acquired by the millionaire banker in piecemeal fashion in the 1840s-1850s from the beneficiaries of Isaac Nichols, convict-cum-colonial postmaster and the original crown landowner in Concord. Yaralla House itself is an architecturally significant, asymmetrical Victorian Italianate mansion, the original alabaster white villa was built by colonial architect Edmund Blacket (1850s-60s) with John Sulman adding extensions to it in the 1890s.
Squash courts built 1920 for future Edward VIII but apparently not used by him on his visit (Source: www.slhd.nsw.gov.au)
Self-contained ‘Walker World’:
After Eadith Walker inherited the Yaralla Estate from her father she built the built up the property holdings piece-by-piece, adding a swimming pool, squash and tennis courts, croquet lawn, stables, coach-house, guest houses and other auxiliary buildings. The squash court was installed specifically for the use of the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) on his visit. However the Royal personage (and later fan-boy of the German reichsführer) declined to play on it because of its concrete floor (his cousin and travel companion Louis (Lord) Mountbatten “had a hit up” instead!).
Yaralla also had its own dairy farm (supplying milk to the Walkers’ hospital and to other local hospitals), piggery, fowl enclosures, bakery, fire brigade and powerhouse (Yaralla was the first building in Concord to have electricity!) A good chunk of the 40ha-plus grounds were used as a golf course – some of its members later established the Royal Sydney Golf Club in North Bondi. The rest broke away from the Sydney Club and formed the Concord Golf Course (Club) on land, then known as “Walker’s Bush”, that had been part of the Walkers’ holdings.
Eadith lived alone at Yaralla – in the sense that she never married, however in a very real sense she was far from alone, even after her companion/adopted sister Anne left to marry the architect Sulman. Dame Eadith maintained a huge retinue of some 200 servants, maids, grooms, cooks, gardeners, engineers and other live-in staff. In addition, twin cousins of the family from Tenterfield, northern NSW, Egmont and George (Walker), lived there for many years (each having a room named after him!)
Rockery from Italy:
Dame Eadith spared little expense on the beautification of her estate. Stonemasons were imported from Italy to build an sculptured Italianate terrace and a grotto. The grotto is a series of sculpted rockery caves interspersed with exotic flora, ferns, palms and especially succulents, lying at the foot of the bluff on which the former Walker home sits. The area between the grotto and the shoreline once contained the Walkers’ swimming pool complete with its own pumping station. There is also a decorative sunken garden and the evocative Four Winds Fountain located near the house.
(Source: www.slhd.nsw.gov.au)
At one period around WWI Eadith was a regular holder of lavish parties and charitable fetes and balls at Yaralla (Walker received her DBE for charitable activities). For the socially advanced, “old money” set, it was the place to be seen! Periodically she entertained royalty … both the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) and the Duke of Gloucester (the future George VI) stayed at the Yaralla Estate. Lesser luminaries, including governor-generals and premiers, also stayed at the Estate. In one celebrated incident aviator Ross Smith landed on the front lawn in a bi-plane in 1920 and had cucumber sandwiches on the lawn with the good Dame Commander. From her art and artifacts collections garnered from frequent overseas’ trips she brought back many Indian treasures to incorporate into a special showcase Indian room at Yaralla. After visiting Scandinavia she had a Norwegian cottage shipped out and reassembled on the Concord estate.
During the Great War the patriotic Eadith gave over Yaralla’s grounds to the army to be used as a ‘tent’ hospital. Yaralla House (less well-known by the name Eadith Walker Convalescent Hospital) fell into the Crown’s hands after her death sans heirs in 1937. It eventually came under the trusteeship of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (the RPA) and then that of the Sydney Local Health District (SLHD). RPA now uses the former villa (and other on-site cottages) as a residential care facility to house HIV and dementia outpatients.
After Dame Eadith died, the contents of the Yaralla properties were auctioned in 1938 by auctioneers Lawson’s and de Groot. Held over eight days, it was the biggest auction held in Australia to that time. Some of the Yaralla items sold are now in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
Fortunately for the vast Estate, there has been a lot of conservation and restoration work carried out at Yaralla in recent years – a combined effort by the City of Canada Bay Heritage Society, the Council itself, and the SLHD. We resume the walk, past the grotto, where the path slopes gently down towards a dense patch of very tall and wild bamboo on the water side with a small child care centre on the right. If you look west up the road that leads away from the centre, you will see a row of planted trees which guards an elaborate rose garden created by Eadith.
In the next section of the walk the narrowing path is encroached upon by overhanging branches in what is a pleasant little, untamed stretch of bush. Shortly we come to a metal fence signifying the boundary where the Yaralla Estate once ended, it has a gate that is no longer locked. Past the gate is a large, well-kept park which looks out on to Majors Bay. A small but dense turpentine-ironbark forest leads to the right in the direction of Nullawarra Road which is flanked by Arthur Walker Reserve (coincidentally named after an apparently unrelated ‘Walker’!).
The expansive park curves around Majors Bay with a continuous trail of dense mangroves on the foreshore and sporting fields on the right. The concrete pathway ends, abruptly and surprisingly, at the back fence of someone’s house. Surprising because, with just a little imaginative urban planning and some funding, a bracket-shaped boardwalk could have extended the foreshore path around the houses to connect with close-by Shadrock Shaw Reserve (much in the manner achieved with sections of Salt Pan Creek and other coastal walkways).
The conclusion of a wonderful walk full of interesting history and natural beauty and charm … a tranquil corridor of nature with an air of unhurried ambience. From the Majors Bay Reserve end-point you can choose between walking on through the Mortlake and Breakfast Point streets to the ferry at Cabarita, or heading west, cutting across Concord Road to the nearest train station at Concord West.
Footnote: Yaralla tradesman’s entrance
The entrance to Yaralla is the main (wrought iron) gate and the Hyacinth (Gatekeeper’s) Cottage at the junction of Nullawarra Rd and The Drive. In its heyday however, the Estate extended as far west as Concord Road (the original gate being where the Masonic hall is on Concord Road). Where privately owned red brick cottages and Californian bungalows are today, Dame Eadith constructed retirement cottages for her loyal staff to live in at the end of their working lives.
Dame Eadith, portrait with her British imperial medals
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Bibliography:
Sheena Coupe, Concord A Centenary History (1883-1983), Sydney 1983.
Jennifer MacCulloch, ‘Walker, Dame Eadith Campbell (1861-1937), Australian Dictionary of Biography, ANU, published in hardcover 1990
Patricia Skehan, ‘Yaralla estate’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yaralla_estate, viewed 31 January 2016
Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney: Walks into Sydney’s Unexpected and Endangered Places, Sydney 1991
In 1976 the NSW state government consolidated the two mental health care facilities in Lilyfield, Callan Park Mental Hospital and Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic, into one body, called Rozelle Hospital (the word ‘Psychiatric’ was quietly excised from the name). Drug and alcohol and psycho-geriatric services were added to the psychiatric care and rehabilitation roles of the hospital.
A watershed moment in mental health with profound and long-lasting repercussions for Rozelle Hospital occurred seven years later in 1983. The Richmond Report recommended a policy of de-institutionalisation, moving patients of mental hospitals back into the community. From the 1960s, with overcrowding in state mental hospitals rife, there had been isolated attempts to deinstitutionalise starting to happen but the Report advocated that the government accelerate the process on a more systematic basis.
Stairs to a safe haven?The Report’s blueprint advocated moving patients out of the psych wards and into the community at large. They were to be given support through a network of community-based agencies. As well, the plan was to open up new special units in mainstream general hospitals and accommodation facilities to take care of the needs of the former inpatients. In reality however these measures have never been properly supported by successive NSW governments, Labor or Liberal. Cynically but unsurprisingly, the parties in power have tended to manipulate the program to cut back on existing bed numbers and close wards in the mental health care system.
New specialised mental health wards were eventually opened, such as in Western Sydney hospitals Nepean and Liverpool. But the cost of caring for the former patients, providing them with the services and housing they needed once released, has not been adequately met by the authorities. As a consequence, the state’s prisons have returned in practice to a traditional role they had filled in past centuries, acting as de facto psychiatric institutions. Government research points to a high percentage of prisoners (90% female and 78% male) experiencing a psychiatric disorder in the year preceding their incarceration [R Pollard, ‘Out of Mind’, Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 2005].
Derelict “Social Club” for the patients
A conspicuous side-effect of de-institutionalisation at Callan Park was the physical deterioration of wards and other dwellings on the site. As wards closed, their upkeep was not maintained and many fell into various stages of dilapidation, some were found to contain very significant levels of asbestos. In 1991 an extensive DPWS Heritage Study was undertaken by the Department of Public Works with every building, evaluated zone-by-zone, to determine if it should be preserved, repaired or removed. Bizarrely, some of the buildings deemed suitable to be demolished were in satisfactory condition and still being utilised, such as the NSW Ambulance Service!?! Many of the old buildings earmarked for removal were subsequently pulled down but fortunately, somehow the Ambulance building complex survived [‘DPWS Heritage Plan’, (1991), www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au].
The fallout from the policy to deinstitutionalise continues to be felt in the community. NSW Health’s 2007 ‘Tracking Tragedy’ report identified that there had been some 113 suicides by former psychiatric patients plus a number of patients who had committed homicides upon release [‘Final Government Response to Tracking Tragedy 2007’ (3rd Report)].
“Harbour Bridge” monument to Ward B patients or to war?
