I happened upon the remarkable, daring exploits of Lt. Edgardo Simoni—the Italian prisoner of war who made a habit of repeatedly escaping from various Australian POW camps during WWII—while reading the non-wartime story of another (very different) ace escape artist, Kevin John Simmonds, a con on the run from NSW cops who bamboozled an extensive manhunt comprising 500-odd police and 300 volunteers in 1959, leading them on a long, fruitless chase through harsh and rugged bush land before being finally being recaptured. To their embarrassment the state’s police officers found themselves lagging far behind the solo fugitive in a catch-up game of “Where’s Wally”, with Simmonds making them at times look like “right” (and not very bright) “Charlies” (They’ll Never Hold Me, by Michael Adams (Affirm Press, Melbourne, 2024).
Kevin John Simmonds
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The theme of valiant escape and valiant escapees from POW camps is a standard trope of cinema and television that has been done to oblivion over the years. This sub-genre has been a recurring feature in cinema for the past seven or eight decades, including a raft of classic war (WWII) features like Escape from Stalag 17, The Colditz Story, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Von Ryan’s Express, The Wooden Horse, The Mackenzie Break and of course the most lauded of all movies subscribing to the sub-genre – 1963’s The Great Escape.
But for me my favourite POW screen vehicle is the antithesis of these largely stark and grim dramas. No, not Hogan’s Heroes but another TV war sitcom, an episode from the Seventies TV series Ripping Yarns (created by two-sixths of the “Monty Python” team, Michael Palin and Terry Jones) called ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’. The protagonist played by Palin (Major Phipps) is a serial escape attempter…during the war to date he has attempted over 560 escapes, 200 of them before he had left England, as a consequence he is transferred to Germany’s most infamous prison camp. At Luft 112B he continues his escape attempts 24/7, all of them ludicrously impossible. Meanwhile the rest of the British POWs frustrate Phipps no end by being perfectly content to sit out the war in their cosy and comfy little gentleman–officer confinement. By the show’s end the other POWs and German guards have all scarpered, leaving Phillips as the only man to never have escaped the “inescapable POW camp”. In his life after the war we learn that escaping is so intrinsically part of Maj. Phipps’ DNA that two years after his death and burial, locals discovered a tunnel dug from his grave to the cemetery fence: his final and “greatest” escape! A gem of a send-up of both the unrelentingly solemn POW film and British upper-middle class and upper class twits𖤓.
Michael Palin, ‘Escape from Stalag Luft 112B’
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Back to the real life POW escapologist Signoré Simoni. Simoni was one of more than 18,000 Italian military personnel captured by the Allies and transported to Australian POW camps, in his case assigned to the Murchison Camp # 13, near Shepparton, Victoria. Unlike the fictional Maj. Phipps’ fellow prisoners and the great majority of his fellow Italian POWs, Edgardo Simoni never content to stay put behind barbed wire and high fences paralleled the fictional Phipps in trying to escape whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Italian prisoners of war arriving at Circular Quay wharf, Sydney, 1941 (source: coasit.com.au)
Simoni’s first shot at freedom failed but undaunted he soon tried again. Swapping uniforms with an Italian private in the prison was his passport to the outside POW work detail. From there he easily managed to slip away from the Murchison guards and head for metropolitan Melbourne. Once there, he took the alias “George Scoto” and got a job selling door-to-door cosmetics (very successfully) which lasted for ten months. Afterwards, Simoni moved to Mildura in country Victoria where he found work on a farm. Here he was recaptured by Australian military police and despatched to a higher security goal in the isolated town of Hay, NSW. Simoni was not intent to accept captivity in Hay and in no time he had escaped by painstakingly filing through the bars of his cell window, becoming the only POW to escape from that supposedly escape-proof incarceration facility. Simoni then walked 300km to Bendigo where he caught a train to Melbourne. His second sojourn in Melbourne was cut short by a stroke of rotten luck when he was spotted and arrested by the same policeman who had arrested him on the previous occasion! (‘Italian POWs in Australia’ by Frank O’Rourke, Newsletter # 580, 02–07–2021, www.melbashed.com.au)✦.
Italian POWs at Myrtleford Camp (photo: Geoffrey McInnes/Aust War Memorial)
Myrtleford, Victoria, was the next POW camp (# 5) to accommodate the peripatetic Signoré Simoni. Edgardo had been an anti-fascist in Italy and had joined Mussolini’s army only after swearing allegiance to the monarchy, but in Australia he started to embrace communism which led to the authorities placing him under special surveillance. Not very successfully it seems because Simoni was still able to regularly abscond from the Myrtleford facility at night-time without much effort to moonlight as an unofficial organiser for the local tobacco sharefarmers exhorting them to agitate for better working conditions (‘Edgardo Simoni oral history interview by Dan Connell’, 06–11–1986, http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au).
Col. Edgardo Simoni (ret.) in 1974: revisiting his travels around SE Australia
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Endnote: All in all Lt. Simoni—who earned the nickname La volpe (“the Fox”) for his war-time escapades—made 13 escape attempts in the three years he was a POW in Australian detention. At the end of the war, upon release, Simoni returned to Italy and resumed his career in the military, rising to the rank of colonel. In 1974 La volpe re-visited Australia, this time on happier terms, to retrace the steps of his fugitive odyssey around NSW and Victoria.
𖤓 the 2000 Aardman film animation Chicken Run also mines the escape from prison trope, freely parodying WWII POW movies (especially The Great Escape) by exploiting all the familiar cliches
✦ the press closely followed Simoni’s escapades in Australia as if they were tracking “Public Enemy # 1”: ‘Search For Italian’ MELBOURNE. June 10. Police and military authorities searching for Lt. Edgardo Simoni, 25, the Italian who escapedon a bicycle from a prisoner ofwar camp in Gotiburn Valley on Saturday, believe that he has crossed the Victorian border. Detectives and railway enquiry officers are checking; every interstate and country train. and interstate detectives have joined the search ~ Adelaide Advertiser, June 11 1942”
Before the creation of Israel as the national home for the Jewish people in 1947 a raft of potential candidates for a permanent homeland for Jewish refugees from the world war cataclysm were canvassed. Comprising all human–inhabited continents, the long list of proposed likely or unlikely sites (aside from Palestine) included several in the US (one being Alaska), Uganda, Madagascar, Russian Far East, Italian East Africa, British Guiana, Manchuria…and Australia!✪
Proposed area in WA for a Jewish homeland (image: Kununurra Historical Society)
A haven for one million people in the WA wilderness?: Yes Australia…a chapter in the country’s history not particularly well known. The proposed homeland in Western Australia’s sparsely–settled Kimberley region evolved out of an Anglo-Australian plan to settle migrants from the UK overseas in the 1920s. The Group Settlement Scheme had the purpose of expanding the population and economy of Australia’s almost boundless western state. Originally it targeted migrants of British and Irish stock only but the results of the scheme were dismally unsuccessful. Nonetheless the scheme captured the interest and imagination of the London–based Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization and gained concrete form when a Western Australian pastoralist, Michael Durack, offered to sell the League a large tract of his family’s land in WA’s East Kimberley. The proposal was investigated by the League with Issac Steinberg (formerly minister of justice in Lenin’s Bolshevik government) despatched to WA to determine the scheme’s feasibility and to get as many VIPs in Australia onside with the League’s objectives as he could. Steinberg’s PR skills and adept arguments for a Jewish homeland in northern WA were persuasive, managing to snare the support of many political and public figures including the WA premier and the Australasian Unions body (ACTU).
Issac Steinberg, emissary for a Jewish homeland
Despite the headway Steinberg was making on his mission, Australian politicians and the public clearly had mixed feelings about a Jewish settlement on Australian soil. The government in Canberra was committed to the objective of populating northern Australia (which the 75,000 and more refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution in Europe would certainly accomplish) but there was opposition to the plan from various sectors. Xenophobia and racism played its part, some in mainstream society were fearful that the Jewish migrants would not stick it out in the harsh conditions of the Kimberleys but would swarm to the cities, take Australian jobs and their “difference” would lead to social dislocation (‘How the Kimberley nearly became the Jewish homeland’, Ryan Fraser, Australian Geographic, 27-Sep-2018, www.australiangeographic.com.au). Newspapers like the Bulletin opposed the plan and of course no one thought to ask the local indigenous custodians of the region, the Miriwoong people, if they were happy with the plan’s ramifications. Some Australian Jews themselves were against it, fearing a backlash of anti-semitism and that the settlement would undermine the Zionist cause of securing a Palestinian homeland𖤘 (Beverley Hooper, ‘Steinberg, Isaac Nachman (1888–1957)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/steinberg-isaac-nachman-117…, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 28 January 2025).
Kimberley outback, WA
Preserving the monoculture and keeping diversity under wraps: No progress was made on the project for a few years due in part to the onset of WWII. Meanwhile conservative pressure was mounting on the Curtin Commonwealth Labor government from vested interests like the Graziers’ Association and the Australian Natives’ Association to veto the Kimberley plan. Finally in 1944 PM Curtin informed Dr Steinberg that the Australian government would not be altering its policy barring “alien settlements” in Australia of the “exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League”. Further appeals to Curtin’s (Labor) successors and to the subsequent Menzies Liberal–Country Party government met with the same negative response, which affirmed Canberra’s refusal to budge from the overarching policy of assimilation. The discouraging experience prompted Dr Steinberg to wryly publish a book entitled Australia – the Unpromised Land (Brian Wimborne, ‘A Land of Milk and Honey? A Jewish Settlement Proposal in the Kimberley’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/essay/9/text29448, originally published 22 May 2014, accessed 28 January 2025).
SW Tasmania, an unpopulated wilderness (photo: Discovery Tasmania)
Endnote: An island wilderness for the Promised Land? The Kimberley region was not the only part of Australia that got a look-in as a possible home for Jewish refugees from Europe. One obsessively-determined, young Gentile from Melbourne, Critchley Parker, fostered the prospect of the Tasmanian wilderness providing a home for displaced Jews which, he proposed, would sustain itself on discovered mineral wealth in the area𖥠. Inspired by and infatuated with a Jewish–Australian journalist passionately involved in the Steinberg–led campaign for a Jewish homeland in the Antipodes, Parker set out in 1942, underprepared, on a solo expedition to find the ideal location for his own vision of “New Jerusalem”, but perished in the island-state’s southwest wilderness (‘Before Israel was created, Critchley Parker set off to find a Jewish homeland in Tasmania’s wilderness’, Rachel Edward’s, ABC News, 05-Dec-2020, www.amp.abc.net.au).
✪ not all of these were benevolent and altruistic proposals, Madagascar for instance was a Third Reich plan to forcibly remove European Jewry from the continent
𖤘 Steinberg and the Freeland League were opposed to Zionism
𖥠 the scheme with Jewish backing won the support of the Tasmanian state premier
The Caspian “Sea”—geographically more correctly an inland saltwater lake, the biggest of its kind in the world—is bordered by five modern nations, Kazakhstan and Russia (to the north), Azerbaijan (west), Turkmenistan (east) and Iran (south). With a melting pot of ethnicities in the region, below we will meet some medieval cities situated on the Caspian littoral that prospered for a time during the Middle Ages before vanishing entirely from history.
Aktobe–Laeti, located south of Atyrau City on the northern shore of the Caspian Sea (image: researchgate.net)
Lost city of Aktobe–Laeti: Archaeologists whose fieldwork focuses on the Caspian Sea and Caucasus regions have had much to occupy themselves with in recent decades. Systematic excavations started in the 1970s and have unearthed hitherto-disappeared sites like Aktobe–Laeti, a buried urban settlement on the Great Silk Road route that thrived in the 14th and 15th centuries. Atkobi–Laeti is located in the Atyrau (western) region of Kazakhstan. Archaeologists discovered that the settlement contains three cultural layers on top of each other (cf. Troy). Furnaces and fragments found among the debris point to the erstwhile city having skilled artisans in metalwork and pottery crafts. Many of the newly unearthed artefacts are now on display at the local history museum [‘Ancient Land of the Caspian Sea Holds Secrets of the Past’, Aruzhan Ualikhanova, The Astana Times, 15-July-2023, www.astanatimes.com].
Excavations of Atkobe–Laeti (photo: assembly.kz)
Reconstructing a Golden Horde settlement: It’s estimated that at its peak Aktobe–Laeti housed around 10,000 inhabitants who traded their goods and wares with travelling foreign merchants. It’s key position on the Silk Road linking Central Asia and the lower Volga and evidence of the minting of coins suggest that the city was a prosperous one during these times. Traces of a substantial urban settlement in Aktobe–Laeti having existed, contradicts the established view that the peoples of the Caspian Sea led exclusively nomadic lives (Ualikhanova).
In the 14th century this important city of commerce could be identified on maps of Italian travellers but by the 16th century Aktobe-Laeti had vanished without a trace. There are two theories put forward that account for it’s sudden disappearance – it was submerged under the rising waters of the Caspian, or the city was destroyed by Timur of Samarkand in his vast empire-extending, take-no-prisoners rampage across central and western Asia (Ualikhanova).
Stone tablets from the sunken Bayil Qala (on display in Baku’s Old City) (source: OrexCA)
Sabayil castle, Atlantis for real: Climate change, the damming of some 100 rivers which flow into the sea including the Volga and the flow-on effects of the Aral Sea disaster, have all resulted in a shrinking of the Caspian and an on-going drop in the sea-level. The singular upside of this ominous ecological change, perhaps for archaeologists alone, is the surfacing of the upper sections of the long-disappeared Sabayil (or Bayil) Castle. The structure, built by Shirvanshah Faribirz III in 1232–1235 as an off-shore watchtower 350m from the shoreline to give the citizens of Baku advanced notice of impending attacks on the city. In 1306 the castle sank under water due to a mega-earthquake. The now visible tops of the towers reveals huge stone tablets engraved in both Arabic and Farsi script and decorations depicting imaginary animals and human faces [‘As the Caspian Sea Disappears, Life Goes on for Those Living by Its Shores’, Felix Light, Moscow Times, 27-Apr-2021, www.themoscowtimes.com; ‘Sabayil Castle, vicinity of Baku’, OrexCA, www.orexca.com].
Shards from the past: no archeological remains of Ithill have been positively identified; the most persuasive theory is that they were washed away by the rising tide of the Caspian Sea
Caspian cities of the Khazar Khanate: Lost cities were also a feature of the medieval Khazaria Kingdom (a large area mainly to the north and northwest of the Caspian Sea). Prominent among these were Ithill (sometimes written “Atil”) and Balanjar. Ithill’s precise location is unknown, however Russian archeologists claim to have discovered the site of Ithill (near Astrakhan in Northern Dagestan), having unearthed a fortress, flamed bricks (a speciality of the Khazars) and yurt-shaped dwellings. The claim has not been substantiated. On the Silk Road route, Ithill, the Khazaria capital at one stage, at its zenith was a major centre of trade, including the Khazaria slave trade. Ithill’s road to ruin and downfall began in the 10th century after the city was sacked by Kievan Rus led by Prince Sviatoslav I. It may have been rebuilt afterwards but it was again decimated in the 11th century and wiped off the map for keeps. Balanjar was also a capital of Khazaria for a time and a city of considerable importance. It suffered the same fate as Ithill, decimated by nomadic conquerors (in the Arab-Khazar wars), rebuilt but went into terminal decline and was no more heard of after ca.1100𖤓.
Khazars were a confederation of Turkic tribes that converted to Judaism in the 8th century (image: Military Review)
Abuskūn: Medieval Persia was the site of a lost city on the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, the port of Abuskūn. It’s location is uncertain but most scholars place it in within the Gorgān region. Abuskūn was a prosperous trading hub for its merchants who traded as far away as the land of the Khazars on the Volga trade route. The city’s wealth and vulnerable location made it a sought-after prize for the Rus and their Caspian expeditions. After 1220 Abuskūn is not mentioned in the documents, although in the 14th century a Persian geographer wrote that it had been an island in the Caspian which was submerged due to the sea’s rise in level.
Receding shorelines of the Caspian Sea, Aktaou, Kazakhstan (photo: Alamy Stock Photo)
Abandoned Dekhistan in the desert:Modern Turkmenistan is host to one or two lost cities of its own. The most significant was Dekhistan, aka Dekhistan-Misrian (S.W. Turkmenistan), near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea…a ruined Silk Road city but at its peak (11th century) a major economic centre and the foremost medieval oasis in the region. It managed to survive the Mongol invasion albeit weakened, limped on till the 15th century but was ultimately undone by large scale deforestation precipitating an ecological disaster (failed irrigation system), turning the city into a ghost town. All that remains are mud-brick foundations, the outlines of a few caravanserais and what’s left of several minarets in varying degrees of decay [‘Ancient settlement of Dekhistan’, Silk Road Adventures, www.silkadv.com].
Dekhistan, deserted former city in Turkmenistan dating back to 3rd century BC (source: advantour.com)
Derbent continuity: Derbent in the Dagestan region of Russia differs from the impermanence of these other medieval Caspian cities in it having achieved a continuity of existence right through to the present day. Archeological diggings reveal that the city has clocked up nearly 2,000 years of continuous urban settlement. The existence of Derbent (romanised as “Derbend”, from a Farsi word meaning “gateway”) as a fortified settlement, was known by Greek and Roman authors as early as the 3rd century BC [‘Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent’, UNESCO, www.whc.unesco.org]. Derbent’s strategic location, nestled tightly between natural barriers—the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains—has seen control of it pass from empire to empire – Persian, Arab, Mongol, Timurid, Shirvan and finally Russian§. Under the Persians it formed part of the northern lines of the Sasanian Empire.
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Derbent, citadel/fortress, surrounded on three sides by steep slopes and buttressed by thick, massive stone walls (photo: flickr.com)
𖤓 another Khazar city, Samandar—thought to be situated on the western shore of the Caspian roughly midway between Atil and Derbent—was also lost to history during this period
§ so prized because it allowed rulers of Derbent to control land traffic between the Eurasian Steppe and the Middle East [‘Derbent’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
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]
In an isolated, off-the-beaten track northern peninsula in the Northern Territory, all that’s left of an early 19th century British outpost are the remnants of several buildings and a few crumbling cemetery headstones. This was once the Victoria Settlement (aka “New Victoria”) at Port Essington, founded in 1838 on the traditional lands of the Madjunbalmi clan.
⌂ Location of Cobourg Peninsula & Victoria Settlement (red arrow)
Britain’s motives for establishing an outpost on the northern coast of the continent were both military and commercial. A garrison guarding the northern approach to Australia would, it was hoped, be a deterrent to any colonial ambitions nurtured by Britain’s imperial rivals, France and Holland. Britain from the early 1820s on had an inkling of France’s intention to claim part of northern Australia (‘Victoria Settlement 1838–1849’, www.pastmasters.org.au)𝟙. British ambitions for the settlement, protected by an armed garrison, included the hope that it might develop into a trading hub along the lines of Singapore (‘Ruined Dreams of Victoria Settlement’, Julie Fison, 20-Sep-2022, www.juliefison.com). The British also hoped to benefit from the lucrative trade in trepang (sea cucumber), which had brought Makassan fishermen from the East Indies to Pt Essington for centuries. Unfortunately for them this remained unrealised as the Makassans continued to trade exclusively with the Dutch (‘The doomed attempt to claim Australia’s north for the British Empire’, Georgia Moodie, ABC News, Upd 03-Dec-2019, www.amp.abc.net).⌂ Part of town remains today (photo: ABC RN/Georgia Moodie)
The fledgling colony was beleaguered by many obstacles and setbacks. A cyclone in 1839 wreaked much havoc and destruction, precious stores were lost𝟚, the jetty was wrecked as well as damage to buildings and moored ships. The water supply was inadequate, proving a vexing problem in the dry season (Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, ‘Victoria Settlement’, http://nt.gov.au).⌂ Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt visited remote Victoria Settlement during his 1844-45 northern expedition
Malaria was a regular companion of the colony’s inhabitants, eventually claiming the lives of nearly a quarter of the residents. Allied with outbreaks of dysentery, influenza and scurvy, the illnesses inflicting the garrison often confined much needed labour to the hospital’s sick bay. The lack of skilled labour and poor quality resources resulted in a lot of substandard dwellings. The exacting climate, the harsh conditions of Port Essington, made the colony an unattractive prospect to new settlers the government had hoped to lure from the south or from the “old country”. Visiting scientist Thomas Huxley’s description of Port Essington as “most wretched, the climate the most unhealthy, the human beings the most uncomfortable and houses in a condition most decayed and rotten” didn’t help the cause.⌂ Sketch of Port Essington by Commandant John McArthur
The royal marine corps, led by Commandant John McArthur, and most unsuitably attired (heavy wool uniforms) for the region’s conditions, struggled to adapt to life the tropics. A sign of the residents’ despair at their situation can be gleaned from McArthur’s habit of signing all his letters “John McArthur, World’s End”. The settlement struggled on for eleven years, the British authorities having given up on its prospects as a viable colony, maintained it for several years only as a strategic outpost to discourage the possible plans of other European colonial powers in that part of the continent (Moodie). Finally, Victoria Settlement’s failure was evident and the outpost was abandoned in 1849 and the marines returned to Sydney.⌂ History information board at site (photo: John Baas)
Footnote: Indigenous–White interactions
In stark contrast to the tragic and violent colonial interactions characterised by Aboriginals and Europeans elsewhere in the Great Southern Land, a refreshingly good relationship formed between the settlers and the local clans𝟛 – the White settlers in time came to develop a respect for the area’s Blacks and their unique culture (Moodie). And without the crucial local knowledge and advice provided by the Madjunbalmi people at the onset of the settlement, it would likely have folded within a couple of years.⌂ Map of 1820s–1830s historic settlements (source: Northern Territory Library)
𝟙 there had been two prior, unsuccessful British attempts at colony made at nearby Raffles Bay and Melville Island in the 1820s
𝟚 stores—sourced from various locations, Sydney, Timor, Java, India (Darwin wasn’t established until 1869)—were often in short supply, especially medical supplies
𝟛 the small White population was a factor in the peaceful accord
Z is the twenty-sixth and not-so-lucky last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet and other western European languages. It is most commonly pronounced zed, as used in international English. But in the US, and sometimes in Canadian and Caribbean English, the preference is for zee. A third, archaic variant pronounces the letter “Z” as izzard, whose usage today is confined to Hong Kong English and Cantonese. “Z” derives from the Greek letter zeta, reaching English via the customary pathway of Latin. The ancient Greek “Z” was a close copy of the Phoenician Zayin (I) (meaning “weapon” or “sword”). Around 300 BC, Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus relegated the letter Z to the ancient history archives, striking it from the alphabet allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, owing to it “looking like the tongue of a corpse”🅐.
Zabernism: misuse or abuse of military authority; bullying [From the German name for Saverne, a town in Alsace involving a 1913 incident of an overzealous soldier who wounded a cobbler for laughing at him, ultimately triggering an intervention from the army who took over the power from local authorities]
Zaftig: having a full, rounded figure; pleasingly plump (esp of a woman) [Yiddish. zaftik, (“juicy” or “succulent”) from zaft, (“juice” or “sap”)]
🅐 a more likely explanation is that the “z” sound had disappeared from Latin at that time making the letter useless for spelling Latin words…a few centuries later it made a comeback to the A(to Z) team resuming its place as № 26
THE street names around Macquarie University in the northwest of Sydney have an unambiguously militaristic ring to them. Many, many bear the names of historical battles, wars and military campaigns. In particular the battles of two 19th century wars, the Crimean War and the Napoleonic Wars, figure heavily in the street configurations – there’s Balaclava Road, Waterloo Road, Talavera Road, Vimiera Road, Taranto Road, Busaco Road (actually misspelt as the correct spelling of the Peninsula War battle is “Bussaco”), Trafalgar Place, Nile Close and Crimea Road itself. Then there’s Culloden Road, Abuklea Road, Libya Place and Agincourt Road on the Marsfield side, and Khartoum Road, all from various other wars involving the British and English imperialists. The names “Marsfield” and “Field of Mars”§ also feature in the locales of the Ryde district. Khartoum (famous for its 1885 siege) also lent its name to a very atypical cinema that existed in the North Ryde area long before the university, tech industry or shopping centre came along. The part of North Ryde, which is now called Macquarie Park, was largely green-belt bushland before the 1960s, punctuated by pockets of agriculture, Italian market gardens, citrus orchards and farms, plus an incongruously-placed greyhound racing track on the site of the future university campus. At the time the area which backs onto the Lane Cove National Park had not been developed commercially and its attractive natural surrounds drew the Northwood Group of artists to it who painted the orchards, market gardens, farms and waterways.
Nestled in among all of these market gardens and bushland was the Khartoum Open-Air Theatre, North Ryde’s first licensed cinema. Located on the corner of Khartoum and Waterloo Roads and carved out of a former orchard, it looked like the type of run-down picture house you’d encounter in a country town rather than in Sydney suburbia. The less than majestic Khartoum, held its first public screenings in early 1938. Debut feature for the theatre on opening night was Cecil B DeMille’s The Plainsman.
≜ ‘The Plainsman’ (1936)
The picture theatre’s knock-up construction from timber and corrugated iron earned it an affectionate (and not inaccurate) nickname from locals, “The Shack”. Roselands “Theatre Beautiful” it was not! The entrance section and projection booth were made of timber. “Open-air” really meant open-air with an obvious lack of shelter. The structure had a partial roof but most of the seating was exposed to the elements – the covered (padded) seats cost the princely sum of 1/6d while the uncovered (and less comfortable wooden) seats went for 1/-.
≜ Khartoum Theatre, an undisguisedly rudimentary open-air cinema absolutely devoid of any “bells and whistles”
The theatre’s owner was one Mr N Johnstone and was later partnered by Jack Peckman who doubled as projectionist. The Khartoum functioned as a two-man operation. At intermission or between double features the theatre would regularly provide an unorthodox form of entertainment for the patrons, wood chopping contests (in keeping with the bush ambience?). On wintry nights, if heating was needed, fires were started in 44-gallon drums (wonder if anyone alerted the local fire brigade?)(‘Khartoum Theatre’, www.cinematreasures.org)
Despite its primitive and seemingly incommodious facilities the Khartoum maintained a steady patronage from locals even after the North Ryde Skyline Drive-In, just one block away, opened in 1956. The greater threat however, not only to the Khartoum but to cinemas everywhere, was the arrival of television. (‘Cinemas of the 20s and 30s’, City of Ryde, www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/).
North Ryde Drive-In (photo: David Kilderry/ Drive-Ins Downunder)
“The Shack” managed to keep going at North Ryde—longer than many of the other, conventional cinemas, in the Ryde district—until 1966 when it closed down, bringing an end to 28 years of big screen entertainment in the former orchard. The Wild One with Marlon Brando was the feature chosen for the final screening on closing night in 1966 (‘Sydney’s lost cinemas: Ten of the best which enchanted audience before biting the dust’, Brian Kelly, The Daily Telegraph, 07-Sep-2016, www.dailytelegraph.com.au).
Khartoum Theatre, North Ryde, 1938-1966, one screen, 480 seats
Anyone who grew up in the golden age of milk bars in Australia, from the 1940s to the 1960s, will have a memory of or an association with these erstwhile hubs of suburban and small town social life…for many of that vintage it’d be hanging out inside with friends, indulging in their favourite flavoured milkshake, ice cream or other sweet tooth delight. My own fond recollection is of salivating over chocolate malt sundaes with nuts and taking turns at playing (or tilting) the pinball machine in the back corner of the shop. This treat was an exhilarating antidote to the aftertaste of having spent the preceding six hours toiling away in school confinement.
B&W 4d Milk Bar with mechanical cow & Red Cross-like symbol
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They were such an integral institution during my salad days that I was under the assumption that milk bars had been around forever. In fact they only surfaced in Australia for the first time in the early years of the Depression. The first bonifidé milk bar is generally considered to be the Black and White 4d. Milk Bar which opened its doors at 24 Martin Place, Sydney, in 1932𝕒, it’s conception was the idea of a Greek migrant to the Antipodes, Joachim Tavlaridis, who had Anglicised his name to Mick Adams. Mick had visited the US and had drew on the American diner/soda parlour concept that was flourishing in the US for his inspiration (including American menus, ice creams and chocolate). The distinguishing feature of the Black and White Milk Bar was its singular purpose, it exclusively sold just sodas and milkshakes (in the iconic silver-coloured metal milkshake cups with actual fruit in the shake). Mick was an early entrepreneur in the field, later adding Wollongong, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane shops to his milk bar “empire”. (‘1932: Australia’s first milk bar’, Australian Food Timeline, www.australianfoodtimeline.com). Mick Adams and other Greek-Australian small businessmen like him were the pioneers of the milk bar trade in Australia…typically the shops operating as open-all-hours family businesses, cf. postwar migrant Italians in the vanguard of delicatessen culture in Australia𝕓.
Golden Star Milk Bar, Perth (Photo source: M. Coufos)
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Greek cafes with a large dollop of Hollywood glitz The Greek owner-operators in Australia added glamour to their milk bars by infusing the decor with an vibrant American feel…gleaming chrome, neon illumination, plush leather chairs, mirrors, curvilinear Art Deco interiors, soda fountain pumps, snazzy uniforms, American jukeboxes. These early Greek milk bars (and cafés)𝕔 were purveyors of American dreams along with confectionery and sugary flavoured chilled beverages. Macquarie University history academic Leonard Janiszewski describes the agency of the early milk bars as “a kind of Trojan horse for the Americanisation of Australian culture” (‘The story of Australia’s Greek cafes and milk bars’, ABC Radio, Conversations (broadcast 02 May 2016). The milk bar caught on like wildfire—by 1937 there were around 4,000 in Australia, with names like “Olympia”, “The Orion” and “The Paragon”—as they did across the Tasman in New Zealand where the milk bar is known as “the Dairy”.
Milk bars passéBy the 1970s the heyday of the Australian milk bar was well and truly past its use-by-date. Faced with an inability to compete with supermarket chains and multinational-owned petrol stations plus high rents, milk bar closures (together with that of the community corner store) became an increasingly common sight. 7-Eleven-style convenience stores started to pop up everywhere across suburbia to fill the void (‘Remembering the Milk Bar, Australia’s Vanishing Neighbourhood Staple’, Matthew Sedacca, Saveur, 18 January 2018, www.saveur.com).
Olympia, tea and milkshakes (Source: Daily Mail Australia)
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One Greek milk bar that did manage to defy extinction for much longer than most was the Olympia Milk Bar in the inner-Sydney suburb of Stanmore. Taken over by the Fotiou brothers in 1959, the Olympia under surviving brother Nick achieved a kind of local iconic status in recent years for its anachronistic novelty…open late, and always dimly lit, ancient chocolate bar wrappers plastered all over, a yesteryear-looking shop locked in a time warp. The Olympia somehow survived to 2018, until the Council decided to close down the dilapidated milk bar.
Postscript: Green plaque fiascoAttempts since 2017 to commemorate the Black and White Milk Bar as “the world’s first modern milk bar” with a green plaque have met with a roadblock. The plan had been to place the plaque on the original site of the proto-milk bar in Martin Place, Sydney, now the ANZ Tower. The spanner in the works has been the overseas corporate owner of the building who has steadfastly refused to allow the plaque to be mounted on the structure. The matter remains deadlocked with the City of Sydney Council unable to find an alternate, close-by location acceptable to Mr Adams’ relatives (“‘Disrespect’: Frustration grows over plaque for world’s first modern milk bar in Sydney”, Adriana Simos, Greek Herald, 05-Oct-22, www.greekherald.com.au).
Green plaque in limbo!
۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵۵
𝕒a staggering 5,000 customers fronted up on the opening day!
𝕓Mick’s concept of a modern milk bar was later replicated overseas in various places within the Commonwealth and Europe
𝕔the nouns “café” and “milk bar” seem to be interchangeable in describing these Greek-Australian run establishments
One of London’s most colourful traditions which continues to the present day is the veritable institution of livery companies, the city’s ancient and modern trade associations. The liverya⃞ companies (LC) are Medieval in origin, established in the 12th century by groups of tradesmen, craftsmen and merchants with similar skills and interests. Like the guilds before them they functioned as kinds of trade unions in an embryonic state before the establishment of unionised labour associations.
Boundary lines of the “Square Mile”
Photo: London Toolkit
Traditionally, the core role of the LCs has been to maintain standards and regulate prices in the various industries. The LCs fostered apprenticeships upon completion of which the apprentice became a “freeman” with licence to operate within the city walls (until the 18th century you couldn’t ply your trade within the city unless you were a freeman). An increasingly important auxiliary role of LCs has seen them engage in benevolent and charitable activities aimed at livery members and their families who have fallen on hard times (‘The History of London Livery Companies’, Black Taxi Tour London, 12-Feb-2020, www.blacktaxitourlondon.com).
How one becomes a Livery freemanThere are two pathways to LC membership: serving a term of seven-plus years as an apprentice to a LC “master”; and patrimony, membership passed down from a parent who holds the status of freeman at the time of the child’s birth. There is in addition the entity of honorary freeman, mostly granted to celebrities and politicians by LCs…honorary Company members include Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Stephen Fry.
Guiding the flock over the Bridge (Source: Metro UK)
With club membership comes privilegeA freeman is by definition a “Freeman of the City of London”, which carries certain privileges, one is the right to stand for election as aldermen or sheriff and if they get that far, even lord mayor. Another popular office open to freemen is ale conner, an elected official who gets to test the quality of new ales (somebody has to do it!). Another quirky privilege for freemen historically was the right to drive a flock of sheep over London Bridge without having to pay a toll. Recently some LCs—specifically the Worshipful Company of Woolmen—have revived this sheep herding exercise across the Thames. A key feature of livery activities is the ceremonial. LC membership affords an excellent opportunity to engage regularly in cosplay. All manner of Liverymen like to don ceremonial robes and march in processions like the Lord Mayor’s Show with no pomp or spectacle spared. Liverymen also indulge in other traditions such as pancake races and the Loving Cup ceremony (‘The traditions of the City of London and its Livery Companies’, CityandLivery, 27-Apr-2018, www.cityandlivery.blogspot.com).
Lord mayors from all walks of lifeThe office of Lord Mayorb⃞, the annually elected administrative boss of the fabled “Square Mile”, the City of London, has been filled by freemen from the broadest cross-section of vocational backgrounds. Recent lord mayors have been merchant tailors, solicitors, haberdashers, shipwrights, grocers and musicians.
Order of PrecedenceAs the number of LCs grew a hierarchy of companies evolved with each company designated the prefix “Worshipful Company of ________” and an “Order of Precedence“ established, headed by the Great Twelve Livery Companies – they are in order, Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors, Skinners, Haberdashers, Salters and Ironmongers (due to a historic disputation over their place in the seniority, #6 and #7 swap places in the pecking order every 12 months!). The Great Twelve were determined on the basis that they were “the most powerful and influential companies controlling all sorts of aspects of daily life and trade” in the city at the time the sequence was settled (Inspiring City, 27-Jul-2013, www.inspiringcity.co).
Crest of Worshipful Company of Bowyers
The monumental changes in fashion and technology since the LC were in it’s infancy has led to many historic trades, crafts and professions withering away. Others haven’t disappeared entirely, like the Worshipful Company of Bowyers (AKA Longbowstring-makers), but their fundamental raison d’être has shifted markedly…despite the disappearance of the long-bow as a weapon used in war and hunting, the weapon retains a more limited usage today in the sport of target archery. Accordingly the Bowyers Co’s primary focus these days is on charitable workc⃞. In 2010 the LCs of London made benevolent gifts to the sum of nearly £42 million, the majority for education and welfare (‘British Institution: Livery Companies’, Matthew Engel, Financial Times, 22-Dec-2022, www.ghostarchive.org).
A lot of the LCs are still identified by their historic name…the famous black taxi cabs ubiquitous in the city fall within the purview of the quaintly named Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers which harks back to the horse-and-cart era. Likewise, the Worshipful Company of Scriveners represents London’s qualified notaries public. Professional practitioners of calligraphy, heraldry and genealogy also come under its ambit. The Worshipful Company of Carmen once represented the drivers of produce carts (carters), now obsolete, so like many in its modern form it devotes it’s energies and finances solely to charitable and ceremonial pursuits.
Tallow Chandlers Co dining hall (Source: tallowchandlers.org)
The Livery Halls
At the present time there are some 110 livery companiesd⃞, 39 of which possess their own premises and some of these have very lucrative property portfolios. Many LCs share with others, eg, the Master Mariners Co’s “hall“, appropriately enough a historical ship HQS Wellington moored in the Thames, is also a venue used by the Scriveners Co. One of the longest functioning livery halls is that of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in Blackfriars, parts of its building dates to the 13th century.
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a⃞ the word livery originally described the form of dress worn by retainers of noblemen and by extension was attributed to the specific attire for different trades or crafts
b⃞ not to be confused with the political office of mayor of London (Boris Johnson’s previous gig before Westminster beckoned) whose jurisdiction, Greater London (GLA), is much larger
c⃞ in 1371 London’s arrow-makers split off from the Bow-makers to establish their own distinct LC, the Worshipful Company of Fletchers
d⃞ with several other groups awaiting approval of their LC membership
“Pedestrian”, just a fancy word for walker, you say? Its certainly got nothing to do with the vocational activity we euphemistically call “street walker”, a very different kind of “pedestrian”. As we understand the term today, It’s hard to imagine that pedestrian with the suffix -ism added was the name of a highly popular and seriously competitive sporting pastime 150 years ago.
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Like golf, outdoor tennis, association football and the rugby codes, pedestrianism, a historical name for organised, competitive walking, has its origins in Britain Something of its sort was around in the 1600s but the activity reached a fuller expression in the 18th century, becoming a regular fixture at regional fairs along with horse racing and running.
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Image: Victorian-era.org
One such instance of pedestrian racing involving the exchange of money was within the purview of upper class gentlemen making carriage journeys between English cities and towns. Wagers would be laid by groups of gentlemen on their travels as to which of their footmen can beat the others to the intended destination, going on foot in advance of their masters’ carriages.
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Foster Powell (Poster published by C. Johnson n.d.)
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Fore-walkers of the ultra-marathon
By the late 18th century we start to learn the names of individuals like Foster Powell who devote all of their time and energy to great feats of walking endurance for monetary reward. Powell, the star of long distancing walking in his day (flourished 1760s–1790s) is considered the first leading exponent of the activity, prefiguring the rise of the professional ultra-marathoners in the late 20th century. Powell’s greatest accomplishment was a 640km distance walk—London/York/London—in five days and 18 hours in 1792, the fourth and final time he had attempted and completed the feat [‘Foster Powell, the Great Pedestrian’, Andrew Green, gwalter, 26-Jun-2020, www.gwalter.com].
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Often leading pedestrians would go head-to-head in wagered races (Image: US Lib. of Congress)
⟡Multi-day walkingLater in the 19th century the British enthusiasm for pedestrianism spread overseas to Canada, the US and Australia. In the last quarter of the century Six-day races including for women pedestrians were very popular both in the US and the UK, attracting up to 70,000 paying visitors during the event. The leading exponents included George Littlewood (the Sheffield Flyer) whose 1888 world record for the six days—623 miles, 1,320 yards—remained unbeaten for 96 years! In America serious money could be made…Edward Payton Weston won a $10,000 prize in 1867 for completing a walk of 1,828 km in 30 days (Portland, Maine to Chicago). Powell didn’t achieve the hoped-for riches from his marathon walking, he died in an impoverished state, but many others that followed him found that success in the activity could pay handsomely. Captain Robert Barclay Allardice in 1809 earned himself the sobriquet the “celebrated pedestrian as well as a purse of 1,000 guineas for walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours, an amazing test of (strength), stamina and sleep denial” [‘Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce’, www.nationalgalleries.org]. For Allardice’s numerous extraordinary exploits on the road, the title of “father of modern race-walking” has been ascribed to him.
