Parramatta Park Peripathetically

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Leisure activities, Local history

 

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/

Nya Sverige in the New World: A Scandinavian Colony in North America

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Regional History

In the free-for-all to secure colonial possessions in the New World, the Swedish kingdom was slow off the mark in comparison  with other European powers. France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and England, all beat Sweden to the punch in establishing footholds in the Americas. When Sweden eventually did so in the 1630s, the achievement was a modest one. One historian described the Swedish colony in North America as “the smallest, least populated and shortest-lived” of all those established by the major European powers (HA Barton).

The initial settlement (1638) was on the shores of Delaware (present-day Wilmington, DE)… later the Swedes extended their colony to portions of land in Pennsylvania and New Jersey★. The first expedition was somewhat derivative, it’s leader was in fact a Dutchman, Peter Minuit. Minuit’s main claim to fame was the purchase of Manhattan Island from the local tribes, but his dissatisfaction with the rewards afforded him by his Dutch masters led him to defect to Sweden. The Dutch colonists ensconced in the Delaware River Valley were openly hostile to the new Swedish colony which they saw as encroaching on their turf. Minuit purchased land from the Lenape Indians (the local native Americans) with the intention of growing tobacco, and a fort (Fort Christina) was built as a base to exploit the fur trade in North America. 

 The Swedish South Company (AKA Nya Sverige-kompaniet) was responsible for making New Sweden work and the colonists made a fair fist of it in the formative days but ultimately the Swedish colony floundered due to a combination of prevailing conditions and circumstances. The  untimely death by misadventure of its experienced leader Minuit was a blow to its crucial formative development. The government tried to entice Swedish and Finnish※ settlers but never managed to attracted more than a few hundred (eventually they were compelled to resort to populating it with Sweden’s criminal classes). As well as a lack of manpower, the requisite government support to make it a success was not forthcoming. 

The hard-line approach of Minuit’s successor as governor Johan Printz to ruling New Sweden met with resistance and desertion from the settlers. Printz’s successor, Johan Rising, ascerbated the already frought relations with neighbouring New Netherlands by aggressively attacking them upon assuming command. This provoked a fierce and decisive retaliation from the Dutch commander Peter Stuyvesant who captured Fort Christina and drove the Swedes’ colony out in 1655, never to return.

All in all New Sweden in North America lasted a mere seventeen years. Despite this failure the colony did leave a Swedish legacy for the future United States – Nya Sverige gave North America the log cabin, an iconic emblem of pioneering America settlement. At the same time it brought the Lutheran religion to North America, to add to the growing patch-quilt of Christian faiths in the New World.

🇸🇪 Postscript: Sweden’s “small e” empire
In keeping with its small-scale North American colony, Sweden’s imperial reach overall across the globe remained modest. There were limited holdings in the Caribbean under the auspices of the Swedish West India Company – comprising briefly Guadeloupe (1813-14) and more substantially Saint-Barthélemy (St Bart’s)  (1784-1878). The latter was the fulcrum of the Swedish slave trade in the period. In the 17th century the Swedish monarchy also held colonies in Africa known as the Swedish Gold Coast (Svenska Guldkusten) – in present-day Benin and Ghana. Like Swedish North America, Stockholm’s Gold Coast possessions were short-lived, with the Swedes levered out of the region once more by its imperial rivals from Europe.

 

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★ the New Jersey colony Fort Elfsborg was beset with a nematoceran plague, earning it the nickname “Mosquito Castle”

※ Finland was then part of the Kingdom of Sweden

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Referenced sources consulted:

‘America’s Forgotten Swedish Colony’s, (Evan Andrews), History, 22-Aug-2018, www.history.com

‘The Swedish Come to America’, (Thomas R. Kellogg), Founders and Patriots of America, www founders patriots.org

‘Swedish colonial empire’, New World Encyclopaedia’, www.newworldencyclopedia.org

 

Hans Island “Whisky War”: Seemingly a Straw Quarrel Conducted with Restraint and Civility

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Geography, International Relations, Political geography, Politics, Regional History

With so many hotspots and tense border stand-offs across the world, the dispute over an obscure island in the Arctic region by two peaceful modern western democracies definitely flies under the international radar. The unlikely spot is Hans Island, a 1.3 square kilometre slab of rock situated in the middle of the Nares Strait separating Greenland from Canada’s Northeast periphery. Barren and uninhabited, devoid of natural resources, the island has been the object of claims on it by both Denmark (of which Greenland is a sovereign part) and Canada since the 1930s¹.

Initially, the League of Nations adjudged the dispute in Denmark’s favour in 1933². But given the ineffectiveness and eventually dissolution of the inaugural world body, the LoN’s ruling carried little weight.

Over the decades Denmark and Canada continued to disagree on who owns Hans Island – without either doing anything about it. Bilateral negotiations in 1973 completely sidestepped the issue of the island’s sovereignty – a maritime border with the vertical line drawn through Nares Strait conveniently left the island itself untouched, and thus still unresolved.

An assertion of sovereignty done with humour and good nature

The 1980s saw an escalation of the competing claims in a tit-for-tat exchange of flag-planting on the island. First there was the hoisting of the Canadian maple leaf (accompanied by an additional item, a trademark bottle of Canadian whisky). The Danes duly responded with their own flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps.

The issue threatened to flare-up again in 2005 when Canadian defense minister Bill Graham earned Copenhagen‘s ire with his unilateral visit of Hans Island. However common sense prevailed and both sides committed to enter into a process to resolve the matter…since then though little headway has been made towards this goal.

A proposal for Inuit authority on the ground

In 2002 academics proposed that Canada and Denmark share control of Tartupaluk (the Greenlandic name for Hans Island), with hands-on management devolving to Inuit control. So far nothing has come of this.

Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promising long-term prospect?

Though never getting remotely close to a military confrontation, the periodic posturing and grandstanding by Canada and Denmark reflects the desire of both governments to secure possession of Hans Island. Two material considerations seem to inform the disputants‘ commitment to the cause – the possibility of oil and gas reserves in the seabed around Hans Island and the potential of the (Nares) strait as a future international shipping route.

End-note: A third claimant to Hans Island has emerged in recent years, Russia, filing its claim through the orthodox UN channels

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¹ “a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over” as one observer depicted it (Bender)

² a tricky matter to adjudicate on as the island technically lies in both countries’ waters, falling within the 12 mile-territorial limit under international law

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Referenced websites and sources:

‘Analysis: Hans Island – and the endless dispute over its sovereignty’, (Martin Breum), High North News, 24-Oct-2018, www.highnorthnews.com

‘2 countries have been fighting over an uninhabited island by leaving each other bottles of alcohol for over 3 decades’, (Jeremy Bender), Business Insider, 10-Jan-2016, www.businessinsider.com

‘Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps’, (Dan Levin), New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com

‘Hans Island Case – A territorial dispute in the Arctic’, (Master Thesis), (Nikoleta Maria Hornackova), Aalborg University, May 2018, www.projekter.aau.dk

Fort Scratchley, Guarding the Hunter River Estuary

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Local history, Military history

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

‘The Newcastle Fortifications – SMH 24 May 1881’, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13484259

‘Fort Scratchley’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org