By the early ’90s the Kirkbride Block was being phased out as a psychiatric institution (the nearby wards however were retained for patient relocation) and a deal was struck with Sydney University (USyd) to lease it from 1996 as the site of its College of the Arts (SCA). The University then injected 19 million dollars into upgrading the facilities to make it suitable as a tertiary education campus. At the same time the nearby Garryowen House was repaired to become the new home of the NSW Writers Centre.
Uncertainty about the Government’s future plans for Callan Park led concerned citizens to form the Friends of Callan Park (FOCP) in 1998. Their concerns were well-founded as the Carr Labor Government in 2001-2002 produced a draft Master Plan for the land which included the sale of significant chunks of the site for residential development and the shift of psychiatric services to Concord – all formulated without having consulted local residents (this followed an earlier clandestine arrangement made by Carr to provide land in the Park gratis for a Catholic retirement village). FOCP and Leichhardt Council mobilised community support against the Government’s plan, resulting in a huge backlash from residents of the municipality.
Embarrassed, the state government backed down, ditched the Master Plan and enacted the 2002 Callan Park (Special Provisions) Act which guaranteed that the entire site would remain in public hands to be used strictly for health and education purposes only [‘Callan Park – a Tribute to the Local Community’, (FOCP), www.callanpark.com]
Later, Labor planning minister Sartor (again covertly) offered the the central core of the whole site (an area of 35HA) to Sydney University whose expansion plans for the SCA site envisaged increasing the student numbers to 20,000 and providing for up to 7,000 places in residential accommodation. USyd received a 99 year lease from the Government on the 35HA land. The University was planning to move the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from its present location in the city onto the Lilyfield site (the Conservatorium itself was very lukewarm about this proposal, as it turned out). This over-the-top development would have required 16 new buildings (some up to 4 storeys high!) to be built, which would have been a breach of the 2002 Act. Again, after a backlash and significant pushback from the public, the Government backed down [Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2002; Inner West Courier, November 6, 2007] (see also PostScript].
Recently USyd has been murmuring about the prospect of pulling out of the Rozelle campus, citing financial difficulties as the reason. It has already flagged its intention to move the Fine Arts School to the main Camperdown site [‘Sydney University abandons art school at Callan Park’, Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 2015]. The uncertainty about Callan Park’s future has prompted critics like FOCP to suggest that the Baird Government may follow the same path as Labor did in trying to sell off part of the site for commercial gain. FOCP has accused the Government of taking a “demolition by neglect” approach to Callan Park, this will be a fait accompli, they contend, especially if USyd leaves Rozelle as the buildings will no longer be maintained and inevitably fall into disrepair [‘Callan Park in danger of being “demolished by neglect”, (23-04-15), www.altmedia.net.au].
New uses for old buildings
The next signpost in the Callan Park story occurred in May 2008 when the Government moved the psychiatric patients out of Broughton Hall and relocated them at a new, purpose-built psychiatric unit at Concord Hospital, six kilometres down the Parramatta River. The Friends of Callan Park had campaigned to retain the psychiatric facility, the late Dr Jean Lennane advocated that, rather than closing down Callan Park, the bed numbers needed to be increased as deinstitutionalisation had led to an increase in homelessness among the mentally ill, or had seen them end up ‘warehoused’ in gaols, or tragically, dead, after being turned out. FOCP also called for an extension of outdoor recreational activities available to the patients, eg, establishment of a city farm on the grounds with the patients tending the animals as part of their therapuetic regime.
Leichhardt Council also voiced its disapproval of the Government’s plans for Callan Park. Despite the chorus of opposition, the NSW Government went ahead with the closures. The Council persisted with its criticisms and the NSW Government in late 2008 granted the Council care, control and management of 40 hectares of Callan Park (roughly two-thirds of the area) under a 99 year lease (previously the “physical fabric” of Callan Park as a whole had been managed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) on behalf of the Government)
[http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/]
Sensing the need to be more proactive, Leichhardt Council prepared its own “Master Plan” for Callan Park, which, in a poll conducted by the Council, elicited 87% approval from municipality residents. The plan provides for greater use of the land for a broad cross-section of the community, with new sporting fields and skate parks and other activities.
The land and structures of Callan Park continue to be owned by the NSW Government now under the agency of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (although the SHFA website still confusingly lists Callan Park on its website as one of the “places we manage” [www.shfa.nsw.gov.au]). Some of the wards and halls (those remaining ones not riddled with asbestos) get rented out for film and television shoots from time to time, one building permanently houses a film production unit (building Callan 201) whose management harbours its own designs to expand further into the Park and create an international film production hub (again which would be a flagrant breach of the 2002 Act if it was ever allowed to happen)[‘Premiere plan for Callan Park film hub’, (20-06-13) www.altmedia.net.au]. Other current tenants of Callan Park include the Ambulance Service and a host of NGOs, eg, AfterCare, WHOS, SIDSKIDS and Foundation House.
With Sydney University’s future campus expansion plans looking elsewhere (closer to the city, North Eveleigh has been mooted as the spot to expand into) [University of Sydney, Campus 2020 Masterplan], Leichhardt Council seems to be running most of the debate currently. Very recently, the Council approved (over opposition from the Greens and Liberals) a motion to use the complex site to house some of the 7,000 Syrian refugees due to be settled in Sydney next year, ‘Leichhardt Council approves plan to resettle refugees at former mental hospital’, ABC News, 09-12-15, www.mobile.abc.net.au]. This produced a predictable if minor furore from some quarters of the community, demonstrating that land use in the area known locally as “The Lungs of Leichhardt” continues to be a divisive and hotly contested issue within the community.
PostScript: North Eveleigh trade-off
Frank Sartor’s biography❈ shed more light on the machinations: according to him the NSW Keneally Government secretly planned to compensate Sydney University for the ‘loss’ of Kirkbride by offering it the North Eveleigh site in Redfern for the new location for SCA. The deal fell through though because the North Eveleigh site was valued at about A$100 million, whereas USyd was only prepared to pay $30 million for it [‘Sartor: Keneally discusses plan for North Eveleigh with Sydney Uni’, Redwatch, [www.redwatch.org.au].
After the Kirkbride complex at Callan Park started as a hospital for the mentally ill in the 1880s, patients held at Gladesville Asylum and other psychiatric institutions in Sydney were routinely redirected to it. Kirkbride had been carefully planned by the hospital’s collaborators, architect Barnet and superintendent Manning, and purpose-built from the start to hold a maximum of 666 patients. But such was the demand for its services that the hospital’s patient population had reached close to 1,000 within three years of its opening (1888), and continued to grow unchecked. By 1960 Kirkbride contained something close to 2,000 patients resident there and in the adjoining auxillary wards.
Unfortunately, political support for care of the insane from around the turn of the 20th century started to diminish, with predictable adverse consequences for mental institutions generally. Without a much-needed injection of capital expenditure from government—a reflection of public apathy about the plight of mentally ill at the time—the essential new building infrastructure required to keep pace with the increasing demands of psychiatric care was stifled. Hospitals like Callan Park, with fewer resources and too many patients, were forced to resort to medical treatments (surgical, chemical and mechanical interventions) to cope with the sheer numbers [M Lewis, Managing Madness. A Social History of Insanity 1788-1980]. The financial stringency occasioned by the Depression and World War was a further blow to hopes for increased funding for mental health.
During the first half of the century there were the occasional, tentative inquiry into the deteriorating conditions in state psychiatric institutions, but these, like the 1948 Public Service Board enquiry, never really went anywhere. In terms of the overcrowding at Callan Park, measures that were at best only stop-gap were employed from time to time, eg, additions to the existing buildings at Kirkbride and Garryowen … which were architecturally out of step with the original Barnet and Manning designs [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 07 December 2015].
There were some positive signs, finally, in 1955 with the Stoller Report which forced the Commonwealth Government to provide funds for mental health care in Australia. 1958 marked a watershed year for mental health with the passage of the NSW Mental Health Act, the first significant legislation in the field of institutional psychiatry for 60 years (replacing the 1898 Lunacy Act). The 1958 Act, in an long-overdue enlightened step, legislated that insanity should no longer be viewed as a criminal offence. It also made provisions for welfare officers to do follow-up visits of patients after their release. A further consequence of the Act was the construction of North Ryde Psychiatric Centre, the first such NSW institution in 35 years!
Within three years of the new act a Royal Commission on Callan Park was undertaken (in 1961), the first detailed investigation into mental health in NSW for 60 years. The Royal Commission was in part triggered by revelations of staff delinquency and dereliction of duty made by Dr Harry Bailey (newly appointed medical superintendent of Callan Park) in early 1960. The reformist-minded but over-zealous Bailey impetuously went over his superior’s head in presenting a report directly to the head of the PSB. Bailey’s act of ‘whistle-blowing’ concerned allegations of staff cruelty to and neglect of patients, and the discovery that staff were withholding food and groceries from patients with the purpose of profiting from these stolen supplies.
Bailey’s action provoked a revolt amongst the workers with staff members of the Nurses Association and the Hospital Employees Union taking industrial action. Bailey, who was later universally reviled for his central role in the horrific Chelmsford Hospital “Deep Sleep Therapy” scandal, was ‘scapegoated’ and pressured by the government into resigning the following year. But, with the newspapers demanding answers, the health minister was forced to initiate a Royal Commission into Callan Park, which confirmed many of Bailey’s charges but found others to be grossly exaggerated [“A history of medical administration in N.S.W. 1788-1973] Public Health Administration: Chief Medical Officer – Director General of Public Health, (2003),http://www0.health.nsw.gov.au/resources/aboutus/history/pdf/pt2cmo.pdf; Stephen Garton, ‘Bailey, Harry Richard (1922–1985)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bailey-harry-richard-12162/text21793, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 12 December 2015].