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Pedestrianism was exceedingly popular in post-bellum USA, drawing great crowds of paying spectators (Image: Alamy/BBC)
Professional pedestrianism in the Victorian era was not confined to males, the most famous and successful woman pedestrian was probably Londoner Ada Anderson. Her accomplishments, particularly the breaking of Capt Allardice’s “1000 in 1000” record prompted the Leeds Times to dub her “Champion Lady Walker of the World” in 1878. Anderson whose preparation included training in severe sleep deprivation, after dominating UK pedestrianism, found great acclaim on the American walking circuit.
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Source: 7 News
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Curbing the proclivity for “speed walking”
As pedestrianism became codified, the “fair heel and toe” rule was established for races. This meant that “the toe of one foot could not leave the ground before the heel of the other foot touched down”𝖆, however in practice “rules were customary and changed with competition” and walkers got away with jogging and trotting in races. [Pedestrianism’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The controversy over what constitutes legal walking has continued to dog the modern sport of race-walking to the present with disqualification of athletes in Olympic 20,000 and 50,000 km road events for “lifting” still a common occurrence.
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Olympic final (men), 3500m Walk, 1908
By the 1890s the Victorians’ vogue for pedestrianism had given way to cycling and other organised team sports. The 1800s activity of competitive walking for monetary gain morphed into the amateur sport of race-walking which found a permanent home in the Summer Olympics in the 1908 London Games. The IAAF/World Athletics organises a series of elite walking events for both men and women including the Olympics and world championships.
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Johnny Day with Nimblefoot 1870 Melb Cup (Image: Herbert James Woodhouse)
Footnote: Prodigy day walker nonpareil
It was not unusual for competitive walkers in the 19th century to turn their hand to other pursuits, some took up cycling, even a few like Ada Anderson ventured into the theatre. In the case of Australian walking wiz-kid Master Johnny Day, he transitioned from wonder boy pedestrian to Melbourne Cup-winning jockey in 1870𝖇. Day by age 10 had won a remarkable 101 walking contests (never beaten) and was hailed as world champion juvenile walker, before pursuing a career as an apprentice jockey in his teens [‘Master Johnny Day, Australian Champion Pedestrian’, National Portrait Gallery, www.portrait.gov.au].
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𝖆competitive walking in thst era was all about technicalities…as well as keeping one foot on the ground at all time walkers were required to ensure that their leading leg remained straight until passed by the trailing leg
𝖇 the premier race on the Australasian racing calendar
I’D never heard of Bill Nix until one day recently when I stumbled upon a selection of his paintings on display at the old Mark Foy’s building (these days reincarnated as the legal eagle-infested Downing Centre). His one-syllable name rhymes with that of another, very different artist of a different era from Europe, Otto Dix, who was one of the principal dissident artists who visually chronicled the social and political decay of post-World War I Weimar Republic German society, and the scourge of Hitler and the Nazis.
Dix’s 1920 ‘The Skat Players’
Nix’s paintings behind the glass of Liverpool Street Mark Foy’s entrance have a unmistakable gritty realism to them and are of a different ilk, style-wise, to the unglamourised, intended-to-shock, expressionistic and surrealistic paintings of Otto Dix, depicting the grotesque, the deformed and the anguished denizens of interwar Germany. The collection of Nix’s work at Mark Foy’s, also unglamourised, adhere to a single theme, the depiction of work life at the long-disappeared Cockatoo Island shipbuilding industry. Nix’s group portraits of the workers, blue collar, office workers and other employees of Cockatoo Island between 1950 and 1980, contain an intimacy borne of personal experience…the artist worked on the island in the 1960s and 70s first as a errand boy, then apprenticed as a fitter-and-machinist and lastly as a draughtsman.
The artworks on display, all done in oil and charcoal on canvas, are a part of larger collection of Nix’s paintings and drawings entitled ‘The Boys from Cockatoo’, focusing on a range of work activities relating to the shipyard including catching the ferry to work, ship repairing and labouring, union meetings, blacksmith shop, the drawing office, the canteen, etc.
‘The Boys from Cockatoo’ series had its public debut in 2008 with a 20-painting exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, which Nix later expanded on to add new works inspired by his memories of the variety of day-to-day routines undertaken by workers at Cockatoo Island.
Any Sydneysiders born in or prior to the 1890s would have been aware of the opening of Sydney Stadium. 1908 was the year this iconic boxing arena on the eastern outskirts of the city’s CBD first saw the light of day…literally saw the light of day as it was originally built as an open air stadium. The brainchild of promoter Hugh D McIntosh who constructed a ‘temporary’ outdoor boxing ring on the site of a former Chinese market garden in Rushcutters Bay to hold the world heavyweight boxing contest featuring Canadian title-holder Tommy Burns and Australian challenger “Boshter Bill” Squires. The fight was however just a warm-up for a legendary pugilistic bout in the same arena four months later between Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson. The fight garnered a lot of attention in Australia and internationally as Johnson was the first black boxer to contest (and win) a world title… and the heavyweight title at that!
The Australian press of the day predictably invoked the race card in the lead-up to the fight, racist descriptions of Johnson abounded, “coloured pugilist” was one of the few politer characterisations of Johnson (Bush Advocate, 28th December 1908). Burns’s thrashing at the hands of his much bigger black opponent—physically it was a real “David and Goliath” mismatch—prompted a backlash from white supremacists. Writer Jack London (ringside at the fight) put out the call for a “Great White Hope” to restore the white man to his ‘rightful’ place atop the professional boxing tree. The decisiveness of Jack Johnson’s triumph tapped into the prevailing currents of eugenic belief of the day, doing nothing to soothe anxieties about the “moral decay and decline” of the white race.
𝔖𝔶𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔶𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔑𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔞𝔩𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶𝔬𝔣𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞)
Stadiums Ltd
For almost its entire lifespan (from 1915 to its closure) Sydney Stadium was owned by Melbourne entrepreneur and gambling identity John Wren’s Stadiums Ltd…during that epoch the company enticed most of the top Australian professional boxers including Vic Patrick, Fred Henneberry, Dave Sands, Jimmy Carruthers and Tommy Burns (not the Canadian heavyweight champion) as well as renowned international prize-fighters such as Emile Griffith, Freddie Dawson and ‘Fighting’ Harada, to Sydney Stadium (‘The Wild Ones: Sydney Stadium 1908-1970’, Sydney Living Museums, www.sydneylivingmuseums.com).
“The old tin shed”
In 1912 the stadium was given a lid, an octagonal shaped roof of corrugated iron, and equiped for a capacity of 12,000 seated patrons. As the decades passed, hosting countless boxing and wrestling matches (in operation several nights a week at one point), it acquired the affectionate sobriquet “the old tin shed”❈. From the 1950s while boxing was still its core entertainment, the Sydney Stadium became a venue for popular music entertainers and television stars (eg, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Walt Disney’s Mouseketeers, and so on⚘. This continued into the Sixties with “The Samurai” star Koichi Ose, and perhaps its pinnacle, the Beatles performing there on their 1964 Australian tour (‘Sydney Stadium’, Milesago – Venues, www.milesago.com; ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Championship Title Fight 1908’, Woollahra Municipal Council), www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au).
𓂀𝓣𝓱𝓮“𝓕𝓪𝓫𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓻” 𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓸𝓵𝓭𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭1964
Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.
‘Blood’ sports and ”show biz” mash-up
Like it’s older relative at Rushcutters Bay, Leichhardt Stadium’s “bread-and-butter” remained pro-boxing and wrestling. However, during the Depression, the suburban stadium, perhaps anticipating Lee Gordon, innovated by incorporating the prevailing popular form of stage entertainment…Saturday night featured a program of boxing contests intermixed with “Vaudeville entertainment” acts (‘Leichhardt Stadium. 1922.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 08-Dec-1930 (Trove); Milesago).
𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔉𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨
ஓ๑ஓ
By the mid to late 1960s Australian professional boxing was in the doldrums and the stadium itself at Rushcutters Bay closed in 1970. Three years later the complex was demolished to make way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Leichhardt Stadium’s demise as a boxing venue occurred not long after in 1975.
Footnote: White City’s fleeting existence
In 1913 another landmark was erected in Rushcutters Bay, a 9-iron’s distance from Sydney Stadium. The White City Amusement Park, also built on former Chinese market gardens, was a precursor of Sydney’s better known Luna Park. White City offered pleasure-seekers a smorgasbord of lakes, canals, river caves, “pleasure palaces”, “fun factories”, the city’s first roller coaster and it’s pièce de résistance, a gigantic (Pennsylvanian-constructed) carousel. White City lasted less than four years before being burnt to the ground after a lightning strike in 1917 (‘Lost Sydney : White City Amusement Park’, Pocket Oz, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au). In the early 1920’s the White City tennis complex was erected on the site.
𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬
❈ also known as ” the old barn”
⚘ expat American promoter Lee Gordon was the brains behind this move into pop music, bringing out big US bands, singers and duos for concerts at Rushcutters Bay, backed by Australian support acts
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)
You’dbe hard pressed to come up with a personality that epitomised Sydney eccentricity more than the legendary Bea Miles who died in 1973. When the subject arises even today, so many Sydneysiders of a certain vintage have a Bea Miles anecdote to tell. Either it’s a chance (and sometimes disconcerting) encounter they had as a school kid–usually on inner Sydney public transport–with the larger (and louder) than life character herself, or one recounted to them by their mother or father. Such was her profile in this city that newspapers in the Forties and Fifties claimed that Bea (or ‘Bee’ as she later insisted it be spelt) was “more widely known than the prime minister” of the day. Bea’s popularity was rooted in that honoured tradition of Australian larrikinism, the unusual thing about this was that she was female※.
Early days, the athletic Bea Miles
Born into a wealthy merchant family, young Beatrice Miles was already exhibiting the rebellious nature that made her buck against the straitjacketed proprieties of conservative Sydney (and specifically North Shore) society, when the illness befell her that would profoundly change her forever. Contracting Encephalitis Lethargica at 21, Bea over time changed physically from a tall, trim and athletic young woman to a seriously overweight, matronly-looking woman.
(Photo: Daily Tele)
Going rogue
More immediately and crucially, Bea underwent a complete personality change, becoming totally disruptive, hyper-kinetic, manic and basically uncontrollable§. When her father couldn’t cope any more with her behaviour he had her committed to an asylum, she was shuffled around between psyche facilities in Gladesville, Kenmore (Goulburn) and Callan Park. After her last escape attempt a Sydney tabloid,Smith’s Weekly,ran a story which exposed Bea’s dire plight in the psychiatric gulag of Callan Park (with sensationalised headline “Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl”) which helped secure her release.
No fixed address
Unable to return to the family home in St Ives, Bea had a sojourn in Sydney’s Kings Cross where she mixed happily with the locale’s Bohemian artists and writers. After this she lived rough in Sydney, finding shelter where she could – a Rushcutters Bay stormwater drain, a cave above a Sydney beach, a park bench opposite Central Station, the steps of a church rectory, etc. Ratbags author Keith Dunstan called her “very nearly the first drop-out, the first hippie”.
Bea with men of the press, circa 1946
Enemy of authority, laws and law-enforcers, habitually disruptive public presence
Bea revelled in being controversial and confrontational, especially towards political and social authorities…abusing police, doctors and magistrates came instinctually to her, and she certainly had plenty of practice at it! By her own (not necessarily reliable) count she was “falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times”…Bea defiantly refused to pay for public transport or to enter cinemas. Other offences earning her the ire of the law included swearing in public and vagrancy.
Bea’s recital services board
Bea Miles, literary orator
Bea loved pulling stunts and making a spectacle of herself, some she did for the heck of it—like riding a man’s push bike through the streets while wearing a formal evening dress—other stunts were to earn money after her grandmother’s inheritance allowance dried up – on the street she would hold a sign up to passing punters advertising her declamatory services, for a set “schedule of fees” she would verbatim quote passages from Shakespeare.
Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr)
Rogue scholar
Under the rough edges of Bea’s (very) public persona, was a formidable intellect. She had excelled at school (Abbotsleigh Girls) and gained admission to medicine at Sydney University. In her post-illness nomadic years, the “wayward waif” as one article called her, never held a formal job and generally gave her occupation as ‘student’. Bea was a habitué of public libraries, especially the State Library in Macquarie Street¶…a life-long voracious reader and produced her own collection of writings, such as “Dictionary by a Bitch”φ.
Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)
Scourge of taxis
The stunts Bea is best remembered and most notorious for involved her with taxis and their drivers. Her propensity for refusing to pay for taxi trips and commandeering taxis to demand that they take her to vastly distant locations has gone into folklore. Legendary instances of this were the 19-day taxi trip she took to Perth (fortunately for the female cabbie involved Bea paid her £600 for the assignment), as well as trips to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide). As is the way with legendary public figures, some of her outrageous taxi exploits were more urban myths than actual events, like the tale that used to circulate of Bea taking a taxi to Broken Hill and then on approaching the outskirts of the town she was supposed to have done a runner leaving the poor hapless driver fleeced of his massive fare. Bea’s most dramatic encounter with a cab, one that did happen, saw her respond to the driver’s refusal to take her by wrenching the door completely off the taxi’s hinges (she was a big woman!). This legendary “Bea-act” landed her in Long Bay Gaol for a spell (and a rest).
“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)
Terror of trams
Tram drivers didn’t escape the attentions of Bea either…the popular press labelled her the “Terror of Trams” and on at least one occasion her antics flirted with real danger as one tram driver who refused to move until Bea paid the fare discovered. Bea, never one to back down, hijacked the tram, seizing its controls and piloted it to Bondi, even stopping to pick up passengers on route.
The Bea Miles “signature look”: The original “bag lady” apparel
Bea’s unorthodox ways made her a Sydney institution and an unmissable sight. Her irregular and unkempt mode of dress made her readily recognisable wherever she went…Bea’s regular ‘outfit’ described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a “down-at-heel uniform” of tennis shoes, white (or was it green) tennis sun visor and ever more scruffy overcoat. Always pinned to the overcoat’s lapel was a £5 note (Bea’s idea of countering any notion the police might get about arresting her for vagrancy).
Years of homeless living, sleeping rough, took their toll on Bea and in 1964 she was taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Randwick. Those last nine years of her life allowed Bea a clean, dry bed and gave the inveterate bookworm that she was joyous access to another library (borrowing an average of 14 books a week from the Randwick branch library).
(Sydney Morning Herald)
Footnote: Deviating from the mainstream, inheriting some of her father’s idiosyncrasies
Despite the love-hate conflict with her father and his eventual disowning of her, Bea gained quite a number of her radical and non-conformist predispositions and beliefs from him. In his own right, wealthy businessman William J Miles was also an individualist and an eccentric. Miles was a rationalist and a secularist (Bea herself was a staunchly committed atheist❡)… from him she also got her love of Shakespeare and her anti-British imperialist/strident Australian patriotism). In the late 1930s Miles’ odd brand of political extremism found its voice in The Publicist. Funded and edited by Miles, the journal advocated fascism (curiously in tandem with Aboriginal rights), wholeheartedly embracing German Nazism and anti-Semitism𝄢. Bea endorsed his pro-Aboriginal and anti-British stand but never enunciated far-right or racist sentiments during her life, although at the end she did express some views that inferred the supremacy of the “white race”.
♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾
※ one of precious few non-male Aussie public larrikins, Dawn Fraser also comes to mind
§ though she still retained her sharpness of intellect afterwards
¶ until she was barred from the library in the late 1950s for being a nuisance (What, Bea?!? Never!)
φ example of an entry, “Duty: an excuse for showing unwarranted interference in somebody else’s business”
❡ there’s some dispute over whether her deathbed conversion to Catholicism was genuine or merely Bea’s way of thanking the church for taking her in off the streets in her twilight years
𝄢 it was a forerunner of the Australia First Movement. William’s dalliance with fascism prompted Cunneen’s assessment that, “with dangerous obsessions and money to spend, Miles represented an unstable element in Australian society”
ℼℼ~ℼℼ~ℼℼ
Articles and websites consulted:
Chris Cunneen, ‘Miles, William John (1871–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-john-7576/text13225, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Judith Allen, ‘Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573/text13219, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.
Pip Wilson, ‘Bee Miles One of Sydney’s favourite individualists’, Wilson’s Almanac, 18-Feb-2012, web.archive.org
Robert Kaplan, ‘Miles From Her Father’, Quadrant, 07-Aug-2016, http://quadrant.org.au
From it’s founding in 1788 as a penal colony Sydney served as a destination for Britain’s burgeoning surplus of convicted persons up until 1850. One of the most distinctive episodes of the transportation history in the period involved the sojourn in New South Wales of 58 French Canadians from Lower Canada (today Quebec) in the early 1840s.Their crimes, having participated in revolts against the inequities of British rule in Canada in 1837 and 1838.
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Both Lower Canada and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario province) rose up against the prevailing political “stitch-up” in British Canada. Power in Lower Canada rested firmly in the hands of a English speaking merchant oligarchy known as the “Château Clique”Ⓐ, controlling the executive and legislative councils, the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. An additional grievance of the Francophone discontents was economic – widespread crop failures in 1836/37 had forced many into subsistence farming. The Les patriotes movement under Louis-Joseph Papineau, repeatedly thwarted by the ruling aristocracy in it’s efforts to secure a better deal, took to arms. The rebels in Upper Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie, similarly frustrated by the denial of political reform, followed the lead of Les rébelles francophones, declaring the “Republic of Canada”. Mackenzie’s forces were aided by the incursion of American volunteers from the borderland states, partly inspired by patriotism and partly by a sense of adventure and the desire to strike a blow against the thraldom of their northern neighbours by the British (Maxine Dagenais, ‘The American Response to the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38’, The Canadian Encyclopedia, 09-Oct-2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca). Both insurrections however were easily and comprehensively crushed by the superior British and loyalist forces…the principal leaders of the uprisings fled to the USA but some 29 of Les patriotes were executedⒷ.
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
Political prisoners removed to the remote Antipodes
A further 58 French speaking Canadian rebels from Lower Canada, originally intended for the “hell-hole” of Norfolk Island, were allowed after intercession by Catholic Archbishop Polding to serve their sentences in Sydney. The patriotes were assigned to the Longbottom Stockage (formerly the Longbottom Government Farm) in Concord (map), housed in crudely-built trenches on the present site of Concord Oval. The less skilled of the exiles found themselves in a quarry gang, tasked with the back-breaking work of breaking and carting rocks for construction of Parramatta Road. Others were employed felling trees and sawing blocks of wood for house construction or firing bricks for use in public works.
“Of good character”
The French Canadians political prisoners were far from the hardened criminals that could be found in much of Sydney Town at the time. In fact they had no previous convictions before being transported, some had been skilled rural artisans in Canada. By the account of no less than Governor Gipps himself, the exiles’ behaviour during their term of imprisonment had been ‘exemplary’, though unbeknownst to the authorities some of their number were also engaging in the odd illicit activity to earn a bit of money on the side, selling purloined wood, collecting oyster shells in nearby Hen and Chicken Bay to sell (Sheena Coupe, Concord – A Centenary History, (1983)).
Ticket-of-leave from Longbottom
The French Canadian exiles were deemed sufficiently responsible that by 1842 the government started releasing them from the stockade to live with ”respectable people”, working for food and lodgings. The political prisoners were then issued with tickets-of-leave into the community so they can earn wages. By the end of 1843, early 1844, the governor awarded free pardons to all of the exiles. 55 of the patriotes took the chance to return to Quebec (once they had raised the necessary passage – which took some up to four years as jobs were scarce in the 1840s Depression) and only one, Joseph Marceau, opted to stay, marrying an Australian woman and settling near Wollongong (two of the original exiled men died while in prison). With the departure of the Canadians the Longbottom Stockade fell into disrepair, its only practical use, a makeshift lockup for ”noisy drunks apprehended on Parramatta Road” (Coupe).
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
While nothing remains of the stockade (above ground anyway), the exiles are remembered in the Concord locale’s nomenclature – Exile Bay, Canada Bay, France Bay, Châteauguay Walk (named after Prieur’s village in Montreal), Marceau Drive. Bayview Park in Concord—where the French Canadians disembarked at the park’s wharf in 1840 on route to Longbottom Stockade—contains a monument to the exiles.
First-hand accounts of the exiles
Three of the 58 transported Canadiens left accounts of their time in Sydney—Francois-Maurice Lepailleur, Léon Ducharme and Francois Xavier Prieur—the only transported convicts in 1840s Sydney who kept daily records of their experiences (Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion , (1995)). Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
American ‘Borderlander’ political prisoners in Van Diemens Land
The same ship that brought the Canadiens to Sydney, HMS Buffalo , also transported between 82 and 93 Upper Canada rebelsⒸ to the penal colony in Van Diemens Land. These were predominantly American ‘borderlanders’ who had invaded Upper Canada to ’liberate’ the Canadians from the British ‘yoke’. The American prisoners‘ experience ran parallel to that of their French Canadian counterparts but their suffering and hardship in the Van Diemens Land colony was much, much worse. Some of the US exiles like William Gates, Linus Miller and Benjamin Wait(e)Ⓓ later wrote accounts of their treatment in Tasmanian prison camps …chain ganged together, treated like slaves, subjected to draconian regimes of labour and living conditions (14 of the patriots died during the incarceration). And unlike the well-regarded Canadiens in Sydney the Americans were vilified by the local press as the epitome of disloyalty (“Americans of the lowest order”) (Carter, J. C. (2009). Most achieved their ticket-of-leave after three to five years although a few escaped on whaler boats ‘One Way Ticket to a Penal Colony: North American Political Prisoners in Van Diemen’s Land’, Ontario History, 101(2), 188-221. http://doi.org/10.7292/1065618ar).
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
Endnote: Longbottom Stockage and surrounds encompassed a large area. The stockage itself sat on land which today is occupied by three recreational fields, Concord Oval, St Luke’s Park and Cintra Park.
꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~꧔~
Ⓐ the equivalent dominant entity in Upper Canada was the “Family Compact”
Ⓑ the (failed) rebellions nonetheless indirectly led eventually to responsible self-government for the Union of the two Canadian provinces (as proposed by Lord Durham)
Ⓒ accounts differ as the number, possibly due to conflation as a number of other American prisoners arrived from Canada in 1839
Ⓓ Wait (or Waite) was Canadian by birth though his father was American and Wait on return lived the rest of his life in the US
Pyrmont on the edge of Sydney’s CBD is one of those inner-city suburbs which has undergone the dramatic effects of intensive urban renewal since the turn of this century – the traditional industries such as sugar refining, brewing, ship and boat-building, the old working class pubs, the modest workers” cottages have all given way to media and IT firms and high-rise apartments. One of the relatively few industry survivors in Pyrmont is the Sydney Fish Market on Blackwattle Bay.
Fish Market, Woolloomooloo (Photo: State Lib of NSW)
Rudimentary beginnings at Woolloomooloo
The city’s fish market has been a local Pyrmont landmark, a continuing presence since 1966, but the city fish market’s history extends back much further than that. It was originally located on the corner of Bourke and Plunkett Streets, Woolloomooloo, on the eastern fringe of the CBD…the selling of fish here in a methodical fashion of sorts commenced in 1871 (some references give the year as 1872).
Eastern Markets, Wolloomooloo: an absence of tables (Photo: SFM)
These Woolloomooloo “Eastern Markets”, according to newspaper reports of the time, show that it was much maligned for its deficiencies. The litany of complaints included its position, deemed far from central; the “barbarous nature of internal arrangements”, ie, the unsanitary practice of laying fish for sale on the uncovered market floor; logistics and transportation shortcomings, ‘transhipment’ was inordinately lengthy: hauls were transferred from catcher to small steamer to large steamer, dumped on the wharf at Botany port until carted to the market by wagon❈ and subjected to pilfering and deterioration on route; the whole process necessitating “maximum amount of handling (of) a peculiarly delicate commodity which suffered from unnecessary pulling and hauling” [‘City of Sydney Improvements’, Evening News (Sydney), 21-Nov-1891].
A developing fish market rivalry
With dissatisfaction with the Woolloomooloo markets palpable, a second fish market was established at Redfern in 1891 which came to be known as the “Southern Fish Markets”. The Redfern enterprise was a clear improvement on Woolloomooloo which had come came under the control of the City of Sydney Council circa 1907-1908. Redfern was conveniently situated adjacent to the railway station. Rail-transporting the fish eliminated the need to load and reload the goods several times, the process was more timely so the fish arrived fresher and in “marketable condition” (plus it meant lower freight charges by rail). Other advantages were new features like cool storage chambers and dedicated rooms for “smoke curing”. Redfern also had the bonus of being elevated, necessary to facilitate the draining of the seafood. Most crucially Redfern was a step up on hygienic fish presentation, placing them not on the floor but in specially constructed tables (around this time Darling Harbour was also mooted as a alternate venue for the fish markets but was considered not as good a site as Redfern)(‘Evening News’).
(Image: Dictionary of Sydney)
Redfern residents however were not enamoured of the fish market in their suburb, as a result of the uninvited 4am “wake-up calls” each morning: the approaching “rumble of fish carts and the vulgar ejaculations and rude raillery of the hawkers” [‘1872 First Sydney Fish Market’,
Australian Food Timeline, www.australianfoodtimeline.com.au].
Fish market built in Haymarket, 1910 (Source: City of Sydney Archives)
Council market v private market
Sydney Lord Mayor, Alderman Taylor, in 1909 advocated relocation from Woolloomooloo to the Belmore Fruit and Vegetable Markets (where Capitol Theatre is situated today) [‘Sydney Fish Market. its Early History’, by Mary Salmon, Evening News, 02-Jul-1909]. This subsequently came to nought, instead in 1910 a new fish market was built a short distance from there at Quay Street, Thomas Street and Thomas Lane, Haymarket (today housing the Prince Centre), and run by the City Council Fish Market in direct competition with the privately-run Redfern operation.
Woolloomooloo continued for a time after Haymarket got going but in a much reduced form with some confusion about its status, as a contemporary article in the Sydney Sun pointed out, the Woolloomooloo manager in 1915, rejecting its description as a fish market, in a piece of double-speak referred to it as a “distribution centre”, adding that it was “merely a market incidentally. If there is any surplus of fish for sale it will be sold” [‘Not a Fish Market: Woolloomooloo Depot”, The Sun, 28-May-1922. In 1926 high profile businessman John Wren purchased the “old Fish Markets” premises at Woolloomooloo (Daily Telegraph, 04-Dec-1926) which was demolished in the 1960s, making way for the Astor Apartments.
Squeezing out the private market
The Council was determined to end the fish market rivalry with Redfern. The state government did its part to assist by refusing to renew the licenses of fish agents at the Southern Markets. Despite a view that the Quay Street fish market was not a paying concern (it was claimed that it handled only 20% of the consigned fish coming to Sydney), a bill was passed in state parliament in 1922 which allowed the City Council Market to acquire the assets of the Redfern fish exchange, which forced its closure the following year [‘Fish Fight: Council v. Redfern Markets’, The Sun, 03-May-1922. Woolloomooloo continued for a time but in a much reduced form with some confusion about its status, as a contemporary article in the Sydney Sun pointed out, the Woolloomooloo manager in 1915, rejecting its description as a fish market, in a piece of double-speak referred to it as a “distribution centre”, adding that it was “merely a market incidentally. If there is any surplus of fish for sale it will be sold” [‘Not a Fish Market: Woolloomooloo Depot”, The Sun, 28-May-1922].
FMA fish monopoly
The Haymarket fish market continued as the sole conduit for fish trading in Sydney until 1945 when their monopoly was expanded…the government transfered the marketing and selling of fish to the NSW Chief Secretary’s Department (hitherto unlicensed operators could sell fish outside of Sydney) which established a regulated and centralised market for the entire state. The central fish market’s control was consolidated in 1964 with the creation of the Fish Marketing Authority, a NSW statutory authority under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture¶ (‘Market History’, Sydney Fish Market, www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au]. The FMA’s role was to bring the seller’s fish and the buyer together, charging a percentage fee for this service.
(Photo: sydneyfishmarkets.com.au)
“Next up, same boat mullet!”
Relocated to Pyrmont in 1966, the fish market management employed a ‘voice’ auction system, buyers would position themselves around the selling bay and as the auctioneer’s called each lot’s sale, they would verbally bid. Disputes among buyers were not uncommon given the din of noise present and with such a capricious arrangement.
Dutch auction system (Photo: flowercompanies.com)
Dutch flower market auction
In 1989 the FMA introduced a computerised Dutch auction system used in Amsterdam to sell tulips, replacing the old manual system. It works by setting the start price approximately $3 higher than the anticipated selling price and then lowering it until a registered bidder electronically lodges a bid [‘Sydney Fish Market’, www.pyrmonthistorygroup.net.au]. This innovation has made the auction process more efficient and quicker.
Privatisation and de-regulation
The state-run markets were privatised in 1994 and renamed Sydney Fish Market P/L. In 1999 full de-regulation meant catchers in NSW could now sell directly to any buyer with a Fish Receiver’s Permit, bringing to an end the Pyrmont market’s long monopoly over the sale of seafood in Sydney (private ownership of the market made the continuation of monopoly untenable) (‘SFM’).
The SFM at Pyrmont in 2021 is the largest seafood market in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the biggest in the world. Every hour of it’s commercial operation about 1,000 crates or 20,000 km of seafood gets sold (‘SFM’).
End-note: An intriguing sidelight to the operation of the fish market at Pyrmont during the 1980s (and I suspect before then as well) was the existence of a black market. As well as bona fide fish buyers, other individuals would frequent the daily markets with a view to unloading ‘hot’ merchandise or goods of a distinctly un-piscine nature for a ‘special’ price. Such shady transactions would often occur concurrently and even alongside the auction bay itself. It was that sort of place which drew all sorts of dodgy characters looking to make a quick buck, no questions asked.
Postscript: Future plans
(Image: The Bays Precinct Sydney)
The fish markets are moving again but this time staying on Blackwattle Bay, the new site will be 15,500 sq m in size, more than two-and-half times the present market, with a scheduled finish date of 2024. The new SFM promises to make the auction area more visible and accessible (off-limits to the public since the change to the computerised system).
↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬
❈ a long six mile-plus haul to Woolloomooloo
¶ the FMA took over the marketing of fish outside Sydney which had prior to 1964 been the purview of individual fishermen’s co-operatives in coastal regions
I went to the ‘Student Prince’ in the 1970s, only the once I think. The pub was pretty well packed with students from across the road, befitting its reputation as the unofficial watering hole of Sydney University students in those days (I was probably one of the few people there who were not actually going to USyd).
The interior was dimly-lit, the furniture well-used and the place definitely not decorated in the fashion of Old Heidelberg. I recall music playing however it was not a Mario Lanza record but a scrawny-looking band out the back playing something that wasn’t the “Drinking Song’ from the 1954 movie bearing the hotel’s name.
(Source: G’day Pubs)
The public house changed hands several times in the years before 2001 when it closed its doors for good, having been the perennial refuge for countless undergrads after a day spent in the mental grind of lecture halls and swotting up in Fisher Library. While many former patrons of the pub no doubt fondly recall their time drinking and waxing lyrically about some newly-acquired parcel of esoteric knowledge, other habitués associate the Student Prince with other memories – Russell Crowe for instance confessed to the Twitterati in 2010 that the roof of the pub was where his ten-year-old self first got his nicotine addiction!
The Student Prince after loitering on the market for a protracted period of time was bought by what the Sydney Morning Herald called “a mysterious consortium of Asian businessmen” who spent two years and $11 million turning the old uni student watering hole into an upmarket brothel (‘Sexclusively yours’, SMH, February 17, 2003).
‘Stiletto’ (the name it trades under) was described on the DA (development application) as an “adult entertainment facility”, or translated into street parlance, a “very high class knocking shop”. In 2011 plans to expand Stiletto into a “42-room megaplex” (the “largest short-stay bordello in the world”) ran into a hitch when Westpac the principal financier got cold feet. The establishment went ahead with the new development, but after a moral backlash (‘Sydney sinking into sin’, Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2010), the eventual expansion was appreciably more limited in size than initially proposed by the developers.
(Photo: ANU Open Research)
Footnote: There was an earlier pub dating from the 1880’s on the site at 82 Parramatta Road, Camperdown, called the ‘Captain Cook Hotel’ (‘Former Student Prince Hotel in Camperdown (NSW)’, www.gdaypubs.com.au).
One of the more novel art genres to emerge in the first third of last century was the “Pitman Painters” phenomenon in northern England. Known as the Ashington Group✱, these were a small collective of unionised mine workers in county Northumberland who approached their local Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) seeking out tuition in new areas of education. Initially the pitmen were hoping WEA could find a economics professor to tutor them in the “dismal science”. When none could be arranged, their interest switched to learning painting and drawing.
⇡ ‘Coal Face’, Jimmy Floyd (1947) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
Artist and WEA teacher Robert Lyon took on the task of teaching the miners—mainly from the Woodhorn and Ellington collieries—all of whom had no formal art training. The workers however didn’t take to dry lectures on the Classical and Renaissance art, so Lyon adopted a more pragmatic approach of teaching the miners the basics of drawing and painting. Lyon advised the miners to simply “paint what they knew” ‘Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters’, Artist Biographies, www.artblogs.co.uk.
⇡‘Coal-Face Drawers’, Oliver Kilbourn (1950) (Image: TUC150.tuc.org.uk)
In 1934 the workers formed themselves into a small society of miner-artists who met weekly to paint and discuss their work. Most of the small group were adherents of the political platform of the Independent Labour Party) (‘Ashington Group’, Wikipedia). The Ashington men even wrote their own constitution, setting out the regulations each of the members had to abide by, including a commitment to the establishment of a permanent collection of their work (” ‘An Experiment in Art Appreciation’: The WEA and the Ashington Art Group”, Marie-Therese Maybe, North East History, Vol 37 2006, www nelh.net).
⇡ ‘Pithead Baths’, Oliver Kilbourn (1939) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
With guidance from Lyon and support from patrons, especially from celebrated collector Helen Sutherland, the group got to observe ‘professional’ art in galleries – Newcastle, London (Tate and National Galleries), etc. Absorbing the influences of professional art, the group of amateur artists increasingly focused on local subjects from their lives and their environs. They also experimented with art forms and styles…trying sculpture, dabbling in abstraction, but ultimately they stuck with social realism, painting mostly in a naive style. In the communal environment of the group hut members critically evaluated each other’s work.
⇡ L Brownrigg, ‘The Miner‘
The Ashington colliery was situated in what some called “the largest coal-mining village in the world”, (‘Celebrating 150 proud years of Ashington, in Northumberland – in 10 archive photos’, Chronicle Live, David Morton, 05-Oct-2017, www.chroniclelive.co.uk). The achievement collectively of the mine workers was to capture their lived experience accurately and truly on canvas, showing the severity of life in the pits. Devoid of sentimentality, the paintings depict the day-to-day reality of gruelling, dirty, backbreaking work, an experience that outsiders have no familiarity with, eg, Leslie Brownrigg’s ‘The Miner’ conveys the deprivations of the tunnel ‘hewer’, labouring away in ultra-cramped, severely restricted space, “crouching semi-naked within the tomb-like shafts” (Mayne). Painting their own lives, the pitmen “testified to a familiarity that no one else from trained art backgrounds could truly understand” (Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters).
⇡ ‘X’mas Tree 1950’, Harry Wilson
Pitmen Painters did not restrict themselves to the life of mine workers below the ground. The non-professional group of artists took on all aspects of home life, ordinary social activities, the pub, football matches, dog tracks, fish-and-chip shops, pigeon ‘crees’ (sheds), etc. What comes through in many of the paintings is just how unglamorous 1930s coal-dominated Ashington was – “dreary rows (of homes) a mile long…ashpits and mines down the middle of still unmade streets” (Mayne).
The group’s first exhibition at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1936, gave them new public exposure and even a critical nod from the likes of Julian Trevelyan and sculptor Henry Moore.
‘Pigeon crees’, Jimmy Floyd ⇡
After WWII interest in the Ashington Group waned but the men from the pits continued their painting. The early 1970s brought a renewal of interest in the Ashington Group due to the efforts of critic William Feaver After meeting what remained of the group including foundation member Oliver Kilbourn, Feaver “reconstructs their history, revives their work, curates exhibitions, culminating in a China tour in 1980, the first western exhibition in China after the Cultural Revolution✧ (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009), (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009) (http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com)⊞.
⇡ Norman Cornish, last of the group
Despite their late rediscovery the Ashington Group’s days were numbered. Coal mines in the Ashington area and the north were closing down in 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The trigger which brought the group to a sudden halt was a prosaic and trivial matter of 50p! In 1982 the annual ground rent on the pitmen’s hut in Ashington was increased by 50p to £14 (Mayne). This proved a straw too much for the ageing handful of members still active and the Ashington Group folded in 1983, just one year shy of its half-centenary. Today the Pitmen Painters are all gone and Ashington and like towns are bereft of traces of their coal-mining past, however the art of the pitmen (or most of it) remains as a visual reminder of that life. With Feaver and other admirers’ help, the permanent collection, a key article of the group’s constitution, exists today, housed within the Woodhorn Mining Museum.
Footnote: Mining art Japanese styleCoal miner art is not the exclusive domain of Northumberland or even Britain. It also emerged in Japan in the art of Sakubei Yamamoto. Yamamoto’s entire work life from the age of seven or eight was in coal mines in the Fukuoka Prefecture. Only at age 57 did Yamamoto start painting seriously. Over the following years he produced over 700 paintings of his work milieu, providing “a visual record of the brutality of mining life, capturing the poverty of workers and their families, the personal lives, customs and superstitions, and their struggles for a better life. Like the Pitmen Painters’ permanent collection, Yamamoto’s ouevre found a home in a former mine site, the Tagawa History and Coal Museum (‘The Pitmen Painters of England and Japan’, Diana Cooper-Richet, The Conversation, 16-Jan-2018, www.theconversation.com).
⇡ (L) O
Pitmen personnel
____________________________________
✱ the group initially met in a small hut in Longhorsley, but after WWII began, they were forced to relocate into Ashington proper, a small town in the coal-mining region of Northumberland
✧ on the China tour group members visited the mining province of Shansi
⊞ Feaver’s book on the group inspired a 2007 play by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall
⌖ prolific in output and broad in scope (including historical subjects among his artwork), Kilbourn exhibited his own series ‘My Life as a Pitman’ in Nottingham in 1977
Woodford is one of those sleepy little towns on the Great Western Highway about mid-way across the Blue Mountains range. Originally the village was called “20 Mile Hollow”, the nomenclature had a pattern to it, Bull’s Camp☸ just on the eastern side of Woodford was known as “19 Mile Hollow” and modern day Linden, further east was originally “18 Mile Hollow”, and so on.
(Image: Blue Mountains City Council)
Woodford’s main claim to fame is the historical landmark Woodford Academy, a property with a varied multi-functional past. Traditionally the custodians of this land are Darug and Gundungurra peoples, but after William Cox’ s convict labour built the Bathurst Road over the mountains, the first known European activity dates to the late 1820s/early 1830s when a convict and illegal squatter on the Woodford site, William James, operated a sly-grog shop.
The first significant structure here started off as an inn circa 1833-1834 on 20 hectares of land granted to Irish-born emancipist Thomas Michael Pembroke (the building of weatherboard construction was called the “Woodman’s Inn”☯). Licensee Pembroke’s facilities included nine rooms, stables for six horses, a store and stock and sheep yards. Woodman’s Inn provided food and lodgings for traveller, including soldiers and colonial officials, between Sydney and Bathurst. Pembroke however suffered some financial setbacks and was forced to sell the inn to Michael Hogan in 1839.
‘Woodman’s Inn’ (1842) (Mitchell Lib.)
Under Hogan’s ownership the weatherboard structure was replaced by a stone building in 1843. The inn licence for the now named “The King’s Arms Hotel” changed hands over the ensuing years – James Nairn, William Barton, Josiah Workman, John Cobcroft and Thomas James were some of the resident publicans. The 1851 discovery of gold put an end to the isolation of Woodford. In 1855 Hogan sold the inn to William Buss of Cowra for £1,040 and the hotel became better known as “Buss’ Inn”. The inn flourished with plentiful trade from passing gold diggers heading for Bathurst and soldiers. But in the mid 1860s business declined and Buss’s widow in turn sold the establishment to Alfred Fairfax (described at the time as a “wholesale grocer of Sydney) in 1868 for £450. Fairfax had an incentive to buy when he did…in 1867 a western rail line was constructed from Penrith to Weatherboard (later “Wentworth Falls”). In 1869 a railway platform (“Buss’ Platform”) was established at what was now called “Woodford House”, advertised as a “gentleman’s country guest house” and “mountain retreat”. At this time the Blue Mountains was becoming a fashionable spot to be…valued for its “fresh, healthy, cool mountain air, waterfalls and broad vistas”.