The Commission’s predictable findings brought to the attention of the public what was commonly known by anyone who had regularly visited the facility. Callan Park (Kirkbride Block) was too large, too overcrowded, with low standards of accommodation. The orientation at Kirkbride was custodial rather than rehabilitative, there was evidence found of cruelty, neglect and corruption … Callan Park had, as it is standard to say today of such matters, failed in its “duty of care”, it had become “a byword for all that was bad in mental health care” [Tanner Architects, Callan Park Rozelle Volume I, Conservation Management Plan, www.callanparkyourplan.com.au].
One of the specific findings of the Royal Commission into the Callan Park complex identified a group of male nurses and attendants who were bashing, starving, verbally abusing patients, as well as neglecting their state of cleanliness. Sadistic nurses were a recurring feature of Callan Park, going back to the institution’s infancy, ex-patients had testified as to the cruelty meted out by these “mechanical, inhumane creatures” [“Sydney’s shameful asylums: The silent houses of pain where inmates were chained and sadists reigned”, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 3 March 2015].
The incidences of illegalities and misdemeanours unearthed by the Royal Commission hinted at the deep, structural problems that had plagued Callan Park since its early days. Bailey’s actions in exposing malpractice at Callan Park, though injudicious in method (Bailey secretly taped a conversation he had with NSW health minister Sheahan), ensured that the institution’s activities stayed in the public’s mind and in the media’s gaze in the years after 1961.
Broughton Hall at the North Leichhardt (southern) end of the broad Callan Park area has experienced all the highs and lows of fortune over its 170 years of existence. Broughton House (as it was first called) was built by John Ryan Brenan after he had obtained the block of land from the old Perry (Township) Estate in the early 1840s. Brenan’s home was a brick stuccoed, two-story dwelling in the Regency style. Brenan’s financial woes forced him to sell his assets in the mid-1860s, but Broughton House stayed in private hands as a Victorian gentleman’s estate until the 20th century. A succession of owners and leaseholders held the property until ironmonger/importer John Keep acquired Broughton House (which he renamed Broughton Hall) and the nearby Kalouan (renamed “Broughton Villa” around 1870). Work on Broughton Hall extended the home to a 20-room mansion. Keep also started to cultivate a large garden on his estate.
After Keep’s death, Annandale timber merchants, the Langdon brothers, eventually acquired Broughton Hall in 1912, intending to use it as the site for a sawmill. When news of the carnage of Gallipoli shocked Australia, the brothers changed their minds and in a patriotic gesture offered the estate to the Commonwealth Government as convalescence and psychiatric hospitals, thus it became the 13th Australian Army Hospital for repatriated soldiers who were suffering the effects of “shell-shock”.
After the war Broughton Hall became NSW’s first voluntary psychiatric admissions clinic✪, Rozelle Psychiatric Hospital (1921), whilst Callan Park remained the place for more serious, longer-care cases. Broughton Hall (BH) and the auxiliary wards that later sprang up around it found themselves servicing an increasing number of out-patients as well.
The BH clinic’s driving force was its Medical Superintendent Dr (Sydney) Evan Jones who also took charge of the building designs and planned a distinctive garden and ground layout, using Keep’s garden as a starting point. Jones did a complete makeover of the existing grounds, creating a curvilinear garden comprising a forested jungle of tropical ferns, oaks and lanky bamboo with fish streams, quirky Japanese and Oriental miniature bridges and ornaments in the gardens. The landscaping of the grounds consisted of “building hills where none had been, valleys, sunken gardens, streams, bridges and stone walls” [Medical Journal of Australia, 26 June 1948, p 806, cited in Peter Reynolds, “Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic,” Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ broughton_hall_psychiatric_clinic, viewed 04 December 2015]. Critically, Dr Jones encouraged BH patients to actively assist in the creation of the amazing flora park.
Jones introduced the practice of occupational therapy into patient treatments (echoing the earlier approach of Manning at Kirkbride). This took the form of animal-assisted therapy—Jones added a zoological park to the hospital with kangaroos, emus, peacocks, cockatoos and parrots (the last remnant of the zoo, the ‘Roo House, was demolished in 1972)—as well as the creation of an environment of dense garden jungles and plants, all integral parts of the BH therapy approach (Reynolds).
If Moore’s Kirkbride garden can be described as a “pleasure garden”, then Jones’ Broughton garden well merits the epithet “fantasy’ garden”! It’s magical, coloured little bridges with their Japanese motifs and their ‘humpy’ paths and curvilinear shapes and the dense forested setting, all combine to bestow a particular fairytale enchantment on the place. Jones stated the gardens should be used “as machinery whereby a patient’s mind could be directed from neurosis to normality.”[cited in Sydney University, Sydney Medical School website].
During Jones’ period at the helm (1925-48), the Broughton Hall complex became the largest voluntary admission facility for psychiatric treatment in Australia, with close links to Sydney University (Jones himself lectured at USyd)[Tanner Architects, Callan Park Rozelle Vol I Conservation Management Plan, www.callanparkyourplan.com.au]. The interwar period saw Broughton Hall in the vanguard of “a virtual revolution in mental health care” as the number of voluntary admissions in Australia exploded. In-house psychiatrists utilised a range of therapies and treatments, in contrast to the incarceration policy of the large institutions [S Gorton, Medicine and Madness]. Later BH patients were encouraged to tend the “community garden” which backs on to Glover Oval (planting vegetables and flowers).
Accordingly, a building campaign began in the 1930s with a series of new wards built, supplementing the original Broughton Hall. A second building spurt occurred from 1956 to 1963 with new, small-scale residential buildings and landscaped surrounds. It also included a new occupational therapy building, new electrotherapy unit, IPC units and canteen [Building Ideas (Dec. 1963) cited in “Tanner Architects”]. New building work in Church Street (opposite the historic BH building) resulted in a modern hexagonal building housing a new outpatients clinic and day hospital. Also constructed on this block was a lecture hall named in honour of Evan Jones (there is some disagreement as to when these buildings were built, some sources say 1962-63, some, 1971). The complex is currently being converted into a Sydney campus for the University of Tasmania [See “Tanner Architects” and Peter Reynolds, “Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic”].
Broughton Hall (the original house) after WWII functioned initially as a female ward, then as an integrated rehabilitation ward, finally as a home for patients of the hospital’s Adolescent Unit in the 1970s. It was renamed, with unconscious irony, Rivendell, from the JRR Tolkien novels – “a place of goodness, peace and strength, devoid of all evil.” Rivendell’s relocation to Thomas Walker’s old Concord estate on the Parramatta River was a death-knell for Broughton Hall. The once great mansion became derelict, was vandalised and damaged by fire. It was boarded up in the 1980s and left in an abandoned, déshabillé state [Peter Reynolds, “Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic”].
Broughton Hall today
In 1976 the psychiatric hospital in the Broughton Hall precinct was formally amalgamated with the Kirkbride and the entire Callan Park complex was renamed Rozelle Hospital. Treatment and care of the mentally ill continued at Broughton Hall until 2008 when all psychiatric operations of Callan Park/Rozelle (BH and the Kirkbride Block) were moved to the newly constructed psychiatric facility at Concord Hospital. Since 2008 the former BH wards have operated as a drug and alcohol admissions clinic run by WHOS.
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✪ prior to this there was a voluntary ward for men only at the Darlinghurst Reception Centre – the Darlinghurst patients were transferred to Broughton Hall after it opened
Up from the water’s edge, the staggered hills, fields, woods, bush and scrubby vegetation, form the grounds that used to be known as Callan Park. On the pathway below, cyclists speed and joggers and walkers scurry along the popular Bay Run which skirts Sydney’s Iron Cove. Further up the undulating slopes of the park’s environs, the primary daytime activity seems to be the exercising of all manner of dog breeds by the local denizens.
The Gardener’s cottage
Callan Park is six kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, a broad area of some 61 hectares of largely park and woodland with scattered pockets of bush. If you stroll round its numerous, roughly concentric and hilly streets and walkways, you will find a very pleasant, tranquil parkland with an undulating landscape, gently sloping down till it reaches the foreshore of Iron Cove on the Parramatta River. The only residual sign of the presence of the area’s indigenous custodians, the Wangal clan (of the Eora tribe) who for thousands of years moved up and down its ridges and through its dense forests of Blackbutts and Ironbarks, are some traditional rock carvings out on the point of the Cove.
The sense of tranquility that the visitor gets is joined by a second sense, that of a pervading air of abandonment. When I first explored the area with only a vague grasp of these old cottages and workshacks being somehow part of Callan Park, the disused, dilapidated buildings left me with the initial impression that I had stumbled onto some sort of industrial wasteland, much like you might encounter in Peter Carey’s early short stories, but with decrepit, crumbling, asbestos-ridden buildings replacing the decrepit, rusty dismantled cars of The Fat Man in History. So many of the old brick-and-stone buildings jotted across the land are in varying degrees of decay, some boarded up to prevent assault from vandals, for others it is too late – they are already showing the pockmarks of wilful destruction … countless broken windows and doors and graffiti everywhere. Almost all of the structures bear the familiar yellow-and-black warning sign “DANGER ASBESTOS” or more ambiguously, “MAY CONTAIN ASBESTOS”.
At least since the beginning of the 20th century it’s been an urban cliché in Sydney to hear the name “Callan Park” casually thrown around … people suspected of aberrant thoughts or exhibiting the slightest deviance from the norm would regularly be on the receiving end of a comment like “You should be in Callan Park!”. This often would be in a flippant tone but sometimes the intent was more threatening, or at least, definitely condemnatory. Such is the stigma of Callan Park’s long-held reputation as a place to dump the mentally ill.
The first significant European use of the land at Callan Park flowed from local land grants made by Governor Macquarie in 1819-20. Land speculators moved to try to acquire the smaller plots and consolidate them into larger estates. In the 1830s two men in the colony with influence and means led the way in this. At the southern end of the park Deputy Surveyor-General Samuel Perry acquired an estate known as Spring Cove (now in Leichhardt North) where he built an impressive mansion home he called Kalouan, around 1840-41.
“Garryowen”
At more or less the same time, John Ryan Brenan, the colony’s Crown Solicitor and Police Magistrate, consolidated his holdings at the northern part of the land where he constructed an elegant Georgian stone home which he named Garryowen (the closest pub to Kirkbride, just over from the park in Darling Street, is named after this pioneer home). Brenan also acquired land near Perry’s estate and built a second, more palatial home called Broughton House. By the mid-1860s Brenan, facing bankruptcy, was forced to sell his properties and holdings. At this point any idea that the land might be used as an asylum hadn’t been contemplated. The new owner of the Garryowen Estate, businessman John Gordon, renamed the estate “Callan Park” with the idea of subdividing it to create a bayside suburb. Gordon’s plans were trumped by the NSW Colonial Government after colonial architect James Barnet persuaded Premier Henry Parkes to purchase the whole site for £12,500 in 1873.
The government was coming under community pressure to address the increasingly critical overcrowding in public asylums, especially in the main Sydney asylum at Tarban Creek (Gladesville). By 1876 Callan Park’s first in-patients were transferred into Brenan’s former homestead, Garryowen House from Darlinghurst. This was only a stopgap measure and Barnet together with the Medical Superintendent of Tarban Creek, Dr Frederick Manning, eventually convinced the government to seek a more permanent solution for the burgeoning numbers of the mentally ill. Barnet and Manning persuaded the Parkes Government as to the wisdom of building a brand new hospital. Both men wanted to create a more humane environment than that prevailing in the appalling, gloomy, prison-like conditions of Tarban Creek (which frankly wouldn’t have been hard, so parlous was the state of the Gladesville asylum!) A site was chosen, directly across from Garryowen, to construct a very large complex intended as a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital providing a curative and therapeutic environment.
Kirkbride & it’s Italianate Tower
Between 1880 and early 1885 some 33 graceful sandstone buildings in the Victorian classical style were erected on a raised rock and earth platform and then enclosed within four sandstone perimeter walls. The complex was eventually named ‘Kirkbride‘ (often referred to as the Kirkbride Block) was named in honour of an influential American psychiatrist who advocated that pleasant surroundings for patients were conducive to “moral therapy”. The hospital’s first director of mental health, Dr F Norton Manning (also the NSW Inspector-General for the Insane), shared the prevailing moral therapy view of insanity as sinful, a character flaw that could be cured (or at least ameliorated) by preoccupation with work (outdoor gardening and trades for men and domestic service for women). If you coupled that with an attractive physical environment and religious instruction, this was the pathway to recovery, according to its advocates [S Garton, Medicine and Madness. A Social History of Insanity in NSW 1880-1940]
The Kirkbride complex, with its Free Classical style sandstone design, was the work of colonial architect James Barnet. It was the largest building project completed to that time in the colony (in fact the largest undertaken until the 20th century) at a then enormous cost of £250,000. Barnet collaborated with the hospital’s), whose designs for Kirkbride were based on the Chartham Downs institution in Kent. Kirkbride was designed with spacious, pavilion wards and sun-lit verandahs and connecting courtyards. To compliment the aesthetic virtues of Kirkbride, an attractive lawn setting and a tree-lined picturesque (sunken) garden was constructed below the block. The appealing garden and the spaciousness of the Hospital was meant to break down the effects of the patients’ natural feelings of confinement by affording them more scope for movement.
These grand, pleasure gardens were designed by Charles Moore, the Director of the National Botanic Gardens, with which they share some stylistic similarities. The gardens also contain something of a cross-cultural curio, a war memorial in the Spanish mission style [Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney, (1991)]. The eastern part of the park, near to Balmain Road, is lined with Port Jackson fig trees. At the northern end of Kirkbride, near where North Crescent circles round to become Central Avenue, are a couple of massive ancient Moreton Bay figs with the most amazing, gigantic root system.
Before taking up his post as Superintendent of Kirkbride Manning travelled overseas, researching the most modern methods of treating the insane. As well as creating the right aesthetic environment, his philosophy focused on the need to engage patients in meaningful work and recreational activities, such as growing their own produce and other farming pursuits (in this sense Manning was something of a harbinger in advocating the use of “occupational therapy”, a term and concept not in vogue until the 20th century) [Callan Park Conservation Management Plan, www. Leichhardt.nsw.gov.au.
Dr Manning also placed an emphasis on the quality of staffing, and played a key role in advancing the professional status of psychiatric nurses in Australian institutions. He insisted that nurses and attendants at Callan Park have proper training to be competent in working effectively in an asylum, and advocated that they be appropriately remunerated for their work.
‘Clockless’ Clock Tower & rear wall
A highlight of the architecture of the Kirkbride Block is the decorative Venetian “clock tower”(sans clock – it was never installed for some reason!). The tower is part of Kirkbride’s built-in reticulation system, on top of the tower is a tidal ball copper spire which indicates the water level of the underground reservoir below. Rainwater from the run-offs is collected in two underground tanks and pumped to the wards (one tank is reserved for any fire emergency). The surrounding walls of the complex employed a device called a “Ha-Ha” Wall. Barnet would have learned this from the work of 18th century English landscape architect ‘Capability’ Brown. A Ha-Ha Wall is where a steep ditch is dug along the inside of the wall to prevent patients scaling it, whilst at the same time retaining the exterior view (allowing patients views from their verandahs extending to the Blue Mountains)[“Rozelle Hospital Heritage Study” 1991 report (PDF), www.callanparkyourplan.com.au; “Kirkbride Past & Present”, SCA, www.sydney.edu.au].
The 5.1HA block was designed to be entirely self-contained, with its own kitchens, separate dining halls, capacity for 666 patients (with an even 333 split for each gender) in the rooms and dormitories (male and female were segregated at opposite ends of the block with other sections in the middle). The complex also contained staff residences, bathhouses, laundries, bakery, workshop, lecture halls, library, chapel, morgue and administration block. To the south of the tower is a furnace stack which was used to generate steam required for the laundries.
Manning’s successor as Inspector-General Eric Sinclair was also ahead of the game! He introduced more specialised (special admissions) wards, such as the Female Cottage Hospital, to treat curable cases through early intervention, and advocated to have treatment of mental disease put on a more scientific basis [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 05 December 2015].
Sadly, over the course of the next century, Manning’s vision of an enlightened psychiatric hospital using modern scientific methods to care for those unfortunate enough to suffer from mental illness, floundered on a sea of inadequate government funding, staffing problems and chronic overcrowding, and until more recent times, met largely with public indifference. The overcrowding was a contributing factor in Kirkbride patient treatment becoming less rehabilitative in emphasis and more custodial as time went on.
🎭Long, long before megaplex cinemas, massive outdoor theme parks and home entertainment centres, Australians were discovering new outlets of activity to occupy their precious and increasing if hard-earned leisure time. In the 19th century one outlet for Sydneysiders which filled the bill for outdoor entertainment and activities was the suburban pleasure ground.
Europe: The Medieval fair
The origins of pleasure grounds in Australia can be traced back ultimately to British and European antecedents such as the Medieval countryside fairs, whose purpose was primarily trade and commerce but whose rituals included an important element of “merry-making” [www.medieval-life-and-times.info/]. In England these would be occasions to celebrate feast days and milestones in the calendar like Midsummer Solstice and St Swithuns Day, and would involve feasting and drinking, bawdy games, musical interludes, races and other physically active pastimes.The type of pleasure grounds that evolved in Australia also drew inspiration from the great English pleasure gardens of centuries gone by. These pleasure gardens, of which, Vauxhall Gardens in South London, was arguably the most famous in Britain, were the primary providers of mass, public entertainment in the 18th and 19th centuries. Vauxhall (AKA New Spring) Gardens charged admission to see performances of tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks. Vauxhall and others such as its closest London rival, Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens, were the forerunners to the modern amusement park, eg, Luna Park/Coney Island, Blackpool Pleasure Beach [‘History of London: Pleasure Gardens’, www.history.co.uk].In Sydney pleasure grounds popped up at all points of the metropolitan compass during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. They could be found in districts as far afield as Prospect Creek/Fairfield (Latty’s Boatshed and Pleasure Grounds), Waratah Bay/Hawkesbury River (Windybanks’ Paradise), Vaucluse (Nielsen Park), La Perouse/Yarra Bay (Howe’s Pleasure Grounds) and the Kurnell Pleasure Grounds at the southern tip of Botany Bay.
🔺 The original Banks Inn
Joseph Banks Pleasure Grounds
One of the earliest such venues was the Botany (or Sir Joseph Banks) Pleasure Grounds (BPG), established along with the Banks Inn on 75 acres of land and seafront in the 1840s by Thomas Kellett. At its peak, BPG was described variously as “zoological gardens”, “a Victorian garden with arbours” and an aggregation of first-rate sporting fields.