(Source: Blue Mountains Gazette)
Fairfax acquired extra acreage on the site, consolidated into a 26-hectare estate, using much of it for commercial orchard planting. He also created a network of walking tracks around the property, one of which was called the “Transit of Venus” track. Fairfax was something of an amateur astronomer, possessing a 4.75-inch Schroder telescope and had allowed Woodford House to be utilised for observing the 1874 Transit of Venus✴. Alas for Fairfax the orchard failed and finding himself in financial difficulties he was forced to mortgage Woodford House in 1877.
Woodford House 1889 (‘London Illustrated News’)
In the 1880s, under manager John Robert Place, the renovated and expanded Woodford House was being touted as providing “superior accommodation”, “a change of air and mountain scenery” and “a capital tennis court on the grounds”. The guest house was not a cheap stay, two weeks’ board was £4/4 (December 1890), equivalent to a fortnight’s pay for a skilled worker.
In 1897 Fairfax sold the Woodford House estate to David Flannery who increased his holdings by 90 acres. At this time the property was being described as a ‘sanatorium’ (cf. the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath, see the 31 April 2015 blog: Medlow Majestic in the Wilderness: Transforming a White Elephant into a White Palace?).
In 1907 Woodford House entered a new phase of utilisation when poet-cum-rector John Fraser McManamey initially leased the property৳ from Mary Jane Waterhouse (the new owner) and converted it into Woodford Academy, a small, exclusive school for boys of all ages✧. In the early 20th century a trend emerged where parents who could afford to were sending their children to small private boarding schools in the Blue Mountains which like Woodford Academy were converted grand estates. The appeal was the promise of “fresh mountain air and bracing climate” thought “beneficially to both children’s constitutions and academic performance”❂.
Woodford Academy c.1920 (Photo: RAHS)
From 1907 to 1925 when the school closed for four years—before reopening as a day school for girls and boys—over 300 students had been educated there. Woodford Academy closed for good in 1936, but McManamey stayed on tutoring private students. When he died, killed in a car accident outside Woodford Academy in 1946, the property was subdivided, some of the land was sold to the Department of Education and a portion of it donated to the Presbyterian Church. McManamey’s daughters took in long-term boarders, in 1979 the surviving daughter Gertrude bequeathed the house and grounds to the National Trust, continuing to live there until her death in 1988. After 1979 the National Trust undertook extensive repairs and improvements.
Today Woodford Academy is a museum of Blue Mountains colonial life, conducting educational tours and “ghost tours”. The 1870s dining room can be hired for dinners and the Academy hosts community events like the Mid-Mountains’ annual Harvest Festival.
Footnote: after establishing the Academy McManamey immersed himself into local community activities – Woodford Bush Fire Brigade, Woodford Progress Association, (president of) Woodford Tennis Club, as well as serving as a Blue Mountains shire councillor.
Woodford Academy, 90-92 Great Western Highway, Woodford 2778 NSW
𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷
☸ a camp for convict road gangs working for magistrate and assistant engineer Captain John Bull
☯ it was also possibly known at times as “The Sign of the Woodman”
✴ chosen as a site for its “clear and steady atmosphere“, (Fairfax’s house was) “a most promising station”
৳ in 1914 McManamey purchased 5.06 hectares of the Woodford estate including the house
✧ McManamey prior to Woodford was headmaster at Cooerwull Academy in Bowenfels (Lithgow area)
❂ English, History, Mathematics, Science, Latin plus one modern language
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Bibliography
‘Woodford Academy – History’, Blue Mountains Australia (BMPH), http://infobluemountains.net.au
‘Seriously “Old School” – Woodford Academy’, National Trust, www.nationaltrust.org.au
Goodlet, Ken, ‘Woodford Academy’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woodford_academy, viewed 20 May 2021 ‘Woodford Academy’,
A Rare Treasure’, Ken Goodlet, Blue Mountains History Journal, Issue 6, 2015, www.bluemountainsheritage.com.au
‘Woodford’s vital role in the 1874 Transit of Venus’, Robyne Ridge, Blue Mountains Gazette, 13-Jun-2018, www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au
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.
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.
(Photo credit: www.hktosydney.gov.hk)
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✱ 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
Gowings menswear store was an retail institution in Sydney’s CBD for six score and then some years. This mid city store was the place you could find—in addition to its main line of affordable casual men’s clothing and apparel—among other things outdoor camping equipment, cricket kits, school uniforms and novelty items. Gowings also had a barber’s shop and you could hire a Year 12 formal suit or a wedding tux.
The Gowings story starts with John Ellis Symonds (JES) Gowings who emigrated to New South Wales from England in 1857. After retail experience in David Jones’ Sydney department store—where he worked his way up to head of mercery—JES’s first venture of his own was to open a drapery shop in 1863 in Crown Street, East Sydney. He then formed a partnership with his brother Preston, in 1868 the brothers opened a Mercery and Glove Depot at 318 George Street. JES managed the store in return for £200 per annum and 50% of the profits. The iconic Sydney retailer was up and running.
The business grew, in 1870 a new mercery warehouse was opened in Edinburgh House, 344 George Street, and 20 years later a second city store at 498 George Street. The brothers’ younger sibling Charles was hired as the Gowings store’s “dog walloper”, his job was chasing dogs away from the store as a preventive measure so they didn’t foul the pavement (Kingston).
Over time the Gowings retailer evolved from specialising in ladies’ gloves and silk umbrellas to menswear, turning itself into high-class gentlemen’s outfitters. JES’ customer-centric retail philosophy involved listening to the customers, treating them like they were friends and securing the best quality goods for them (Kingston). The 1890s and the approach of Federation prompted Gowings, anticipating the modern “Buy Australian” campaign, to push the Australian product. Restyling themselves as “Austral Clothiers, Mercer’s, Hatters”, Gowings Bros launched the slogan “Australian wool for Australian people”. For the country customers Gowings offered Australian manufactured commodities via its mail order service, eg, Marrickville Tweeds from John Vicars & Co, ‘bosker’ rugs made especially for Gowings (Kingston).
After JES’ death in 1908 control of Gowings passed to the John and Preston’s sons, with the firm’s tradition for quality goods continuing. The construction of a new flagship building in 1929 on the George Street site became a landmark for Sydney (at the time it was Sydney’s highest building and the first steel construction in the CBD)✦.
A testimony to Gowings’ fame is the cult phrase that it acquired (and cultivated by the retailer) during the 20th century …”Gone to Gowings” has passed into the Australian vernacular, meaning a failure of some kind or other, or possibly a state of inebriation or dementia (Tréguer). Macquarie Dictionary lists six definitions: 1. Deteriorating financially, 2. illness especially a hangover, 3. Failing dismally (a racehorse, a football team, etc), 4. having departed hastily or without a specific destination in mind, 5. drunk, 6. Insane, idiotic. Alternately it could mean down on your luck, lost at the races, etc. The other famous catchphrase that was posted on the flagship premises” facade was “Walk Thru, No one Asked to Buy”.
The Gowings family maintained a steady as it goes, minimise risk approach to the retail business for most of its history. Attempts to modernise it’s main store came later (installing air conditioning and music in lifts, the first retailer in Sydney to do so). Another innovation was its introduction of the “Gowings Own Brand” label of merchandise.
Gowings’ CBD stores (it added a second city store at Wynyard in 1996 – nicknamed the “Blokeatorium”) retained their popularity with the public, however a move to the suburbs (Oxford Street, Darlinghurst and Hornsby) proved less successful. In 2000 the Gowings family relinquished control of the retail business to an independent listed company G Retail and concentrated on the property development game.
Gowings ad, 1909
Gowings end-game
Under G Retail a new suburban outlet at Parramatta opened in 2002 proved a disaster, and when G Retail lost money three years in a row, the writing was on the board for the veteran retailer. More financial strife followed overreach (an aggressive expansion and building renovation program), G Retail was heavily in debt and headed for administration. In the early 2000s, Gowings, like most small retailers, struggled. A hike in the petrol price in Sydney in 2005 depressed consumer spending, exacerbating its problems (Evans; Perinotto). In recent years Gowings tried to innovate, going online, discounting, etc, but the decline was irreversible by then. Competition from the city’s retail giants was too great, Gowings simply couldn’t match the depth and breadth of range and quality that big merchants such as Target could offer (Lake)◈. The Oxford Street and Hornsby stores closed in 2005 and the following January the flagship George Street store closed its doors for good after 137 years of retailing. Later that year the Wynyard store completed the round of closures.
Compared to the larger, more dynamic players in the market, Gowings had the reputation of being a “blokey store”, leading some observers to pinpoint its ultimate demise in its retail conservatism, “stay(ing) locked in the fifties or sixties and limited (in its) geography” (Lake)
The post-Gowings space
Three months after its closure the Gowings landmark building at 452 George Street was snapped up by the Rydge family’s Amalgamated Holdings goliath for $68.6 million, consolidating its property holdings in this mid-town spot — Amalgamated Holdings had previously acquired the State Theatre building next door (49-51 Market St) as well as the nearby Mick Simmons building.
Footnote: in the late Nineties Gowings wholeheartedly embraced the ‘blokey’ image, its then MD and descendent of the founder proclaimed Gowings “the complete bloke’s outfitters”. Along with its usual clothing lines, it began pitching the “Bear Grylls” experience to men, selling goods for the great outdoor adventure (camping gear, hunting knives, zippo lighters) (Owens).
Gowings bldg (2021)
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✦ designed by architect Crawford H Mackellar and incorporating a Palazzo style
◈ Retail expert Rob Lake attributes the fact that Gowings survived longer than many of the other ‘dinosaurs’ to its evolution into a sort of quaint relic which became its “point of difference” but one that didn’t boost it’s sales (Lake)
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Works and articles consulted:
Beverley Kingston, ‘Gowing, John Ellis Symonds (1835–1908)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gowing-john-ellis-symonds-12945/text23395, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 26 April 2021.
‘”gone to Gowings”: meaning and origin of this Australian phrase’, (Pascal Tréguer), Word Histories, 2020, www.wordhistories.net
‘End of an era as Gowings finally gone’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28-Jan-2006, www.smh.com.au
‘Gowings makes it like a man’s, (Susan Owens), Australian Financial Review, 25-Sep-1999, www.afr.com
‘The sad demise of a quirky retail dinosaur’, (Rob Lake), Crikey, 08-Nov-2005, www.crikey.com.au
‘Gowings clearing out for good after 137 years’, (Michael Evans), Sydney Morning Herald, 17-Dec-2005, www.smh.com.au
‘Gowings building sold to neighbour for $69m’, (Tina Perinotto), Australian Financial Review, 28-Apr-2006, www.afr.com
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 government transferred 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
Oatley is a prime piece of residential real estate in the southern suburbs of Sydney. The suburb faces on to the Georges River (Tucoerah River in the local indigenous language). Large leafy blocks of land and water views abound in this “north shore” status locality of the south. One of the star attractions in the western fringe of Oatley is the 45-hectare Oatley Park, a dense concentration of natural bushland with Edwardian era baths and sandstone ‘castle’ built during the Great Depression and now encircled by lofty smooth-barked Angophoras Costatas.
If you cross the railway line to the east side of Oatley you can see a tower dedication to the early Sydney settler the suburb is named after – James Oatley. Oatley was yet another transported felon made good in New South Wales’ formative years. The Oatley tower in the high street contains a clock face which alerts us to J Oatley Esq’s association with timepieces. Oatley from Staffordshire in the West Midlands got napped for stealing two featherbeds and linen to the value of £16, sentenced to death for his crime but transported instead to Australia in 1814. Oatley put his watch and clock making skills to good use, winning a conditional pardon and a Georges River land grant from Governor Macquarie in 1821. On his Georges River land—stretching from Gungal Bay in the west to Boundary and Hurstville Roads—where he established a farm on his property called “Needwood Forest” after the woodland in his native Warwickshire. Oatley’s Needwood Forest grant included the area of today’s eponymous suburb.
Appointed colonial clockmaker, Oatley plied his trade from a shop in George Street opposite the Sydney Town Hall, with a bit of a flair for constructing grandfather clocks. His best known work was the clock in the turret at the Hyde Park Prisoners’ Barracks built by fellow emancipist Francis Greenway (Oatley’s clock has featured on the Australian $10 note).
Oatley’s work also won favour with later governors who granted him 515 acres in the Hurstville area between 1831 and 1835. The clockmaker died on his residential property ‘Snugburough’ in 1839. The precise location of Snugburough in Sydney is not certain…some sources give it as Canterbury, others Beverley Hills or Pubchbowl. After Snugburough was sold by Oatley’s family, future owners had to accede to a curious condition of sale – they were required to retain Oatley’s sepulchre and his body on the property. Clockmaking stayed in the family after Oatley’s demise, his third son took over the George Street shop.
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Books and sites consulted:
Frances Pollon, The Book of Australian Suburbs (1988)
Brian and Barbara Kennedy, Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Description (1982)
Oatley, James (1770–1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oatley-james-2514/text3399, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 30 March 2021
Pyrmont Bridge Road in the inner suburb of Camperdown—no small distance from the now pedestrian only Pyrmont Bridge itself—is where you’ll find the brew house of James Squire, reputedly Sydney’s first brewer. It’s current name, Malt Shovel Brewery, is a yesteryear nod to the “Malting Shovel Tavern”, a pub run by the brewery’s namesake and founder James Squire at Kissing Point (present-day Putney on Sydney’s Parramatta River) commencing ca. 1798.
Squire (or possibly ‘Squires’) commenced cultivating hops on the riverside location around 1806. Squire is considered to be the first person to brew beer successfully in Australia, although some claim the title on behalf of one John Boston who made corn beer in Sydney in 1796 with the aid of an encyclopaedia. Boston’s Indian corn-based beer “was so successful that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business” (Iltis).
Squire also was particularly successful at it, so much so that he eventually acquired a vast estate that stretched from Parramatta River to a point north of Victoria Road. Squire’s real estate empire wasn’t exactly down to superior business acumen on the brewer’s part…Squire kickstarted his land holdings monopoly by revelling in decidedly unethical behaviour.
But more of that later, first let’s look at the earlier chapter of Squire’s life, the sequence of events that brought him to Britain’s colony at Port Jackson. From his early years in England Squire found himself on the wrong side of the law, arrested for highway robbery which launched him on a path of recidivism. He was subsequently nabbed for pilfering from somebody else’s hen house and managed to escape the noose through transportation to Botany Bay with the 1788 First Fleet. Being transported didn’t cure Squire of his predilection for thievery however. Stealing hops (an illustrious start to brewing immortality!) got him 300 lashes of the ‘Cat’ (150 immediately and another 150 on “lay-buy” when his back was deemed up to it again).
After winning his freedom Squire was granted a small plot of land which with “a little skillful swindling” from other less diligent emancipist-land grantees he managed to grow into an estate in excess of 1,000-acres (the “unethical behaviour” alluded to above).
Squire’s business was the recipient of government incentivisation a few years later when Governor King began encouraging the brewing of beer as a counter to the pernicious trafficking of rum and corruption perpetrated by the colony’s military. King’s largesse bestowed on the “enterprising rogue” included a cow and the title of Australia’s first brewer.
The brewery and Malting Shovel Tavern at Kissing Point was strategically located, roughly equidistant from the colony’s two arms of settlement (Sydney Cove and Parramatta) …very handy for thirsty passing sailors and boat passengers on the river. By 1820 James Squire was producing a weekly output of 49 hogsheads of beer most of the year long (Walsh).
Squire’s wealth did not rest on the brewery concern. Due to the vagaries of the local grain market and the import trade at the time, it rested on a number of diversified interests which included farming and grazing as well as beer making (Walsh).
Interestingly, the James Squire brewing company of today has, rather than playing it down, whole-heartedly embraced the “scoundrel’s’ legendary ill-repute as a marketing ploy. Convict-related names biographically referencing the exploits and misdemeanours of the man himself resound in the label titles of James Squire beers – “One Fifty Lashes”, “The Swindler”, “Broken Shackles”, “Hop Thief”, “Four Wives” (a reference to JS being married four times) and the like.
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Bibliography
G. P. Walsh, ‘Squire, James (1754–1822)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/squire-james-2688/text3759, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 16 March 2021.
Judith Iltis, ‘Boston, John (?–1804)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boston-john-1804/text2051, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 16 March 2021.
Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park
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Walkers and cyclists doing the path section of Sydney Olympic Park that stretches from Bennelong Speedway (oops! I mean Parkway) to the Badu Mangroves that guard the northern edge of Bicentennial Park would be familiar with the sight of half-a-dozen or so shipwrecks sitting calmly in the waters of Homebush Bay.
🔺 HMAS Karangi: once an important contributor in the defence of Darwin against the Japanese attack, now decomposing incrementallyin the bay
🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”
ჱჲს A metal plaque on the ground alongside the trail directs the curious passerby to an old wooden viewing platform where you can observe these maritime relics redolent of rotting timber and rusting metal. This spot contains the ship-breaking ramp (or what remains of it) that was used to dismember these ex-naval vessels. Missing is the wooden crane (presumably submerged) and the telescope.
🔺 The ship-breaking dock
ჱჲს The story of how these ships ended up here begins in 1966 when the Maritime Services Board approved the use of land here as a ship-breaking yard for the Port of Sydney. From 1970 till to the early Nineties private companies leased the yard to demolish hulks which had surpassed their use-by-date.
ჱჲს With the passage of time, left to nature and the elements, a number of these ex-ships have experienced an almost complete organic makeover. The dense mangroves of the bay have invaded the vessels, turning them into what one observer described as “a floating mangrove forest” (May Ly) and another, “a floating rusty relic forest” (Ruth Spitzer). The stricken and abandoned vessels are now a haven for local coastal birdlife (at dusk the hovering and nesting white gulls are easy to spot aboard the arboreal hulls).
ჱჲს The most striking example of this process of afforestation of wrecks is the SS Ayrfield. The UK-built steam collier, which ended up in Homebush Bay in 1972 after World War 2 service, is spectacularly overgrown with mangroves, a dense armada of trees literally bursting out of the ship’s disappearing hull and threatening to swallow it whole! High-rise residents in the Wentworth Point estate and people strolling along the waterfront of the Point are afforded the best views of the organically-refashioned Ayrfield.
ჱჲს Also warranting special mention for a similar makeover courtesy of its biotic vibrancy–albeit much more obscurely located around the bend close to the Waterbird Sanctuary–is the 1924-built SS Heroic. The Heroic, a steam tug boat, saw service in both world wars before being consigned to the Homebush Bay cast-iron graveyard. Hidden behind a cloak of thick mangroves, you need to position yourself right on the muddy edge of the water and crane your neck to get a decent sighter of the nature-engulfed old tug boat. Its predicament, mirrors the Ayrfield’s but in a less advanced stage of arboreal encroachment.
ነሃጣፈነ A curious footnote to the 50 year-presence of the scuttled and abandoned ships in Homebush Bay is that the vessels, despite the egregiously bad state they are in, are ‘protected’ by legislation (under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976).
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Materials referenced:
‘Shipwrecks of Homebush Bay’, (May Ly), 30-Jul-2013, www.weekendnotes.com
‘Graveyards of a different kind at Homebush Bay’, (Ruth Spitzer), 2015, www.ruthspitzer.com
A journey in time from government domain to “people’s park”
Leaving the fringe of Parramatta CBD at O’Connell Street, we venture west onto the north bank of Parramatta Park… traditionally, before the white colonial takeover, this was Burramatta Darug country. Passing the car park at the front of Bankwest Stadium, we soon arrive at the park’s first slice of colonial history. The sloping grassland running down to the river—now the habitat mainly of ibises and swamp hens—was once Government Farm, the infant Sydney colony’s first successful farm. The early settlers (such as Dodd’s Farm) found the undulating fertile land here more conducive to growing crops¹ than the sandy soil and unreliable water supply at Farm Cove.The colony’s first governor Arthur Phillip gave the Parramatta area its first English name, Rose Hill².
Following the riverside path we come to the Old Kings Oval with its small Doug Walters Pavilion, a reminder that the 60s and 70s star cricketer played for the local Cumberland team when he first came to Sydney. The name of the oval is a clue to the fact that the prestigious independent boys school, the Kings School, occupied the surrounding land for 130 years (to the late 1960s). A sign on the pathway alerts us to another by-gone sporting activity of the park – there was also a (horse)racetrack that snaked around the river in the early colonial days.
If we cross the skimpy narrow metal foot bridge and head back towards O’Connell Street, we can spot the park’s principal building, Old Government House, an impressive grand Georgian mansion with a fascinating life story. Construction commenced in 1799, thus the UNESCO-listed structure is the oldest surviving public building in Australia. For the early governors this was effectively a country retreat for them, a preferred residence because of it’s superior air and distance from the crime-infested, unsanitary conditions of Sydney Town.
From 1910 Government House was leased to the Kings School, giving it another imprint on the park’s history. Till 1965 the former governors’ residence was home to junior boarders of the school. Two years after that the school moved holus-bolus to North Parramatta. Today OGH operates as a National Trust heritage site and the repository of Australia’s best collection of early 1800s colonial furniture.
Leaving OGH and continuing in the direction of Westmead we pass Governor Brisbane’s Roman-style bath house. It fell into a dilapidated state by the late 19th century and was subsequently converted (or reduced) into a (small) bandstand, which is it’s present state of obsolescence.
Just a bit further on from the Bath House we arrive at a curious-looking military monument to the Boer War. Mounted on a high platform supported by thick classical columns is a small 19th century canon on wheels. Menacing positioned at such an elevated vantage-point, you could just imagine it being used to take potshots at pesky Afrikaner farmer-soldiers skulking round the Transvaal veld or on the Rand.
Also near here we happen upon another, very different monument. This represents a tribute to a home-grown aviator pioneer of the Parramatta district, William Ewart Hart. The stone inscription informs us that he was “Parramatta’s Flying Dentist” circa 1912, believed to be the first Australian to fly an aircraft on this continent.
Looping round the path onto Railway Pde we take the road back to O’Connell St and the last stop on our ramble around Parra Park. The George St Gatehouse is one of six such guarding the entrances to the park. Picture-book English Tudor in style, it’s the most iconic, and since it was restored in 2014, the most aesthetically pleasing of the gatehouses.
Map identifying the main physical sections of Parra Park: Mill Race Flat, Pavilion Flat, The Crescent, Cattle Paddock, Salter’s Field, Old Orchard, West Domain.
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¹ the result of indigenous land management methods like the regular burning of grasslands
² the first settlement in Parramatta (1788) was a redoubt built by soldiers at The Crescent, a geological feature comprising flat alluvial ground contained by a bend in the river, situated to the south-west of OGH
Bibliography‘Rose Hill and Government Farm’, Parramatta Park,www.parrapark.com.au
‘Old Government House’, (Sonya Gellert), Discover Parramatta, www.discoverparramatta.com.au
Levins, Chris, Parramatta Park, Dictionary of Sydney, 2010, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_park, viewed 27 Feb 2021
‘The Crescent’, (Michaela Ann Cameron), Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/
Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.
The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.
Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.
(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)
The fort’s guns were decommissioned in 1962 and the fort itself closed in 1972. Vacant for several years followed closure, it has since been occupied by the Newcastle Regional Maritime Museum and the local historical society. Today, open to the public and with some of its guns repositioned, guided tours of the fort and it’s tunnels are a principal feature of the site’s activities.
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¹ before acquiring the name Ft Scratchley the site had a sequence of different English names, “Beacon Hill”, “Fortification Hill”, “Signal Hill”
² although the first (seven-gun) earthen battery was installed there in 1828
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Referenced websites and sources:
‘Tunnel into 200 years of history’, Fort Scratchley Historical Site, www.fortscratchley.com.au
Just five weeks after the First Fleet led by Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Port Jackson in 1788, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King was despatched to Norfolk Island 1,673 km north-east of Sydney to establish an ancillary settlement of convicts and free settlers※. The British, recognising the island’s strategic importance in the western Pacific and the need to keep it out of French hands, had a further, practical motive for colonising Norfolk Island. Captain James Cook on his 1774 Pacific voyage identified the island’s (Norfolk Island) pines and (New Zealand) flax plant as invaluable materials for the construction of masts and sails. As it turned out they weren’t, being too brittle for this purpose, although the island’s soil proved good for agriculture and farming (in the early settlement days Norfolk served as Sydney’s ”food bowl”) [Robert Macklin, Hamilton Hume, Our Greatest Explorer, (2019); ‘History’, (Norfolk Island National Park), www.parksaustralia.gov.au].
≜ Norfolk Is penal settlement, ca.1790 (Geo. Raper) (State Lib. of NSW)
From the early days of settlement the convicts made an unsuccessful attempt to depose King. In 1800 Rum Corps officer Joseph Foveaux was made commandant of Norfolk Island, and he successfully but ruthlessly suppressed a new insurrection in 1801 by United Irish prisoners. Foveaux summarily executed some of the convicts without due legal process and courted controversy for his practice of selling female prisoners to settlers. However overall he was commended by the authorities for the advancement of public works on the island under his administration [B. H. Fletcher, ‘Foveaux, Joseph (1767–1846)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/foveaux-joseph-2062/text2567, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 30 December 2020].
(Image: www.lonelyplanet.com)
Abandonment and penal rebirth
Settlement on Norfolk Island went in fits and starts. In 1814 it was abandoned altogether◕ due to a combination of factors – a poor harbour made for perilous landing sites; isolation and remoteness; too costly to maintain; diminished necessity (Sydney had achieved self-sufficiency in food) [‘Looking at History’, 14-Aug-2015, wwwrichardjohnbrblogspotcom]. In 1825 the island was resettled again as a penal colony. This was the beginning of Norfolk’s darkest chapter of its history. The British determined that the reestablished penal colony would be home to the worst case prisoners. Norfolk Island’s second penitentiary has been described as a “planned hell”, with a series of convict uprisings and escape attempts a recurring feature (eg, the 1846 “Cooking Pot” rebellion resulted in its 12 leaders being executed for the murder of four minor officials [Burridge, K. (2013). Review of Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Joshua Nash, Norfolk Island: History, people, environment, language. Oceanic Linguistics, 52(2).] (see Postscript for a different perspective on the question of the penitentiary’s severity).
In the wake of the Bounty
By 1855, with transportation to New South Wales ended, there was only eleven residents left on Norfolk Island (the colony’s remaining 119 convicts had already been relocated to the draconian Van Diemen’s Land prison system). The following year the island was turned over to (194) descendants of the Pitcairn Island mutineers and their Tahitian families. Each was entitled to 50-acre grant of land on Norfolk. Some of the new settlers returned to Pitcairn within ten years but many who stayed pursued their traditional vocations of farming and whaling❂.
(Photo: Getty Images/Lonely Planet)
By the late 19th century the settlers on NI were engaged in a range of industries – forestry, cattle and the growth of export crops (lemon, passionfruit, banana). Changes in land use altered the ecosystem of Norfolk Island. The intensive agricultural use, the clearing of native land, saw the original subtropical rainforest give way to a pastoral landscape of rolling green hills encircled by rocky outcrops (‘Norfolk Island NP’).
Norfolk Island, inching towards autonomy and self-ruleAfter Australia achieved federation Norfolk Island was administered as an external territory, control alternating between the Australian Commonwealth and NSW. During WWII an Allied airfield was constructed on the island, testimony to its strategic importance in the Pacific theatre of the war. In 1979 Norfolk Island was granted limited self-government by Australia. A constant theme for Norfolk Island throughout its post-war history—perhaps even existing from the initial Australian takeover before WWI—has been the tensions and ambiguities resulting from a search for identity…the NI community is aware of the constant shadow of Australian governance over it and yet it also sensing in its distinctive Pacific Island nature a yearning for self-rule and independence (Burridge). In 2015 Canberra delivered a body blow to the autonomous aspirations of locals when, on the back of an NI economic decline due to the GFC and diminished tourism, it rescinded the Island’s self-government [‘Norfolk Island broke, set to be stripped of self rule’, (Nine News), 19-Mar-2015, www.9news.com.au].
(Image: www.mapsland.com)
Endnote: The period since the transportation of convicts to NI ended has been marked by an absence of violent crime. However early in the 21st century the tranquility was punctured by not one but two murders in the peaceful island community. In 2002 a young woman (an Australian mainlander working in NI) was murdered in mysterious circumstances. Two year after this, the NI government’s deputy chief minister was fatally shot in Kingston the NI capital…the murder had a family rather than a political motive and was not connected to the earlier homicide [New Zealand Herald, 20-Jul-2004].
≜ NI’s old and newer prisons with the iconicNorfolk Is Pines in the background (Source: www.aucklandmuseum.com)
Postscript: Norfolk Island, a “punitive hell” for incorrigibles or an overstated case? The conventional view of Norfolk Island as a penitentiary by the mid-19th century is that it “was the most notorious penal station in the English-speaking world and represented all that was bad about the convict system”⚃ (eg, convicts universally brutalised by sadistic gaolers). The colonial secretary in London directed Governor Brisbane in NSW in 1825 to send “the worst description of convicts” to Norfolk, (those) “excluded from all hope of return”. The characterisation of the NI penal colony as “hell-on-earth” is myth not fact according to historian Tim Causer who demurs from the consensus opinion. He argues that the NI inmates were not predominantly of the worst kind, not recidivists, not “doubly-convicted capital respites”, as widely stated. Using the available data Causer shows a contrary picture: over 2,400 of the convicts were first offenders who came directly from Britain and Ireland; nearly 70% sent to NI were sentenced for non-violent crimes (against property) (“‘The worst types of sub-human beings’? The myth and reality of the convicts of the Norfolk Island penal settlement, 1825-1855”, (Tim Causer), March 2011, www.researchgate.net].
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※ the original inhabitants of Norfolk Island were Polynesian seafarers (14th-15th century) who journeyed there from the Kermadec Islands or the North Island of New Zealand
◕ and replaced as a penal destination by Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)
❂ roughly half of the present NI population of 1,800 are descended from Pitcairners
⚃ at the time NI penitentiary was universally synonymous with criminality and perversion, even alluded to by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. NI was widely considered equal to or worst than the barbaric penal colony at Macquarie Harbour (Tasmania)
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).
(Map: 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 swampedCommencing 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].
🔻 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).
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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 belated 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
Sydney is chock full of locality names—names like Taverners Hill, Clifton Gardens, Pearces Corner, Tom Ugly’s Point, Russell Lea, Camp Cove, Tumble Down Dick, Bushrangers Hill, Brush Farm, Strawberry Hills, Charing Cross, etc—places on or off the map not big enough or important enough to warrant the status of ‘suburb’ in their own right.
‘Plan de la Ville de Sydney’ (Lesueur’s Map, 1802) (Source: State Library, NSW)
One of the earliest in the Sydney colony with an interesting back story is Brickfield Hill. Located on indigenous Gadigal country at the south end of the CBD, Brickfield Hill is a loosely-demarcated area❋ with a small hill, the place where the early colony’s clay was sourced for the making of bricks and tiles…bricks plus a hill, hence the name “Brickfield Hill”. This endeavour started virtually from year one of the European takeover of the Great South Land…the First Fleet in 1788 includedconvicts with brick-making experience – James Bloodworth, the most significant of them was to prove invaluable to the embryonic settlement’s progress. With only makeshift accommodation in the form of canvas tents, the construction of more secure and permanent housing was of the highest priority. Bloodworth was immediately appointed master brick-maker for the Port Jackson colony by Governor Phillip, assigned labourers and tasked with the job of manufacturing 30,000 tiles per month [Ringer, Ron, Bricks, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionary of Sydney.org/entry/bricks, viewed 19 Nov 2020 ; ‘Brickfield Hill’, www.kathyprokhovik.com), 06-May-2018].
The public brickfield on the ‘Hill’ became such a hub of activity that in 1799 it was described as “a suburb of the town of Sydney … within a few yards of the main road” (George Street) [‘Bricks and Nails: Building Materials as Criteria for Dating in Sydney and Environs from 1788’, Robert Victor Johannes Varman, (Unpublished PhD thesis from the University of Sydney, Sept. 1993), www.ses.library.usyd.edu.au].
Brickfield Hill, George Street (Photo: JR Clarke / State Library, NSW)
By 1804 there were 72 houses within the village of Brickfield Hill, but it wasn’t the most salubrious part of Sydney to live…that part of George Street was “infamous for its steep, dangerous and dusty road” (Varman). The “exceedingly unpleasant” place, “covered by a filthy brown haze and choking dust storms of windy days” the southerlies that swept along the street were given the name the ‘Brickfielder’ [“Brickaholic’s tales behind the history of Sydney’s ‘golden mile’”, (John Huxley), Sydney Morning Herald, 26-Sep-2008, www.smh.com.au]. By 1840 the public brickfields had become a blot on the landscape…the dusty brick pits and polluting kilns were not conducive to the increasing residential composition of the village. Its dingy, seedy taverns were dens of crime and rampant practices of bestial cruelty. In 1841 the government ended the brick industry in the locality. In it’s place small brick-making concerns in private hands fanned out in directions south and west to suburbs such as Newtown, Camperdown, Pyrmont, Glebe and to St Peters which eventually emerged as the premier site for brick-making in Sydney. Merchant stores, warehouses and more housing (leading to slum conditions) helped fill the void in Brickfield Hill (Varman).
(Source: SL – NSW)
Gradient was a sizeable issue in Brickfield Hill in the early period … the steeply sloping terrain along that section of George Street impeded the transport of heavily-laden carts. During the 1830s the authorities finally addressed this. A colonial earth-moving project succeeded in reducing the gradient between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets to a more gradual and manageable slope [‘Brickfield Hill (1) – The Hill’, Sydney Eye, www.sydneyeye.blogspot.com/].
At the beginning of the 20th century Brickfield Hill achieved the kudos of an altogether different association as the new home of one of Sydney’s early retail giants. In 1905 Anthony Hordern and Sons opened its “Palace Emporium” on the site, their mega-department store rose up on the ‘Hill’ – six stories high and comprising 21 hectares of retail space. At its zenith Hordern’s Brickfield Hill emporium was reputedly the largest department store in the world. [‘Brickfield Hill’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
In its post-department store life the Hordern building’s vast “rabbit-warren” network of rooms and corridors was home to the Business School of the NSW Institute of Technology until the 1980s. Acquired by Malaysian property developer Ipoh Garden Development in 1985, it was demolished the following year amid considerable controversy to make way for the World Square complex⍉ [‘Anthony Hordern & Sons’, www.wikiwand.com].
With the leveling of Hordern’s Palace Emporium building and the earlier closure of the Brickfield Hill post office, Brickfield Hill’s long existence as an identifiable locality in Sydney’s CBD was consigned to the past.
PostScript: The Hordern story
From humble beginnings as a King Street (Sydney) drapery shop in 1823, Hordern and Sons built up an Australian retail empire.After a stint in Melbourne retailing, Anthony Hordern (Senior) built his first Sydney emporium in Chinatown (Haymarket). The AH showcase, opened in 1905 to replace the fire-destroyed Haymarket emporium, was the new Palace Emporium (AKA the “Senior Store”). The Brickfield Hill retail ”super-store“—with a main entrance of imported Italian marble—later diversified its commercial activities to include a branch of the Commonwealth Bank, tea rooms, a post and parcel office, rest rooms, public phone booths and a Thomas Cook travel agency. Expansion of the business occurred from the Fifties with new Hordern & Sons stores opening in Canberra, Wollongong, West Ryde and Mid-City Pitt Street.By the late 1960s Anthony Hordern & Sons was massively losing business to suburban malls and to city competitors…it’s retail empire crumbling, the Brickfield Hill flagship was acquired by Waltons Ltd. In early 1973 the doors of the iconic retailer, once lauded as a “colossal business premises”, closed for good. (Wikiwand entry).
🔽 (Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection. Sydney Living Museums. [TC 658.871 HOR/54]) 
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❋ roughly covering the area from Sydney Town Hall (Bathurst Street) to Central Station, skirting the present-day locales and suburbs of Haymarket and Surry Hills
⍉ which then stayed as a gigantic hole In the ground for 18 years until World Square was completed in 2004
The United States over the years has had a mania about banning lots of things—there’s been an unspoken exemption granted to bad taste—but one of the more curious prohibitions in the 20th century was that on the seemingly innocuous pinball machine.
In the early 1930s the Gottlieb Company of Chicago introduced the first coin-operated, machines, the “Baffle Ball”. The timing was right, the Great Depression had hit, playing pinball was a cheap and accessible form of entertainment for the financially impoverished masses, and the machines caught on. A few years later machines became electromechanical and automatic score counters were added, making games more appealing [“The History of Pinball Machines and Pintables”, BMI Gaming, www.bmigaming.com/].
The moral legislatorsBy the time of America’s entry into WWII pinball’s popularity had grown exponentially. Not all sectors of American society however were enthusiastic about the game. Churches and school boards harboured a perception of pinball as corrupting the morals of American youth, asserting that children would steal coins and skip school to play❋. Lawmakers too viewed pinball negatively because they saw it a game of chance and thus was a form of gambling. They shared the view that it “a time and dime-waster for impressionable youth”. Legislators were also suspicious that it may be a “mafia-run racket” because of Chicago’s centrality in pinball machine manufacturing, a “hotbed of organised crime” [“That Time America Outlawed Pinball”, (Christopher Klein), History, upd. 22-Aug-2018, www.history.com ; “11 Things You Didn’t Know About Pinball History”, (Seth Porges), Popular Mechanics, 01-Sep-2009, www.popularmechanics.com].
⍌ City authorities vandalising the machines
(Source: Chicago Sun-Times)
New York City’s crusade against the pinball
The mayor of NYC, Fiorello LaGuardia, took these perceptions to heart, launching a very proactive approach to rid the city of these “insidious nickel-stealers” by ordering the police force to make “Prohibition-style pinball raids” on candy stores, bowling alleys, speakeasies, cigar stores, drugstores, amusement centres, etc [“The Mayor Who Took a Sledgehammer to NYC’s Pinball Machines”, (Conor Friedersdorf), The Atlantic, 18-Jan-2013, www.theatlantic.com]. Illegal pinball machines and slot machines were confiscated and some were smashed in staged, publicity-conscious showcases (Klein).
LaGuardia’s anti-pinball machine crusade took on extra zeal after Pearl Harbour, which allowed him to characterise it as a patriotic cause…the line run by the NYC mayor was that the copper, aluminium and nickel components of the outlawed machines could be better utilised in the materiel requirements of America’s war efforts (Klein). This didn’t prevent many machines ending up dumped in NYC harbour.
⍌ 1963 ‘Swing Time’ Gottlieb machine
Banned, but not eliminatedOther cities were quick to follow NYC’s example, Including Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and New Orleans, with pinball bans extending across the country. Other cities like Washington DC didn’t go as far but prohibited children from playing it during school hours. The inevitable consequence of banning was to drive pinball activity underground (resurfacing in places like the back rooms of ‘porno’ book shops). Thus marginalised, pinball become “part of rebel culture”⧆ (Klein).
⍓ Roger Sharpe, “calling the shot!”
(Source: IFPA)
The long ban, ended by a ‘Sharpe’ player Remarkably, the outlawing of pinball machines persisted until the 1970s – despite the technical innovation of “flippers” (pivoted arms activated to propel the ball back up the table) introduced in Gottlieb’s 1947 “Humpty-Dumpty” machine which made the game more one of reflexes (skill) than of chance. Finally, in 1974 the Californian Supreme Court, accepting the skill component, overturned the prohibition in that state. In 1976 NYC councillors were still skeptical about pinball and it took a spectacular courtroom demonstration by one of the game’s top exponents, Roger Sharpe, to break the impasse. Sharpe won over the doubters by nominating beforehand which lane he would propel the ball through and then making the shot, demonstrating that patience, hand-eye coordination and reflexes, not luck, were the ingredients for success in the game◰[“How One Perfect Shot Saved Pinball From Being Illegal In The US”, (Matt Blitz), Gizmodo, 19-Aug-2013, www.gizmodo.com.au].