BPG was a popular spot for annual St Patrick’s Day Sports Carnivals which comprised, in addition to sports, singing, dancing, drinking, the riding of penny farthings and various circus acts. The road from Sydney to the Pleasure Grounds was of such a poor condition that many visitors came to the Botany attraction by steamer – a round trip fare on the “Sir John Harvey” in the 1850s cost 10/-. An indication of the popularity of the grounds and hotel can be gauged by the fact that over 5,000 people attended on Boxing Day 1852 [‘Australia’s First Zoo’, The World’s News (Sydney), 15 March 1952].
Control of BPG went through many hands with new leasees and owners regularly being turned over. The zoo was introduced by leasee William Beaumont in the early 1850s. It was Australia’s first private zoo with a menagerie acquired from the original colonial zoo at Hyde Park that included Australia’s only elephant, Manila red deers, Indian goats, black Bengal sheep and Bengal tigers, both a Himalayan and a Californian grizzly bear, and an ape.
The Banks pleasure grounds and zoo were purchased in 1875 by Frank Smith, an entrepreneur and publican, and incorporated into the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel complex. A grand ballroom catering for up to 1,000 diners and a bathing house were also added to BPG [M Chaffey, ‘A review of Botany’ (Botany Library local history files) quoted in M Butler, ‘Botany’ (2011), The Dictionary of Sydney, www.dictionaryofsydney.org; ‘Sir Joseph Banks Pleasure Gardens Botany Bay’,www.prowse.com.au].
🔺 Sir Joseph Banks Athletics Track, Botany NSW
Sporting fields for cricket, football, archery and athletics were also appended to the Joseph Banks Gardens. Aboriginal runners from the Randwick/La Perouse area participated in foot races on the Botany track (quaintly known in the day as “pedestrian contests”). In the 1870s and 1880s BPG hosted Australia’s earliest professional footrace, the Botany Bay Gift, which attracted top international athletes and large crowds. 1888 was probably the high point of professional sprinting in Australia with £800 being offered in prize money at that year’s Bay Gift.Wagering on the outcome of the Botany running contests was extensive and eventually the money involved led to some sharp practices occurring which affected the outcome of races. As a consequence, after several years the annual Gift was discontinued, though it was briefly resurrected in the late 20th Century. A well-known running club, the Botany Harriers (later the Randwick-Botany Harriers), had its beginning at the Sir Joseph Banks track [‘History of the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel’, www.thebanks.net.au].Around 1908–1910, after yet another change in ownership, BPG became the Olympic Recreational and Picnic Grounds. In March 1908 the Joseph Banks Ground hosted the first-ever game of rugby league in Australia, a match between a South Sydney Probables team and a Possibles side which preceded the inaugural season of the Sydney Rugby League [‘Centenary of Rugby League’, www.monumentaustralia.org.au].Fairyland Pleasure Grounds
Another suburban pleasure ground that greatly captured the imagination of Sydneysiders in its day was Fairyland Pleasure Grounds. It was situated on the Upper Lane Cove River in an area now incorporated into the Lane Cove National Park. From its inception as a pleasure ground in the early 1900s, up to when a main arterial road in North Ryde (Delhi Road) was linked with it, it was largely only accessible by boat to a wharf specially built by the operators of Fairyland (FPG).The Swan family, owners of the bushland, initially cleared the area for market gardens but also constructed a timber siding on the river which they called “The Rest”. Robert Swan later turned the site into a pleasure ground for day-trippers to visit, adding a kiosk, a playground, a dance hall and picnic area. ‘Fairyland’ was chosen as the name for the pleasure ground apparently because it exuded the atmosphere of a magical and mysterious place, Swan enhanced this theme with fairy-like structures and motifs – quirky fairytale huts, a slippery-dip in the shape of a sleeping giant (thought to be modelled on the character ‘Bluto’ from the ‘Popeye’ comics), and cardboard representations of imaginary and supernatural creatures such as fairies and elves positioned high up in the trees [www.friendsoflanecovenationalpark.org.au].Swan acquired a good deal of equipment from the closure sale at White City Fun Park in Rushcutters Bay in 1917 (from 1922 site of the White City Tennis courts✱). Amongst the items Swan brought to FPG were strength-testing machines, coin-operated machines through which you could view silent movies, and entertainment rides such as the’Ocean Wave’ (a “razzle-dazzle”) and a fairly rudimentary ‘Flying Fox’.
The former ‘Fairyland’, Lane Cove River: now overgrown by coastal bush land 🔺
Just getting to Fairyland in the early days could be quite a lengthy exercise. Walter Baker, a schoolboy during WWI, recalled how it took one hour to get to FPG travelling by motor boat from nearby Gladesville! [reported in The Catholic Press (Sydney), 18 July 1918]. Many associations and organisations held their yearly outings at FPG. In 1963 Sydney radio station 2UW sponsored a “Rock ‘n Roll Spectacular” on the grounds. After WWII there was widespread availability of private cars allowing people to journey further afield, consequently Fairyland’s popularity declined [‘Heritage and History’ (FLCNP), www.froghollow.com.au]. It lingered on as a venue for leisure activities, but falling attendances aided and abetted by a series of floods and more modern leisure choices saw the pleasure grounds close in the early 1970s.A similar pleasure ground to Fairyland was Palmer Pleasure Grounds, also on the northside at Castle Cove. Danish migrant HC Press started his entertainment venue in 1910 (which survived till 1964). Palmer (later renamed Press) PG was replete with picnic area, pergolas, fernery, three dining pavilions, swings and slippery dips, swimming pool, wharf, and a 100-yard sprint track. Press charged for admission with crowds of up to 900 pleasure-seekers visiting daily [Gavin Souter, Time and Tides: A Middle Harbour Memoir, 2012]
🔺 Wonderland in ‘Glamarama’
Tamarama Wonderland
In Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Tamarama was the location of a popular if relatively short-lived pleasure ground, which was known under various names at different times, the Bondi Aquarium (though not situated in the suburb of Bondi), the Royal Aquarium, Wonderland City (this name resonates with the later sobriquet acquired by Tamarama, ‘Glamarama’). The Aquarium, opened in 1887, was the first coastal amusement park in Sydney. It comprised a collection of sea creatures including tiger and wobbegong sharks, seals and a solitary penguin. The distinguishing physical icon of Wonderland was the serpentine-like roller coaster (called the “Switchback Railway”) which weaved around the cliffs of Tamarama beach. The carnivalesque entertainments included a ‘camera obscura‘, ‘merry-go-rounds’ and vaudevillian acts. Later, a waxworks was added to the park.
🔺 Tamarama Beach clubhouse mural
In the early 1900s the Aquarium was purchased by theatrical entrepreneur William Anderson who revamped the complex (now renamed ‘Wonderland City’). Under Anderson, the ‘Airem Scarem’ (an airship tracked on a cable from cliff to cliff), an artificial lake and open-air ice skating rink, was added to the entertainment venue. A haunted house and maze further underlined Wonderland City’s position as a precursor to the later Luna Park at Milson’s Point. The opening night in 1906 lured an estimated 20,000 visitors (during summer-time on weekends 2,000 Sydneysiders regularly attended the Wonderland park).Wonderland was dogged by controversies such as William Anderson’s attempts to block swimmers from the beach by erecting a barbed wire fence across the Tamarama site. After a tic-for-tac exchange between the disaffected local swimmers and management, the NSW Government eventually intervened in the conflict and re-established beach access. The bad press experienced by Wonderland over the blockade of the swimmers was followed by further adverse publicity – safety concerns over breakdowns on the Airem Scarem, complaints made about the treatment of the animals, local resident unhappiness about the disruptive nature of weekend revellers. By 1911, with attendances having declined for several years, Wonderland closed its doors. Anderson was said to have lost £15,000 on the venture [‘Wonderland City’, www1.waverley.nsw.gov.au; J Spedding, ‘Wonderland City’ (2011) in Dictionary of Sydney, www.trust.dictionaryofsydney.org].
🔺 Clontarf Pleasure Grounds (Source: Manly Art Gallery & Museum)Other pleasure grounds in Sydney in the 19th and 20th centuries didn’t have quite the colour or pulling power of Fairyland and Wonderland, but were significant providers of popular leisure pursuits in their own right. The Clontarf Pleasure Grounds (CPG) in Sydney’s north was founded in 1863 by hotelier Issac Moore (see footnote at end of the article for the connexion between pub-owners and pleasure grounds in Australia), who provided an off-liquor license at the grounds. Day-trippers would arrive by ferry to engage in games (quoits, skittles, cricket, etc), dancing, swimming and picnicking. The steamer Illalong ferried visitors from Circular Quay to Clontarf in the last quarter of the 19th century for the sum of 2/-. CPG was a particularly favourite venue for picnics and anniversaries like St Patrick’s Day, and for the celebrations of religious and trade union organisations (eg, Catholics Youngmen’s Societies, United Protestant Societies, Telegraph Construction Branch, Amalgamated Slaughtermen).
🔺 Attempted royal assassination at Clontarf
Clontarf Pleasure Grounds
The Clontarf Pleasure Grounds had another association in the 19th century, this one noted for its infamy. It was the site of an attempted assassination on the life of Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria’s son) in 1868 by a Irish supposed supporter of the Fenian movement. Issac Moore’s sons took over the family business from their father and continued the Clontarf Pleasure Grounds for over 35 years…at one stage the sons sued The Bulletin paper for labelling the Pleasure Grounds’ dance event an ‘orgy’ [www.manly.nsw.gov.au; www.balgowlahonline.com.au].