⍓ An “Indiana Jones” Williams machine with revolver for plunger
With the ‘liberation’ of pinball, player interest revived in the late Seventies, but it was a short-lived triumph. The advent of video games provided compelling competition (the newer technology requiring fewer repairs and less space). By the Nineties the writing was on the wall for arcades and the coin-op industry, as home video-games and the internet were rendering them obsolete [“The First Family of Pinball: Meet the local wizards behind the game’s huge resurgence”, (Ryan Smith), Reader, 03-May-2018, www.chicagoreader.com]. In any case, the repealing of the prohibition wasn’t uniformly implemented…Chicago city authorities resisted, still associating pinball machines with “nests of gangs and drugs” for juveniles [“Chicago once waged a 40-year war on Pinball”, (Ryan Smith), The Bleader, 03-May-2018, www.chicagoreader.com]. Prohibition in Kokomo, Indiana, was not ended till 2016✦ [“Pinball—once a source of vice and immorality—now, legal in Kokomo, Ind., after 61-year ban”, (Ben Guarino), Washington Post, 15-Dec-2016, www.washingtonpost.com].
PostScript: Surviving if not exactly thrivingToday, the Stern Pinball Co (Chicago) is the only manufacturer of machines left in the business in America. If not played by casual gamers in anything like its numbers in the “Baby Boomer” era (except in video game mode), it has experienced a resurgence of sorts – as an annual series of professional tournaments (Stern Pro Circuit) (among its internationally ranked seeds are Roger Sharpe’s two sons).
⍓ Roger Daltry (Tommy “Pinball Wizard”) at the controls
❋ Seth Porges identifies something quasi-religious in the anti-pinball position, a “temperance-fuelled” belief that the activity was “a tool from the devil” corrupting young people (Friedersdorf)
◰ the councillors were also persuaded to overturn the ban by the eloquent testimony mounted by Sharpe, who went on to be a pinball star witness in subsequent, successful hearings in other states. Another factor in the outcome may have been revenue-raising, eg, Mayor Daley in Chicago wanted to lift the ban so as to tax individual machines and licensing operators (Smith, “Chicago once waged”)
⧆ the rebel image remained into the late 1960s and ‘70s with the anti-establishment tone of The Who’s rock opera about a “pinball wizard”, Tommy
✦ it was a similar story in Nashville, TN, for anyone under 18, and in some places and times it is still illegal – such as on Sundays in Ocean City, N.J. (Porges)
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’.
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❋ 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.
The early British colonists in Sydney were quick to appreciate the value that Observatory Hill held in the formative days of the New South Wales colony. This hill, no more than moderately sized, situated between The Rocks and Barangaroo in the old part of the town, is a rich part of Sydney’s history. Not long after the founding of Port Jackson in 1788, Sydneysiders started putting the well-positioned bluff and its natural endowment to greater or lesser productive use in a variety of ways.
After the European settlement its first use seems to have been as a location for windmills. The first was constructed in 1796 by Irish convict John Davis with the purpose of grinding wheat into flour for the making of bread. This windmill was of limited productivity, leading to a second windmill being built on the hill in the early 1800s. As a result the site acquired its first English name, Windmill Hill. The name of the suburb/locale around Observatory Hill today, Millers Point, references its erstwhile flour milling activity.
Sydney Observatory, 1874 ⇧
(Wikipedia Commons)
In 1800 a fort was constructed on the hill, named Fort Phillip in honour of the colony’s founding governor Arthur Phillip. This propitious spot was again chosen, this time because its perceived advantages for defence. The fort, equipped with four six-pounder cannons and a gunpowder magazine, was intended to be consolidated into a comprehensive citadel which would be a stronghold to safeguard the colony in the event of criminal insurrection. Such fears were fuelled by 1798 Irish rebellion and by the prospect of a local revolt by convicts in Sydney✤. Although for a while the hill acquired the name Citadel Hill, the fortification itself as planned never materialised. The project, proposed by Governor Hunter, got kicked round by succeeding governors, King, Bligh and Macquarie, but in the end the citadel was only ever half-built (primarily a powder magazine built by convict architect Greenway). The fort was eventually demolished around 1840✫.
Part of Fort Philip was given over in 1825 for the housing of a signal station…it’s construction by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis was prompted by the growth in shipping at the time. From here, flags and semaphore was used to communicate with ships in the harbour below. The presence of signal flags gave rise to a new name for the Hill, Flagstaff Hill (this name remained in currency into the 20th century with some locals referring to as “The Flaggie”). In 1847, with maritime activity in Sydney Town on the rise, a two-storey Telegraph House was added to Flagstaff Hill◲.
Fort Street High – on a 1920 cigarette card! ⇧
Also around 1825 Observatory Hill entered another phase of its diverse land-use, this one medical and educational. That year a (military) hospital was constructed on the hill, the second hospital only in the young colony’s history (the first was at George Street North in the The Rocks). By 1848 the hospital on the hill had closed and the site became a school the following year. Fort Street Model School, the first school in Australia not founded by a religious organisation, became known for its innovative teaching methods (intended to be a model for other schools who follow). Initially, Fort Street was a primary school but in the early 20th century a co-educational high school was added to the site◩. Fort Street Public School still exists today in the original location on Observatory Hill, opposite the Bradfield Highway❂.
The next and most important use made of Flagstaff Hill was the enterprise which gives the hill the name is by known by today, the construction of (Sydney) Observatory. Astronomical observations in the Southern Hemisphere were considered of particular importance and the handily-situated bluff was thought an ideal location to observe the stars. Built from 1857-1859 by architects William Weaver and Alexander Dawson, it originally comprised the observatory and the astronomer’s residence.
There was also a time ball on the observatory tower serving two functions. Each day at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon the time ball would drop, sending a signal (accompanying by a cannon blast) to alert people in the city and more importantly shipping on the seas to the time.
Formal gardens were created around the Observatory, circa 1875, The next decade, under the Flagstaff planting scheme, a grove of palm trees were planted. In the 20th century a tennis court was added. Observatory Park, which surrounds the Observatory itself, with its sloping lawns and great, sprawling old Moreton Bay figs is a popular lunch spot for city workers. The park also houses a Boer War memorial with an antique mounted gun and a bandstand rotunda which is a favourite for wedding photo shoots.
Observatory Park, 1941 ⇧
(Photo source: City of Sydney Archives, SRC3143)
In 1908 the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) established a facility on Observatory Hill. Rainfall on Observatory Hill is still a feature of Sydney weather reports, though these days the BOM maintains a number of different sites scattered around Sydney to gauge the city’s weather patterns.
Increasing city light and air pollution since the Seventies saw the Sydney Observatory close in 1982…the complex has since functioned as a scientific museum. Visitors today can take a tour of the Observatory, observe the stars at night through one of the facility’s powerful, modern telescopes, or look at the historic equipment, such as the 29cm refractor telescope, dating from 1874.
⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿
✤ in 1804 the fears came to fruition with an attempted uprising by convicts at Castle Hill in Sydney’s northwest
✫ Lower Fort Street which encircles Observatory Hill was named to commemorate Ft Phillip
◲ the salary and conditions of the signal-master John Jones in the 1840s (£150 per annum and his own comfortable on-site cottage) is an indicator of the signal station’s increasingly key role in the colony
◩ in 1916 the boys high school moved to a new location at Tavener Hill at Petersham. In 1975 the girls joined them
❂ the old Fort School Model School is now a heritage-listed National Trust site
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Publications consulted:
‘History of Observatory Park’, City of Sydney, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
‘How time flies: maintaining our 159 year-old Time Ball tradition‘, (by Melissa Hulbert), Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, 10 April 2017,www.maas.museum
Burwood is an old, established suburb in what is today called the Inner West of Sydney, but was once (broadly) just called the “Western Suburbs”. In the colonial period and even into the early days of Federation, Burwood’s standing in the “pecking order” of Sydney suburbs was probably somewhat higher than it is today, if the grandness of its large, surviving houses and mansions, especially towards the southern end of Burwood Road, Burwood, is anything to go by.
Appian way, or if you prefer, the Appian Way, is a reminder of the more exalted social status that Burwood perhaps once commanded. In the midst of the “Strata-titleland” that is modern day Burwood is the Appian Way, you’ll find it perched between Burwood Road (South) and the seminal Liverpool Road. Appian Way is just a short, little street which charts a serpentine course, looping not far from its eastern end. Within this loop lies the street’s main interest…at least as far as this correspondent is concerned.
Hoskins Estate
More of that later but first some background. Appian Way (with its obvious nod to Ancient Rome’s illustrious highway) had its genesis with wealthy industrialist George John Hoskins. Hoskins who along with his brother Charles extracted their immense capital from successful engineering and steel-making works, purchased the land which hitherto had been called Humphrey’ Paddock just after the turn of the 20th century✽. London-born Hoskins conceived of it as an (upmarket) model housing estate to accommodate the executives of his businesses in close proximity to himself. That is, a haven for citizens of his own socio-economic class. The estate of some 20 acres in area was intended for houses of a standard that would attract ‘respectable’ businessmen and professionals … a harmonious social community having all the facilities desirable for a self-contained suburban lifestyle” [‘A model community’, Cheryl Kemp and John Johnson, Inner West Courier, 28-May-2019, www.innerwestcourier.com.au].
Hoskins, exhibiting a tendency which nowadays we might describe as that of a “control freak”, leased rather than sold the estate’s houses, which allowed the industrialist and developer to monopolise all aspects of the community (only one solitary house in the tree-lined street had been sold by the time of Hoskins’ death in 1926) [ibid.].
The houses
The Dictionary of Sydney describes the Appian Way as a “heritage-listed precinct of Edwardian houses”. The architecture is of that period but the houses are best characterised as asymmetrical and very variable in style. Essentially, together the original estate comprises some of the finest examples of Australian Federation style with their multi-gabled roofs, wide use of slate and terracotta tiles, and drawing on a variety of domestic designs. The grounds of the properties are more than generously spacious – large blocks, expansive frontages, manicured lawns and landscape gardens. Appian Way includes a nature strip in the midst of these bushy and leafy residences which is neatly maintained and occupied by Brush Box trees [‘Appian Way’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
‘Erica’ – perhaps the Way’s standout ▲
The original houses still standing in Burwood’s Appian Way are a rich sample of different Federation styles. Among the variants of the genre is the Queen Anne Federation (‘Alba Longa’ and ‘Colonna’), the Arts and Crafts Federation (‘Erica’ and ‘St Ellero’) and the Bungaloiw Federation style (‘Casa Tasso’ and ‘Ostia’). One or two modern redbrick houses have also infiltrated the street, but these undistinguished abodes stick out by virtue of the paucity of their character in comparison with the elegant ‘Feds’.
Appian Way Recreational Club
On the eastern side of Appian Way the street forms a curve which envelops a communal reserve – this is Hoskins estate’s most distinctive feature回. The sign on the iron gate of the reserve spells out the acronym “AWRC’- Appian Way Recreational Club. The AWRC purportedly runs a lawn tennis club on the green field, but when I visited, the lines of the courts had not been recently marked and the nets nowhere to be seen✣. With the gates of the club firmly padlocked, it did not look like there had been a game in jest or earnest for some time.What tennis courts? ▲
When the estate’s houses were eventually offered for sale after Hoskins had passed on, the standing arrangement was that each house sold came with a share in the communal reserve (owned collectively by the Appian Way Recreational Club) [‘A model community’].▲ Bush plants and agaves surround the ‘courts’
Footnote: I have a distant but nonetheless pretty firm recollection (dating from around late 1970s) that before the lawn tennis courts existed at the AWRC, the field was used as a croquet court…which would be an altogether appropriately patrician pastime for the financially well-connected community of the estate’s earliest days – what today we might call “the big end of town”.
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✽ recipient of the original land grant at Burwood was one William Faithful who came to the colony as a private in the NSW Corps in 1792
回 it is speculated that Hoskins may have derived inspiration for this distinctive feature from ‘The Parade’ in nearby Enfield [‘A model community’]
✣ let alone the semblance of an actual player or two
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
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
Ealing is a name synonymous with British film comedy, Ealing comedies of the late 1940s through the 1950s…high quality, well written and acted feature films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers✲.
Ealing’s film association with Australia is less well known. It’s genesis lay with Ealing’s movie mogul and powerful postwar image-maker, Michael Balcon. With the Second World War still raging, Balcon despatched documentary film director Harry Watt to Australia to explore its filmable story possibilities. Balcon was looking to make films which reflected “the strength, diversity and stoicism of the (British) Commonwealth” [‘Ealing Studios in Australia: An Introduction ‘, (Stephen Morgan) (2012), www.thefarparadise.wordpress.com].
Pagewood before Ealing …
Once Ealing committed to Australia as a film production location, it sought out appropriate studios for projects, which it found in the southern Sydney suburb of Pagewood. These studios in fact were already operating as a film production unit…constructed in 1935 for National Studios❄ in anticipation of an expansion of the local film industry as a result of the Film Quota Act (1936) which imposed a minimum domestic quota on the level of film distribution in New South Wales❂. The studios’ first production was Charles Chauvel’sUncivilised and other significant, early Australian movies were shot there – including Columbia’s “Australian Western” Rangle River (1936)and Ken G Hall’s Dad Rudd, MP (1940) – but a pattern of closures of National Studios (1937-40, 1942-45) hampered its efforts to establish itself as a film production unit [Sydney Morning Herald, 27-May-1936 (Trove)].
In 1946 Harry Watt fulfilled the task set him by Studio head Balcon by writing and directing the first feature for Ealing “down under”. The Overlanders, the story of an epic cattle drive across the continent, made Chips Rafferty an international star and an Australian screen icon.
The success of The Overlanders prompted Ealing to establish a film base in Australia. At the beginning of 1949 it acquired the struggling Pagewood studios❇. Ealing took over a “shambles of a place” (rundown through neglect and misuse by both the Australian and US armies during WWII occupancy), but nonetheless it invested considerable capital into the property to create state-of-the-art film studios with first-rate sound-engineering departments, cutting room and sound stage – a concern worth all up £100,000 [“The studio for indoor filming of ‘Kangaroo’ “, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 11-Sep-1950 (Trove)].
Chips Rafferty was chosen to head up the cast of Watt’s next Ealing Australian movie Eureka Stockade (1949) – the dramatic and symbolic story of miner resistance to overbearing British rule on the 1850s goldfields. ‘Eureka’ (released in the US as Massacre Hill failed at the box office (general consensus of critics was that Chips was miscast in the lead role of the 1850s Irish-Australian rebel Peter Lalor).
Bitter Springsdirected by Ralph Smart followed…this time with Chips more comfortable returning to the role of courageous pioneering bushman in the Australian outback. The most interesting aspect of Bitter Springs is that it was prepared to tackle the polemical topic of indigenous land rights – in the movie white settlers clash with local Aboriginal people (Pitjantjatjara and Kokatha Mula tribes) over the possession of land. This screen subject was 25 to 30 years ahead of its time, however an assimilationist mindset prevails in its handling…in one scene Wally (Chip’s character) betrays the gross ignorance of Europeans about Aboriginal Australian – when the fair-minded territorial ranger (Michael Pate) questions the planned land grab, Wally summarily dismisses the Aborigines’ claim to the disputed land, stating that the Aboriginal culture was only about 1,000 years old! [Morgan, loc.cit.]✥. One jarring note is that the serious theme of Bitter Springs is undermined by Ealing’s decision to cast comic Tommy Trinder in the movie, Trinder’s character’s constant cracking of jokes tends to deflate the build-up of tension arising from the film’s central conflict between the blacks and the whites [Byrnes, ‘ASO’].
Chips Rafferty ▼
After 1950 however Ealing made few of its own films at the Pagewood Studios, instead it leased out the premises to other movie production companies, eg, to 20th Century Fox who made Kangaroo (1952) at Pagewood with Maureen O’Hara, the first technicolor film made in Australia.
Closing chapters of Ealing Pagewood
In 1952 the Pagewood Studios shut down production◙ (in what was meant to be a temporary move only), but the following year Ealing sold the studios to Associated Television which renamed the studios “Television City” and leased it to independent film producers. A 1954 independent production of the “Treasure Island” tale, Long John Silver, (with Robert Newton) was filmed at Pagewood (interiors) and exteriors shot at the Royal National Park [‘AAARRRHH There Matey! – The Strange and Wondrous Tale of Bill Constable & the Cinemascope Pirates of Pagewood…’ (Bob Hill, Oct 2018) www.apdg.org.au].
Ealing had been trying to make Robbery Under Arms in Australia since 1949 but it was finally completed by Ealing’s parent company Rank Organisation in 1957 – with some footage shot at Pagewood but mostly in London (exteriors: Flinders Ranges and near Bourke) [‘Film World Weather in Australia Disappoints Studio’, The West Australian, 03-Nov-1949, (Trove)].
Pagewood on it’s last legs
The final film to be made (or partly made) at what had become Television City (Pagewood) was a film version of the hit Australian play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1958/59). ‘Doll’ was made by Burt Lancaster’s HHL company using US and British leads…the production however took radical liberties with Lawler’s play and the film was ultra-Americanised with unsatisfactory results. In 1959 the Pagewood site was sold to General Motors Holden Australia which allowed the car manufacturer to expand its existing plant in the suburb. In the Eighties the studios’ land (and the adjacent bus depot) were redeveloped again, becoming the location of Westfield’s huge Eastgardens shopping mall and a housing estate built by the Meriton Group [‘Pagewood Studios’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
GMH Pagewood ▼
Ealing’s last Antipodean hooray
The Siege of Pinchgut (1959) was Ealing’s last film shot in and with an Australian setting (and as it transpired, it proved to be the company’s final ever adult feature). Harry Watt came back to direct what was a grim convicts-on-the-run drama filmed around Fort Denison (Pinchgut) in Sydney Harbour. ‘Pinchgut’, released in the US as Four Desperate Men, did not succeed at the box office⊛.
Australia closed for film-makers!
Ealing’s venture in Australia was never really a secure one…the follow up films to The Overlanders yielded only disappointing returns. The writing was on the wall for Ealing’s Australian enterprise from the time Menzies’ Liberal-Country Party won power in Australia in 1949 and took an antithetical attitude towards domestic film production. The LCP government refused to renew Ealing’s lease on the Pagewood Studios (a bitter pill for Ealing who’d already spent considerable funds on the Pagewood project). In a move which set the industry in Australia back decades, the government deemed that “film making was not an essential industry” and pointed out that the lease-holders (Ealing) were not an Australian residents in any case [The A-Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema, (Albert Moran & Errol Vieth), (2009)].
If that wasn’t the tipping point for Ealing, it came with the studios’ own assessment… Balcon authorised the company’s accountant to undertake an financial evaluation of the Australian studios’ viability – which was negative [ibid.]. In the words of Eric Williams (manager at the Ealing Pagewood Studios), ultimately Ealing found it “impossible to maintain continuous production at a range of 12,000 miles”. That there was no Australian sponsor for productions was put forward as an additional disincentive for staying [‘Decision a blow to film industry’, The Mail (Adelaide), 26-Jan-1952 (Trove)].
PostScript: The failure of Ealing’s Australian venture was merely one chapter in the larger story of Ealing Studios’ global rise and fall. The rising costsand risks of big budget films of the parent company in Britain, large staff numbers and increasing expenditures, all contributed to the toll of financial problems plaguing Ealing and the UK industry as a whole…leading to Ealing’s eventual demise (this accumulation of pressures forced production head Balcon to unload Ealing in 1955).Note: the original 1930s studios in West London (above) were bought by the BBC in the 1990s and resurrected as a facility for hire [‘Remembering Ealing Studios and the golden age of British film’, BBC News, (Vincent Dowd), 30-Aug-2015, www.bbc.com].
︵‿︵‿︵︵‿︵‿︵︵‿︵‿︵︵‿︵‿︵︵‿︵‿︵︵‿✲ and by association, synonymous also with actor Alec Guinness, the star of most of this “purple patch” of Ealing classics
❂ unfortunately the state government failed to back its own law, not allocating adequate funding to its implementation… when resisted by Hollywooddistributors the legislationwas killed off by the end of 1937
❇ Pagewood’s rival film production houses in Sydney, Cinesound at Bondi Junction and Figtree Studios at Lane Cove had folded, and turned into, respectively, a cordial factory and a transport depot [Barrier Miner, 11-Sep-1950]
✥ Wally’s band of settlers reinforce the stereotype with “disparaging views about stone-age men who do nothing with the land” [‘Bitter Springs (1950)’ Synopsis, (Paul Byrnes), ASO mobile, www.aso.gov.au]
◙ described by Ken G Hall as “a fatal blow” to the national film industry which would relegate Australia to “the bottom of the list of the world’s 60 film producing countries”
⊛ although an historical point of interest of the movie are shots of what was left of the old Fort Macquarie Tram Depot then being demolished for the construction of Sydney Opera House [‘Siege of Pinchgut’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
Most motorists who regularly drive within a 10-15km radius of the centre of Sydney have found themselves at some time at the intersection of Parramatta and Liverpool Roads – not uncommonly in heavily banked-up peak traffic. In the pioneering days of the New South Wales colony, the routes of the two major roads played a seminal role in the exploration and discovery of new areas to the west, south and north of Sydney.
The first rough tracks crudely carved out of the wilderness by the colonists in 1788 pretty much follow the routes of Parramatta and Liverpool roads as they were later constructed✲. For many of the early explorers of NSW this intersection of the Great Western Road (to Parramatta, the Blue Mountains and beyond that the Central West and the continent’s vast interior) and the Great Southern Road (to Liverpool and the Southern Tablelands), was the jumping-off point for many exploratory treks into the colony’s hinterland.
The intersection at the junction of three inner west Sydney suburbs, Ashfield, Summer Hill and Haberfield, is thus the ideal place to commemorate those early heroic efforts of exploration, endurance and hardship, and in 1988 as part of Australia’s Bicentennary of European settlement, this is precisely what happened.
If you turn from Parramatta Road into Liverpool Road, immediately on your right, between a fast food chicken outlet and the corner, you will see a small, narrow tree-lined park (about 85-90m x 35m). The most intriguing association of the park is its name – Explorers Park✪.
The park comprises as its centrepiece a long arched trellis covered with the thick, verdant vines of a climbing plant, forming a tunnel effect. On the paved floor, along the length of the trellis, are plaques which celebrate those early 19th century Australian explorers. Starting with Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, who with the inestimable help of local aboriginal trackers from various clans and tribes, made the breakthrough discovery of a viable route across the Great Dividing Range, there are plaques with brief summaries of the achievements of all those who followed – the likes of Oxley, Mitchell, Sturt, the tragic Kennedy, Hume and Hovell (one half of which gave his name to the iconic Hume Highway that has its genesis at the intersection).
At the north end of the park, there’s a dome-shaped trellis which backs on to Parramatta Road. The trellis contains a white wall with a stencil pattern depicting images of the participants who made the pioneering achievements of exploration possible – the explorers themselves, their mode of transport (the camels) and their invaluable indigenous guides.
Long before the advent of the Bicenntenary triggered the construction of Explorers Park, the location was a busy thoroughfare for mounted travellers, horse and carts and livestock, especially after Liverpool Road was opened in 1821. One hundred years later exactly, with the age of the automobile established as the dominant and future mode of transport, this exact block of land was purchased by a motor engineer Frank Dale. Two years later in 1923, he built a motor service station (Dales Garage) on the site. Over the following decades ownership of the garage regularly changed hands (Major Motors, Western Service Station, etc.). Eventually the land was acquired by the DMR (Department of Main Roads) and the garage demolished to allow for the widening of the high-traffic intersection [‘Sydney’s fork in the road’, Inner West Courier, 19-Feb-2019 (Ann O’Connell, Ashfield Historical Society)].
Dales Garage (photo: Inner West Courier) ∇
Footnote: An early landmark pub for travellersOpposite the Explorers Park site, across Parramatta Road (in what is today Haberfield), there used to be another building at this important intersection…this was a hotel called Speed the Plough Inn (often abbreviated to ‘The Plough Inn’), one of Sydney’s iconic travellers’ pubs of the early colonial era. The Inn was built by a pioneering settler of Haberfield, David Ramsey in the late 1820s [‘The Dobroyde Estate’, (Ramsey Family History), http://belindacohen.tripod.com/ramsayfamilyhistory/dobroydestate.html]. ▲An early drawing of the hotel by George W Roberts (c.1845) (State Library of NSW)
Long gone, but in it’s day the Plough Inn went far beyond merely providing food, drink and shelter…boasting extensive stabling for livery and coach horses, as well as ample enclosures and water for livestock (the yard and adjoining paddocks were used for sheep and cattle sales) [Harvest of the Years – The Story of Burwood, 1794-1974, Eric Dunlop (1974 Burwood Municipal Council)]. The Plough Inn closed down in 1911 with the land becoming part of the Haberfield subdivision.
Speed the Plough Inn, Parramatta Road ∇
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✲ as illustrated in Captain (later Governor) John Hunter’s An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea at the time
✪ Explorers Park is only metres from the larger Ashfield Park which features a statue of the popular children’s literature character Mary Poppins, commemorating the fact that the author of the Mary Poppins books, PL Travers, once lived in the suburb
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
The Westfield business group, after its recent merger with a Franco-Dutch real estate Goliath made it the largest commercial real estate corporation in the world, has come a long way from its humble beginnings in Blacktown, NSW nearly 60 years ago.
⇡ Westfield development signage, 1960s (Source: ‘Westfield History’)
The story begins with two postwar Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. They both arrive in Sydney in the early 1950s and both separately start up small businesses in western Sydney. Frank Lowy and John Saunders (originally Jeno Schwarcz) come into each other’s world when Lowy would regularly deliver small items to Saunders’ milk bar. The two hit it off and in 1955 they combine their skill sets and open a delicatessen together in Blacktown (outer western suburbs of Sydney).
Lowy’s road from small goods deliverer to nation-wide/international mall king
In July 1959 Saunders and Lowy, having adopted the one-stop-shopping model of US retailing and recognising the population growth potential of western Sydney, open their first shopping centre – Westfield Plaza❈ in Blacktown [‘Australia’s retail history – Westfield Parramatta’, 29-Sep-2017, www.arc.parracity.nsw.gov.au]. With 12 shops, two department stores and a supermarket, “people flocked to see the plaza which newspapers of the day described as the most modern American-type combined retail centre” [Scentre Group, (history), www.scentregroup.com].
Westfield Plaza of itself was not anything like a full-blown shopping mall on the American scale, but it did launch Westfield✥ on its skyward trajectory. In 1960 the Westfield Development Corporation was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange as a public company. According to the gurus of applied finance, such has been Westfield’s phenomenal success in the commercial property game that “anyone who had the foresight to invest $1000 in the fledgling Westfield group back in 1960 and (then) reinvested all the dividends back into stock would have a holding valued at $136 million” (as at 2004)[‘Lowy’s retail revolution’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26-Apr-2004, www.smh.com.au].
⇡Burwood Westfield Shoppingtown, 1966
Westfield Hornsby shopping centre (1961) opened two years after Blacktown…by 2018 there were about 36 Westfields in Australia, the majority in the eastern coast states of NSW, Victoria and Queensland❂. In 1977 Westfield took the plunge and moved into the American market. The first US Westfield mall was the Trumbull Shopping Park in Connecticut…by 2005 there were Westfields in 15 American states, many clustered together in particular cities (in 2018 the total number of Westfield malls in the US was given as 33). Worldwide there are over 103 Westfield shopping centres including in the UK, New Zealand, Italy, Croatia and Brazil [‘Westfield Group‘, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⇡ Westfield Eastgardens (NSW)
The Lowy/Westfield formula for success
Locating for growth: Unlike the mall pattern in America (developments on the edges of urban sprawl) Lowy and Saunders put their retail centre developments in places that were close to railway stations, in areas that were growing or were already built-up, allowing Westfield to “dominate the prime catchment areas for retail spending” [‘Sir Frank Lowy’s Great Australian success story’, Australian Financial Review, 14-Dec-2017, www.afr.com].
Westfield’s involvement in commercial property projects did not confine itself to solely building the shopping centre, but rather it retained an ongoing role in the venture through ownership of the investment portfolio. Thus, Westfield maintained a constant cash flow while its assets ensured it would be able to secure finance for future expansion. With the growth of department store retailing from the 1960s, it was specialist developers like the Westfield Group and Lend Lease who became the dominant players over time in the Australian landscape [‘Westfield’s history tracks the rise of the Australian shopping centre and show what’s to come’, (Louise Grimmer & Matthew Bailey), The Conversation, 13-Dec-2017), www.theconversation.com].
The challenge of online shopping
Lowy’s Westfield, like all 21st century retail industry players, has had to adjust to competing with the modern worldwide phenomena of the “digital revolution”. Large retail players losing market share to online sales have adopted strategies such as moving to “smaller, more carefully curated boutique stores in affluent areas” (eg, DJs, Debenhams UK), thereby severing their reliance on being inside big shopping malls [ibid.].
The advent of pop-up storeshas also provided a challenge to established retail stores and malls in the 21st century. Uniqlo, In-N-Out Burgers, Niké, Nestlé, Coco-Cola, and numerous other businesses have established their pop-up presence in Australia over the last decade or so. The immediacy and flexibility of this retail mode have allowed them to drastically cut their overheads and take a share of the permanent entities’ market. Westfield’s response has been to rebrand its casual leasing division as the “Pop-up Department”, and thus making it easier for pop-ups to be accommodated within the Westfield shopping centre umbrella [ibid.].
⇡Westfield Geelong (Vic.), 1986
In the face of growing online competition from e-commerce giants such as Amazon, the malls and large department stores have made concerted efforts to lure back lost customers…to take Westfield as an example again, the approach has been to try to enhance the in-store services available to customers, to provide “unique services and experiences” that would value-add to their visits in a way the online businesses couldn’t offer [ibid.]. This prompted a strategy change from Lowy◙, a refocus on “developing flagship stores in prime international retail sites, (and) developing shopping experiences, not just transactions”✦ [‘Sir Frank’ (AFR), loc.cit.].
The model for the new approach, as usual, has been the overseas malls, especially the US. These shopping enterprises, to entice the buying public to desert the online mode and return to the physical store, have taken to offering punters a new mix of leisure and entertainment options inside the malls. Shopping centres in Australia have already embraced some of these innovations⊙ (like upscale dining, cinema complexes, fitness clubs) and are certain to add many of the other mall features already in place in the US (eg, concert venues, day spas, art galleries, farmers’ markets) [Grimmer & Bailey, op.cit.].
Footnote: Remarkably on song as Frank Lowy’s business antennae has been, there have one or two lapses (over a sixty year span!) where Frank DID NOT emerge out of a deal with “laugh lines around his pocket” (a “Fred Daggism” (AKA John Clarke)) … probably the lowest point was Lowy trying to buy the TEN Network in the 1980s and getting his fingers badly burnt. Within the milieu of the mall Lowy has had a reputation for being a tough landlord. At one point Westfield Group was brought before the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) which found that Westfield had abused its market and commercial power. Lowy was forced to formally undertake to “not engage in unconscionable conduct and intimidation” of tenants [‘Westfield promises not to bully’, (Anthony Hughes), Sydney Morning Herald, 18-Jun-2004, www.smh.com.au].
⇡Westfield’s founder & entrepreneurial driving force
PostScript: Nothwithstanding Westfield’s measures to try to counter the inroads made by the online merchandisers, Westfield, in line with the catch-all trend adversely affecting global retailing, had suffering a downturn in trade. Ultimately Lowy (and his sons) decided at the end of 2017 to sever their hold on the hitherto family business empire. Lowy meticulously and vigorously negotiated the sale of Westfield to international property giant Unibail-Rodamco, a societas Europaea (a public company set up under the auspices of the EU). The transaction netted the Lowy family a cool $32.7bn with the new merger entity taking the name Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield [‘Westfield: Lowy family sells shopping centre empire to French property giant’, (E Morgan & I Verrender), ABC News, 12-Dec-2017, www.mobile.abc.net.au].
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❈ some sources give the name as “Westfield Place”
✥ etymology: ‘West’ = the location in Sydney’s western suburbs \ ‘field’ = the first centre was located on subdivided farmland
❂ Burwood Westfield Shoppingtown (inner west Sydney) opened in 1966, was the first Westfield to carry the (now characteristic) company logo…it was also the first to contain a major department store – David Jones [1959 Westfield Place opens in Blacktown’, (Australian food history timeline), [www.australianfoodhistorytimeline.com.au]
◙ Westfield’s two-man partnership came to an end when co-founder John Saunders sold out his half of the business in 1987
✦ in 2014 the Westfield Group undertook a major organisational restructure, splitting into two entities – Scentre Group (Australasia) and Westfield Corporation (Europe and America)
⊙ the Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne, for example, now has the Legoland Amusement Park within its walls
We booked into Rydges Hotel in Queenstown✲, New Zealand’s capital of adventure tourism. Whitewater rafting, bungy jumping and Jet Shotovers beckoned, but as our hotel was handily situated in proximity to the wharf on picture perfect Lake Wakatipu, something more sedate – a leisurely boat trip across its glistening waters – was what took our immediate fancy.
From the Queenstown wharf we caught the vintage twin screw steamboat TSS Earnslaw❁…the journey was a complete step back in time…a slow and leisurely ride across Lake Wakatipu with the boat chugging along at a 1924 pace. No one on board much minded the pedestrian progress we were making. The only downside to the trip was trying to avoid inhaling the vessel’s toxic nasties, trying to survive the vile fumes of black smoke emitted from the steamer’s coal-fired boilers pervading the air inside the Earnslaw.
Once at Walter Peak High Country, we were immediately taken on a guided tour of the working farm. We got up close with the farm’s various livestock – Scottish Highland cattle, red deer, lambs and some adaptable llamas. My favourite critters on the farm were the “hairy coos” as they are called in Scotland. These Erse ‘Heilan’ cows, sandy-golden-tan in colour and rather soporific in nature, were a delight with their full coats of shaggy hair endearingly covering their eyes.
My highest highlight of the tour however was the demonstration of rounding up and penning a drove of sheep. This was made memorable by the antics of the leathery-faced old shepherd guy and his “Abbott and animal Costello” routine with the farm’s working border collie. The old farmer was a real joker, entertaining us with his dry commentary which bore more than a touch of the John Clarke quippery – and the same flat deadpan delivery. To start the show, he barked out instructions to the collie to tear madly all over the top paddock fetching the grazing sheep. After terrorising and cajoling the sheep into one cowering bunch, the dog efficiently corralled them into the enclosure at the south end. Then, with mission accomplished, the farmer, with comic timing and mock annoyance, remarked of the still heavily panting dog, “I don’t know why he’s so tired! I’m the one who does all the work”!
The one-liners didn’t stop when the farmer donned his “shearing kit”, the blue and red overalls of his defleecing trade, to do some serious bladework. With a couple of hand-picked Romneys, he demonstrated (with accompanying audio) how to give a sheep the “Full Monty” crew cut! I’m not sure if the sizeable cohort of Japanese tourists on hand were sufficiently au fait with ‘Kiwised’ English to get the gist of the demonstrator’s jokey spiel and all the nuances of his wry humorous asides, but they generally seemed to sense the comic implications of the situation and enthusiastically laughed accordingly.
The other stand-out feature of the visit, the afternoon tea, was held in the Colonel’s Homestead, an elegant turreted terracotta red and white building set against the impressive backdrop of the towering Walter Peak. The high tea worked a treat with very generous servings of scones and pikelets and the obligatory jam and cream, all washed down with a nice cuppa. Afterwards, a leisurely lakeside stroll through the homestead’s très picturesque English-style gardens set the seal on a great day’s outing.
Time passed at the right pace on the return journey in the Earnslaw to Rydges – the tour operator organised a traditional sing-a-long to the accompaniment of the boat’s period-piece piano. We were given a complimentary “NZ Song Book” and encouraged to join in. The songs were every bit as vintage as the 1912 vessel and only a bit cringeworthy, but hey it was all part of setting an authentic mood for a momentary step back into yesteryear.
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✲ Kiwi anecdote # 579 – No double entendres please, we’re New Zealanders! The Queenstown Rydges’ street entrance unusually is on the building’s fourth floor, owing to a bit of a ridge in the landscape where it was built. Our room was on the sixth floor. Returning to the hotel on the first night of our stay, I decided to walk up the stairs (only two flights) to our floor. Perplexingly though when I reached the top of the stairs on the fifth floor, I couldn’t see the staircase which led to the next floor, our floor! It was not where it should (logically) have been. I scouted around level 6 for a bit but weirdly the staircase couldn’t be sighted. So, puzzled, I went back to the fourth floor to ask reception. The attractive young Pakeha woman on duty responded to my query in a slightly patronising tone reserved I imagine for the utterly clueless…she said to me firmly: “Sir-r-r, we are a very normal hotel in Queenstown, we always have sux here between five and seven”. Realising that the immediate implication I had drawn from what she had said, had not for one scintilla dawned on her, I was sorely tempted but managed to restrain myself from replying, thanks very much for telling me when, all that’s missing now is where! Ba-boom!
❁ the Earnslaw briefly popped up in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) as an Amazon River boat(sic)
Next year, Sainsbury’s, which has long maintained a place on the podium of Britain’s leading supermarkets will reach its sesquicentennial milestone – 150 years in the grocery retailing trade. Over the last 20-plus years the company has had to content itself with the runner-up position in the market leadership ladder of supermarket chains, trailing the seemingly ubiquitous and dynamic Tesco which has swept all before it. Nevertheless, Sainsbury’s has carved itself a distinctive and impressive notch among the titans of modern British retailing since it first opened for business in the Victorian era.
Foundation years, butter and establishing the Sainsbury styleIn 1869 the newly wed John James Sainsbury, founded Sainsbury’s in partnership with his wife, Mary Ann Sainsbury (née Staples). The two opened their first dairy goods shop at 173 Drury Lane, Holborn (London). Mrs Sainsbury played an active role in the business, in the early years she effectively managed the Drury Lane shop, making it “famous for the quality of its butter”. As Sainsbury’s built its formative business reputation largely on product quality, Mary Ann (the daughter of a dairyman) insisted on fresh milk on the shop’s shelves, as well as, that the Dutch supplier of Sainbury’s butter date-stamp every unit item it supplied [‘The History of Sainsbury’s – Trying Something New for 147 Years’, (Darren Turner, 11 Nov.), www.s4rb.com]. The freshness and purity of Sainsbury’s butter gave it a commercial edge over the competition in an era known for widespread food adulteration (eg, it was a common practice for milk to be watered down) [Judi Bevan, ‘Battle of the Supermarkets’, RSA Journal, Vol. 152, No 5517 (June 2003)].
In the 19th century Sainsbury’s rivals in the grocery game were shops like Lipton’s and Home and Colonial Stores. Early on John J Sainsbury developed a business model which made the shops stand out from the other grocers by doing things differently. Appearance was important to Sainsbury, the shops were clean and hygienic, on offer were “high-quality products and fresh provisions at prices even London’s poor could afford” (an early shop slogan was “Quality perfect, prices lower”).
A gradualist approach to growthJohn J Sainsbury, whose motto could well have been “Make haste slowly”✱, was in no hurry to expand the business. From the Drury Lane foundations he gradually added a shop in Kentish Town and then two more in the new railway suburb⊡. It wasn’t until 1882 that Sainbury made his first move outside London, establishing a shop in Croydon, one that specifically sought to cater for a middle-class clientele, selling comestibles which were in the luxury range (foreign cheeses, poultry and game birds, cooked meat delicacies, etc) [‘Sainsbury family’, (Bridget Salmon), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (23-IX-2004), www.odnb.com].
Even well into the 20th century century each new Sainsbury’s store was a matter of measured deliberation…the company continued “to place the highest priority on quality, taking the time to weigh each decision, whether it meant researching suppliers for a new product, assessing the reliability of a new supplier, or measuring the business potential of a new site” [‘J Sainsbury plc History’, Funding Universe, www.fundinguniverse.com].
During John J Sainsbury’s tenure in charge, the company established what was to become the Sainsbury’s “house style”, stores which were elaborately decorated in contrast with the other (typically drab) grocers of the day. The key to the company’s success was covering all of the bases…John James would price-match the competition while at the same time offering higher standards of quality, service and hygiene. Moreover, the likes of Home and Colonial and Lipton’s, while having numerically more shops, could not match Sainsbury’s range of products [ibid.].
Sainsbury’s “Own Brands”Although “own brands” are thought of as a modern phenomena in retail merchandising, Sainsbury’s first introduced the concept as early as 1882! The shop’s first own brand was its staple commodity – butter. Sainsbury’s continued this practice and by the 1950s there was a host of such offerings on the shelves: ‘Sainsbury’s Cornflakes’, ‘Sainsbury’s Snax Biscuits’, ‘Sainsbury’s Cola’, ‘Sainsbury’s Peas and Carrots’, etc, etc. [‘The History of Sainsbury’s’, loc.cit.]. By 1980 half of the products Sainsbury’s sold were under its own label [Bevan, op.cit.].
Modernising Sainsbury’sIn 1950 Sainsbury’s refitted one of its earliest shops, in West Croydon, creating what was Britain’s first supermarket proper, one of the country’s earliest to operate as fully self-service. Some customers were at first put off by the innovation, thinking it impersonal and “anti-social”, however the convenience factor of not having to wait to be served eventually won out…Advertising and Marketing magazine reviewing the new store concluded: “From the point of view of the customer the chief advantages of self-service shopping are the speed with which shopping can be done and the ease with which one is reminded of things needed…these advantages substantially outweigh the disadvantages of not getting the personal attention of the assistant.” [‘Sainsbury ‘s return to site of first self-service supermarket’, (Graham Ruddick), The Telegraph (UK), 30-Aug-2013, www.telegraph.co.uk].
Although under its founder Sainsbury’s had been reluctant to get too big too quickly, once the company passed to his successor, son John Benjamin Sainsbury✫, the number of stores grew (though still at a trademark cautious pace). Under the strong leadership of a string of postwar CEOs (such as (John) Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover), this trend was maintained❂.
Although Sainsbury’s followed a typically cautious approach to its business model, the company couldn’t be accused of dragging its feet when it came to embracing new technology. In the early Sixties they were the first retailer in Britain to develop a computerised distribution system and their stores were among the first to turf out electronic cash registers in favour of scanners in the late Eighties [‘J Sainsbury plc’, www.company-histories.com].
In 1973 the company went public under the holding co name J Sainsbury plc after being floated on the stock market. The 1970s witnessed increasing competition from discounters and a squeezing of profit margins, prompting an escalation in diversification…non-food items started to appear on Sainsbury’s shelves. It also innovated with the advent of ‘Savacentre’ hypermarkets and ‘Homebase’ house and garden centres. Overseas expansion was concentrated in the US – Sainsbury’s acquired Shaw’s Supermarkets, Giant Food Inc and Star Markets (its holdings in Shaw’s were unloaded in 2004).
Stumble and renewalDuring the Nineties, Sainsbury’s, hitherto accustomed to being the premier supermarket chain, was relegated to second place by Tesco which became supermarket “top dog” in the UK in 1995. A change-up was required at Sainsbury’s and further diversification was sought. In 1997 the company ventured into in-store banking (in partnership with the Bank of Scotland – before going it alone in 2014). During this period the 130-year direct involvement in running the company of the Sainsbury family came to an end with the retirement of David (Lord) Sainsbury. The acquisition of Bells Stores in the early 2000s signalled a move into convenience stores, adding to the variety of its retail outlets.
Sainsbury’s – status quo in 2018 and future fortunes?In the contemporary British retail landscape, Sainsbury’s, with a healthy slab of the market, is the second largest chain in the country✥ with ≻1415 stores (2017) and ≻186,900 employees (2018). Despite having long conceded first place to Tesco, this state of play is a fluid one…no longer dominated by the Sainsbury family (though it retains 15% of shares in the company), these days the majority shareholder is the Qatar Investment Authority (note comparisons with Harrods). 2018 has seen Sainsbury’s unearth a bold attempt to unseat Tesco’s hegemony through a planned merger with ASDA which would give the merged entity around 30-31% of the UK market – as against about 27.5% for Tesco (Source: Kantar). Approval of the controversial merger is still pending but could depend upon Sainsbury’s and ASDA offloading 463 of their stores to win over the competition ‘watchdog’ (CMA) [‘Walmart’s Asda agrees to UK merger deal with Sainsbury’s’, (Silvia Amaro) 30-Apr-2018, www.cnbc.com; ‘Sainsbury’s and Asda may have to offload 460 stores to seal merger’, (Sarah Butler), The Guardian, 28-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].
Footnote: A “leg-up” for UK supermarketsAs the age of postwar austerity and scarcity gave way to an era of abundance and growth in the 1960s, supermarket heavyweights like Sainsbury’s and Tesco led the way. The supermarket chains on their expansionary arcs was facilitated by legislative changes affecting the retail sector. The abolition of resale price maintenance (RPM)✧ by the British Board of Trade in 1964 was a total game-changer! RPM had allowed (especially large) manufacturers to dictate terms to retailers, the law change shifted the balance in favour of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and co, who now could lord it over even the largest of manufacturers like Unilever and Procter & Gamble [James Buchan, Review of Trolley Wars by Judi Bevan, The Guardian, 30-Apr-2005].
PostScript: How Tesco outmanoeuvred and outgunned Sainsbury’sOne of the key moves made by Tesco was to take careful note of what the older retailer was doing right (eg, offering quality in goods and service) and copying it! (in “Tesco-speak” this is called ‘benchmarking’ the opposition) [Bevan, op.cit.]. As Tesco grew incrementally it benefitted from a “virtuous circle” of business⊙. The sheer, monolithic size of Tesco allows it to buy merchandise more cheaply and accordingly sell it more cheaply. Ergo, they turn over more customers and make greater sales, and so the cycle is sustains itself [Buchan loc.cit.]. Tesco has a reputation for following intuitive hunches…being less risk adverse than other major supermarkets like Sainsbury’s it happily ventured into lower class, ‘brownfield’ areas that its competitors wouldn’t touch [Bevan, op.cit.].
—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧✱Festina lente – the motto of Roman emperors Augustus and Titus, et al⊡ a calculated, gradual approach to expansion suited John James who had a very hands-on management style, by temperament he was a “micro-manager”, immersing himself in the minutiae of the shops’ everyday transactions✫ known for his focus on staff welfare and remembered by one of his senior staff as a “benevolent dictator”, [‘Sainsbury family’, loc.cit.]❂ there have so many Sainsbury family members involved in the company, in British politics, in art patronage and philanthropy, to almost necessitate a scorecard✥ although it briefly conceded second place to the Walmart owned ASDA in 2003/2004✧ Resale price maintenance (or retail price maintenance) is a practice where the distributor agrees to sell at a price set by the manufacturer⊙ a business scenario the Financial Times described as “hard to create, but (also) hard to disrupt”
Before the principals of Marks and Spencer teamed up, the entity was singular, just the one aspiring retailer, Michael Marks, and of material necessity he started very small. A late 19th century immigrant refugee from the Russian Empire’s Byelorussian region, Marks launched his first penny bazaar stall in Central Leeds’ Kirkgate Market with start-up funding amounting to one £5 note – which he had borrowed! Marks met his future partner at this time, Thomas Spencer, and eventually went into business with him after the latter, a Yorkshire cashier, invested £300 for a half-share in what became Marks and Spencer✱.
Early days: Establishing a chain of “penny bazaars”Michael Marks kicked off with a very basic business model: his initial stall in Leeds was a “one penny stall”, hence the business’ motto, “Don’t ask the price, its a penny”⊡. The early stall commodities focused on household goods, haberdashery, toys and a sheet-music business (note the early spelling of the store name with an errant plural ‘s’ in ‘Spencer’ in the photo at left). Marks (the more dynamic and “hands-on” of the partners) immediately set about expanding the business, first up establishing a shop in Manchester. By 1894 Marks and Spencer had graduated to a permanent stall in Leeds’ covered market (in 1904 they opened their first Leeds shop) and in 1901 concentrated its open market operation in Birkenhead on Merseyside.
Forging a regional retail identityThe two partners initially focussed locally, concentrating on Yorkshire and Lancashire, a new warehouse in Manchester (1897) became the early centre of the M&S business empire which numbered 36 branches by that time…the firm accumulated stalls (later on, shops) in towns and cities across the North of England (Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Sunderland) as well as further south (Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, etc) [‘The History of Marks and Spencer’, (h2g2, 2008/2012), www.h2g2.com].
SpencerMarks
By the early 1900s Marks and Spencer was starting to yield a very tidy surplus, becoming a limited company in 1903. At this juncture Thomas Spencer decided to cash in and retire from the partnership with a nice “nest egg” of £15,000 (for his initial outlay of £300) [‘Thomas Spencer (Marks and Spencer)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Sadly for both Spencer and Marks, neither got to enjoy their monetary success long – Spencer died in 1905, followed by Marks in 1907. Nonetheless the prestigious company name has long outlived the two founding principals, thriving into the 21st century.
The end of “British-only” and “home-brand only”In the early 20th century M&S, entering into long-term relationships with British manufacturers, emphasised a policy of selling only British-manufactured goods, clothes and food were sold under the famous “St Michael” brand (named after founder Michael Marks). The fluctuating commercial fortunes of the company in the 1990s led to M&S relenting somewhat on this policy.
Textiles and foodBy the Twenties M&S had moved into the sale of textiles in a big way (launching its own laboratories to commercially produce new fabrics for the British market). In 1931 it added food to its portfolio of products…M&S’s own food technology department (from 1948) allowed it to offer chilled poultry to customers, instead of the hitherto frozen or pre-cooked options (courtesy of a new technology it called “cold chain distribution”) [‘What 130 years of M&S history can teach us about innovation”, (Hannah Jenkinson, 2018), www.about.futurelearn.com].
By the 1960s these two commodities, textiles and food, were firmly ensconced as the staples of Marks and Spencer. M&S were forerunners in introducing retail practices that enhanced customer satisfaction, such as the “money-back, no questions asked, no time limit” policy.
Marble Arch – M&S flagship store⬆
In 1930 Marks and Spencer established itself in the United Kingdom’s financial capital, opening a mega-sized London store at 458 Oxford Street, W1. The Marble Arch store which was to become the company’s flagship store, would go on to compete with those other leading retailers of quality merchandise already with abase in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s and John Lewis’. Marble Arch wasn’t in fact M&S’s first retail outlet in London, that honour went to the one in nearby Edgware Road (which is actually closer to the Marble Arch monument than the Marble Arch M&S!). The Edgware Road store began as a penny bazaar in 1912 with additional floors added in the 1920s. During World War II the building was damaged by German incendiary bombs (as was Marble Arch tube station in an earlier Nazi air raid). In 1959 the original store at Nº228 Edgware Road was closed and replaced by a new, much bigger store at 258-264 Edgware which opened just six days later [‘The History of Marks & Spencer Edgware Road’, (Jan. 2017), www.marble-arch.london].
Nº228 Edgware (Source: M&S Co Archive) ⬇
M&S shift of strategy in an increasingly volatile retail market At the turn of the 21st century Marks and Spencer’s prospects appeared fairly sanguine…in 1998 it became the first British retailer to achieve a pre-tax profit of over £1B.
But in the first decade of this century, M&S, sensing the need to compete for more of the market, made some seismicchanges. The standard–bearer St Michael’s brand was dropped, other longtime lines were rebranded. The company moved away from its emphasis on “British quality goods”, starting to sell big-name grocery lines like Marmite, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and KitKats in its stores [‘Marks and Spencer to start selling top brands’, (G Hiscott), The Mirror (UK), 04-Nov-2009, www.mirror.co.uk] (previously it had concentrated on ‘luxury’ food products exclusively). This marks the recognition by Marks and Spencer that the falling trend of clothing sales needed to be heavily supplemented by popular food items.
Marks and Spencer (colloquially and affectionately known on the street as “Marks and Sparks”) as at April 2017 could list a total of 959 operating stores across the UK✣, 615 of which traded in food only (the “Simply Food” label), evidence of how food products had come to prop up the other traditional areas of the business. Future prospects for the major British retailer remain somewhat nebulous after the company signalled in 2018 its intent to close around 100 M&S stores in the country by 2022. Retail finance watchers have also questioned, with such a reliance on food items, whether M&S can ultimately match it with the UK’s food and groceries powerhouse Tesco [‘M&S online food delivery service will be no piece of cake’, Robert Plummer, BBC News, 28-Apr-2017, www.bbc.com]. Still, Marks and Spencer remains in majority British hands (unlike its rival heavyweights Harrods and Selfridges).
⬆ Commemorative M&S clock in Leeds market
━━━──━━━━──━━━━──━━━━──━━━━──━━━━──━━━✱ the foundation date for the company is traditionally given as 1884, however the exact date the partnership began between Marks and Spencer seems conjectural – other candidates are from 1894 (the Leeds permanent stall) or from 1901 (the Birkenhead market)⊡ product inexpensiveness was not to stay the M&S catch cry – by the late 1920s Simon Marks (the founder’s son who had assumed the reins) placed a 5/- limit on items. Long before this M&S had made the store focus one of quality over cheapness✣ plus over 200 overseas stores in at least 40 countries
The path taken by John Lewis in scaling the heights of retail commerce was typical of many embryonic and aspiring owner-drapers in mid-Victorian Britain. Somerset born and raised, Lewis started his first modest shop in Nº132 (later re-numbered) Oxford Street, London, in 1864 (taking the sum of 16s & 4d on opening day). His first twenty years in business for himself were far from glamorous, a period dominated by hard and dreary ‘yakka’ and slow piecemeal accumulation and consolidation.
The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-1.jpg”> Flagship store 1939 (Source: John Lewis Memory)[/cap
Lewis adopted an habitually “penny-pinching” stance when it came to running the store’s finances. In this he was the diametrically opposite of his Selfridges contemporary, the ostentatious, big spending, big advertising Harry Gordon Selfridge. In the eyes of Lewis, Selfridge must have seemed absolutely criminally profligate! Nonetheless Lewis did earn “brownie points” with London consumers for his straight dealing and commitment to the purveyance of quality goods, and profits grew accordingly. Sales for the ‘John Lewis’ stores rose from an underwhelming £25,000 in 1870 to a commendable £921,000 in 1921.
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-2.jpg”> Peter Jones[/caption
Another instance of Lewis’s circumspect approach was his reluctance to expand the business. It was not until 1906 that he made a move in this direction, purchasing the ailing Peter Jones store in Chelsea after the death of the store’s original Welsh owner✧. During his long lifetime John Lewis made no further expansionary attempts. The company during this period was clearly hamstrung by a lack of dynamic vision under its founder – losing vital retail ground to the likes of Whiteleys and Owen Owen [Tweedale, loc.cit.].
Father v son
Lewis’s innate caution also showed itself in his hesitancy in passing even a portion of control of the firm over to his sons, especially his eldest son John Spedan Lewis. When Lewis’s sons came of age, he gave them a limited role only…Spedan (as he was universally called) was put in charge of the newly acquired Peter Jones store (presumably to keep him from interfering with the central operation of the business). Spedan increasingly clashed with Lewis Senior over their fundamentally different approaches to business, with Spedan in charge of Peter Jones and JL Senior holding sway in Oxford Street HQs, relations between father and son deteriorated alarmingly (characterised in some quarters as equating to intra-family “store wars”) [Viner, loc.cit].
After the founder’s death in 1928 Spedan was free to fully implement his more progressive management ideas – in the area of staff relations these were often light years away from his father’s outmoded views and intransigent bellicosity…once at the helm Lewis Junior started by cutting working hours and introduced tea-breaks for the staff…Spedan envisaged further, more radical, plans for modernising ‘John Lewis’ and propelling it forward in the Thirties.
Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.
In the Forties John S Lewis bought up some of the failing Selfridge business concerns after the former high-flying company plummeted and Harry Selfridge was forced out to pasture and into retirement. Other (overseas) business moves into South African draperies however turned out to be unsuccessful ventures [‘John Lewis’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
▼ Spedan Lewis
Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].
Today JLP remains an employee-owned British company (consistent with the “worker-cooperative” entity (the ‘Partnership’) as initiated by Spedan Lewis in 1929). According to the Sunday Times it is the third largest private UK company by sales – £3.78B revenue in 2017 [“The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league” (2016)]. As a retail operator JLP maintain its traditional market position as a chain of high-end✫ department stores⊡, competing with its historic, equally upscale rivals in the merchandising field, Harrods and Selfridges.
FN: the corporate colours of retailing
John Lewis’s store colours have traditionally been green and white – supposedly because Spedan Lewis wrote his memos exclusively in green ink (the auditor’s colour!) on white paper [Tweedale, loc.cit.]. Interestingly, green seems to be the preferred colour of successful London-based retailers…Selfridges’ salient business colour is also green, and both Harrod’s and Marks and Spencer’s traditional hues are green and gold.
2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia
“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”~ HG Selfridge
⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹
Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)
Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.
A Marshall Field blueprint for LondonWisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
“The American Invasion of London”The London press was not initially warm to the notion of the American’s incursion into the world of London commerce. The City’s daily and drapery trade press described it as an “American Invasion of London” [Lawrence]. Selfridge’s loud in tone and bombastic approach to selling the project didn’t help in endearing him to the newspapers (described in some publications as being “aggressively big in scale”). Selfridge’s efforts to make the store a reality were driven by an unwavering vision: creating a “monumental retail emporium” was in his eyes the key to elevating “the business of a merchant to the Dignity of Science” (as he grandiosely put it). Selfridge believed to achieve that, he had to construct a gigantic “technologically advanced department store”, hence the massive amount of money, time and effort he put into the project [LAWRENCE, J. (1990). ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations: Selfridges, the Ritz, and American Technology’. Construction History, 6, 23-46. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613676].A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed buildingConstruction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.
Rigid building regulations weren’t Selfridge’s only impediment to making his dream store a reality. Half-way through the project funding became a pressing issue when his partner and main backer Sam Waring, frustrated by Harry’s “grandiose and reckless approach” to the venture (Selfridge had grievously underestimated the complications of the project), withdrew his financial backing. The economic downturn in London (and in the US) at the time made alternative sources of funding a very grim prospect, and disaster was only narrowly avoided when a new backer, millionaire tea tycoon John Musker stepped in to rescue Selfridge [Gayle Soucek, Mr Selfridge in Chicago: Marshall Field’s, the Windy City and the Making of a Merchant Prince, (2015)]. After the big opening Selfridge remembered to make sure the store’s product lines included everything to do with tea-making (teapots, cups and saucers, sugar bowls, etc) [‘Selfridges: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the department store’, (History Extra), www.historyextra.com].
Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curveHarry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s televisionprototype shown on display in 1925.
Those specially designed wide windows were put to optimal use, Selfridge was the first to utilise window dressing where he could show off the latest fashions and utensils in open display [‘Selfridges 7 things’, loc.cit.]. The staff at Selfridge’s Oxford Street store (initially comprising 1,400 employees) were instructed to assist customers in their purchases, not to pester or use any “hard-sell” tactics on them⊟. Harry’s philosophy was “first get them in, then to keep them there. Thereafter they would buy” (Woodhead). One of Selfridge’s more forward-thinking moves was to locate the goods where they were visible and accessible to customers all around the store’s interior (a practice he devised while at Marshall Field’s in Chicago), rather than hiding them away from sight under counters (as had been the practice in most retail stores hitherto). He also introduced the concept of the “bargain basement” to retailing, a section where shoppers could find regularly discounted commodities [‘Innovation Lessons From The World’s First Customer Experience Pioneer — Infograph’, (Blake Morgan), Forbes Magazine, 26-Jun-2017, www.forbes.com ; Lindy Woodhead, Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge, (2012)].
A visceral, holistic experienceSelfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].
The female shopper as an identified demographicSelfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013,www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅[Forbes, loc.cit.].
The H.G.S. leadership style As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ;“The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]
Tower follySelfridge’s thrived, prospered and grew after the Great War (the store size doubled). Things didn’t always go the Wisconsin-born retail magnate’s way however…a couple of commercial reversals suffered by Harry during the decade concerned his plans for erecting a massive tower from the building which was rejected by the LCC Committee because of excessive height, and possibly also because it would have vied with the iconic St Paul’s Cathedral for attention (a fortunate outcome perhaps as the model drawings for the tower suggest the result would have been an incongruous coupling of architectural forms and a hideous eyesore!) [Lawrence, op.cit.]. The other setback was Selfridge’s proposal for a tunnel between the store and the nearest tube station, Bond Street, the plan ultimately got kiboshed!
Harry on the downslideBy the late Twenties Selfridge & Co was at the top of its game, the name was synonym with quality merchandise and Selfridge took its place as a stellar institution on the London commercial scene. Some time after the onset of the Great Depression things started to turn badly pear-shaped for Selfridge, as for businessmen as a whole. Harry Selfridge contributed to his own decline however by persisting in his flamboyantly extravagant spending. He squandered money on his womanising ways for which he earned a certain notoriety, for instance, $4M was wasted on his dalliances and affairs such as with the Dolly Sisters (Hungarian jazz dancers) – a part of his story that the TV series was quick to focus on) [Forbes, loc.cit.. By 1940 the company owed £250,000 in taxes and Selfridge was deep in debt to the bank, forcing him to sell out and retire from the business (retaining a modest annual consultancy stipend) [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.; Milwaukee Sentinel, op.cit]
Selfridges’ Birmingham Bullring store ▼Selfridges post H.G.S.Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).
FN: Harry Selfridge from when he first arrived was perceived widely as a Trans-Atlantic “blow-in”, splashing his (and his wife’s) money around, vociferously determined to show the established home-grown retailers what a ‘superior’ type of modern department store looked like. Selfridge displayed a talent for polarising opinion…to his dazzled admirers he was “the Earl of Oxford Street”, the flashy Midwest American merchant was “as much a part of the sights as Big Ben” (as one columnist waxed lyrically), but to his detractors (including many of his competitors and much of the London press) he was merely a “vulgar American tradesman” or worse [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit ; Woodhead, op.cit.].
PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hipIn 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].
“The Queen of Time” AKA Ship of Commerce Statue ▼⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎
✱ described as “Downton Abbey with tills” [” ‘Mr Selfridge’: It’s ‘Downton Abbey’ with tills…”, The Telegraph, (Daphne Lockyer), 15-Dec-2012, www.telegraph.co.uk]☯ the impressive Selfridge facade, personifying power and permanence, was later complimented by the addition of a decorative Art-Deco motif – the ‘Queen of Time riding her Ship of Commerce’ (clock-statue by Gilbert Bayes)✜ around 12,000 visited the store to view the displayed history making French monoplane…no doubt plenty of these visitors also made spontaneous purchases while they were in Selfridge’s premises [Forbes, op.cit.]⊟ Selfridge possibly was quite consciously also trying to make his front-line staff as unlike Harrods’ staff – who had a reputation for ‘snootiness’ and stiff formality – as he could! [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit]✧ recently the roof was again used in idiosyncratic fashion, by being turned into a “boat lake” and a “putt-putt” mini-golf course for customers❅ in return, when protesting suffragettes smashed shops windows in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s was one of the few left unscathed✥ other (very famous) attributed ‘Selfridgeisms’ are “the customer is always right” and “only xx shopping days till Christmas”
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 boysBy 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 AiresAfter 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 offshoreAs 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 codeIn 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 comingBy 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’ handsA 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 cupboardOne 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].≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛≛✱ 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 spaceBeaconsfield, 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.].
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’)
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
[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.
⑅⑅⑅ ⑅⑅⑅ ⑅⑅⑅ ⑅⑅⑅
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
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.
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✲ 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 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).
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✲ 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)
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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
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
Within the world of macropolitics, the realm of large-scale political entities, the urge by some within the whole to secede has always been a recognisable element of those societies. During the last half century Australia as elsewhere has witnessed the emergence of individuals or small groups of people wanting to break away, for varying reasons, and go it alone.
The actions of micronations✻ or “would-be” micronations (sometimes called “model countries”) have been motivated by a host of varying reasons. These include genuine secessionist aspirations, environmental protests, a sense of grievance and financial motives. Quite a few seem to be specifically humorous in intent. Some micronations are just left-field wacky, like Asgardia, a Russian initiative which seeks to launch satellites into space to found a “real nation” recognised by the UN (and therefore, it claims, protect Earth from the threat of asteroids, solar storms and space junk)[1].
▲ The ‘border’ bridge between Vilnius & Užupis
Reactions of the periphery to the metropolitan centre have prompted the rise of quasi-anarchist communities purporting (seriously or less seriously) to be outside the jurisdiction of that same central authority…two such European instances of this are Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen whose advocates proclaimed autonomy over a small district of the city in 1971 and an established open drug trade (tolerated by the Danish authorities until 2004); and Užupis (Užupio Res Publika), a tiny enclave within Vilnius, described perhaps somewhat romantically as a “modern manifestation of a bohemian Free State”[2]. Whereas Freetown strove for a kind of anarchist autonomy, the unrecognised “Republic of Užupis” adopted all the trappings of a sovereign state (flag, currency, politicians, anthem, etc) but uncertainty remains whether the Užupis entity is “intended to be serious, tongue-in-cheek, or a combination of both”[3].
▲ The Prince of Hutt R Province
His Royal Hutt River HighnessOne recurring theme of micronationhood including in Australia has been the singular protest against the state (or against the local authority). Leading the way in this (chronologically at least) is Prince Leonard and his self-declared Principality of Hutt River. Leonard Casley was an unremarkable wheat farmer in rural Western Australia in 1970 when a dispute with the state of WA over the wheat production quota set him on a course of (declaring) succession from Australia. ‘Prince’ Leonard adopted royal titles and garb for himself and his family and the Hutt River Principality grew into a tourist attraction. Casley’s failure to comply with his taxation requirements resulted in a Commonwealth prosecution in 1977 which the prince, increasingly behaving like Count Rupert of Mountjoy✪, responded by declaring war on Australia![4].
The Hutt River WA prince, after easing himself into the unfamiliar mantle, like other Micronation ‘monarchs’ enthusiastically set about establishing the tourism potentiality of the novel enclave in the Western Australian bush…HR Province began issuing ‘royal’ stamps, ‘legal'(sic) currency and passports (described by the Council of Europe dismissively as “fantasy passports”)[5]. In 2017 Prince Leonard now a nonagenarian ‘abdicated’ in favour of his son, the altogether less regally sounding ‘Prince’ Graeme.
▲ King Paul with his court (Source: News Ltd)
The principality of the suburban quarter-acre blockSome breakaway entities and would-be sovereign states have arisen from the most trivial of domestic matters, eg, Mosman artist and art school principal Paul Delprat founded the Principality of Wy as a consequence of his local Sydney council’s refusal to grant permission for a residential driveway (a dispute lasting over 20 years!)[6]. Presiding over his ‘kingdom’ which comprised in area one suburban block, ‘King’ Paul, possessed of a theatrical bent and a large supply of whimsy, has warmed to his new status, naturally going the “whole hog” with full regal fancy dress, pomp and ceremony!
Global open borders orchestrated from the NSW South West SlopesGeorge Cruikshank together with his cousins started up his own micronation whilst still a schoolboy in Sydney. Known as the Empire of Atlantium ‘Emperor George II runs it from Reids Flat¤, 344km inland from Sydney…the 0.76 square kilometre province has its own post office, government buildings, currency, national anthem and monuments (ie, a small white pyramid and obelisk in the micronation’s Lilliputian-sized capital). What marks Atlantium out from other micronations is its espousal of liberal, progressive values – described by the Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations as serious in its aims and “a refreshing antidote to the reactionary self-aggrandisement of so many micronations”…a “secular humanist utopia”[7] George is also a bit atypical as ‘micronationals’ go as his separatist impulse derives not from a specific beef with local authority but from genuine idealism. Emperor George advocates the international freedom of movement and other socially progressive goals. The Empire claims in excess of 3,000 ‘citizens’ hailing from various parts of the globe – all signed up online.
▲ A Great Britain strawberry patch in Sth Australia!
The strawberry fields United KingdomOne of the more exotic if not outright wacky secessionists in Australia was Alec Brackstone. English migrant Brackstone, alarmed at the prospect (as he saw it) of Australia’s drift toward republicanism, founded the Province of Bumbunga in rural South Australia in the 1970s. The ultra-monarchist, self-appointed governor-general of the breakaway mini-state, planted thousands of strawberry plants in the pattern of a huge scale model of Great Britain (A++ for loyalty/subservience to the Crown!) The Bunbunga Province also issued Cinderella stamps honouring the royals, but the province dissolved in the late 1990s after the “G-G” was charged with possession of illegal firearms and repatriated to the UK[8].
PostScript: Micro-states of mind?Wy and the self-styled Hutt River and Bumbunga provinces conform with RT Reid’s characterisation of the ethos of contemporary micronations …”mock sovereign states fuelled by local disputes, utopian idealism and the imaginations of a few eccentric individuals”[9]. Ultimately it is that eccentricity, together with their isolation and the fact that they pose no real inconvenience or harm to the greater (macro) political entity✦, explains why they tend to be tolerated (but not encouraged) by the central authority of the state in which they reside.
﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏✻ defined as an entity claiming to be an independent nation or state but not recognised by world governments or major international or supranational organisations, ‘Micronations’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org✪ leader of the fictional minuscule tinpot state of Grand Fenwick which declares war on the USA in the 1959 comedy/satire The Mouse That Roared¤ Cruickshank’s Atlantium had two prior “spiritual homes” in Sydney, a house in suburban Narwee and a flat in inner city Potts Point✦ the ‘Principality’ of Seborga in the Italian Riviera is a good case in point: despite a 98.7% vote in favour of independence from Italy in 1995, the tiny town (pop: <400) still pays its civic taxes to Rome
[1] ‘Space oddity: Group claims to have created nation in space’, Science, 12-Oct-2016, www.sciencemag.org[2] J Crabb, ‘Gabriele D’Annunzio And The Free State of Fiume’, (Culture Trip), 12-Jul-2017, www.theculturetrip.com[3] ‘The Republic of Užupis’ (Užupis Everywhere), www.uzhupisembassy.eu. Some of the more absurd sounding clauses of the Užupis Constitution evoke a suggestion of whimsical hippiedom, eg, 12. A dog has the right to be a dog.[4] ‘Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations’, (J Ryan, G Dunford & S Sellars, (2006)[5] ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org[6] ‘Prince of Wy Paul Delprat loses driveway court battle’,(Simone Roberts), Mosman Daily, 17-Jul-2013[7] Lonely Planet, op.cit.[8] ‘Province of Bumbunga’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org. Hutt River, Atlantium and Bumbunga are only three of the estimated 35 Australian micro-nations in existence at one time or other, according to ‘A quick tour of some of the many, many Micronations Australia has to offer’, (Joseph Earp, Mashable Australia, www.mashable.com[9] RT Reid, ‘Micronations of the World’, Smithsonian, 23-Aug-2009, www.smithsonianmag.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.
Bêifāng Hâitān Cháng-chéng 長城Collaroy-Narrabeen’s Great Wall of Sand!
Collaroy-Narrabeen’s 長城Sth Narrabeen Surf Club peering over the Wall of Sand!
The photos (L + R) taken five days ago show the cumulative effects of successive series of storms on the one kilometre plus stretch of coast where Collaroy Beach merges seamlessly with South Narrabeen Beach. The foredune in the pictures (the high ridge of sand) was created from countless poundings by severe storms over the last 100 years, but the gouging out of a phenomenally large quantity of sand to create the current steepness of the ridge owes itself to the most recent destructive event, a massive storm action which relentlessly blitzed the narrow beachfront at Collaroy and Narrabeen in June 2016. For three days huge waves and king tides pummelled the beach, the cost in landform terms was the lost of an estimated 50 metres of beach on what was already a precariously thin strip of coast [M Levy, A Benny-Morrison, D Dumas, ‘Sydney storm: erosion swallows 50 metres of Collaroy, Narabeen beaches’, Sydney Morning Herald, 07-Jun-2016, www.smh.com.au].
Just one sample of the damage to Collaroy Beach & property in 2016
The damage to coastal infrastructure last year was extensive – back fences, balconies, sunrooms, whole backyards and most spectacularly in-ground swimming pools were uprooted – but came as no surprise to locals, coastal geologists or environmentalists. The beach here has had numerous precedents over the years (such as 1913-14, 1920, 1944, 1945, 1967, 1974, 1978, 1986, 1995, 2007), and has been witness to the undermining of foundations, damage to clubhouses, the washing away of houses and the demolition of some homes. The storm havoc in 1967 undermined the foundations of the (then) recently built, high-rise Flight Deck apartment block [J Morcombe, ‘Collaroy beachfront has been an erosion hotspot for a hundred years’, Manly Daily, 07-Jun-2016].
Urban development and sand bank vulnerabilityThe present predicament of waves swallowing up beachfront properties had its genesis in the early 1900s when people, attracted by the sea and the views, started constructing their houses on Pittwater Road on the edges of the beach. Solutions to the ongoing onslaught from nature of storms was from the start consistently ad hoc. In the 1920 “Great Storm” locals desperately tried to shore up their beachfront cottages with sandbags✧. Warringah Council’s response to each new threat was largely reactive rather than proactive. The frequency of recurrence clearly called for preventative measures…one of the few early attempts by Council to pre-empt the threat was its purchase and demolition of storm-damaged houses between Arlington Amusement Hall and Jenkins Street, to be replaced by a public reserve.
Flight Deck too close to ground turbulence!
By the early 1960s Council’s planning scheme had polarised the community. The Collaroy-South Narrabeen Progress Association lobbied Council to halt its policy of building flats and resume as many houses as possible along the beachfront, demolishing them to create open space. This prompted an opposition group to spring up, demanding that more flats be constructed on the beach edge. This division was mirrored within Warringah Council itself, Councillors were split, some were in favour of increasing the number of flats, some were opposed to the development. A compromise was reached in 1964 which still permitted construction of flats and houses on the fragile edge of the sand bank [J Morcombe, ‘Milestone for Collaroy’s landmark Flight Deck’, Manly Daily, 12-Feb-2016].Beach erosion and reinforcement measuresMore storms in the eighties and nineties prompted Council to try to come up with better thought-out strategies to cope with the burgeoning threat. Earlier construction of rock walls had been haphazard. In 2002 it opted to construct a 1.1km long sea wall along the most pregnable part of the Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach❖. The plan was shelved after several thousand people staged a beach protest against the proposed sea wall.
Again public opinion has been divided – many different views have been voiced on the issue…from those whose properties would not be protected by the wall or by individual walls covering single properties (eg, water can be pushed on to other neighbouring properties which don’t have a sea wall – sometimes because they were denied approval by Council to build one!). Who bears the cost is another issue – coastal engineer Angus Gordon has raised the thorny prospect of “councils building walls using public money to protect private property” (current Northern Beaches Council policy dictates that individual homeowners must pay for the construction of an approved wall for their properties). Beach-goers too, tend to have a differing perspective to those of beachfront homeowners, many surfers point to the way changes to the nature of the beach can affect the wave patterns and thus the quality of surfing (altering the breaks, etc) [C Chang, ‘Bitter battle over Collaroy beachfront has raged for years’, (News) 07-Jun-2016, www.news.com.au
‘Flight Deck’
Given the alarming extent of beach erosion gorged out of Collaroy and South Narrabeen beaches, supplementing the lost sand is vital. Northern Beaches Council tackles what it calls “Sand Replenishment and Beach Nourishment” by sourcing sand from local building sites, and it is also “dredged periodically from the entrance of Narrabeen Lagoon … to replenish Collaroy-Narrabeen Beach” [‘Coastal erosion’, (Northern Beaches Council), www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/.] One of the concerns about using building site materials is the issue of ensuring clean fill…rubbish, waste matter or other, undesirable pollutants may inadvertently end up in the bolstering mix on the beach (risk of litter and impurities, aesthetic considerations).
Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach is considered to be Australia’s third most at-risk area¤ when it comes to the deleterious effects of coastal processes. Thus maintenance of sand bank stability remains a crucial civic objective against a backdrop of rising seas and unpredictable and extreme weather patterns. This is also an extremely costly matter for both Council and the state Liberal government. In 2013 Waringah Council forked out almost $3M to acquire a (potentially endangered?) luxury beachfront property to demolish it and use the land for a public park, and the troubled beach will figure significantly in the allocation of the $69M the state government announced for councils to address beach erosion, coastal inundation and cliff instability [Chang, op.cit.]
Collaroy Beach dune reinforcement
Endnote: Longshore drift, an agent of beach erosionA beach is inherently dynamic, motion and change are constant factors in its composition. Lateral movement of sediment (sand, clay, silt and shingle) along the shoreline is known as Longshore drift (or sometimes called Littoral drift). The geological process occurs thus – the prevailing wind powers the waves, directing them towards the coast. When they hit the surf zone they break at an angle to the shoreline (oblique wave action). Sand and other sediments are propelled along the surf zone in a zig-zagging motion, the swash (onshore-rushing water moves the beach materials along), followed by a corresponding backwash (the water returns offshore – if the wave is constructive, it will do so with reduced energy)[‘Longshore Drift’, (Revision World), www.revisionworld.com]
See related post King Canute Battling the Relentless Tide*: The Dilemma of Rampant Beach Erosion – Gold Coast and Adelaide (Nov. 2017)(Cartoon: Clive Goddard)
﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋* The title is of course a symbolic nod to King Canute (Cnut the Great) 11th century Anglo-Saxon ruler of the North Sea Empire, and the apocryphal anecdote of his futile but persistent efforts to turn back the tide on the seashore✧ sand-bagging’s value is as an immediate response to flooding and is considered ineffective in countering sand erosion❖ Council had earlier erected groynes (low walls or sturdy timber barrier) on the beach which had become largely ineffective over time¤ after the Gold Coast and Adelaide’s north-western suburban beaches
All around this water-encircled continent, wherever there are pebbly or sandy shores, rocks and boulders by the sea, beach erosion is a fact of environmental life. Australian coastal geologists and environmentalists have singled out three areas for particular concern in the light of climate change and rising seas – the Gold Coast of Southern Queensland, Adelaide’s western seaside suburbs (in particular the stretch of coastline from Outer Harbour down to Marino), and Sydney’s Northern Beaches centred on the narrow sandy strip from Collaroy to Narrabeen.
Beach erosion from storm action is the expected end-product of a process when we get waves of higher height (measured from trough to crest) and of shorter periods (ie, the time interval in seconds between succeeding waves passing a specific point) repeatedly crashing onto shore. Storms of greater energy and intensity result in more sand being moved offshore and a storm bar builds up on the nearshore zone. For significant amounts of sand to return to the visible beach, ie, less erosion occurring (the process of accretion), Ocean and sea conditions need to be calmer. Unfortunately for the environment, and for coastal-clinging human habitation, all the trends are in the opposition direction! Concerned coastal watchers are increasingly preoccupied with the sense of a stark future, apprehensively eyeing the very real prospect of untrammelled beach attrition [‘Beach erosion: Coastal processes on the Gold Coast’, (Gold Coast City Council – Discovering Our Past), www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au]
ref=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/image-18.jpg”> GC damage inflict by Cyclone Dinah 1967[/ca
Gold Coast: Human encroachment on a coastal cyclone zone The Gold Coast at latitude 28° S is in a tropical cyclone prone zone, its history of cyclone events goes back to the 1920s, including crunch years such as 1967 when eleven cyclones hit the Coast in rapid succession. Like Sydney’s Northern Beaches (see separate blog post) the Gold Coast/Surfers Paradise area is especially susceptible to property damage due to the same development pattern of building too close to the beach (multi-millionaires’ coastal mansion syndrome?). A 2009 study by the Queensland Department of Climate Change (DCC) estimated that there are 2,300 residential buildings located within 50 metres of sandy coast and 4,750 within 110 metres” [Tony Moore, ‘Gold Coast beach erosion plan: Is the plan on the right track?’ Brisbane Times, 05-Jul-2015, www.brisbanetimes.com.au].