St George and Shire Pleasure Grounds
The southern suburbs of Oatley and Como had their own pleasure grounds. Harry Linmark started Oatley Pleasure Grounds in the early part of the 20th century (the park where it was located still retains this name). OPG was popular for fishing and swimming parties and for picnics. When it acquired by Hartlands, they introduced a miniature zoo and a noisy wine bar which earned the ire of local residents. In 1934 Kogarah Council acquired the pleasure grounds and closed down the bar [www.kogarah.nsw.gov.au]. The nearby Como Pleasure Grounds was created in 1895 to celebrate the extension of the southern rail link to the Shire. It boasted a ‘RazzleDazzle’ circular ride (similar to the one in operation at Fairyland on Lane Cove River) which drew the crowds to Como by train [www.sutherlandshireaustralia.com.au].
Pleasure grounds in Sydney came into fashion in the 19th century, providing an outside outlet for people away from their everyday, often unexciting urban existences. The locations of pleasure grounds allowed workers to escape on the weekends by taking a nice train day trip or a ferry boat ride. The venues conveyed a romantic connotation for day-trippers, a kind of rustic paradise which promised carefree social and recreational activities. Some of the operations floundered financially and were closed down within a relatively short interval. Others that managed to achieve a measure of longevity, like Fairyland and the Botany Pleasure Grounds, eventually became simply “old hat”. Society had changed, there were new, slicker forms of entertainment that people preferred. The convenience and proximity of big amusement complexes in the city like Luna Park made them a more attractive option for workers’ leisure time, and as the pace of life quickened, the appeal of pleasure grounds as unhurried, bucolic ‘paradises’ receded.
🔺The Pleasure Garden: translated into Swedish for the title of this 1961 film gives the outdoor entertainment concept a quite different connotation
PostScript: Pleasure Grounds in Melbourne – a lesser feast for the public
Interestingly in Melbourne at that time, pleasure grounds/ gardens for whatever reason didn’t catch on to anywhere near the same degree as in Sydney. Probably the only one that rose to any significant heights, albeit ephemerally, was Cremorne Gardens on the Yarra River at Richmond – which acquired the somewhat pretentious appellation “Cremorne Gardens-Upon-Yarra” (CGUY). Under its proprietor, theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin, CGUY had an amusement park aspect to it, with trapezes, balloon ascents, dances, theatres, a Cyclorama (a panoramic painting set against a concave wall), a bowling alley, a menagerie, firework displays, with a few extra features taking advantage of the Yarra, such as regattas and gondola rides. It also had a hotel on-site as with many of the Sydney pleasure grounds. Coppin’s gardens was inspired by the prototype Cremorne Gardens in London.
🔺 Cremorne Gardens-upon-Yarra, 1865
Though Coppin poured a lot of money into it, CGUY lasted only from 1853 to about 1863, unable to attract the patronage required to sustain it as a viable enterprise. The wowser element in Melbourne played its part in CGUY’s demise, many in the community objected to the presence of alcohol and the use of the Gardens by prostitutes to ply their trade. Dreamland, on St Kilda Beach, was even less successful than Cremorne, winding up after barely three years in 1909 (although the same site became a permanent entertainment fixture a few years later with the advent of Luna Park) [R Peterson, A Place of Sensuous Resort, (Online edition), www.skhs.org.au]. Some people at the time concluded that the Melbourne weather (more inclement than Sydney’s) was not conducive to outdoor amusements [‘# 1933. Cremorne Gardens Plan’ (Picture Victoria), www.pictures.libraries.vic.gov.au].
FN: An intriguing if not exactly surprising footnote to the pleasure grounds in Australia were the large number of proprietors of the operations who were also publicans
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✱ today the White City location is a reconstructed Jewish sporting complex known as Maccabi Tennis
Walter Burley Griffin’s untimely death in India in 1937 provoked only passing comment, even in Australia where he and Marion had lived a high-profile existence, practicing their particular craft for over 20 years. Mahony returned to Chicago from Australia around the end of 1938, and set about the valiant but ultimately fruitless task of trying to consolidate Walter’s reputation. The vehicle for the restoration of WBG’s name (principal among which was defending Griffin against the poisonous invective of one Frank Lloyd Wright) was Marion’s epic memoir (The Magic of America), a massive work of over 1,400 pages and 650 illustrations [www.artic.edu]. Marion was dissuaded by a family friend from her intention to try to have The Magic of America published. Regrettably, the ‘friend’ advised her than there was insufficient interest in Burley Griffin within American architectural circles at that time (the 1940s).
Burley Griffin’s main period of productivity in America amounted to a narrow corridor of time, from about 1905 when he went into practice on his own to 1914 when he and Marion left to take charge of the Capital City project in Australia, entrusting their US work to new partner Barry Byrne. Griffin spent the entire second half of his life living and creating structures and communities outside of America, denying himself the opportunity of recognition and esteem that he would otherwise have likely received from his countrymen and women had he stayed.
Consequently a note of ambivalence about the extent of the Chicagoan’s architectural significance persists in America. As recently as 2002 and 2003 two of the early Illinois houses designed by Griffin were demolished without any real public clamour (it is difficult to imagine this happening to one of Wright’s houses in this day without a resounding hue and cry) [‘Silence deafening as home by noted architect razed: Elmhurst teardown fails to stir outcry’ (N Ryan) Chicago Tribune, 19 May 2002)].
Notwithstanding this, Walter’s lavish abilities as a planner, designer and landscaper are more widely recognised today. He is acknowledged as an outstanding innovator in domestic architecture, and is credited with having invented the carport, developed the L-shaped floor plan and the use of reinforced concrete. WBG was a pioneer of open plan living and dining areas. His work in the Prairie School was characterised by his attention to vertical space, contributing critically to the development of split-level space interiors (not in widespread use until after WWII) [M Maldre & P Kruty, Walter Burley Griffin in America]. As I enlarged on in an earlier blog, Griffin also invented the Knitlock construction method in Australia in 1917 which had the practical advantage of enabling houses to be built quickly and cheaply [M. Walker, A. Kabos & J. Weirick, Building for Nature: Walter Burley Griffin and Castlecrag].
Marion L Mahony, as a pioneering woman in the field of architecture, encountered all of the prejudices and assumptions that was commonplace about female professionals in the day. The first staffsperson to be released from her cousin Dwight Perkins’ architectural office when there was a downturn in business. Despite Frank Lloyd Wright’s (perhaps) begrudging praise of the sublime quality of her architectural rendering, Marion was never treated as anything close to an equal by the great architect. After Mahony returned to her homeland at the end of 1938, her efforts to turn her talents to community planning and to re-enter architecture in the US met largely with discouraging indifference.
Marion’s silkscreen watercolour of Walter’s plan for Griffith, NSW
Since the 1990s there has a renewed focus on the work of pioneering women architects, especially in the US [eg, “The 10 Most Overlooked Women in Architecture History”, www.archdaily.com], and Marion has been a beneficiary of this, receiving overdue acknowledgement of her contribution to modernist art and architecture. American architecture expert David Van Zanten made the case that Mahony’s extraordinary delineating talent ranked her as “the third great progressive designer of turn-of-the-century Chicago after Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright” given that the Chicago School placed an extraordinary emphasis on drawings [D Van Zanten in D Wood (Ed), Marion Mahony Griffin: drawing the form of nature].
After her marriage to Griffin, Mahony was perfectly content to live in the shadow of her more illustrious partner, to be “a slave to my husband in his creative work” [quoted in J Wells, “The collaboration of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin”, www.griffinsociety.org/]. Notwithstanding Marion’s freely-chosen subordinate role, she and Walter worked smoothly and cohesively as a team. The respective strengths each brought to architecture and planning were different, but on specific projects these abilities were pooled together to produce a harmonious and advantageous fusion. WBG’s imagination allowed him to conceptualise complex ideas and solutions for building problems and plan intricate landscaped communities, but his talents as a draughtsman, a delineator of great schemes, were at best modest. MMG with her superb draughting technique filled this void perfectly. Former Castlecrag resident, Wendy Spathopoulus, recounted the pair’s peculiar style of co-working, “silent communication … a kind of fusion … expressing the same ideas, the same philosophical ideas, but coming at them from a different angle” [interviewed in ‘City of Dreams: Designing Canberra’ (2000 documentary).
Wright’s residential magnum opus: Fallingwater, Penn.
The Griffins were part of the Prairie School style of architecture, the best-known practitioner of which was the prolific and highly-revered F L Wright. An interesting point of comparison between Wright and Griffin is that the greatest architectural achievements of Wright’s career, the Fallingwater house in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (chosen by the American Institute of Architects in a national survey in 1991 as “the best all-time work of American architecture”) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, occurred long after FLW had turned 60, the age at which Griffin died. It remains a speculative consideration but a reasonable question to ponder, what more might WBG have accomplished had he lived on into old age as FLW did? (Wright worked productively in architecture till the age of 91!)[‘The Griffins – Canberra’ (PBS broadcast), www.pbs.org; www.griffinsociety.org].
A balanced evaluation of the achievements of the Griffins in Australia as architects and planners reveals a mixed legacy. The plan for a capital city in Canberra was stunningly original in its vision of an unseen land, and the pictorial and diagrammatical representation of the city by Marion was an artistic accomplishment in itself of the highest order. As we know the implementation of Griffin’s plan for Canberra remained unrealised. This can be attributed to a combination of factors, bad luck and timing, political opportunism by both sides of parliament using WBG as a pawn, outright sabotage by vested interests (sectors of the public service, envious Australian architects), and idealism and naivety on Walter’s part. As a result, the shape of Griffin’s original plan was heavily distorted by successive politicians and bureaucrats, key components of the plan were excised altogether in the name of expediency. Perhaps worse of all, not one of the designed buildings for Canberra on WBG’s drawing board were ever constructed!