=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/image-17.jpg”> Gold Coast erosion: Sand cliffs of epic proportions![/capti
Queensland’s volatile summer storm seasons will undoubtedly continue to be exacerbated by climate change and rising sea levels. In recent years an intensification of the cyclonic onslaught on the South Queensland coast has seen the buildup of towering sand ridges on beaches like Narrowneck and Broadbeach, as a result of massive quantities of sand being gouged from the beach❖.
Gold Coast strategies to counter erosionIn direct response to the devastating 1967 cyclones the City of Gold Coast commissioned the Dutch Delft Report and established a Shoreline Management Plan to follow up its recommendations. New seawalls were constructed to bolster the beaches and an artificial reef created at Narrowneck Beach (the Delft Report called for Gold Coast beaches to be widened to withstand severe weather conditions and restorative work was intended to re-profile the vulnerable beaches). The Shoreline Management Plan strategy incorporates a scheme to shift sand from south of the Tweed River (from NSW) through a system of bypass pumping to replenish the beaches on the Gold Coast [‘Gold Coast Shoreline Management Plan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org. Transporting sand has proved a costly exercise for the Gold Coast Council ($20,000 a day during severe storm activity periods to shift 20,000 cubic matures of replacement sand) [‘Battling erosion on the Gold Coast’, (Splash ABC Queensland), www.splash.abc.net.au]
Adelaide hot spotsAdelaide’s north-western beaches’ susceptibility to the climatic forces of erosion mirrors that of the Gold Coast…and similarly it has been plagued by the same degree of imprudent decision-making by planners and developers resulting in property lines being positioned too close to the shoreline. A conspicuous case in point being Tennyson Beach 14km from Adelaide CBD. Tennyson locals recall that a stretch of its celebrated coastal dunes was washed away by massive storms in the 1960s…after it was restored to its previous height, amazingly houses were built on the same vulnerable dunes! Erosion at nearby West Beach has become so problematic that the West Beach Surf Life Saving Club has given consideration to moving the location of its clubhouse [‘Adelaide beachfront housing “facing erosion risks” like those at Collaroy, Sydney’, ABC Radio Adelaide, ABC News, 08-Jun-2016, www.abc.news.net.au
Coastal inundationAs elsewhere the fear for Adelaide coastal watchers is the inexorable rise of sea levels – scientists have predicted that its low-lying coastal land will be inundated with the bulk of the city’s beaches under water by 2050! Geologists and coastal experts such as Dr Ian Dyson have predicted that the great majority of Adelaide’s sandy beaches are at risk of being reduced to the same denuded state as Hallett Cove – once a glistening sandy beach, now a rocky foreshore bereft of sand¤. Dyson forecasts that the only beaches likely to survive, albeit as “pockets of beaches” on the metropolitan coast beyond 2026 will be at Glenelg, Henley Beach and Semaphore [Thomas Conlin, ‘Expert says key Adelaide beaches could disappear within a decade because of rising sea levels and erosion’, Sunday Mail (SA), 24-Jun-2016, www.adelaidenow.com.au
Notwithstanding the pessimism of scientific experts, the state government’s Coastal Protection Board maintains its sand-replenishment programs are effective in meeting the challenges which are undeniably formidable. Dr Dyson however has been critical of the authorities’ over-reliance on rock wall defences, contending that “retaining beaches (were) a losing battle without angled breakwaters or groynes at the southern end of erosion hot spots to slow sand movement [Conlin, ibid.]
Endnote: A dynamic problem – the natural drag of sand by the elementsAn important factor contributing to beach erosion is the natural tendency of the ocean to drag coastal sand in a northward movement. This affects both Adelaide and the Gold Coast. On the GC’s southern beaches where sand is plentiful, the drift north to replenish the northern GC beaches is impeded by the presence of rock walls and groynes which interrupts the free flow of sand northwards [Tanya Westthorpe, ‘Sand erosion threat to prime Gold Coast tourist beaches’, Gold Coast Bulletin, 02-Aug-2012]. the top of the Gulf St Vincent. Sand replenishment and maintenance thus is a major challenge for the more southern lying beaches like Kingston Park and Seacliff which are in continually peril of being sand ‘starved’. Aside from the logistics of managing this, sourcing sand from quarries is proving an increasingly expensive exercise for the authorities [‘Sand carting plea to save Adelaide’s vulnerable beaches, including Seacliff and Kingston Park’, (E Boisvent), 12-Oct-2016, www.news.com.au]
See related post King Canute Battling the Relentless Tide*: The Dilemma of Rampant Beach Erosion – Collaroy and South Narrabeen (Nov. 2017)
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* The title is of course a symbolic nod to King Canute (Cnut the Great) 11th century Anglo-Saxon ruler of the North Sea Empire, and the apocryphal anecdote of his futile but persistent efforts to turn back the tide on the seashore
❖ prompting sections of the media to jocularly re-label Broadbeach as “Steep Beach”
¤ Dyson blames ill-considered development and the construction of a beach marina for the degradation of Hallett Cove
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 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.
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✣✣ 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 (many of which 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 (a healthy number of which are 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.
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 (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
[6] ‘Timber Industry’, (Glebe Walks), www.glebewalks.com.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.dsilytelegraph.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]
AT the end of Anzac Parade, not far from where the bitumen meets the grassy knoll, was once the location of the La Perouse tram terminus (known locally as “the Loop”). The tram lines were torn up in 1961 with the La Perouse line having the distinction of being the last Sydney tram service still running at that time. This is an ideal spot to kick-off a leisurely and instructive saunter through Sydney’s southern suburban coastline and unearth some of the connexions with its past. The knoll is dotted with a number of landmarks recalling both the early British colonial regime and Comte de Lapérouse’s brief sojourn on his eponymous peninsula.
Looking south, the first colonial structure that comes into our line of sight is the 1822 built sandstone, castellated watchtower … today an exotic backdrop favoured by numerous newly-weds for their wedding photos. In the 19th century the watchtower functioned as a surveillance point and customs post (under David Goodsir who had the quaint official title of “coast watcher”): strategically important because Botany Bay was a vulnerable point in the early colony, a sparsely populated “back door” through which smugglers sought to sneak contraband into Sydney by sea. A fire destroyed the attached wooden living quarters in 1957 [‘The Macquarie Watchtower, La Perouse’, (RDHS – Randwick and Districts Historical Society), www.randwickhistoricalsociety.org.au]. To the west of the castle tower is the monument to J-F Lapérouse, not far from the museum which also bears his name.
“Snake Man of La Perouse (Junior)” John Cann (Photo:SMH)
Leaving the monument and walking east past the seemingly ever-present Mr Whippy van, the weekend kite-flyers, and assorted day-trippers reclining on the side of the hill, we come to a bridge leading to a one-time fort and later war veterans home, Bare Island. Organised tours of historic Bare Island on Sundays are available, but these days the most activity the hilly island sees are the scores of scuba divers who flock to its shoreline to enjoy what is one of the most popular dive sites in Sydney. From here we return to Anzac Parade and to a sign directing us to Congwong Bay Beach. Before we take that path lined with sandy vegetation on either side, we spot a square, fenced-off area just ahead which is decorated with colourful Aboriginal motifs. This is the famous “snake pit” (AKA “the Loop”), for 107 years a source of entertainment for Sunday visitors to La Perouse. A small, dedicated team of herpetological enthusiasts (for most of this period the work of one family of seasoned handlers – the Canns) have enthralled, mesmerised and horrified (probably in equal measures) untold numbers of onlookers. Every Sunday since c.1909 this pit has been the stage on which countless snakes, goannas, lizards and other reptiles have strutted their stuff!
Congwong Bay
We leave the snake ‘sideshow’ and cross small Congwong Beach, heading north-east into the scrub. Ignoring a right turn which leads to secluded Little Congwong Beach (a long-time haunt for unofficial nude bathers … shock/horror!), we keep to the main track which cuts through ragged scrubland that once was thick with tall, abundant Eastern Suburbs Banksias (melaleucas, coast tee trees, banksia serratas and the like). At the top of the rise (where a solitary rest bench sits) we go left up to the boundary of the first of four golf courses we will pass on our travels (the NSW Club), then right down a long, disused service trail that leads us to Henry Head. Henry Head was the site of a 19th century battery post which was meant to back up the fortifications at Bare Island further inside the heads (neither sets of guns were ever fired in anger!). On the point, in front of the Henry Head emplacements, is a small, obsolete lighthouse (Endeavour Light). The empty mountings where the guns were once housed now are bare shells with only the calling cards of vandals, graffitists and rubbish dumpers to show.
Henry Head battery
This windswept and desolate spot marks the start of a spectacular coastal walk. The quality of this walk has been enhanced in recent years with the addition of a mini-mesh boardwalk which facilitates the up-and-down clamber over the rocks. About halfway along the winding boardwalk we see a bench seat made from the very same mesh material … obsessive-compulsiveness or 100% utilisation of existing materials? Perhaps when they finished laying the boardwalk they had some mesh left over and thought, waste not, want not, might as well make a matching seat as well! The high cliffs from here down to Malabar provide some of the best vantage points in Sydney to view northbound pods of migrating whales (mainly Winter-Spring).
At the point where the rocks on the shoreline start to get too high to climb without the right mountaineering gear, we verge left and follow a narrow trail that winds up the hill. At the top we find ourselves rejoining the NSW Golf Club course. We steer a tight course around the edge of the cliff so as not to antagonise any iron-wielding golfers we may run in to, but also because it affords walkers the best views of the ocean. Lots of vivid, native coastal wildflowers can be seen along the cliff-top.
What remains of the stern of the ‘SS Minmi‘
Halfway through the golf course we take a diversion over a narrow footbridge to explore the aquatic reserve at Cape Banks. This sinewy peninsula, jutting out into the sea, was a WWII fortification and the site of a 1937 shipwreck, SS Minmi. The collier upon impact with the rocks one dark night split in two, the remainder of its stern, a rusty grey mess, draws curious sightseers and hikers to the peninsula (‘Shipwrecks’, Randwick City Council, www.randwick.nsw.gov.au). One of the holes of the golf course has a professional tee on the nature reserve itself, a challenging lofty shot back across a broad and windy stretch of water to the green, fully testing the nerves of even the most confident of golfers.
Continuing through the golf course onto a bush track with lush vegetation, the path turns towards the road, coming out near the Westpac Chopper Base. Adjacent to the base is a pistol range, the home of the Sydney Pistol Club❈. Just after that we turn right and enter what a sign describes as the “Coastal Hospital Management Trail”. It is an ancient looking graveyard … the widespread, abandoned remains of the old Coast Hospital Cemetery, the scattered graves and headstones all looking decidedly unkempt and decrepit (the approaches to the cemetery are usually water-logged after any significant rain). Many patients from the Little Bay infectious diseases hospital are buried here. Most of the headstones, much weathered by the elements and/or vandalised, are hard to read (see below for more on the historic hospital).
‘Wrapped Coast’ by Christo, 1969
After the cemetery the trail returns to the cliffs and we walk along the edge of the second golf course, St Michaels. More attractive wildflowers on the right side. At the end of the golf course where the headland turns to the left we catch a glimpse of a secluded little beach deep in the bay, aptly name “Little Bay” (behind the beach a third and shorter course is situated, this is the Coast Golf Course). There are many more houses and apartments in Little Bay now than 47 years ago when the celebrated avant-garde artists, Bulgarian-American Christo and his partner Jeanne-Claude, selected this remote and uninhibited stretch of Sydney coastline for an environmental art project. In a major logistics operation involving over 100 workers in 1969, these two practitioners of what has come to be called “environmental sculpture” ‘wrapped’ a 2.5km long section of Little Bay’s deserted rocky coast using one million square feet of synthetic woven fibre fabric and an awful lot of rope!❦
Coastal Hospital for Infectious Diseases
A short diversion from the walking path at Little Bay beach takes us up to Coast Hospital Road where the Prince Henry Hospital, initially called the Coast Hospital, was situated (in 2001 the hospital was closed and its services transferred to the Prince of Wales Hospital, the salvageable buildings were absorbed into local public housing). From 1881 Prince Henry functioned alternately as a smallpox hospital, a convalescent hospital, and a “fever hospital” dealing with all manner of infectious conditions over the years (diphtheria, TB, scarlet fever, bubonic plague, swine flu pandemic). Later the medical focus of Prince Henry was extended to epidemiology and preventative medicine and the poliomyelitis virus (‘Prince Henry Hospital – South Eastern Sydney Local Health District’, www.seslhd.health.nsw.gov.au).
Close to the Coast Hospital site the University of NSW maintained a campus for many years. Originally intended for a medical school which was never built, it was used instead for biological sciences research and for solar energy research (Solarch, first building in NSW to generate green power). In 2008 UNSW sold the land to developers and it now contains high-rise apartments [‘Development of ex-UNSW site Little Bay’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info].
The Coast walk continues north from Little Bay above “Christo’s Rocks” (a headland once owned by the Prince Henry Hospital) where we trek past the last of the four ocean-facing golf courses in a row, the Randwick Council course. Keeping out of the range of flying golf balls✥ is one of the navigational skills needed to thread your way through the maze of golf courses … a key to managing this is to hug the red marker posts on the cliff edges.
Finally we get beyond the last of the golf holes by the distance of a 4 wood, reaching Bay Parade and Long Bay where there is a rockpool and a tiny, unfashionable beach, too sheltered from the ocean to lure many serious board surfers. On the northern side of Long Bay you will spot plenty of black suited “frogmen and women”, signifying another popular dive site. Malabar Beach is very much the “poor relation” of much larger neighbour, Maroubra Beach, and its popularity probably hasn’t been enhanced over the years by its proximity to both a large sewerage outlet and a large penitentiary (Long Bay Gaol).
Anzac Rifle Range
The route taken for the final leg of our walk, to Maroubra, depends on circumstances at the time of the walk⊗. The optimal route is out to Boora Point where you can find a series of isolated concrete lookout posts from WWII, then north along the cliff-top past dense thickens of tea trees and banksia (the scrubby track here is ill-defined or even non-existent!). The last part which takes you to South Maroubra Beach skirts around the eastern perimeters of the vast Anzac Rifle Range (there has been recreational target shooting here on-and-off since the 1850s). After passing the northern boundary of the rifle range you do a sharp dog-leg left through wild, lanky vegetation around the model aero club field, followed by a U-turn, then back through an open gate (hard to spot until you get close, look to the right side) leading to Arthur Byrne Reserve and the South Maroubra beachfront.
All up the La Perouse to Maroubra coastal trek is about a 12.5 to 14.5 km walk depending on which route you take from Malabar Beach – with very minimal amount of gradient to contend with. If you are looking for a pleasant and feature-packed sort of coastline ramble, with plenty of variety to see on the way, then this one definitely ticks the box.
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❈ located here (near Cape Banks) since 1959, previously the handgun club practiced in a disused rail tunnel near Wynyard Station(!?!)
❦ Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘bag’ seems to have been to temporarily wrap monumentally large objects – natural or human-made … one of the other famous projects of the environmental artist-couple was the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin
✥ especially on the Council course where we find ourselves walking directly towards the golfers hitting from the tees!
⊗ if you are walking on a weekend on which the Rifle Club is holding a competition (red flags flying over the range), then the Boora Point route is not available (for safety reasons) and usually patrolled. On these occasions you need to take the western path through Cromwell and Pioneer Parks and come out at Broome Street, South Maroubra
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
[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
If you ever take an international flight to South America and happen to stop over in Santiago, Chile with a spare day or two and find you are not much enamoured of what’s on offer in the less than pulsating capital, a trip to picturesque Valparaíso would be just the tonic! To escape Santiago’s grimy greyness … and its multi-millions of stray, mangy dogs, take a trip on Route 68 115km north-west to Valparaíso and Region V.
Valparaíso, or ‘Valpo’ for short, today has a faded, glamour but stacks of aesthetic character – with a higgedly-piggedly, chaotic pattern of brightly coloured houses, “a heap … a bunch of crazy houses” as poet Pablo Neruda described them, and numerous run-down/falling-down Victorian mansions (conversely on a cautionary note, the city these days also has a criminal underbelly including endemic petty crime and prostitution). Remnants of the city’s former glory and especially its quaint charm remain however: the old and rickety ascensores (inclined motorised lifts, called funiculars elsewhere) transport passengers up and down Valparaíso’s steep, undulating hills, from atop the cerros visitors enjoy sweeping views across the bay and the ports. It’s a city awash with the most brilliant murals on the walls of houses and commercial buildings which themselves exude colour and character.
Valaparaíso’s “salad days” were in the 19th century, during this period it was a world-class port on the Europe to California shipping route. A combination of the devastating 1906 earthquake and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 signified the rapid commercial decline of Valparaíso, once known as the “Jewel of the Pacific”. This small city on the eastern edge of the Pacific 11,326km from Sydney might seem an odd place for a turn-of-the-century Australian prime minister to be born◙, but in 1867 one such future PM was born there (also see Postscript). His name at birth was Johann Cristian Tunck. Tunck’s father was Chilean of German stock whilst his mother was born in New Zealand of Irish ancestry. After his Chilean father disappeared early on, his mother remarried, changing the child’s name to John Christian Watson.
Later on Watson perpetuated a myth as to the truth of his origins which sustained itself throughout his political life. The name John Christian Watson emphasised his supposed ‘Scotchness’ and concealed an inconvenient, alien background. If his non-Britishness have been known, Watson’s eligibility for public office would have been imperilled (Australian politicians were required to be subjects of the Crown)[1].
(Photo: NRMA)
Tanck (the future J Christian Watson) grew up in the South Island of New Zealand, he trained as a compositor and worked for provincial newspapers such as the North Otago Times and the Oamaru Mail. Through these workplaces Watson had his first contacts with labour politics, joining the Typographers’ Union and the NZ Land League. Finding himself unemployed in his late teens prompted him to migrate to Sydney and peripatetic employment with local newspapers until moving to the Australian Star, a paper with a protectionist bent which matched his own economic thinking. As in NZ Watson found a path into the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council (TLC) via the Typographical Association of NSW[2].
Rising quickly through the official labour ranks Watson became both president of the TLC and chairman of the Labor Party (only recently established as the Labor Electoral League) by age 25. Watson served as a member of the colonial parliament of NSW, representing rural Young, and his star continued to ascend after the Commonwealth came into being on 1 January 1901. A few months after Federation, still closer to 30 than 40, Watson was chosen as the first parliamentary leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Early Federal Australian politics entailed a three-way tussle between Watson’s ALP, the Protectionist Party led by Deakin and the Free Trade Party under Reid. Watson’s ascension to the prime minister-ship in 1904 was a novel occurrence: (the ALP was the) first national, labour-based government in the world; Watson at 37, the youngest-ever Australian PM[3]. The advent of Watson’s “workers'” government was met with cynicism and hostility as it challenged the hitherto standard notion that the working class were capable of assuming the mantle of government and succeeding. It didn’t as it eventuated succeed, surviving not quite four months before Watson found his government’s position untenable and was edged out of power¤ … but this was more to do with the nature of the Watson government, a minority one, than the quality or performance. Basically it couldn’t muster the numbers in parliament to continue governing and the governor-general appointed George Reid to the PM-ship in August 1904[4].
Watson’s political ideology:
In the terminology of 2016 filtered through the media’s lens, Chris Watson would be called “right-wing Labor”. Pro-protectionist (much closer to the position of his friend Deakin than to that of Reid and his Free Traders), a staunch advocate of the White Australia Policy, committed to gradual, industrial change in the working conditions and wages of the working man (hence his constant championing of Arbitration and Conciliation reform whilst PM). On the enduring question of the ALP and socialism, Watson, a moderate and mediator by temperament, eschewed a revolutionary approach, seeing himself rather as a proponent of “evolutionary (Christian) socialism”[5]. At his core Watson was no ideologue, he was far from being a fan of the later, quasi-messianic NSW Labor leader Jack Lang and his style of politics. Not a fuzzy idealist either, Watson was a thorough-going pragmatist (albeit a well-liked one), ever happy to do deals and compromise with the Free Trade Party and especially the Protectionists to try to retain Labor’s hold on power.
Labor front runner from Double Bay with Van Dyke beard
The almost universally highly regarded Watson held on to the leadership for a few more years[6] but in 1910, at around the time his successor Andrew Fisher was forming the first Federal Labor government to rule in its own right, Watson was leaving parliament. One reason for this decision was to spend more time with his wife, the other was purely financial, MPs in those days were not handsomely remunerated. Watson’s early business ventures were unsuccessful, eg, investing in a South African gold mine, land speculation at Sutherland in the southern districts of Sydney. More stable income was to be had when he became a director of a wool and textile enterprise – he was able to put his prestige as an ex-PM and his political connections to good use as a lobbyist for the business[7].
Into WWI Watson continued to play a behind-the-scenes role in the ALP, allying himself with the new Labor leader and PM, William Morris Hughes. The 1916 Conscription debate, saw both Hughes and Watson on the wrong side of the argument … calling for the introduction of compulsory military service by Australians in the war, a stand bitterly opposed by the great bulk of the Party (also decisively rejected by the public at large in two referendums). In the internecine conflict Hughes factionalised the ALP, defecting in 1917 to form a new (non-Labor) party, the Nationalists and holding on the prime minister-ship. Watson joined Hughes in the new party (both he and Watson were expelled from the ALP for their actions). Watson spent the last part of the war enthusiastically trying to get a soldier settlers’ scheme for returned Great War veterans off the ground[8].
In the 1920s Watson played a leading role in establishing and guiding the NRMA (National Roads and Motorists Association), and in the formation of Yellow Cabs (taxi service), and in the 1930s, AMPOL (Australian Motorists Petrol Company), all of which illustrate the former PM’s interest in motor transport. One of his other interests, cricket, led to him being appointed a trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground in Australia[9].
Chris Watson’s life journey took him from obscure and somewhat clandestine origins in Chile to a printing apprenticeship in Dunedin, NZ, to labour politics in Sydney and ultimately to the highest political office in Australia during the formative years of Federation. His brief stint in the top job (a mere 15 weeks) and early retirement at 42 from representative politics, leaves him as one of the lesser known PMs but one that nonetheless played a pioneering role in Labor leadership and in the shaping of Australia’s national identity.
Watson’s trajectory after 1916, if you were to be critical, could be seen as one in which he abandoned labour for the business world, and for the party of big business, the Nationalists (a choice of nationalism over social democracy it could be described) … clearly why, despite his achievements, he has never quite made it into the Pantheon of ALP political heroes.
Valpo view
Postscript:
When I undertook my day trip to Valparaíso, our tour guide, Adrián, who was equipped with excellent English and organisational skills, informed me of this little feature he incorporated into his tours. If he was taking an Australian group of tourists (as with my one on that particular day), he would tailor his commentary of the places we visit to include a sprinkling of references to Australia (or say to Mexico or Italian, etc whatever the case may be). Such as pointing out the concentrations of imported Eucalyptus Globulus among the indigenous trees in the Andean valley. When we got to the city of the Porteños I casually asked the knowledgable guide if he was aware that an Australian prime minister was actually born right there in Valparaíso. Adrián, clearly someone interested in the wider world, was surprised, even doubting of such a claim. “No, really?!?” he inquired disbelievingly (how could this have escaped the meticulous Adrián!). Immediately he googled it on his iPhone and gleefully confirmed that I was right! Chuffed at picking up such a handy little revelatory fact, he added with a boyish enthusiasm that he would mention it to his next group of Aussie tourists. I laughed and replied, “Don’t worry, even though they come from there, they won’t have heard of Watson either“!
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❈ a superfluous distinction of course given that as far as is known, short of a forensic examination of Hansard, Watson was almost certainly the only Australian political figure to be born in Valparaíso
◙ all other Australian prime ministers born outside Australia came from the British Isles
¤ the specific trigger for the government’s downfall was Watson’s failure to secure a double dissolution from the Gov-Gen.
[1] the Scottish myth was sustained throughout Watson’s political career, eg, the (Sydney) Bulletin lavished praise on him when he became the government’s treasurer in 1904 – concluding that “public finances are in safe Caledonian hands”, The Bulletin, 28 April 1904, cited in J Hawkins, ‘Chris Watson: Australia’s second Treasurer’, The Treasury: Australian Government, (Economic Roundup – Winter 2007), www.archive.treasury.gov.au
[2] B Nairn, ‘Watson, John Christian (Chris) (1867-1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 12, (MUP), 1990
[3] at the same point in time the British Labour Party (BLP) had precisely four MPs out of a total of 670 in the House of Commons, and the first BLP UK government didn’t occur until the 1930s, R McMullin, ‘First in the World: Australia’s Watson Labor Government’, Department of Parliamentary Services, (2005), www.aph.gov.au/
[4] ibid. Reid’s term, similarly, was one of only 11 months … Watson’s and Reid’s terms were characteristic of the early Commonwealth governments – minority rule, composite, multi-party based governments and (consequently) short-lived
[5] Hawkins, op.cit.
[6] Even when he was PM or Leader of the Opposition, Watson was still highly responsive to his local constituents in Bland (and later South Sydney) and worked tirelessly to address their “grass roots” needs, ‘Chris Watson’ (Australian Prime Ministers), Museum of Australian Democracy, www.primeministers.moadoph.gov.au
[7] A Grassby & S Ordoñez, John Watson, (1999)
[8] ibid.
[9] ibid.
Windsor, 63 kilometres north-west of Sydney and nestling on the southern side of the winding Hawkesbury River, is one of the most historic towns of Australia’s European settlement. The first white settlers moved into Windsor in the early 1790’s giving it the name Green Hills, although it wasn’t until Lachlan Macquarie’s governorship (commencing in early 1810) that the town and environs of Green Hills (by now renamed ‘Windsor’) started to get a kick-along, progress-wise.
Plaque honouring site of Macquarie’s Govt House at Windsor
The Riverview Shopping Centre in George Street (Windsor’s high street), constructed in 2006, offers up its own acknowledgement of the suburb’s rich historical story. On the centre’s marble effect floor, positioned at regular points, there is an historical timeline, a series of banner inscriptions which identify certain events or milestones in the history of the Hawkesbury district.
Among the little snippets of local historical interest is a reference to Windsor’s own notorious colonial bushranger, George Armstrong. Armstrong – labelled “the terror of the Windsor district” – briefly threatened the safety and well-being of the township’s citizens in 1837[1] (an interesting side-note to this is that nearby Wilberforce – just across the river – was the birthplace of a far more celebrated Australian bushranger, Fred Ward, better known as Captain Thunderbolt).
However it was another historic headline on the centre floor that caught my eye – the banner read “1814 ~ Report given to Governor Macquarie of planned invasion of the Hawkesbury by Napoleon”. I was not previously aware of any reference to a supposed connection between Napoléon and Sydney’s Windsor district, and found the notion an intriguing one.
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-8.jpg”> Gov. Macquarie in Thompson Square[/captio
At the time the Napoleonic Wars were at their height with Britain and its allies moving towards the ultimate showdown with France at Waterloo in 1815. The official who alerted Macquarie to the French danger was Earl Bathurst, Secretary of War and Colonies (Bathurst to Macquarie: 1813 correspondence). Bathurst’s letter warned of the possibility of French attack on the colony, most likely to originate by sea from Broken Bay, down the Hawkesbury River … the target was thought to be Windsor’s granary (Sydney’s “food bowl”), to cut off its supply to Sydney Town[2]. In response, Macquarie, already preoccupied with the task of making Windsor more secure, stepped up the strengthening of the military garrison and boosted the population of free men (including emancipists) in the district.
British intelligence about a planned invasion of the Sydney colony has its genesis in the period’s French maritime expeditions in the South Pacifc, particularly that of Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and 1803. Baudin’s scientific expedition visited Port Jackson in 1802 and it was the activities (and subsequent written record) of the expedition’s naturalist, François Péron, which provided the blueprint for supposed French intentions in New Holland. Whilst there, Péron, under the guise of his scientific activities, engaged in a “freelance spying” exercise[3], collecting information on the nature and defence capacity of the colony. Péron wrote down his observations in a secret report (entitled Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande).
Monsieur Péron
Péron claimed to be a government agent and that the expedition’s real purpose was a political mission. The zoologist-cum-spy recommended that France attack the fledgling British colony in New Holland, speculating that the act would incite an Irish rebellion against the colony’s English overlords and elicit resistance from the indigenous population as well. The military strategy advanced by Péron also called for a takeover of the south of Tasmania. The assault on Sydney via the Hawkesbury was one of three invasion routes proposed by Péron[4].
Although Péron’s viewpoint was widely discredited at the time, his memoir has recently been translated into English (from the original) and new research on the subject at Adelaide University (UoA) has thrown up fresh evidence to support the contention of Péron that Napoléon was seriously considering such an attack. Peron’s report (and the reactions to it) demonstrates that Port Jackson/NSW was perceived as a strategic location by both Britain and its enemies. The related UOA research unearthed further evidence that the British South Pacific outpost held a strategic necessity that went beyond the mere penal colony that was stated to be Sydney’s raison d’être[5].
Isle de France 🇫🇷
The perspective of the Sydney colony proffered by Péron (and Napoléon’s later acknowledgement of his views) underscore the displeasure with which the French viewed Britain’s decision to unilaterally annex this great, southern land without consulting other European powers. The new British colony was also seen as posing a potential threat to France’s Indian Ocean island possessions, especially to the French naval base in the Isle de France (Mauritius and its dependent territories)[6].
The British colonialists in Australia did recognise and respond to the threat from France at some level. Concern over French incursions into Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was intensified by the contemporary activity of French explorers (separate ‘scientific’ expeditions by d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Freycinet in the south) – and prompted His Majesty’s government to occupy the south of Tasmania and plant the “Union Jack” on King Island (in the Bass Strait) in fear of French designs on this part of the continent[7].
Bathurst’s “hush-hush” letter to Macquarie (based on information supplied by agents friendly to Britain) also raised the prospect of a joint naval attack by both France and the United States[8]. The plan was for the combined fleet to assemble at Two Fold Bay (Eden, NSW) and then proceed up the Pacific Coast and launch an attack on Sydney from the north (Hawkesbury River). Napoléon’s disastrous Russian campaign and the reverses suffered by the US early in the War of 1812 meant that the plan was never put into practice[9], but the episode served to underline how strategically important the remote, western Pacific colony was for Britain imperial ambitions.
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[1] ‘The Notorious Bushranger George Armstrong’, Hawkesbury Historical Society, (10-Feb 2016), www.hawkesburyhistoricalsocietyblogspot.com.au
[2] ‘Windsor, New South Wales’, (Wiki),http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] described by some as an “amateur espionage project”, N Rothwell, ‘Francois Peron’s French lessons in the colonisation of Australia’, The Australian, 05-Apr 2014
[4] M Connor, ‘The secret plan to invade Sydney’, Quadrant Magazine, 01-Nov 2009, www.quadrant.org.au; ‘Napoleon’s Intention to Capture Thompson Square’, (The Battle for Windsor Bridge – Personal Stories), www.rahs.org.au
[5] R Brice, ‘Sacré bleu! French invasion plan for Sydney’, (ABC News, 11-Dec 2012), www.abc.net.au
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘Battle for Windsor Bridge’, op.cit.
[8] At the time (1813), both France and the US were engaged in (distinct but related) wars with Britain, whose navy was blockading the fleets of both countries. Attacking the important colony of Port Jackson made tactical sense to divert the British fleet away from US and French ports, ibid.
[9] ibid.
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[/caption
A 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 (1960s) Caltex sign: 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
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[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.architectureau.com
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[/cap
At 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 re-zoned 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
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[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
October 7 this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Taronga Zoological Park, or as it is simply known to successive generations of children and parents of Sydney and its environs, Taronga Zoo (Taronga: Abor. for “beautiful sea view”). Sydney’s premier zoo can in fact trace its genesis considerably further back than that to the formation of the Zoological Society of New South Wales in 1879‡.
The Society’s initial purpose was to import English birds (and other introduced species) to the Antipodes and to acclimatise them to the conditions before distributing them to different parts of the continent. In 1883 the Sydney City Council gave permission to the Zoo Society to open a public zoo on government land allocated to it in Moore Park (3.5km south of the city centre). The location of the zoo was in a part of Moore Park known locally as Billy Goat Swamp, today occupied by Sydney Girls High (zoo remnants survive, still visible within the school grounds, ie, two bear pits in the ‘Lowers’ area adjoining Sydney Boys High). The zoo was designed by Charles Moore, responsible for the earlier creation of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens[1].
Primitive lion enclosure at Moore Park
As more animals were added to it, the zoo soon outgrew its original land grant of 7.5 acres[2]. Gradually the zoo’s space encroached on more and more of the Moore Park parkland. Mostly in the 19th century, the new additions of animals for big public zoos came from engaging overseas professional hunters to capture exotic animals for their collections[3]. Melbourne Zoo acquired its hippos and monkeys, and Moore Park its Californian and Cinnamon bears, via this channel. Others like Jessie the Asian elephant were gifts for the Sydney zoo from the King of Siam.
By 1910 Moore Park Zoo was too small for the burgeoning number of animals accumulated. As a result the New South Government made 43ha of bushland§ between Little Sirius Cove and Bradleys Head (Mosman) available as a new site for Sydney’s zoo[4]. Around 1913-14 most of the zoo inhabitantsφ were bused from Moore Park to Circular Quay and then ferried by flat-top barge across the harbour to Mosman. With the taller animals, the elephants and giraffes, the zoo authorities eventually realised that it would be prudent to transport them to their new home in the middle of the night to avoid a public commotion in the streets. The sight of the massive beasts silhouetted against the night skyline whilst being barged across the water would have provided an inspiring, even poetic, vision.
Melbourne Zoo was founded in 1862 at Royal Park (Parkville). Heavily modelled on London Zoo, it has often been described as the first zoo in Australia[5], but this is not strictly correct – as there were small, private zoos in Sydney that predate it. Melbourne’s position however as the first public zoo in the country is certainly not in dispute, starting up some 22 years before Sydney’s Moore Park Public Zoo (Royal Melbourne Zoo is also the longest, continually operating zoo in Australia).
The concept of a zoo in the NSW colony has its origins in Hyde Park in the centre of Sydney Town in 1810. Soon after taking office Governor Macquarie established Sydney Common as a “people’s park”. Hyde Park initially housed a racecourse which by 1825 had given way to a menagerie of domestic and imported animals¥. By 1848 one Captain William Charlesworth, having procured exotic animals from India, and with the imprimatur of the Australian Museum, displayed them in a private menagerie-cum-small zoo in the Park[6].
Botany Zoological Gardens Remembering the elephant at Banks Zoo
The Hyde Park zoo experiment was short-lived and in 1851 its exhibits were ‘gifted’ to the publican (William Beaumont) of the Sir Joseph Banks Inn in Botany in Sydney’s south. The Botany hotel included a large land holding which was turned into pleasure grounds, with the private zoo being one of its star attractions. Among the new zoo’s animals acquired from Hyde Park were a ‘docile’ Asian elephant, a Bengal tiger, a gorilla, male and female Himalayan bears, black Bengal sheep and a pair of Manilla red deers[7].
After a change of hotel lease-holders the zoo folded and the animals were sold (late 1850s) to another pub at Watsons Bay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs – the Marine Hotel, owned by Henry Billing. “The Marine” was originally a private mansion built by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis ca 1837 and initially named “Zandvilet” (or “Zandoliet”) and then “Marine Villa’ under different owners (known simply as “Watsons Bay House” to many).
Billing located the zoo in Robertson Park (Clovelly Street Watsons Bay) in the grounds of the Marine Hotel, which he later renamed Greenwich Pier Hotel⊕. The private zoo (and hotel) had its own wharf for visitors. The collection included a lion (which was obviously tame, and perhaps worst, declawed, as the zoo advertised that it was available for visitors to ride!), elephants, tigers and harnessed zebras (no further information available on this but the inference is that the zebras might have been used bizarrely to pull carriages – like a horse!)[8].
The ‘showman’ Billing tirelessly promoted his private zoo as the largest and finest collection of wild animals in the Australian colonies, with “the wonder of the world, the Monstor Bengal Tiger Hercules, three East Indian Leopards, East Indian Porcupines, a Brahmin Cow, Egyptian Sheep, Golden Pheasants, Mongoose and English Ferrets”[9].
Dunbar House – former grounds of Watsons Bay Private Zoo
Not surprisingly, the zoo was a big hit with the punters, especially when combined with the on-site pub! Unfortunately in 1861 the zoo suffered a setback when one of the Bengal tigers mauled its keeper. This resulted in litigation against Billing and although cleared of any blame, the hotelier soon after died. His widow tried to get the colonial zoological board to purchase the animals, but the government rejected her request. Her excessive reaction, sadly, was to poison the 18 animals (some reports list the number as higher) in the Robertson Park zoo. A few years later Mrs Billing embarked on a new “show business” venture, operating a waxworks in Sydney[10]. There is no record of whether it was a successful business or not, but at least it didn’t involve any animals.
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‡ the Zoological Society was formed to carry on the role of the Acclimatisation Society, viz. the introduction and acclimatisation of (especially English) song birds and game (Royal Zoological Society of NSW)
§ an additional 9ha of Ashton Park bushland was later made available to the zoo
φ calculated at 228 mammals, 552 birds and 64 reptiles (Taronga Conservation Society Australia)
¥ Mrs Macquarie was reputed to maintain a personal menagerie of animals at Government House in Parramatta during her husband’s governorship.
⊕ the building housing Billing’s hotel in Robertson Park can boast a most colourful and manifold history. Since Billing’s ownership it has continued to change hands and names. Later in the century it got a new name, this time becoming the Royal Hotel, which had an open-air cinema added to its rear. From 1924 it was the municipal chambers of Vaucluse Council until the Council was abolished and merged into Woollahra Council in 1948. Part of the house became a library for a time. In the fifties as “Fisherman’s Lodge” it hosted wedding receptions and the like. Today it is the revamped Dunbar House, owned by the Grand Pacific Group, and hired out for events and operating as a cafe/restaurant for the many visitors to Watsons Bay
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[1] the Botanic Gardens provided many exotic birds for the new Moore Park Zoo aviary, ‘Who’s Who in the Moore Park Zoo?’, Centennial Parklands, History & Heritage, 7 May 2015, www.blog.centennialparklands.com
[2] pointedly,the Australian Town and Country Journal expressed “surprise that such a charming effect should be obtained in so comparatively small an area”, ‘The Zoological Gardens – a popular holiday resort with Sydney young folk’, Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney), December 17 1892, www.trove.nla.gov.au
[3] ‘The Zoo’s first hippos stars: William and Rosamund’, (Culture Victoria),www.cv.vic.gov.au. There was more of an overlap of zoos and circuses in that era with both obtaining their ‘wild’ animals from this same source. It wasn’t until much later that zoos developed an interest in conservation and education
[4] a thriving artists’ colony, Curlew Camp, on the cove at Ashton Park, was closed down to make way for the zoo. Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, two of Australia’s most celebrated late colonial artists were members of the Curlew Camp group. As it eventuated the camp section of the bush headland was not used by the zoo. A bush track (the Harbour Hike) skirts around the Taronga fence and is part of the Sydney Harbour National Park
[5] eg, ‘Le Souëf Family Archives: Royal Melbourne Zoological Gardens’, www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au; ‘Melbourne Zoo’, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[6] T Lennon, ‘Colonial Sydney went wild for first zoos at Hyde Park and Botany’, Daily Telegraph, September 10 2015
[7] ‘Sydney’s First Zoo’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1931 (Trove collection online). The picnic grounds at Sir Joseph Banks Park contain a series of zoo animal statues commemorating the zoo’s one-time existence there
[8] W Mayne-Wilson, ‘Robertson Park Its Secret Past’, Historic Environment, 17(3) 2004. Beaumont retained some of the Botany zoo animals which were later donated to the Moore Park Zoo
[9] V Campion, ‘Bayside Beauty – Dunbar House revives forgotten 1830s glamour’, Daily Telegraph, 10 May 2011
[10] Robin Derricourt, Watsons Bay, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionary of Sydney.org/entry/watsons_bay, viewed 30 April 2016
The founding of the British colony in Port Jackson in 1788, isolated from the mother country some ten-and-a-half thousand miles away, brought with it many anxieties for the new settlers. With French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian empires all vying with Britain for global supremacy, the security of Sydney was very much on the minds of Governor Phillip and his gubernatorial successors. Right from the get-go measures were put in place to shore up the vulnerable colony’s defences, both against potential external threats and internal rebellion. How secure and how effective these efforts were, we shall examine below.
⇧ What’s left of the Dawes Pt battery, these days with a pretty sizeable awning!
1790: “No frills” fortifications
In 1790 a battery was located in Sydney on a rocky bluff jutting out into the harbour on what was to become known as Dawes Point. The Dawes Point fortifications were chosen to be the first line of defence against enemy invaders because of its propitious location – a high, narrow, peninsula offering an excellent views straight out onto the harbour✱. Also, being very close to the main settlement at Sydney Cove, news of any sign of impending danger or threat could be quickly relayed to the townspeople. A battery was also installed on Windmill Hill (now Observatory Hill) in 1794. Ten years later work commenced on the construction of Fort Phillip on the same site, the fort was intended to be a citadel in the event of convict insurrection, however it was never completed. In the 1850s most of the fortified structure got dismantled to make way for the building of the Sydney Observatory¹.
Over the course of the first seventy years or so of settlement in Sydney the security focus gradually shifted from concentrating on the inner harbour (Dawes Point and Sydney Cove) to defending the Heads and Botany Bay. In 1801 the first gun emplacements were built in Middle Head (north of Obelisk Bay) as a response to the growing threat to Britain of France under Napoleon (in the 20th century these fortifications were overgrown by vegetation and more or less forgotten until rediscovered in the 1990s)².
⇧ Outmoded artillery on ‘Windmill Hill‘
The threat to New South Wales, so distant from the European theatres of the Napoleonic Wars, probably seems a remote one when seen through modern eyes, but it was taken seriously at the time. Sydney was perceived as a desirable prize because of several factors – it had a strategically important harbour, the envy of navies all over the world; there was only a small population in place to defend the settlement; and later on it had huge quantities of gold bullion acquired from the goldfields³.
It seems that the adequacy of the fortifications was being called into question constantly throughout the 19th century. Criticism from prominent citizens of the colony was common (the embrasures ineffective, fragility of the fortification as a whole, etc). One of the points made by Commissioner Bigge’s Report into the colony (1820) was that in the event of another conflict between Britain and the USA (following upon the recent War of 1812) Britain’s colonies, especially New South Wales, would be very susceptible to seizure by the US⁴. In addition, the prevalence of American whaling fleets in the South Pacific made many in the colony fearful of raids on Sydney Town by Yankee privateers.
Francis Greenway was the architect commissioned to strengthen the principal fort at Dawes Point in 1819, having described (with some exaggeration) the battery’s prior state as “perfectly useless … so that any speculator of any of the nations we were at war with, might have entered our harbour, destroyed our infant town, blowed up the stores, and left us in a woeful condition⁵. Greenway was also responsible for the construction of Fort Macquarie on the tip of Bennelong Point (smack-bang where the Sydney Opera House is today!).
The strengthening of Sydney’s defences have often occurred as a reaction to security scares in the colony. The decision in 1841 to convert a convict hold in the middle of the harbour (Pinchgut Island) into Fort Denison came about after two American warships were discovered having anchored themselves in the harbour without being detected. The fortifications of Fort Denison were in any case far from swiftly constructed, not being finished until 1857, by which time the perceived external threat had shifted to Russia after the Crimean War.
South Head was fortified in the 1840s – though not equipped with artillery until the 1870s! Possessing an ideal vantage point to view vessels approaching the harbour, it was also used as a lookout and a signal station. Today a naval base, HMAS Watson, is housed on the land it occupied⁶.
Not all plans for the reform of Sydney’s coastal defences got acted on. In 1848 Lt-Colonel James Gordon proposed a definitive, systematic plan to upgrade and improve both the inner (harbour) fortifications and the outer (heads) fortifications. Gordon’s plans only ever got partially implemented by the colonial authorities who were content to “cherry-pick” what they liked⁷.
⇧ Upper Georges Heights battery
Following the Crimean War conflict, a fear that the Russian Pacific Fleet might invade the colony prompted an upgrade in defence facilities. Some fortifications were added to Bradleys Head and South Head, although nothing much really happened until Britain’s Cardwell Army Reforms came into effect (1870). One consequence was that British ‘redcoats’ were withdrawn from Australia and the colony was required to raise local units to protect itself. This proved a spur to the authorities in Sydney to construct new fortifications further north-east in Port Jackson, around Mosman. Gun emplacements were built at Middle Head, Georges Head, Bradleys Head and Lower Georges Heights.
British fears that Tsarist Russia might try to extend its empire into India via Afghanistan led to a wave of ‘Russophobia’in the 1870s and 80s8, which spread eventually to the NSW colony. Already, in 1863 a Russian corvette (the Bogatyr) had visited Sydney and Melbourne, prompting the Sydney Morning Herald to allege that it was secretly conducting topographical surveys of Port Jackson and Botany Bay to ascertain the strength of the settlement’s fortifications⁹.
⇧ Bare Island – decent sort of target!
The Sydney authorities, fearing an attack from the Russian Navy and sensing that Sydney was vulnerable to an attack from its southern “back door”, built a fort in 1888 at Bare Island off La Perouse⊕at the entrance to Botany Bay. The edifice unfortunately was composed of poor quality materials and began to crumble before completion. The islet fort was decommissioned in 1902 due in part to the state of its armaments. Though heavily-gunned its technology had quickly become outdated. The Russian Pacific Fleet never came to Bare Island but these days scuba divers flock to it as its waters are a prized diving site¹⁰.
The Jervois-Stratchley Reports (defence capability reviews) of the late 1870s emphasised the military importance of sea-ports and this led to a new phase of fort construction in Sydney and elsewhere in the Australasian colonies, eg, Bare Island, Fort Nepean (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Fort Lytton (Brisbane) and the eponymous Fort Scratchley in Newcastle. The fortifications designed by Lieutenant Scratchley, eg, Bare Island, the 1890s cliff-top forts manned with large, anti-bombardment guns around Sydney’s eastern seaboard to protect the suburbs of Vaucluse (Signal Hill Fort), Bondi (Ben Buckler) and Clovelly/Coogee (Shark Point), were outmoded and already basically obsolete when completed¹¹.
The development of Sydney’s coastal defences has followed an irregular course since 1788. Its decidedly desultory and piecemeal trajectory can be attributed to a number of factors, principal among which is cost. Funding defensive works with all the infrastructure required (then as well as now) is an expensive business. Unsurprisingly, the resort to cost-cutting as in the Dawes Point battery, led to the use of inferior materials and rapid disintegration of the construction. Procuring the artillery was neither cheap or easy to do, and in virtually no time the weaponry became out-of-date¹². Also at times, the “tyranny of distance” possibly breed in the local authorities a degree of complacency. Being so far away from where the international action was, meant that coastal fortification often ended up a lower priority that the other, immediate needs of the colony.
Postscript: Bare Is
Bare Island has functioned as a museum since the early 1960s, having never fired a shot in anger (fortunately so perhaps, as had it seen action, its location would have been terribly exposed to hostile fire). Its infrastructure remains largely intact although it’s disappearing guns have indeed ‘disappeared’ for good. The nearby but remote Henry Head is today overgrown to a large extent with vegetation and also sans guns.
⇧ Old Fort Rd, Middle Head
Middle Harbour fortifications
Middle Head/Georges Head (Mosman) has probably the best kept fortifications on the Sydney coast, owing in large part to the fact that this part of Middle Harbour was under military jurisdiction for over a century. The area at various times has contained, et al, a naval hospital, army camp (barracks, quarters, etc), a gunnery school and a submarine miners’ depot.
⇧ the Outer Fort’s notorious “tiger cages”
Middle Head has two forts on the headland, the larger one, the Outer Fort, is perched up on sloping ground in front of a cleared area. The fort’s emplacements contain the notorious the “tiger cages”. During the Vietnam War the cages were used by the Australian Army to train soldiers to withstand torture and interrogation. On the iron grills of some of the cages rust marks are still visible, a remnant of the water entrapment ordeals that used to be meted out! Although no shots were ever fired in anger from the Head, in the middle of last century the battery’s gunners used to practice the accuracy of their 10 and 12 inch guns on a tiny, rocky outcrop of an island in Middle Harbour – which is now fully submerged (no surprise!)
A 1970s ‘Indie’ film set
The smaller Inner Fort with dense vegetation surrounding it has a very different claim to fame. It was used as the bikies’ hideout in the 1974 independent cult movie Stone. The emplacements have long entrance ramps leading to circular gun enclosures and the bikies on their Harleys would tear through the bush track and along the ramps into the enclosures. The two forts and the nearby fort at Georges Head all have the same design – circular gun mounts with ancillary rooms running off them and a vast network of connecting tunnels leading to other military instalments on the promontory.
⇧ Emplacements at Middle Head
The Dawes Point battery today is non-existent, the space merely one of the historic curios of the Rocks. All that remains is the symbolism of a couple of authentic looking canons, some information boards recounting the history and architecture, and an artist’s modern, interpretative representation of the former structure … and a nice park in the shadows of the steel undergirth of the harbour bridge.
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✱ Dawes Point functioned as the centrepiece of a system of signal stations. A series of strategically positioned signal posts stretching out to the Heads would relay information on marine activity such as the approach of foreign shipping
⊕ at the same gun emplacements (with disappearing guns) were constructed at Henry Head on the most easterly part of La Perouse
² ‘Sydney’s lost fort declared open’, 23. July 2010, www.news.com.au
³ Dean Boyce, ‘Defending colonial Sydney” Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/defending_colonial_sydney, viewed 30 March 2016
⁴ Boyce 2008; A Wayne Johnson, ‘Showdown in the Pacific: a Remote Response to European Power Struggles in the Pacific, Dawes Point Battery, Sydney, 1791-1925’, (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority), www.sha.org/uploads/files/
⁵ F Greenway, Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser, 13 September 1834
⁸ ‘Russophobia’ was evident at the time in the popularity of “Invasion scare novels” (eg, The Invasion by WH Walker, published in Sydney in 1877, an account of a fictionalised attack on Sydney by the Russian navy, Boyce 2008
⁹ A Massov, ‘The Russian Corvette “Bogatyr” in Melbourne and Sydney in 1863’,http://australiarussia.com.au
¹⁰ ‘Bare Island (New South Wales)’, Wikipedia
¹¹ Boyce 2008; ‘Sydney’s Fortifications’ 2015
¹² ‘Sydney’s Colonial Fortifications’, Australian Society for the History of Engineering & Technology (ASHET, Self-guided Tour, nd)
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.
* 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 nomenclatureThe 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)]
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[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.
🎭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
NOW that Scotland have expressed an inclination, but not a preference, to secede from the Union with England (the UK), it would be interesting to take a gander at other secession attempts both closer to home and around the world. The impulse for or advocacy of secession by a section or part of an established, multi-ethnic nation state is a recurring feature in contemporary international relations.
The enthusiasm with which so many Scots embraced the notion of “going it alone” and their, so it seemed up to polling day, excellent prospect of pulling it off, is a fillip for long-lingering secessionist movements around the world – Catalonia, the Basque Country, Québec, Flemish Belgium, Kurdistan (although some of the several Kurdish groups seek only autonomy, not outright independence) [“The Kurdish Conflict: Aspirations for Statehood within the Spirals of International Relations in the 21st Century”, www.kurdishaspect.com]
In the Southern Hemisphere, on this very continent indeed, in the state of Western Australia, an air of secessionism has tended to linger, much like the relieving breeze visited upon Perth in the afternoon from the Indian Ocean’s “Fremantle Doctor”. The Western Australians, from the very outset in 1900, were reluctant to join the Commonwealth of Australia…in fact the state’s name was conspicuously omitted from the original Federation document of 1 January 1901! A special provision (Section 95) guaranteeing that a planned inter-colonial tariff would only be gradually phased in, had to be added to the Constitution before the West would sign up. A further inducement that clinched it was the prospect of a transcontinental railway to be built linking WA with the eastern states.
The proposed colony of ‘Auralia’ – an irredentist goldfields colony
𓂃𓂅𓂅𓂅𓂃
In the end, what swayed WA in joining (as argued by Tom Musgrove) was the affinity with the East held by recent settlers lured to WA by the goldfield discoveries. The huge population surge in the 1890s in WA, due to the influx of these Eastern fortune-seekers made them more numerous than the established residents on the coast who were, conversely, distinctly isolationist in their outlook. The miners formed a pressure group advocating that the eastern goldfields area (calling itself the colony of ‘Auralia’) break away from the rest of WA and unilaterally federate with the Commonwealth. The WA Parliament eventually succumbed to the threat of being splintered and losing the goldfields, and committed to the Federation [T Musgrove, ‘Western Australian Secessionist Movement’, The Macquarie Law Journal, www.austlil.edu.au; ‘Separation Movement on the Eastern Goldfields, 1894-1904’, West Australian Historical Society 1949, 4(5) 1953]. So, even prior to Federation, a bent for Western secession was evident.
Black Swan State
𓂃𓂅𓂅𓂅𓂃
The secessionists succeed…or do they?
The threat of ‘Westralian’ succession has been a recurring theme in the state’s history since the early days of colony… lying dormant for years before being triggered into prominence by the emergence of some economic upheaval or issue (more recently over the distribution of mining revenues by the Commonwealth). In 1933 the issue of secession was actually put to the electorate of WA in a referendum held concurrently with the state election. The pre-conditions leading up to such a momentous development were brought about by the Great Depression. Wheat, WA’s top primary product export-earner was decimated (the price per bushel declined by less than half in three years) and unemployment in Perth reached 30 per cent. The WA Dominion League spearheaded by H Keith Watson agitated from 1930 for secession in the West. As a result of the League’s vigorous campaign (contrasting with the lacklustre campaign of the Federal League’s ‘No secession’ campaign), the referendum resulted in a greater than two-thirds vote (68 per cent) in favour of secession. Interestingly, the only region of the state to oppose the secession motion was again the goldfields!
“Westralia Shall Be Free”
𓂃𓂅𓂅𓂅𓂃
The Electorate’s each-way bet!
Paradoxically at the same time, the WA electors dumped the incumbent Nationalist/Country Party Coalition from power (even though the NCPC had backed the ‘Yes’ camp), and elevated the Labor Party opposition, who had opposed secession, into office in the state. The apparent contradictory behaviour of the electors has been explained thus: support was given to the ‘Yes’ case because there was widespread dissatisfaction with WA’s situation vis-à-vis the eastern states (WA had long identified itself as the “Cinderella State” of the Commonwealth, it’s perception being one of it contributing more to federal funds than it receives back). At the same time, the unacceptable state unemployment situation in 1933 resulted in voters seeking to punish the incumbent conservative government by turfing them out (as was done federally to the Scullin Labor Government in 1932) [‘Secession 1929-39: Western Australia & Federation’ www.slwa.wa.gov.au].
The WA delegation bringing the petition to secede to London
𓂃𓂅𓂅𓂅𓂃
Westminster or “Yes Minister”!
The new WA premier, Philip Collier, after some prevarication, appointed a delegation which took a petition for WA secession to the UK. Westminster, in a farcical turn of events which the writers of the popular 1980s TV series Yes, Minister would be proud to put their name to, simply sat on the issue, doing nothing! The British Government after a lengthy delay informed the WA Government that it could not act on the petition without the assent of Canberra. By 1935 the economy had recovered somewhat, the secessionist movement and the Dominion League lost momentum and the issue petered way for ordinary West Australians as they got on with the day-to-day task of making the best of what they could with the status quo [ibid.].
Western successionism, a simmering pot!
The media in WA helps to keep the issue alive with periodical appeals to the spectre of “secessionist redux” (with regular articles appearing with titles like “Why the West should secede” and “Secession still on our mind”). Secessionism has remained a rallying cry for disgruntled Western Australians whenever they feel aggrieved about what they see as the excesses and encroaching powers of Canberra. In the 1970s maverick millionaire/WA mining magnate Lang Hancock tried to revive the state’s secessionist trajectory with his short-lived “Westralian Secessionist Movement”, in effect a political campaign against the allegedly ‘socialist’ policies of the Whitlam Labor Government.Most recently this reared its head again in the concerted opposition to the Rudd and Gillard Labor Governments’ mining taxes.
‘Prince’ Leonard & his consort – in the ‘Principality’
PostScript: Fringe micro-secessionists – seceding from the secessionist state!
In 1970 West Australian wheat farmer Leonard Casley declared his 18,500-acre agricultural property near Northampton (south of Geraldton) to be ‘independent’ of the Commonwealth and the state of Western Australia when Canberra and the WA government tried to limit the size of his wheat crop. In true “comic-opera” style, the eccentric Casley turned his farm into the Hutt River Province Principality, adopting the title of “His Majesty Prince Leonard I of Hutt”, and in so doing spawned a whole new wellspring of tourism for the locality. Enthused with the spirit of commercial opportunity Leonard and his Hutt River ‘micro-nation’ has gone the whole hog…flag, coat-of-arms, royal seal, coins, stamps, medallions, passports, souvenirs, etc. The response from the Australian authorities to such a “bold act” of “unilateral independence” has been a “softly-softly” approach, not seeking to unduly push the matter, a bit surprising as the Hutt River ‘Principality’ purportedly owes the Commonwealth many years of unpaid taxes (although it does make rate payments to the local government authority, the Shire of Northampton)…the state and the federal governments seem to gravitate between being nonplussed and amused by the eccentric entity❈ and generally try to ignore it! [M Siegel, “Micronation Master: Prince Leonard of Hutt River”, 17 May 2012, www.businessweek.com]; ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org
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❈ the Prince’s pattern of bizarre and idiosyncratic behaviour includes trying to seize government land surrounding his farm to increase his wheat quota; invoking the 1495 British Treason Act as proof of Hutt River Province’s status as a de facto monarchy; and declaring war on Australia (for four days in 1977!)
Most Australians have at some time or other glimpsed the grainy old Cinesound newsreel footage or the still pictures of the dramatic events of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932. What should have been a moment of glory for the NSW Premier, Jack Lang, declaring open Bradfield’s engineering wonder of a bridge, was turned into a minor public relations coup for a shadowy fringe paramilitary group called the New Guard through an audacious act by one of its members.
De Groot’s ‘coup’
Just as the Bridge ribbon was about to be cut by the NSW Premier, Captain Francis De Groot who had attached himself undetected to the escort cavalry, rode forward and pre-emptively slashed the ribbon. In doing so he declared the bridge open “in the name of all decent and respectable people of New South Wales”. De Groot, the Irish-born antique dealer, furniture restorer and part-time soldier, with one outrageous swipe of his sword, secured his “15 minutes of fame”, embarrassed the Lang Labor Government and thrust the New Guard deeply into the consciousness of Sydneysiders at large!
Primrose’s ceremony at the Northern Pylon
Now all this is well known, but what is largely not known is what was happening at the northern end of the Bridge whilst attention was focused on the high drama at Dawes Point. Soon after De Groot “opened the bridge” in unorthodox fashion at the southern pylon end, another member of the New Guard cut the ribbon at the northern pylon. Hubert Leslie Primrose, Mayor of North Sydney, was an assistant adjunct and quartermaster-general in the New Guard. Primrose as mayor had organised his own bridge-opening ceremony from the North Sydney side. Although NSW Police (and Premier Lang) had decided reservations about Alderman Primrose’s Northside celebration of the Bridge, because of his involvement in a suspect para-military movement that was under investigation (the New Guard), they ultimately made no attempts to stop the municipal representative going ahead with his act of public ceremony.
So, remarkable as it may seem to us today, the opening of both ends of that most iconic of Sydney symbols, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was accomplished by the New Guard. These deeds (one undertaken officially and the other without state sanction) were achieved by a small, para-military organisation that at best was only ever a marginal player in provincial Australian politics.
Harbour Bridge from Kirribilli
Primrose’s fascination with the New Guard, like many of its initial supporters, was short-lived. In June 1932 he was one of many New Guardsmen elected to the Legislative Assembly for the new conservative force in party politics, the United Australia Party (forerunner to the Liberal Party of Australia), later rising to the rank of UAP Minister for Health, and later Minister for National Emergency Services. Primrose Park in the northern Sydney suburbs of Cremorne and Cammeray is named in his honour, but clearly not for his activities on behalf of the New Guard!
Footnote: Apart from his right wing, para-military enthusiasms, Captain De Groot, the stealer of Premier Lang’s thunder on thatillustrious day, had a respectable day job as the proprietor of a successful antique furniture business in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The plaque below stands on the site of the former shop in Rushcutters Bay.
␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣
[Refs: Australian Dictionary of Biography (Vol 11) 1988, HL Primrose, ADB, (Supp. Vol) 2005, FE De Groot, both artls by Andrew Moore]
I have long thought that one of the more intriguing back stories of 20th century Australian history is the rise and (rapid) fall of the New Guard movement. The New Guard which flourished in the early 1930s was Australia’s own home-grown, ‘wannabe’ fascist organisation, one of a number of disgruntled, peripheral Australian Alt-Right groups in the Depression years.
The New Guard was a fairly obscure fringe organisation in early 1931, formed by ex-World War I army officers who broke away from an existing organisation (the Old Guard) deemed by them to be too cautious in its anti-socialist methods❈. The singular incident associated with the New Guard that resonates most clearly in the public consciousness today is the intervention by Francis De Groot (divisional commander in the New Guard) in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932. The fanatical, sword-wielding De Groot, on horseback, upstaged the State Labor government by dramatically cutting the ribbon at the southern pylon of the bridge before NSW Premier JT Lang could do so officially.
At its height the New Guard had somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 members in New South Wales❅ (men only, women were not permitted to join the New Guard). Included in these numbers were prominent Australians such as the famous aviators, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, Sir Thomas Henley (Nationalist Party MP), Hubert Primrose (Mayor of North Sydney, later NSW UAP Minister for Health), and leading business figures in industry and agriculture such as the Patricks (Patricks Stevedore and Shipping Lines) and the MacArthur Onslows (sheep barons). Interestingly, it has been alleged (though not substantiated) that Lyall Howard, the garage owner-father of former PM John Howard, was very likely to have been a New Guard member (Andrew Moore, ‘The New Guard & the Labour Movement 1931-35’, Labour History, No 89).
JT Lang in typical demagogic mood
.The background to the New Guard’s emergence was the societal dislocation caused by the Great Depression and the sudden and calamitous level of unemployment of the early 1930s. This gave the New Guardsmen the impetus to thrive as it did to right-wing authoritarian political forces in Europe during the same period. In October 1930 a left-leaning Labor Government was elected in NSW under the demagogic nationalist Jack Lang. Lang’s scheme to tackle the state’s catastrophic economic crisis comprised repudiating Australia’s international loan obligations and refusing to make any further interest payments to British bondholders (and re-channelling those retained monies into job creation for the state). This polemical stand not only enraged Big Capital interests but also made fringe groups on the right, especially the New Guard, flare up in hostile opposition to Labor.
Lt.Col Campbell
The leader of the New Guard (NG) was a Sydney North Shore solicitor, company director and WWI army officer of patrician stock, Eric Campbell. The attraction of men who followed Campbell into NG was that it appeared to offer a fresh, alternative solution to the problems of society to those espoused by the democratic parliamentary parties of the day⊚. NG viewed communism and socialism as having a corrosive and degenerative effect on Australian society. Campbell characterised the incumbent Lang government as avowedly socialist, and thus tried to relegate the Labor Party to the status of being abject co-conspirators with the communists working against the liberties of loyal Australians.
Lt-Colonel Campbell asserted that New Guard was “staunchly patriotic”, but by this he meant patriotic to the British Empire, so intricately linked in his mind was Australia with the ‘mother country’, Britain. In effect the New Guardsmen were undisguisedly über-British loyalists. So, when Lang signalled his intent to default on loans to British banks, this infuriated Campbell and loyalists to the Crown generally. Campbell and his executive redoubled the movement’s efforts to bring Labor down. NG believed in minimalist government and individualism, in “sane finance” as Campbell put it, in freeing up private enterprise to get on with business…Lang’s plans to expand the public sector to alleviate the unemployment crisis, put ‘Langism’ very squarely in the ideological cross-hairs of NG.
Campbell & his NG acolytes giving a familiar salute at a Sydney rally
By late 1931, disillusioned with parliamentary party politics, the New Guard adopted more aggressive tactics in the fight against the left. New Guardsmen also started to display some of the trappings of fascist parties (military uniforms and armbands, the Nazi salute, ID badges) and began to break up meetings of communists and the unemployed. NG’s unleashing of its paramilitary arm provoked the left into forming communist and Laborite militias which eventually led to pitched street battles with the NG forces.
The most significant, physical confrontation between these groups, occurring in early 1932, became known as the “Battle of Bankstown”. The New Guard in its coercive actions in Bankstown and elsewhere in Sydney did succeed in its aim to disrupt meetings of the labour movement, but these mobilisations ultimately proved counterproductive to the NG leaders’ attempts to consolidate the new movement. The Bankstown mêlée had two adverse effects for NG. First, the leadership’s decision to up the ante in NG’s strong-arm tactics against their ideological opponents alienated a lot of the movement’s rank-and-file and many disaffected members resigned in the aftermath of Bankstown. At an NG meeting soon after some members moved motions of no confidence in the leadership of Führer (the leader) Eric Campbell, ibid.
Secondly, the level of New Guard violence exhibited at Bankstown, and to a lesser extent at other NG mobilisations like Newtown, Drummoyne and Canterbury, following upon De Groot’s bridge antics, convinced NSW Police of the need to take the threat to law and order posed by Campbell’s organisation seriously. The promotion by Premier Lang of an uncompromising, aggressive Glaswegian, Big Bill MacKay, to Acting Metropolitan Superintendent, was the catalyst for a much tougher police line taken against the right-wing paramilitary groups. MacKay intimidated Campbell and De Groot and other NG leaders and exhorted the State police to respond with unrestrained force every time the New Guard initiated a public fracas.
Given free rein by Supt MacKay, the white-helmeted state police launched a savage assault on the trouble-making New Guardsmen, especially in an incident that became known as the “Liverpool Street Police Riot”. Campbell’s enthusiastic but volunteer guardsmen proved no match for a well-trained, disciplined and highly motivated police force. The largely middle class NG members who clashed with the police found the experience distinctly not to their liking. Under instructions from MacKay, the police went at the New Guardsmen full-tilt and absolutely brutalised Campbell’s militia. MacKay’s tactics of intimidation and savage counter-violence against NG paramilitaries kept the agitators in check and dissuaded many from continuing their active involvement in the right wing organisation (Moore, ibid).
Berrima Gaol, NSW
NSW Police in early 1932 undertook investigations aimed at unearthing a possible plot by Campbell to use his so-called Secret Army to launch a coup d’être against Lang’s Labor Government. It was widely rumoured in the press that the New Guard planned to overthrow the Government, kidnap and imprison Lang and his senior cabinet ministers in the disused Berrima Gaol in country NSW. ‘The revolution that wasn’t’ (www.matthewleecunningham.com). Whether Campbell was planning such a strike on democracy or not (he publicly denied it, whereas Major Treloar, disaffected NG deputy commander, informed police that this was indeed Campbell’s true intention)(Robert Darlington, Eric Campbell & the New Guard). The question became academic in May 1932 when the Governor, Sir Philip Game, sacked the Lang Government for withholding revenues deemed owing to the Commonwealth as part of the debt to British financiers. The incoming State UAP Government quickly shelved the CID’s investigation into the alleged New Guard plot.
⇓Gov. Game, co-conspirator?
In what sense could the New Guard movement be said to be fascist in nature?Historians have long debated whether the New Guard organisation was a fascist one or even a quasi-fascist one – as they have done with regard to Franco’s Falange Party in Spain and other authoritarian-right movements. If we stack the New Guard up against the classic Italian and Germany models of inter-war fascism, it is of course a ludicrous comparison. The New Guard movement, in addition to lacking a totalitarian systemic structure, falls well short even of fulfilling the criteria for a semi-fascist organisation like the British Union of Fascists, whose leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, Campbell expressed great admiration for. Campbell visited Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in 1933 and came away deeply impressed by the Nazi and Fascist systems of rule, and subsequently did integrate some aspects of Mussolini’s Italian Corporatism into the New Guard’s ideology. The most that can be said about Campbell’s organisation however was that it was heavily influenced by the success of the European fascist movements and was openly sympathetic to fascism (Matthew Cunningham, ‘Australian Fascism? A Revisionist Analysis of the New Guard’, Politics, Religion & Ideology , 13(3)).
Real fascists ⇓
Nor can it be said that the New Guard had any claims to be considered as a mass movement in NSW politics. NG remained fundamentally a middle class organisation, the core of its base were urban professionals and small businessmen, like Campbell himself (Cunningham, Ibid.). Unlike many other fascist/authoritarian parties in Europe, it lacked for significant working class participation (Moore, op.cit.). Moreover, geographically, the New Guard was very limited in scope. It was confined almost entirely to one state, NSW, and even more, was essentially a Sydney metropolitan phenomena with only around 3,000 members from rural areas outside of Sydney (Cunningham, ibid.).
The staunchly pro-monarchist and pro-capitalist (and distinctly non-radical) positions of the New Guard demonstrates that the organisation didn’t cross over into a fascist character…contrast the monarchist fervour of Campbell and NG with the positions of Hitler and Mussolini in their countries, Hitler had no interest in restoring the exiled Kaiser during his Reich, and Il Duce merely ignored the powerless Italian King. Rather, the retention of these allegiances shows that the NG movement retained an essentially conservative authoritarianism in appearance (Cunningham, ibid.).
1930s New Guard propaganda against Premier Lang
Why did the New Guard decline and dissolve so swiftly in the mid 1930s?As alluded to above, one reason for the disaffection and eventual alienation of much of the respectable, middle class membership from the New Guard was the resort to more extreme violent means by the leadership from around the end of 1931. Vigilante action by the Fascist Legion, a splinter grooup within NG, did nothing to assuage the doubters in the organisation. In May of that momentous year a number of the Fascist Legion members, clad in black Ku Klux Klan style hooded capes, attacked and bashed Jock Garden, a prominent communist and trade union official in his Maroubra home (Garden was a close associate of Premier Lang). This violent act of what we now would call home invasion brought disastrous publicity to the New Guard (Richard Evans, ‘A menace to this realm’: The New Guard & NSW Police, History Australia, 5(3). This coming on top of the general perception that NG leadership was seriously contemplating taking extra-legal action against the elected Lang Government, made many people distance themselves from the increasingly extremist actions of the New Guard. Interestingly, afterwards the Deputy Leader of the opposition Nationalists came out in parliament denying any involvement by NG in Garden’s bashing, alleging it was a Labor “put-up job” in which Garden himself was complicit! (Darlington, op.cit.).
The ‘Maroubra incident’ 1932 Garden’s bashing by NG thugs
One week after the Maroubra bashing of Jock Garden, the State Governor dismissed Lang and at the subsequent election Labor was soundly beaten by the UAP led by Stevens. The removal of Lang-Labor had been the New Guard’s overriding objective, so with Lang gone and the conservatives firmly in control, a large part of NG’s raison d’être was at an end. The sacking of Lang released the tension that had been building up between the various opposing forces in the political crisis of 1932.
The gradual recovery of the economy starting from late 1932 encouraged many who had joined the movement from a fear of socialism to drop their political allegiance to NG (Darlington, op.cit.). The New Guard’s strength dwindled after 1932 and by 1935 the NG support base had largely eroded. In that year Campbell tried to revive the movement’s fortunes by forming a new political group, the Centre Party, and contesting the state elections. Campbell’s last despairing grab at some semblance of power, a electoral bid for the seat of Lane Cove, went nowhere, and soon after, he faded into political obscurity.
PostScript: The New Guard – the Mini-series? A few years ago I suggested to SBS that the story of the New Guard and its ambitious if deeply flawed leader, Eric Campbell, would have the makings of a first-rate mini-series for television, and that they might like to explore the possibilities of this. They never got back to me!
I think this episode in Australian history has the same kind of dramatic ingredients and appeal as the successful Bodyline mini-series made for TV in the 1980s where the English cricket captain’s s breaching of the rules of the “Gentlemen’s game of cricket” forced many Australians (momentarily at least) to question their loyalty to Crown and Empire. Lang’s refusal to back down and the establishment’s uncompromising response was the makings of a high political stakes drama set against the turbulent background of the depression and a very real chance of a bitterly antagonistic explosion of class conflict; the violence of the New Guardsmen and the counter-violence from organised labour, and the unleashed mayhem and retribution of the NSW Police; there are the colourful and complex personalities in the story, larger than life figures such as Jack Lang and Bill MacKay, the paradoxical and enigmatic Campbell. There was also Sir Philip Game – was he the political executioner of the rebellious Lang to safeguard the interests of international capitalism or was he the dutiful King’s representative, an honest broker bring to heel a dangerously out of line state premier?
Was there a conspiracy or not? – a coup, behind-the-scenes, shadowy figures intent on usurping by whatever means the premier, an arrogant demagogue but nonetheless a democratically elected head of a provincial government (a forewarning of 1975?). How far did NG infiltrate the Sydney establishment and the conservative Nationalist Party? Then there was the question of the bashing of the communist union official Jock Garden, who was really behind it? Many questions to explore.
The New Guard had something of a chameleon-like character, many in society and in the press didn’t take it very seriously with its pompous and overblown leader and his supporters who at times resembled a ‘Dad’s Army’ trying to imitate the real thing in Germany and Italy (the Labor press regularly referred to them as the ‘Boo Guard’). Some however were concerned, especially on the left, including European émigrés with an insight into the threats to liberty a nascent fascism might pose – these sectors viewed the New Guard’s brief ascendancy very gravely. Others in the community of a more traditional, conservative bent, well-connected politically and socially and often from the North Shore and the Eastern Suburbs, took a different and more sanguine view of the New Guard and endorsed the fringe group’s need and right to inject some new energy into the stalled world of parliamentary politics.
Drama, tension, intrigue, civil unrest, all set against an international context of fascism and communism on the rise. Unfortunately, SBS did not express any interest in this proposition, but I still maintain that the subject conveyed through a mini-series remains a most worthy project – done well! An expert academic history consultant for the period (such as Andrew Moore or Robert Darlington) working with a good screenwriter and some money, could produce a very good product, both as entertainment and as historical reconstruction of a not terribly well-known chapter of our history. Perhaps the ABC … budgetary constraints in the reality of a national Liberal government permitting.
_____________________________________________❈ the New Guard in rhetoric also distanced itself from the establishment conservative parties as well, the National (or Nationalist) Party and the Country Party (despite there being a good amount of conspicuous cross-membership!), seeing them as failing to take action against the communists and trade unions, and seeing itself as a legitimate, alternative right-wing movement❅ an active membership of around 36,000 was claimed by NG leadership⊚ Campbell himself had impeccable establishment credentials…a professional man, a Freemason, a company director, the Turramurra resident was a member of all the right clubs (Imperial Services, the Union, the NSW, Rotary, Royal Sydney Golf and Killara Golf), [Keith Amos, ‘Campbell, Eric (1893–1970)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/campbell-eric-5487/text9331, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 31 May 2014].
⌂ Part of town remains today (photo: ABC RN/Georgia Moodie)
⌂ Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt visited remote Victoria Settlement during his 1844-45 northern expedition 
⌂ Sketch of Port Essington by Commandant John McArthur
⌂ History information board at site (photo: John Baas)⌂ Map of 1820s–1830s historic settlements (source: Northern Territory Library)
𝟙 there had been two prior, unsuccessful British attempts at colony made at nearby Raffles Bay and Melville Island in the 1820s
B&W 4d Milk Bar with mechanical cow & Red Cross-like symbol
Golden Star Milk Bar, Perth (Photo source: M. Coufos)
Olympia, tea and milkshakes (Source: Daily Mail Australia)
Green plaque in limbo!
Boundary lines of the “Square Mile”
Photo: London Toolkit
Guiding the flock over the Bridge (Source: Metro UK)
Crest of Worshipful Company of Bowyers
Tallow Chandlers Co dining hall (Source: tallowchandlers.org)
Image: Victorian-era.org
Foster Powell (Poster published by C. Johnson n.d.)
Often leading pedestrians would go head-to-head in wagered races (Image: US Lib. of Congress)
Pedestrianism was exceedingly popular in post-bellum USA, drawing great crowds of paying spectators (Image: Alamy/BBC)
Source: 7 News
Olympic final (men), 3500m Walk, 1908
Johnny Day with Nimblefoot 1870 Melb Cup (Image: Herbert James Woodhouse)
Dix’s 1920 ‘The Skat Players’
Nix’s paintings behind the glass of Liverpool Street Mark Foy’s entrance have a unmistakable gritty realism to them and are of a different ilk, style-wise, to the unglamourised, intended-to-shock, expressionistic and surrealistic paintings of Otto Dix, depicting the grotesque, the deformed and the anguished denizens of interwar Germany. The collection of Nix’s work at Mark Foy’s, also unglamourised, adhere to a single theme, the depiction of work life at the long-disappeared Cockatoo Island shipbuilding industry. Nix’s group portraits of the workers, blue collar, office workers and other employees of Cockatoo Island between 1950 and 1980, contain an intimacy borne of personal experience…the artist worked on the island in the 1960s and 70s first as a errand boy, then apprenticed as a fitter-and-machinist and lastly as a draughtsman.
The artworks on display, all done in oil and charcoal on canvas, are a part of larger collection of Nix’s paintings and drawings entitled ‘The Boys from Cockatoo’, focusing on a range of work activities relating to the shipyard including catching the ferry to work, ship repairing and labouring, union meetings, blacksmith shop, the drawing office, the canteen, etc.
‘The Boys from Cockatoo’ series had its public debut in 2008 with a 20-painting exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, which Nix later expanded on to add new works inspired by his memories of the variety of day-to-day routines undertaken by workers at Cockatoo Island.
𝔉𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 ~ 𝔭𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔞𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞 𝔰𝔶𝔪𝔟𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠 𝔭𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔣𝔱
⚔️ 𝒮𝒸𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓉 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓂 𝑜𝒻 𝐵𝓊𝓇𝓃𝓈 𝓋 𝒥𝑜𝒽𝓃𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 (𝒩𝐹𝒮𝒜/𝒜𝒮𝒪 𝑀𝑜𝒷𝒾𝓁𝑒) ⚔️
𝔖𝔶𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔑𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔞𝔩 𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶 𝔬𝔣 𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞)
𝔍𝔬𝔥𝔫𝔫𝔶 ℜ𝔞𝔶 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔞𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1957 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔉𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔣𝔞𝔵 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰)
𓂀 𝓣𝓱𝓮 “𝓕𝓪𝓫 𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓻” 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓽𝓲𝓷 𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 1964 
Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.
ᗝ 𝒱𝒶𝓊𝒹𝑒𝓋𝒾𝓁𝓁𝑒 + 𝒶 𝒮𝒾𝓃𝑜–𝐼𝓇𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓌 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝒹? 
𝐹o𝓇𝓂𝑒𝓇 𝒷o𝓍𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝓇o𝒹𝓊𝒸𝑒𝒹 o𝓃 𝒮𝓎𝒹𝓃𝑒𝓎 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓊𝓂’𝓈 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉, 𝟫th June 𝟣𝟫𝟩0 (𝒫𝒽o𝓉o: 𝒮𝑀𝐻) 
◥ 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴 (𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓱𝓻𝓪 𝓜𝓾𝓷. 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓵) 
‘Coniston’ Ashfield, Bea’s first home (Source: hafs.org.au)
Bea with men of the press, circa 1946
Bea’s recital services board
Main Reading Room, NSW State Library (Flickr)
Bea in the driving seat? (Photo: Daily Telegraph)
“Bee in charcoal”, Roderick Shaw (Source: portrait.gov.au)
(Sydney Morning Herald)
(Image: Canadian Encyclopedia)
Historic map detailing extent of Longbottom area (Source: docplayer.net)
1890 map identifies “Longbottom Estate” (Source: Coupe)
Reminders of the Canadien exiles’ presence
While nothing remains of the stockade (above ground anyway), the exiles are remembered in the Concord locale’s nomenclature – Exile Bay, Canada Bay, France Bay, Châteauguay Walk (named after Prieur’s village in Montreal), Marceau Drive. Bayview Park in Concord—where the French Canadians disembarked at the park’s wharf in 1840 on route to Longbottom Stockade—contains a monument to the exiles.