Castlecrag: Griffin Country
If we turn to Castlecrag, the Burley Griffin imprint on the ‘would be’ suburban bush utopia again met with mixed results. The Griffins did manage to engender a sense of community and cultural affinity in Castlecrag from adherents who like Walter and Marion came to cherish the virtues of living in a natural environment. This was realised by WBG’s careful planning of houses within a thriving organic landscape. Having established the aesthetic miliéu conducive to artistic activity, Mahoney provided a great deal of the community leadership (and the infrastructure) that led to the flourishing of creative energies. To top this off, Marion and Walter, far from being remote leaders of the community perched high above everyone else in an ivory tower, were committed participants in the everyday life of the early community. They joined and were actively involved in the Castlecrag Progress Association from its inception in 1925.
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
There were other issues with the form and character of the Griffin house which suggest that the American architect did not fully appreciate the local, Australian conditions. The absence of practical features like verandahs, eaves on roofs and hoods on doorways, did not address the exigencies of a harsh environment and climate. Similarly, some critics pointed out that Griffin did not apply himself sufficiently to the specific problems arising in Castlecrag such as drainage on horizontal roofs and the challenges of building on a rocky terrain [Walker, Kabos & Weirick, op.cit.].
Marion’s drawing of Walter’s design for an Indian-inspired “Sydney Opera House”
The final chapter of the Griffins’ life together, in Lucknow, India, saw the reuniting of the old creative team – with Walter as innovator and Marion as delineator. Their work in collaboration, produced a prolific harvest anew, a churning out of plans and designs for a host of new buildings which married the ancient architectural forms of India with the Griffins’ take on modernism. In less than 18 months the couple designed some 95 projects for India ranging from university buildings to exhibition pavilions to palaces to bungalows, even finding time to create a design for an ‘Opera House for Sydney’ featuring an Indian-influenced central domed roof [A Kabos, ‘Walter Burley Griffin’, www.griffinsociety.org].
Through the efforts of interested groups like the Walter Burley Griffin Society (NSW), the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America (St Louis, Mo.) and local historical and architectural groups in the Castlecrag/Willoughby (Sydney) area, the legacy of the Griffins’ have been preserved. These organisations, through their publications and websites, have promoted the couple’s accomplishments to newer generations.
The Griffin footprint in Castlecrag & Australia
The Griffins’ story, spanning three continents, has all the elements – drama, tragedy, political intrigues, obsessions, spurned love❈, the clash of great personalities – that would make it eminently filmable. At centre, two temperamentally different but like-spirited idealists, highly gifted if flawed artists striving against convention to articulate their distinctive beliefs and feelings of nature and democracy through the practice of their architectural and artistic pursuits. In Australia they were ground-breakers in a number of areas, as trailblazing environmentalists, as passionate landscapers, as creators of affordable, ready-to-assemble homes for the average person. Had the Griffins returned to the US as originally intended, after the expiration of WBG’s contract with the Australian Government in 1917, they would undoubtedly have left a much weightier artistic and cultural footprint on the built environment in America.
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❈ there is a suggestion that Walter may have married Marion on the rebound. Griffin originally proposed to Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, Maginel, but was rejected … this rebuff can hardly have lessened the growing animosity between the two rival architects (WBG and FLW)
Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin travelled to Australia in 1914 armed with Walter’s blueprint for transforming the Canberra plains into a model “democratic” Capital. The Griffins as part of an early 20th century US movement known as the Prairie School (or as Mahony preferred, the “Chicago School”), introduced Australia to the new ideas of modern American architecture. The Prairie School practitioners, the most famous of which was Frank Lloyd Wright, employed low, horizontal lines (flat roofs) and lack of decoration in their buildings. The idea behind this primarily residential architectural style was that the built environment should blend in with nature. Specifically given the School’s origins in Chicago, its inspiration was the flat landscape of the American Midwest.
When the Canberra project turned sour for Burley Griffin, after hostile local forces and circumstances conspired to block the realisation of his Capital “vision”, the Griffins channelled their energies into their private practice. WGB’s focus on the business in Melbourne was productive with a regular supply of commissions coming in from clients wanting to have their house built by the celebrity American architect living within their community. Griffin designed houses in the Melbourne suburbs of Carlton, Canterbury, Surrey Hills, Toorak, Heidelberg, Kew, Black Rock, Ivanhoe, Armadale, Eaglemont and Frankston (the Frankston and Heidelberg dwellings were designed as residences for the American couple). MMG by herself was credited with the design of one Melbourne house in East Malvern [P Navaretti, “Melbourne”,http://www.griffinsociety.org/].
Palais Theatre,
St Kilda, Vic.
Burley Griffin, with assistance from Mahony, also designed a number of commercial buildings in Melbourne at the time, including Newman College (Melbourne University), the Palais de Danse and Palais Picture Theatre (both in St Kilda), the Kuomintang Club for the Chinese Nationalist Party, Café Melbourne, the Capitol Theatre (Mahony’s crystalline ceiling design comprising 4,000 coloured globes for the theatre was an absolute tour de force). The Capitol was described by prominent architect and academic, Robin Boyd, as “the best cinema that was ever built or is ever likely to be built” [The Australian, 24 December 1965]. Whilst in Melbourne, WBG’s exceptional flair for town planning was reignited and demonstrated in the imaginative plans he created for the Ranelagh Estate of holiday homes on Mornington Peninsula and the Glenard and Mount Eagle subdivisions in Eaglemont.
Rock Crest/Glen
After coming to Australia the Griffins maintained their architectural office in Chicago working through a partner, Barry Byrne, to design some distinctive houses (Rock Crest/Rock Glen) in Mason City, Iowa. WGB would send back his plans for US projects for Byrne to follow through on but unbeknownst to Griffin, Byrne was altering Griffin’s plans to suit his own aesthetic and proceeding with his own designs on the business’ projects. WGB eventually twigged to what Byrne was doing and severed their partnership [James Weirick, “Walter Burley Griffin: In his Own Right”, US PBS program broadcast 1999 (www.pbs.org)]. As if the Griffins didn’t have enough headaches with the vicissitudes of the Australian projects already. Around 1920/1921 Walter let go of his personal vision of the new capital, cutting himself free from the Canberra project morass and turned his focus elsewhere.
Concurrently with the Melbourne practice, the Griffins through Mahony ran a Sydney architectural office from Bligh Street in the City. During the Canberra period the Griffins lived mainly on Sydney’s North Shore (at Cremorne, Neutral Bay and then Greenwich). Walter had been attracted to Sydney’s spectacular harbour from his initial arrival in Sydney in 1913. Whilst in Sydney WGB found time to to take on individual commissions, designing private homes at Pymble (two), Wahroonga, Killara, Avalon and Telopea (all of which exist to this day), plus two other residences in the South Sydney municipality now demolished. In addition, a few of WBG’s designs for commercial buildings were realised, such the facade for the Paris Theatre (cinema) in the Sydney CBD.
Plan of Leeton, NSW (1913)
Whilst on the Australia east coast Walter maintained his strong interest in urban planning. Among the many, many town plans WBG created in Australia, were designs for new towns in Leeton and Griffith (part of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Project), Culburra Beach (Jervis Bay), North Arm Cove (Port Stephens), Milleara (Keilor East), Newcastle and St Kilda, as well as two university campuses in Sydney [J Birrell, Walter Burley Griffin, cited in Di Jay, “Urban Planning”, www.griffinsociety.org]. Disappointingly, the overwhelming majority of Griffin’s urban plans in this country were never implemented, or sometimes only ever partially so.
The downturn in the economy occasioned by the Depression adversely affected the Griffins’ building sales in the Castlecrag Estate. Needing a new source of finance to continue his residential work, WGB took an opportunity to venture into industrial commissions. At this time municipal councils in Australia were under pressure to find new solutions for the growing problem of waste disposal, instead of simply dumping refuse at sea as had been the prevailing practice. WBG joined up with the Reverberatory Incinerator & Engineering Co, headed by a former client of his. In the 1930s he designed 13 such incinerators in collaboration with Eric Nicholls in several states and the ACT. Griffin and Nicholls promoted their incinerators as being “hygienic, efficient and aesthetically pleasing” [“Burley Griffin Incinerator”, sydneyarchitecture, http://sydneyarchitecture.com/GLE/GLE27.htm].
The initial reverberatory furnaces built (Ku-ring-gai/West Pymble and Essendon) were relatively small structures and church-like or large residence-like in appearance and scale. Later Griffin/Nicholls incinerators took on a more monumental and imposing countenance, utilising Art Deco styles and Pre-Columbian motifs (eg, Willoughby, Glebe, Pyrmont). Simon Reeves argues that the catalyst for the change was the growing interest of Walter, and especially Marion, in the spiritual beliefs of Anthroposophy, describing the Pyrmont incinerator as representing “the geometric massing of archaic power, embellished with symbols” [S Reeves, “Incineration and Incantations” in J Turnbull & P Y Navaretti (Eds), The Griffins in Australia and India]. From the early 1930s Anthroposophical belief did appear to inform WBG’s architecture and planning, the American Anthroposophical Society affirms that “buildings should be ecologically sound and reflect the character of the region or culture …(and should enhance) … physical, psychological and spiritual well-being”. To this end Griffin’s work certainly possessed a crucial ecological purpose [J K Notz Jr, “A Beginning, an End and Another Beginning” (Marion Mahony Griffin, Architect), Chicago Literary Club address, 23 April 2001].