First-hand accounts of the exiles
Three of the 58 transported Canadiens left accounts of their time in Sydney—Francois-Maurice Lepailleur, Léon Ducharme and Francois Xavier Prieur—the only transported convicts in 1840s Sydney who kept daily records of their experiences (Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion , (1995)).
Impression Bay Probation Station. North American prisoners did hard labour at the network of probation stations on Van Diemens Land’ (Image: UTAS)
Concord Oval: Longbottom trenches excavated in 1984 (Credit: Canada Bay Connections)
Fish Market, Woolloomooloo (Photo: State Lib of NSW)
Eastern Markets, Wolloomooloo: an absence of tables (Photo: SFM)
(Image: Dictionary of Sydney)
Fish market built in Haymarket, 1910 (Source: City of Sydney Archives)
FMA fish monopoly
The Haymarket fish market continued as the sole conduit for fish trading in Sydney until 1945 when their monopoly was expanded…the government transfered the marketing and selling of fish to the NSW Chief Secretary’s Department (hitherto unlicensed operators could sell fish outside of Sydney) which established a regulated and centralised market for the entire state. The central fish market’s control was consolidated in 1964 with the creation of the Fish Marketing Authority, a NSW statutory authority under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture¶ (‘Market History’, Sydney Fish Market, www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au]. The FMA’s role was to bring the seller’s fish and the buyer together, charging a percentage fee for this service.
(Photo: sydneyfishmarkets.com.au)
Dutch auction system (Photo: flowercompanies.com)
Privatisation and de-regulation
The state-run markets were privatised in 1994 and renamed Sydney Fish Market P/L. In 1999 full de-regulation meant catchers in NSW could now sell directly to any buyer with a Fish Receiver’s Permit, bringing to an end the Pyrmont market’s long monopoly over the sale of seafood in Sydney (private ownership of the market made the continuation of monopoly untenable) (‘SFM’).
The SFM at Pyrmont in 2021 is the largest seafood market in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the biggest in the world. Every hour of it’s commercial operation about 1,000 crates or 20,000 km of seafood gets sold (‘SFM’).(Image: The Bays Precinct Sydney)
The interior was dimly-lit, the furniture well-used and the place definitely not decorated in the fashion of Old Heidelberg. I recall music playing however it was not a Mario Lanza record but a scrawny-looking band out the back playing something that wasn’t the “Drinking Song’ from the 1954 movie bearing the hotel’s name.
⇡‘Coal-Face Drawers’, Oliver Kilbourn (1950) (Image: TUC150.tuc.org.uk)
⇡ ‘X’mas Tree 1950’, Harry Wilson
‘Pigeon crees’, Jimmy Floyd ⇡
⇡ (L) O
In 1907 Woodford House entered a new phase of utilisation when poet-cum-rector John Fraser McManamey initially leased the property
Today Woodford Academy is a museum of Blue Mountains colonial life, conducting educational tours and “ghost tours”. The 1870s dining room can be hired for dinners and the Academy hosts community events like the Mid-Mountains’ annual Harvest Festival. 
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)
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.
(Photo credit: www.hktosydney.gov.hk)
The Gowings story starts with John Ellis Symonds (JES) Gowings who emigrated to New South Wales from England in 1857. After retail experience in David Jones’ Sydney department store—where he worked his way up to head of mercery—JES’s first venture of his own was to open a drapery shop in 1863 in Crown Street, East Sydney. He then formed a partnership with his brother Preston, in 1868 the brothers opened a Mercery and Glove Depot at 318 George Street. JES managed the store in return for £200 per annum and 50% of the profits. The iconic Sydney retailer was up and running.
The business grew, in 1870 a new mercery warehouse was opened in Edinburgh House, 344 George Street, and 20 years later a second city store at 498 George Street. The brothers’ younger sibling Charles was hired as the Gowings store’s “dog walloper”, his job was chasing dogs away from the store as a preventive measure so they didn’t foul the pavement (Kingston).
After JES’ death in 1908 control of Gowings passed to the John and Preston’s sons, with the firm’s tradition for quality goods continuing. The construction of a new flagship building in 1929 on the George Street site became a landmark for Sydney (at the time it was Sydney’s highest building and the first steel construction in the CBD)✦.
A testimony to Gowings’ fame is the cult phrase that it acquired (and cultivated by the retailer) during the 20th century …”Gone to Gowings” has passed into the Australian vernacular, meaning a failure of some kind or other, or possibly a state of inebriation or dementia (Tréguer). Macquarie Dictionary lists six definitions: 1. Deteriorating financially, 2. illness especially a hangover, 3. Failing dismally (a racehorse, a football team, etc), 4. having departed hastily or without a specific destination in mind, 5. drunk, 6. Insane, idiotic. Alternately it could mean down on your luck, lost at the races, etc. The other famous catchphrase that was posted on the flagship premises” facade was “Walk Thru, No one Asked to Buy”.
Gowings ad, 1909
The post-Gowings space
Three months after its closure the Gowings landmark building at 452 George Street was snapped up by the Rydge family’s Amalgamated Holdings goliath for $68.6 million, consolidating its property holdings in this mid-town spot — Amalgamated Holdings had previously acquired the State Theatre building next door (49-51 Market St) as well as the nearby Mick Simmons building.
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). 
CC Skarratt
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 government transferred 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.
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).
Fmr Bank of NSW branch, cnr King & Sussex Sts (in the Victorian era it was the King Street Post Office)
Squire (or possibly ‘Squires’) commenced cultivating hops on the riverside location around 1806. Squire is considered to be the first person to brew beer successfully in Australia, although some claim the title on behalf of one John Boston who made corn beer in Sydney in 1796 with the aid of an encyclopaedia. Boston’s Indian corn-based beer “was so successful that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business” (Iltis).
Squire also was particularly successful at it, so much so that he eventually acquired a vast estate that stretched from Parramatta River to a point north of Victoria Road. Squire’s real estate empire wasn’t exactly down to superior business acumen on the brewer’s part…Squire kickstarted his land holdings monopoly by revelling in decidedly unethical behaviour.
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Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park
🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”
Leaving the fringe of Parramatta CBD at O’Connell Street, we venture west onto the north bank of Parramatta Park… traditionally, before the white colonial takeover, this was Burramatta Darug country. Passing the car park at the front of Bankwest Stadium, we soon arrive at the park’s first slice of colonial history. The sloping grassland running down to the river—now the habitat mainly of ibises and swamp hens—was once Government Farm, the infant Sydney colony’s first successful farm. The early settlers (such as Dodd’s Farm) found the undulating fertile land here more conducive to growing crops¹ than the sandy soil and unreliable water supply at Farm Cove.The colony’s first governor Arthur Phillip gave the Parramatta area its first English name, Rose Hill².
Following the riverside path we come to the Old Kings Oval with its small Doug Walters Pavilion, a reminder that the 60s and 70s star cricketer played for the local Cumberland team when he first came to Sydney. The name of the oval is a clue to the fact that the prestigious independent boys school, the Kings School, occupied the surrounding land for 130 years (to the late 1960s). A sign on the pathway alerts us to another by-gone sporting activity of the park – there was also a (horse)racetrack that snaked around the river in the early colonial days.
If we cross the skimpy narrow metal foot bridge and head back towards O’Connell Street, we can spot the park’s principal building, Old Government House, an impressive grand Georgian mansion with a fascinating life story. Construction commenced in 1799, thus the UNESCO-listed structure is the oldest surviving public building in Australia. For the early governors this was effectively a country retreat for them, a preferred residence because of it’s superior air and distance from the crime-infested, unsanitary conditions of Sydney Town.
From 1910 Government House was leased to the Kings School, giving it another imprint on the park’s history. Till 1965 the former governors’ residence was home to junior boarders of the school. Two years after that the school moved holus-bolus to North Parramatta. Today OGH operates as a National Trust heritage site and the repository of Australia’s best collection of early 1800s colonial furniture.
Leaving OGH and continuing in the direction of Westmead we pass Governor Brisbane’s Roman-style bath house. It fell into a dilapidated state by the late 19th century and was subsequently converted (or reduced) into a (small) bandstand, which is it’s present state of obsolescence.
Just a bit further on from the Bath House we arrive at a curious-looking military monument to the Boer War. Mounted on a high platform supported by thick classical columns is a small 19th century canon on wheels. Menacing positioned at such an elevated vantage-point, you could just imagine it being used to take potshots at pesky Afrikaner farmer-soldiers skulking round the Transvaal veld or on the Rand.
Also near here we happen upon another, very different monument. This represents a tribute to a home-grown aviator pioneer of the Parramatta district, William Ewart Hart. The stone inscription informs us that he was “Parramatta’s Flying Dentist” circa 1912, believed to be the first Australian to fly an aircraft on this continent.
Looping round the path onto Railway Pde we take the road back to O’Connell St and the last stop on our ramble around Parra Park. The George St Gatehouse is one of six such guarding the entrances to the park. Picture-book English Tudor in style, it’s the most iconic, and since it was restored in 2014, the most aesthetically pleasing of the gatehouses.
Map identifying the main physical sections of Parra Park: Mill Race Flat, Pavilion Flat, The Crescent, Cattle Paddock, Salter’s Field, Old Orchard, West Domain.
Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.
The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.
Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.
(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)
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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, a public 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).
‘Plan de la Ville de Sydney’ (Lesueur’s Map, 1802) (Source: State Library, NSW)
Brickfield Hill, George Street (Photo: JR Clarke / State Library, NSW)
At the beginning of the 20th century Brickfield Hill achieved the kudos of an altogether different association as the new home of one of Sydney’s early retail giants. In 1905 Anthony Hordern and Sons opened its “Palace Emporium” on the site, their mega-department store rose up on the ‘Hill’ – six stories high and comprising 21 hectares of retail space. At its zenith Hordern’s Brickfield Hill emporium was reputedly the largest department store in the world. [‘Brickfield Hill’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. 
Banned, but not eliminated
Other cities were quick to follow NYC’s example, Including Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and New Orleans, with pinball bans extending across the country. Other cities like Washington DC didn’t go as far but prohibited children from playing it during school hours. The inevitable consequence of banning was to drive pinball activity underground (resurfacing in places like the back rooms of ‘porno’ book shops). Thus marginalised, pinball become “part of rebel culture”⧆ (Klein).
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)
(Source: G-N Dune Center)
(Photo:www.fws.gov)
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.
Treasury and Audit Office building (1849-51)
Chief Secretary‘s Office⍟ (1869)
Department of Education (1914) and Lands Department (1877-90) buildings
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).Macquarie Place as it was in the early colonial period, unrecognisable today (Source: http://dictionaryofsydney.org/)
The early British colonists in Sydney were quick to appreciate the value that Observatory Hill held in the formative days of the New South Wales colony. This hill, no more than moderately sized, situated between The Rocks and Barangaroo in the old part of the town, is a rich part of Sydney’s history. Not long after the founding of Port Jackson in 1788, Sydneysiders started putting the well-positioned bluff and its natural endowment to greater or lesser productive use in a variety of ways.
Sydney Observatory, 1874 ⇧
Part of Fort Philip was given over in 1825 for the housing of a signal station…it’s construction by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis was prompted by the growth in shipping at the time. From here, flags and semaphore was used to communicate with ships in the harbour below. The presence of signal flags gave rise to a new name for the Hill, Flagstaff Hill (this name remained in currency into the 20th century with some locals referring to as “The Flaggie”). In 1847, with maritime activity in Sydney Town on the rise, a two-storey Telegraph House was added to Flagstaff Hill◲.
Fort Street High – on a 1920 cigarette card! ⇧
The next and most important use made of Flagstaff Hill was the enterprise which gives the hill the name is by known by today, the construction of (Sydney) Observatory. Astronomical observations in the Southern Hemisphere were considered of particular importance and the handily-situated bluff was thought an ideal location to observe the stars. Built from 1857-1859 by architects William Weaver and Alexander Dawson, it originally comprised the observatory and the astronomer’s residence.
There was also a time ball on the observatory tower serving two functions. Each day at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon the time ball would drop, sending a signal (accompanying by a cannon blast) to alert people in the city and more importantly shipping on the seas to the time.
Formal gardens were created around the Observatory, circa 1875, The next decade, under the Flagstaff planting scheme, a grove of palm trees were planted. In the 20th century a tennis court was added. Observatory Park, which surrounds the Observatory itself, with its sloping lawns and great, sprawling old Moreton Bay figs is a popular lunch spot for city workers. The park also houses a Boer War memorial with an antique mounted gun and a bandstand rotunda which is a favourite for wedding photo shoots.
Observatory Park, 1941 ⇧
Increasing city light and air pollution since the Seventies saw the Sydney Observatory close in 1982…the complex has since functioned as a scientific museum. Visitors today can take a tour of the Observatory, observe the stars at night through one of the facility’s powerful, modern telescopes, or look at the historic equipment, such as the 29cm refractor telescope, dating from 1874.
Appian way, or if you prefer, the Appian Way, is a reminder of the more exalted social status that Burwood perhaps once commanded. In the midst of the “Strata-titleland” that is modern day Burwood is the Appian Way, you’ll find it perched between Burwood Road (South) and the seminal Liverpool Road. Appian Way is just a short, little street which charts a serpentine course, looping not far from its eastern end. Within this loop lies the street’s main interest…at least as far as this correspondent is concerned.
Hoskins, exhibiting a tendency which nowadays we might describe as that of a “control freak”, leased rather than sold the estate’s houses, which allowed the industrialist and developer to monopolise all aspects of the community (only one solitary house in the tree-lined street had been sold by the time of Hoskins’ death in 1926) [ibid.].
The houses
The Dictionary of Sydney describes the Appian Way as a “heritage-listed precinct of Edwardian houses”. The architecture is of that period but the houses are best characterised as asymmetrical and very variable in style. Essentially, together the original estate comprises some of the finest examples of Australian Federation style with their multi-gabled roofs, wide use of slate and terracotta tiles, and drawing on a variety of domestic designs. The grounds of the properties are more than generously spacious – large blocks, expansive frontages, manicured lawns and landscape gardens. Appian Way includes a nature strip in the midst of these bushy and leafy residences which is neatly maintained and occupied by Brush Box trees [‘Appian Way’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
‘Erica’ – perhaps the Way’s standout ▲
What tennis courts? ▲
▲ Bush plants and agaves surround the ‘courts’
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.
(source: Dictionary of Sydney)
Perdriau‘s rubber hose line
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.
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)].
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)
⬆️ Australian cinema’s long tradition of Bushranger flicks beginning with the original 1906 feature film
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].
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.].
⬆️ ‘Smithy’ star Ron Randell later pursued a career in Hollywood
Note: the original 1930s studios in West London (above) were bought by the BBC in the 1990s and resurrected as a facility for hire [‘Remembering Ealing Studios and the golden age of British film’, BBC News, (Vincent Dowd), 30-Aug-2015, www.bbc.com].
Most motorists who regularly drive within a 10-15km radius of the centre of Sydney have found themselves at some time at the intersection of Parramatta and Liverpool Roads – not uncommonly in heavily banked-up peak traffic. In the pioneering days of the New South Wales colony, the routes of the two major roads played a seminal role in the exploration and discovery of new areas to the west, south and north of Sydney.
If you turn from Parramatta Road into Liverpool Road, immediately on your right, between a fast food chicken outlet and the corner, you will see a small, narrow tree-lined park (about 85-90m x 35m). The most intriguing association of the park is its name – Explorers Park✪.
The park comprises as its centrepiece a long arched trellis covered with the thick, verdant vines of a climbing plant, forming a tunnel effect. On the paved floor, along the length of the trellis, are plaques which celebrate those early 19th century Australian explorers. Starting with Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, who with the inestimable help of local aboriginal trackers from various clans and tribes, made the breakthrough discovery of a viable route across the Great Dividing Range, there are plaques with brief summaries of the achievements of all those who followed – the likes of Oxley, Mitchell, Sturt, the tragic Kennedy, Hume and Hovell (one half of which gave his name to the iconic Hume Highway that has its genesis at the intersection).
At the north end of the park, there’s a dome-shaped trellis which backs on to Parramatta Road. The trellis contains a white wall with a stencil pattern depicting images of the participants who made the pioneering achievements of exploration possible – the explorers themselves, their mode of transport (the camels) and their invaluable indigenous guides.
Long before the advent of the Bicenntenary triggered the construction of Explorers Park, the location was a busy thoroughfare for mounted travellers, horse and carts and livestock, especially after Liverpool Road was opened in 1821. One hundred years later exactly, with the age of the automobile established as the dominant and future mode of transport, this exact block of land was purchased by a motor engineer Frank Dale. Two years later in 1923, he built a motor service station (Dales Garage) on the site. Over the following decades ownership of the garage regularly changed hands (Major Motors, Western Service Station, etc.). Eventually the land was acquired by the DMR (Department of Main Roads) and the garage demolished to allow for the widening of the high-traffic intersection [‘Sydney’s fork in the road’, Inner West Courier, 19-Feb-2019 (Ann O’Connell, Ashfield Historical Society)].
▲ An early drawing of the hotel by George W Roberts (c.1845) (State Library of NSW)
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].
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.
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.
The challenge of online shopping
⇡ Westfield Geelong (Vic.), 1986⇡ Westfield’s founder & entrepreneurial driving force
We booked into Rydges Hotel in Queenstown✲, New Zealand’s capital of adventure tourism. Whitewater rafting, bungy jumping and Jet Shotovers beckoned, but as our hotel was handily situated in proximity to the wharf on picture perfect Lake Wakatipu, something more sedate – a leisurely boat trip across its glistening waters – was what took our immediate fancy.
From the Queenstown wharf we caught the vintage twin screw steamboat TSS Earnslaw❁…the journey was a complete step back in time…a slow and leisurely ride across Lake Wakatipu with the boat chugging along at a 1924 pace. No one on board much minded the pedestrian progress we were making. The only downside to the trip was trying to avoid inhaling the vessel’s toxic nasties, trying to survive the vile fumes of black smoke emitted from the steamer’s coal-fired boilers pervading the air inside the Earnslaw.
My highest highlight of the tour however was the demonstration of rounding up and penning a drove of sheep. This was made memorable by the antics of the leathery-faced old shepherd guy and his “Abbott and animal Costello” routine with the farm’s working border collie. The old farmer was a real joker, entertaining us with his dry commentary which bore more than a touch of the John Clarke quippery – and the same flat deadpan delivery. To start the show, he barked out instructions to the collie to tear madly all over the top paddock fetching the grazing sheep. After terrorising and cajoling the sheep into one cowering bunch, the dog efficiently corralled them into the enclosure at the south end. Then, with mission accomplished, the farmer, with comic timing and mock annoyance, remarked of the still heavily panting dog, “I don’t know why he’s so tired! I’m the one who does all the work”!
The one-liners didn’t stop when the farmer donned his “shearing kit”, the blue and red overalls of his defleecing trade, to do some serious bladework. With a couple of hand-picked Romneys, he demonstrated (with accompanying audio) how to give a sheep the “Full Monty” crew cut! I’m not sure if the sizeable cohort of Japanese tourists on hand were sufficiently au fait with ‘Kiwised’ English to get the gist of the demonstrator’s jokey spiel and all the nuances of his wry humorous asides, but they generally seemed to sense the comic implications of the situation and enthusiastically laughed accordingly.
The other stand-out feature of the visit, the afternoon tea, was held in the Colonel’s Homestead, an elegant turreted terracotta red and white building set against the impressive backdrop of the towering Walter Peak. The high tea worked a treat with very generous servings of scones and pikelets and the obligatory jam and cream, all washed down with a nice cuppa. Afterwards, a leisurely lakeside stroll through the homestead’s très picturesque English-style gardens set the seal on a great day’s outing.
Time passed at the right pace on the return journey in the Earnslaw to Rydges – the tour operator organised a traditional sing-a-long to the accompaniment of the boat’s period-piece piano. We were given a complimentary “NZ Song Book” and encouraged to join in. The songs were every bit as vintage as the 1912 vessel and only a bit cringeworthy, but hey it was all part of setting an authentic mood for a momentary step back into yesteryear.
Sainsbury’s “Own Brands”
Although “own brands” are thought of as a modern phenomena in retail merchandising, Sainsbury’s first introduced the concept as early as 1882! The shop’s first own brand was its staple commodity – butter. Sainsbury’s continued this practice and by the 1950s there was a host of such offerings on the shelves: ‘Sainsbury’s Cornflakes’, ‘Sainsbury’s Snax Biscuits’, ‘Sainsbury’s Cola’, ‘Sainsbury’s Peas and Carrots’, etc, etc. [‘The History of Sainsbury’s’, loc.cit.]. By 1980 half of the products Sainsbury’s sold were under its own label [Bevan, op.cit.].
Modernising Sainsbury’s
In 1950 Sainsbury’s refitted one of its earliest shops, in West Croydon, creating what was Britain’s first supermarket proper, one of the country’s earliest to operate as fully self-service. Some customers were at first put off by the innovation, thinking it impersonal and “anti-social”, however the convenience factor of not having to wait to be served eventually won out…Advertising and Marketing magazine reviewing the new store concluded: “From the point of view of the customer the chief advantages of self-service shopping are the speed with which shopping can be done and the ease with which one is reminded of things needed…these advantages substantially outweigh the disadvantages of not getting the personal attention of the assistant.” [‘Sainsbury ‘s return to site of first self-service supermarket’, (Graham Ruddick), The Telegraph (UK), 30-Aug-2013, www.telegraph.co.uk].
Stumble and renewal
During the Nineties, Sainsbury’s, hitherto accustomed to being the premier supermarket chain, was relegated to second place by Tesco which became supermarket “top dog” in the UK in 1995. A change-up was required at Sainsbury’s and further diversification was sought. In 1997 the company ventured into in-store banking (in partnership with the Bank of Scotland – before going it alone in 2014). During this period the 130-year direct involvement in running the company of the Sainsbury family came to an end with the retirement of David (Lord) Sainsbury. The acquisition of Bells Stores in the early 2000s signalled a move into convenience stores, adding to the variety of its retail outlets.
Sainsbury’s – status quo in 2018 and future fortunes?
In the contemporary British retail landscape, Sainsbury’s, with a healthy slab of the market, is the second largest chain in the country✥ with ≻1415 stores (2017) and ≻186,900 employees (2018). Despite having long conceded first place to Tesco, this state of play is a fluid one…no longer dominated by the Sainsbury family (though it retains 15% of shares in the company), these days the majority shareholder is the Qatar Investment Authority (note comparisons with Harrods). 2018 has seen Sainsbury’s unearth a bold attempt to unseat Tesco’s hegemony through a planned merger with ASDA which would give the merged entity around 30-31% of the UK market – as against about 27.5% for Tesco (Source: Kantar). Approval of the controversial merger is still pending but could depend upon Sainsbury’s and ASDA offloading 463 of their stores to win over the competition ‘watchdog’ (CMA) [‘Walmart’s Asda agrees to UK merger deal with Sainsbury’s’, (Silvia Amaro) 30-Apr-2018, www.cnbc.com; ‘Sainsbury’s and Asda may have to offload 460 stores to seal merger’, (Sarah Butler), The Guardian, 28-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].
Before the principals of Marks and Spencer teamed up, the entity was singular, just the one aspiring retailer, Michael Marks, and of material necessity he started very small. A late 19th century immigrant refugee from the Russian Empire’s Byelorussian region, Marks launched his first penny bazaar stall in Central Leeds’ Kirkgate Market with start-up funding amounting to one £5 note – which he had borrowed! Marks met his future partner at this time, Thomas Spencer, and eventually went into business with him after the latter, a Yorkshire cashier, invested £300 for a half-share in what became Marks and Spencer✱.
Early days: Establishing a chain of “penny bazaars”
Michael Marks kicked off with a very basic business model: his initial stall in Leeds was a “one penny stall”, hence the business’ motto, “Don’t ask the price, its a penny”⊡. The early stall commodities focused on household goods, haberdashery, toys and a sheet-music business (note the early spelling of the store name with an errant plural ‘s’ in ‘Spencer’ in the photo at left). Marks (the more dynamic and “hands-on” of the partners) immediately set about expanding the business, first up establishing a shop in Manchester. By 1894 Marks and Spencer had graduated to a permanent stall in Leeds’ covered market (in 1904 they opened their first Leeds shop) and in 1901 concentrated its open market operation in Birkenhead on Merseyside.
Spencer
Marks
Textiles and food
By the Twenties M&S had moved into the sale of textiles in a big way (launching its own laboratories to commercially produce new fabrics for the British market). In 1931 it added food to its portfolio of products…M&S’s own food technology department (from 1948) allowed it to offer chilled poultry to customers, instead of the hitherto frozen or pre-cooked options (courtesy of a new technology it called “cold chain distribution”) [‘What 130 years of M&S history can teach us about innovation”, (Hannah Jenkinson, 2018), www.about.futurelearn.com]. 
By the 1960s these two commodities, textiles and food, were firmly ensconced as the staples of Marks and Spencer. M&S were forerunners in introducing retail practices that enhanced customer satisfaction, such as the “money-back, no questions asked, no time limit” policy. 
Marble Arch – M&S flagship store ⬆
Marks and Spencer (colloquially and affectionately known on the street as “Marks and Sparks”) as at April 2017 could list a total of 959 operating stores across the UK✣, 615 of which traded in food only (the “Simply Food” label), evidence of how food products had come to prop up the other traditional areas of the business. Future prospects for the major British retailer remain somewhat nebulous after the company signalled in 2018 its intent to close around 100 M&S stores in the country by 2022. Retail finance watchers have also questioned, with such a reliance on food items, whether M&S can ultimately match it with the UK’s food and groceries powerhouse Tesco [‘M&S online food delivery service will be no piece of cake’, Robert Plummer, BBC News, 28-Apr-2017, www.bbc.com]. Still, Marks and Spencer remains in majority British hands (unlike its rival heavyweights Harrods and Selfridges). 
⬆ Commemorative M&S clock in Leeds market
The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]
Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.
Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].
2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia
Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)
Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.
A Marshall Field blueprint for London
Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed building
Construction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.
Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curve
Harry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s television prototype shown on display in 1925.
A visceral, holistic experience
Selfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].
The female shopper as an identified demographic
Selfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013, www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅
[Forbes, loc.cit.].
The H.G.S. leadership style
As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ; “The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]
Selfridges post H.G.S.
Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hip In 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].
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].
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).
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 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].
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 ▲
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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 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.
Beaconsfield, NSW
⍐ Dacey Model Suburb (Sydney), map circa 1920
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.].
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].
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.].
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.
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
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!
Ad for the Orient Line
Royal Autos in ‘Wilson’s’
The original (1907) Challis House
The “Half-way House” of Blue Mts
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)
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’)
The 1960s Sydney motorist’s Vade mecum
▲ Webber’s “One stop shop”!
▲ Strathfield: free from “Influences of the Sea Air”
▲ The “Digger” Agents at Roseville
Newtown 1922: Hire-a-luxury wedding vehicle
▲ Bulli Motors: cars, motorcycles, bicycles, for Bulli Pass
▲ A horse-intensive removals firm!
Rookwood handiwork
▲ 1922: Home entertainment unit
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‘1922 Wilson’s Director’
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
The colliery (deepest mine shaft ever sunk in Aust.) in the 1940s (still operating at that time)
The Glebe
Mascot with a racecourse where the airport should be!
East Subs’ residential paradise
The other side of Strathfield municipality
Eastwood map, p235: site of future MQ University just to the south of Lane Cove River
Dee Why
South Kenso & Daceyville
Penrith & the (“world-class”) Nepean
The cover of my edition is long gone but the 1926 edition is very approx.
‘ Gregory’s’ 1st street directory of Sydney 1934
⤴ Abbotsford, off Hen & Chicken Bay
⤴ What’s left of the two remaining dog kennels after a large tree fell on them
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 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.
“House of Nestlé” 1937 (Photo: RAHS – Adastra Aerial Photo Collection)
KMT bldg in Sydney
KMT Club (pre-war)
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.
▲ The ‘border’ bridge between Vilnius & Užupis
▲ The Prince of Hutt R Province
▲ King Paul with his court (Source: News Ltd)
▲ A Great Britain strawberry patch in Sth Australia!
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✻ defined as an entity claiming to be an independent nation or state but not recognised by world governments or major international or supranational organisations, ‘Micronations’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
✪ leader of the fictional minuscule tinpot state of Grand Fenwick which declares war on the USA in the 1959 comedy/satire The Mouse That Roared
¤ Cruickshank’s Atlantium had two prior “spiritual homes” in Sydney, a house in suburban Narwee and a flat in inner city Potts Point
✦ the ‘Principality’ of Seborga in the Italian Riviera is a good case in point: despite a 98.7% vote in favour of independence from Italy in 1995, the tiny town (pop: <400) still pays its civic taxes to Rome
Coogee Amusement Pier
Manly wharf & fun pier 1950s/1960s
Manly Fun Pier & Aquarium late 60s/early 70s
Old portico entrance to Giles’ Baths
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.
Collaroy-Narrabeen’s 長城
Sth Narrabeen Surf Club peering over the Wall of Sand!
Just one sample of the damage to Collaroy Beach & property in 2016
Flight Deck too close to ground turbulence!
Beach erosion and reinforcement measures
More storms in the eighties and nineties prompted Council to try to come up with better thought-out strategies to cope with the burgeoning threat. Earlier construction of rock walls had been haphazard. In 2002 it opted to construct a 1.1km long sea wall along the most pregnable part of the Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach❖. The plan was shelved after several thousand people staged a beach protest against the proposed sea wall.
‘Flight Deck’
Collaroy Beach dune reinforcement
(Cartoon: Clive Goddard)
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* The title is of course a symbolic nod to King Canute (Cnut the Great) 11th century Anglo-Saxon ruler of the North Sea Empire, and the apocryphal anecdote of his futile but persistent efforts to turn back the tide on the seashore
❖ prompting sections of the media to jocularly re-label Broadbeach as “Steep Beach”
¤ Dyson blames ill-considered development and the construction of a beach marina for the degradation of Hallett Cove
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 Collaroy in 2017The Arlington in the 1920s
Middle Harbour: 1922 Sydney street directory
Spit Bridge (current)
Plaque in Clontarf Reserve remembering the dramatic 1868 incident
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‘Father of Manly’
(Source: Pinterest)
Tram, The Corso (c.1905) (Photo: State Lib. NSW)
North Head Q-Station
Two Manly ‘pollies’ from Federation era
Fairlight House (site)
Fairlight Beach
The grounded WWII sub at Fairlight
Kay-ye-my Point
Manly East
Manly West
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
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.
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].
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۞.
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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 disapprovalIf 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.
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]
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).
AT the end of Anzac Parade, not far from where the bitumen meets the grassy knoll, was once the location of the La Perouse tram terminus (known locally as “the Loop”). The tram lines were torn up in 1961 with the La Perouse line having the distinction of being the last Sydney tram service still running at that time. This is an ideal spot to kick-off a leisurely and instructive saunter through Sydney’s southern suburban coastline and unearth some of the connexions with its past. The knoll is dotted with a number of landmarks recalling both the early British colonial regime and Comte de Lapérouse’s brief sojourn on his eponymous peninsula.
“Snake Man of La Perouse (Junior)” John Cann (Photo:SMH)
Congwong Bay
Henry Head battery
What remains of the stern of the ‘SS Minmi‘
‘Wrapped Coast’ by Christo, 1969
Coastal Hospital for Infectious Diseases
Close to the Coast Hospital site the University of NSW maintained a campus for many years. Originally intended for a medical school which was never built, it was used instead for biological sciences research and for solar energy research (Solarch, first building in NSW to generate green power). In 2008 UNSW sold the land to developers and it now contains high-rise apartments [‘Development of ex-UNSW site Little Bay’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info].
Anzac Rifle Range
Lapérouse
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.
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
Bare Is.
Bastille Day celebrations 2013
(Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/)
Valparaíso, or ‘Valpo’ for short, today has a faded, glamour but stacks of aesthetic character – with a higgedly-piggedly, chaotic pattern of brightly coloured houses, “a heap … a bunch of crazy houses” as poet Pablo Neruda described them, and numerous run-down/falling-down Victorian mansions (conversely on a cautionary note, the city these days also has a criminal underbelly including endemic petty crime and prostitution). Remnants of the city’s former glory and especially its quaint charm remain however: the old and rickety ascensores (inclined motorised lifts, called funiculars elsewhere) transport passengers up and down Valparaíso’s steep, undulating hills, from atop the cerros visitors enjoy sweeping views across the bay and the ports. It’s a city awash with the most brilliant murals on the walls of houses and commercial buildings which themselves exude colour and character.
Valaparaíso’s “salad days” were in the 19th century, during this period it was a world-class port on the Europe to California shipping route. A combination of the devastating 1906 earthquake and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 signified the rapid commercial decline of Valparaíso, once known as the “Jewel of the Pacific”. This small city on the eastern edge of the Pacific 11,326km from Sydney might seem an odd place for a turn-of-the-century Australian prime minister to be born◙, but in 1867 one such future PM was born there (also see Postscript). His name at birth was Johann Cristian Tunck. Tunck’s father was Chilean of German stock whilst his mother was born in New Zealand of Irish ancestry. After his Chilean father disappeared early on, his mother remarried, changing the child’s name to John Christian Watson.
(Photo: NRMA)
Early Federal Australian politics entailed a three-way tussle between Watson’s ALP, the Protectionist Party led by Deakin and the Free Trade Party under Reid. Watson’s ascension to the prime minister-ship in 1904 was a novel occurrence: (the ALP was the) first national, labour-based government in the world; Watson at 37, the youngest-ever Australian PM[3]. The advent of Watson’s “workers'” government was met with cynicism and hostility as it challenged the hitherto standard notion that the working class were capable of assuming the mantle of government and succeeding. It didn’t as it eventuated succeed, surviving not quite four months before Watson found his government’s position untenable and was edged out of power¤ … but this was more to do with the nature of the Watson government, a minority one, than the quality or performance. Basically it couldn’t muster the numbers in parliament to continue governing and the governor-general appointed George Reid to the PM-ship in August 1904[4].
Labor front runner from Double Bay with Van Dyke beard
In the 1920s Watson played a leading role in establishing and guiding the NRMA (National Roads and Motorists Association), and in the formation of Yellow Cabs (taxi service), and in the 1930s, AMPOL (Australian Motorists Petrol Company), all of which illustrate the former PM’s interest in motor transport. One of his other interests, cricket, led to him being appointed a trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground in Australia[9].
Valpo view
Plaque honouring site of Macquarie’s Govt House at Windsor
British intelligence about a planned invasion of the Sydney colony has its genesis in the period’s French maritime expeditions in the South Pacifc, particularly that of Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and 1803. Baudin’s scientific expedition visited Port Jackson in 1802 and it was the activities (and subsequent written record) of the expedition’s naturalist, François Péron, which provided the blueprint for supposed French intentions in New Holland. Whilst there, Péron, under the guise of his scientific activities, engaged in a “freelance spying” exercise[3], collecting information on the nature and defence capacity of the colony. Péron wrote down his observations in a secret report (entitled Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande).
Monsieur Péron
Isle de France 🇫🇷
Bathurst’s “hush-hush” letter to Macquarie (based on information supplied by agents friendly to Britain) also raised the prospect of a joint naval attack by both France and the United States[8]. The plan was for the combined fleet to assemble at Two Fold Bay (Eden, NSW) and then proceed up the Pacific Coast and launch an attack on Sydney from the north (Hawkesbury River). Napoléon’s disastrous Russian campaign and the reverses suffered by the US early in the War of 1812 meant that the plan was never put into practice[9], but the episode served to underline how strategically important the remote, western Pacific colony was for Britain imperial ambitions.
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[1] ‘The Notorious Bushranger George Armstrong’, Hawkesbury Historical Society, (10-Feb 2016), www.hawkesburyhistoricalsocietyblogspot.com.au
[2] ‘Windsor, New South Wales’, (Wiki), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] described by some as an “amateur espionage project”, N Rothwell, ‘Francois Peron’s French lessons in the colonisation of Australia’, The Australian, 05-Apr 2014
[4] M Connor, ‘The secret plan to invade Sydney’, Quadrant Magazine, 01-Nov 2009, www.quadrant.org.au; ‘Napoleon’s Intention to Capture Thompson Square’, (The Battle for Windsor Bridge – Personal Stories), www.rahs.org.au
[5] R Brice, ‘Sacré bleu! French invasion plan for Sydney’, (ABC News, 11-Dec 2012), www.abc.net.au
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘Battle for Windsor Bridge’, op.cit.
[8] At the time (1813), both France and the US were engaged in (distinct but related) wars with Britain, whose navy was blockading the fleets of both countries. Attacking the important colony of Port Jackson made tactical sense to divert the British fleet away from US and French ports, ibid.
[9] ibid.
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.
[Indigenous motifs decorate the site’s industrial remnants]
[Old (1960s) Caltex sign: grease plant]
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.
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].
In the eighties and early nineties industrial areas of the peninsula were re-zoned 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.
Taronga – southern (ferry end) entrance
Primitive lion enclosure at Moore Park
Botany Zoological Gardens
Remembering the elephant at Banks Zoo
Dunbar House – former grounds of Watsons Bay Private Zoo
⇧ What’s left of the Dawes Pt battery, these days with a pretty sizeable awning!
⇧ Outmoded artillery on ‘Windmill Hill‘
⇧ Upper Georges Heights battery
⇧ Bare Island – decent sort of target!
⇧ Old Fort Rd, Middle Head
⇧ the Outer Fort’s notorious “tiger cages”
A 1970s ‘Indie’ film set
The smaller Inner Fort with dense vegetation surrounding it has a very different claim to fame. It was used as the bikies’ hideout in the 1974 independent cult movie Stone. The emplacements have long entrance ramps leading to circular gun enclosures and the bikies on their Harleys would tear through the bush track and along the ramps into the enclosures. The two forts and the nearby fort at Georges Head all have the same design – circular gun mounts with ancillary rooms running off them and a vast network of connecting tunnels leading to other military instalments on the promontory.
⇧ Emplacements at Middle Head
(Photo: SOFA)
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].
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.
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’. 
🔺 Wonderland in ‘Glamarama’
🔺 Attempted royal assassination at Clontarf
🔺 Cremorne Gardens-upon-Yarra, 1865
NOW that Scotland have expressed an inclination, but not a preference, to secede from the Union with England (the UK), it would be interesting to take a gander at other secession attempts both closer to home and around the world. The impulse for or advocacy of secession by a section or part of an established, multi-ethnic nation state is a recurring feature in contemporary international relations.
The proposed colony of ‘Auralia’ – an irredentist goldfields colony
Black Swan State
The WA delegation bringing the petition to secede to London
‘Prince’ Leonard & his consort – in the ‘Principality’
De Groot’s ‘coup’
Primrose’s ceremony at the Northern Pylon
Harbour Bridge from Kirribilli
Nor can it be said that the New Guard had any claims to be considered as a mass movement in NSW politics. NG remained fundamentally a middle class organisation, the core of its base were urban professionals and small businessmen, like Campbell himself (Cunningham, Ibid.). Unlike many other fascist/authoritarian parties in Europe, it lacked for significant working class participation (Moore, op.cit.). Moreover, geographically, the New Guard was very limited in scope. It was confined almost entirely to one state, NSW, and even more, was essentially a Sydney metropolitan phenomena with only around 3,000 members from rural areas outside of Sydney (Cunningham, ibid.).