Burley Griffin’s industrial construction represented some of his most striking work in Australia. Marion considered Pyrmont with its distinctive Mayan influences and towering chimney to be Walter’s best Australian building [“Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin”, www.griffinsociety.org; PY Navaretti, “Incinerators”, ibid.]. Sadly, it was allowed to fall into disrepair by a neglectful Sydney City Council and demolished in 1992 to make way for a block of units. [“WB Griffin Incinerator”, www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au]
With his Canberra dream unfulfilled, Burley Griffin continued to search for a suitable site that could be moulded into a community compatible with the Griffins’ nature-centric philosophy, where the built world could be integrated into the natural world. This led Griffin to find a favourable location in Middle Harbour on the north side of Port Jackson, on an isolated, rocky promontory. Walter would call it “Castlecrag”, here, he would try to create an “organic solution”, a way of living in harmony with nature.
On-site residential bushland retreat, The Crag
Once the idea took root and the foundations started to take shape, the Castlecrag community was to become the Griffins’ abiding passion, right up until they left Australia for Imperial India in the mid 1930s. Planning and guiding this small, community from scratch allowed Griffin to give full vent to his talent for landscape architecture and his and Marion’s) deep love of nature. Integrating the habitat with the natural world was intimately personal for Walter and Marion in Castlecrag, as the couple were to live, fully engaged, within the local community for the longest term of their marriage. I will outline the Castlecrag chapter of the Griffins’ story in Australia in a separate blog.
Mention the name Walter Burley Griffin and people in Australia will think, especially since last year’s lavish Capital Centenary celebrations, of Canberra. In the Australian psyche the American architect is largely associated with the planning of the capital in Canberra 100 years ago. However, there was a lot more to the Australian story of Walter Burley Griffin (WBG) and his wife Marion Lucy Mahony, than the seven frustrating years they spent in Canberra, but I will concentrate in this blog on the Canberra chapter of his life in Australia (and that of his wife).
Early Griffin project {Carter House Evanston, Illinois}
In 1911 Griffin was a young Midwestern architect living in Chicago, working within the modernist style of the Prairie School and making inroads in the profession. The Illinoisan was establishing himself in his own practice and building up a portfolio of important commissions in America. Walter’s wife and architectural partner, Marion Mahony Griffin (MMG), found out about Australia’s Federal Capital Design Competition and badgered him into completing the plans for entry (they only just made the extended deadline for entry submission by the tightest of margins!).
WBG’s design for the capital-to-be was selected in 1912 as the winning entry. No small part in Griffin’s success was due to the exemplary quality of the plan and perspective presentations superbly rendered by Marion. They comprised 14 immense ink on satin drawings, the standard size was five feet wide by two-and-a-half feet (some even were a staggering eight feet by up to 30 feet long!). Some of the amazing drawings and paintings were done in triptych fashion, opening out into three-hinged panels in the style of Japanese woodcut prints [National Archives of Australia(Your Momento To), “Unearthed Griffin treasure returned to the Archives”, Issue (July 2011)]. Fred Bernstein has described the effect of MMG’s beautiful drawings thus, “the rugged Australian landscape seemed to embrace Griffin’s buildings”… and this was despite the fact that MMG had never set eyes on the country [F A Bernstein, “Rediscovering a Heroine of Chicago Architecture”, New York Times, 20 January 2008].
A second factor that worked to the Griffins’ advantage was that whilst other competitors in the national capital design competition (there were 137 entries in all!) failed to take into account the topography of the site in their presentations, the Griffins’ submission managed to harmonise with the site’s landform and natural features [National Archives of Australia, “A vision for a democratic capital”, www.naa.gov.au.
▼ BELOW {MMG: Ink on satin painting – the city from across the valley}
With a little help from our compatriots? Ultimately, the support of the Australian Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley, was decisive. The colourful O’Malley, himself an erstwhile American like the Griffins, as the minister with overall responsibility for bringing the new national capital to fruition, made the final decision in favour of WBG’s submission against concerted opposition from within the Australian community [Alasdair McGregor, “Rebels & Gilt-spurred Roosters: Politics, Bureaucracy & the Democratic Ideal in the Griffins’ Capital”, a paper delivered in A Cultivated City, (Seminar, 2 May 2013)]. Unfortunately for Griffin, O’Malley’s support for WGB’s plans for the capital was not sustained beyond the original decision. It transpired that O’Malley was in reality prepared to use a hotchpotch of the three leading designs for the purpose of implementation (the Griffins, the second place-getter from Helsinki and the third from Paris) [“An Ideal City? The 1912 competition to design Canberra”, www.idealcity.org.au]. My hunch is that the manoeuvrable and expedient O’Malley probably considered Griffin’s city plan of no greater merit than the Finnish and French bids, but it was the sublime quality of Marion’s artwork presentation that tipped the scales in the American architect’s favour.
Over a year passed after the contest victory before WBG received an invitation to come to Australia. During this interval the Department Board in Melbourne set up by O’Malley had persuaded the minister into allowing them to rework the Griffin plan. Only after an outcry from the architectural community at this amateur effort at town planning, did the Government reverse this and reinstate the Griffins’ winning plan [‘City of Dreams – Designing Canberra’ (2000 documentary)]. Upon his arrival in 1913 Griffin initially received a warm reception from the Australian press, Advance Australia introduced him to the public as “Walter Burley Griffin – Architect and Democrat”. Walter’s optimism at the outset was understandably pronounced, saying “I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept.” Unfortunately in the fullness of time this faith in the Australian power-brokers was to prove sadly misplaced.
Griffin then returned to the US to put in place provisions for the maintenance of his Chicago practice during the Griffins’ absence from America. During this time WBG spent a long while waiting round for an invitation from the Australian Government to return and start work on Canberra, which he was obviously keen to do. It was only after a change of government in Melbourne (then the interim national capital) in 1914, that the new Home Affairs Minister, William Kelly, finally invited the Griffins to return and paid for their passage [G. Korporaal, “Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin were drawn together on Canberra”, The Australian, 9 March 2013]. Marion and Walter established bases for their work in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Blueprint for a “Democratic Capital”
In accepting the Federal commission Walter had the highest hopes for his vision of what Canberra could become, the realisation of the idea of a democratic city. This political element of the Canberra project was important to Griffin in itself. Politically, the Griffins were idealistic liberal progressives, followers of radical political economist, Henry George, whose egalitarian single tax on land struck a resonant cord with his fellow Americans, especially his tenet that the value of land should be owned equally by all citizens. WBG attempted to put this tenet into practice when appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction, exerting his influence on the Government – when residential plots were first opened up in the ACT, land was not sold. Instead it was offered up for rent on 99-year leases [K Williams, “William Burley Griffin”, www.prosper.org.au]. Having a chance at shaping the Canberra experiment was an overriding priority for WBG, so much so that when offered the chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois shortly after winning the Australian prize, he declined it [“Walter Burley Griffin in his Own Right”, US PBS broadcast documentary, www.pbs.org. WBG’s blueprint envisaged the new Federal Capital as an “irregular” amphitheatre with a centrally located parliamentary triangle, surrounding artificial lake with a concentric pattern of residential streets moving away from the centre.
The Lake
Griffin’s grand plan for the new capital city was however cynically undermined from the start. Even before WGB had set foot in Australia, a specially-appointed departmental board pressured O’Malley into making changes to WBG’s Canberra design [“Canberra – Australia’s Capital City”, www.australia.gov.au]. Instead of making Mt Kurrajong a public space and placing Parliament House lakeside in the valley below, as Griffin wanted to do (part of WBG’s scheme for the democratisation of the capital), the bureaucrats positioned Parliament on the mountain (Capital Hill). In a spooky parallel with what was to happen to Jørn Utzon and his design for the Sydney Opera House half-a-century later, the Griffins met with continual bureaucratic interference and obfuscation, and eventually became disillusioned.
Canberra: the winning blueprint
For sure Griffin rubbed certain people in the government and the public service the wrong way, but there was clearly a coordinated attempt to sabotage the implementation of his “vision”. Some working on the Canberra project decried his plan as being vastly extravagant and incapable of ever being brought to fruition [Peter Harrison, “Walter Burley Griffin” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9 (1983)]. He was further criticised for “poor administration of the project”. The situation was further complicated by funding for Canberra starting to dry up due to the priorities of the war, and by injudicious comments by WBG himself in the middle of World War I opposing Australia’s participation in it. The progress of WBG’s work was also subject to the vicissitudes of alternating national governments during the war years, as he waxed in and out of favour with every new minister appointed. In the end WBG had had enough, the forces of dissent had won, and he resigned his post as Director of the Federal Capital program in 1920, removing himself from all further involvement in the Canberra project. Walter’s architect brother-in-law, Roy Lippincott (who accompanied the Griffins to Australia), described the experience as “seven years of struggle and slander” [McGregor, op.cit.]. Virtually none of WBG’s designed buildings for the Capital were ever completed (the only structure by erected by Griffin was a monument to a general killed in the Gallipoli Campaign), and both his extensive lakes scheme (only implemented after heavy modification nearly half-a-century later) and his railway proposals were not taken up.
GSDA Sydney Office, 35 Bligh Street
The Griffins: Architectural Life after Canberra – Sydney, Melbourne, private practice and the GSDA
In the late 1910s, as implementation of the plan for Canberra and construction of works stalled, Walter could see the writing on the wall, but interestingly the wilful WBG didn’t pack up and return to Chicago where there was plenty of work for him and the likelihood of a chair in architecture at the university. Instead, the Griffins turned more to developing their Australian private architectural commissions. Marion took charge of the couple’s New South Wales office in Bligh Street, Sydney, whilst Walter ran the newly created Melbourne office, seeking out new residential projects in the southern city to shore up the couple’s finances.