〝 The principle of preventing the spread of infectious disease by which people, baggage…likely to be infected or coming form an infected place are isolated at frontiers or ports until their harmlessness has been proven…〞
~ Port Nepean Q-Station‘s definition of ’Quarantine‘

Since the initial strains of Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out early last year, the word ‘quarantine’ has found a renewed vigour in the lexicon. In a previous blog the history of Sydney’s early animal quarantine station for imported livestock was outlined – ‘Sydney Foreshore’s Animal House of Detention and Segregation on Hen and Chicken Bay’, 21-Apr-2018. Human quarantine in Sydney has a much longer history. The story starts with governor of the colony of New South Wales Ralph Darling. In response to the cholera pandemic sweeping Europe and the risks of ship-borne disease being transported on vessels coming to the colony, Darling initiated a Quarantine Act in 1832  “subjecting Vessels coming to New South Wales from certain places to the performance of Quarantine”❅.

(Source: researchgate.net / Peter Freeman Pty. 2000)

Darling set aside the entire North Head peninsula (277 hectares)—on indigenous Gayamagal country in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches—for the grounds of the quarantine processing centre. The exact site chosen for the Q-station, Spring Cove, overlooking Sydney Harbour, was already housing an infected and quarantined merchant ship, the Bussorah Merchant.

In the early years of the station’s operation, the practice was to keep sick passengers on board the vessels on arrival at Spring Cove. After complaints from the merchants about the delay and cost of keeping the ships tied up at North Head, the authorities started bringing the sick onshore to free up the transport ships, this required the construction of more substantial permanent accommodation and storage facilities at the Q-Station to replace the original makeshift buildings [‘North Head Quarantine Station’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Passengers disembarking at North Head Q-Station, 1940s (Photo: State Library of NSW)

Q-Station longevity
The old Quarantine Station enjoyed a surprisingly long lifespan at the North Head site, surviving albeit with decreasing utilisation until 1984⌖, this despite periodical calls for its closure…as far back as 1923 Manly Council alderman and later mayor Percy Nolan was advocating for the Q-Station’s removal in favour of open public space [Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Quarantine Station. Proposed Removal’, 31-May-1923 (Trove)].

Slabs of cut sandstone near the station’s wharf bear the markings of passengers detailing the dates and ship names of their journey to North Head

First class expectations
Conditions and facilities at the Q-station were regularly under scrutiny from the better-off passengers. First class passengers were not slow in bringing deficiencies in housing to the attention of the authorities, leading in the 1870s to the building of a new section of Q-Station passenger accommodation in what was known as “the Healthy Grounds” (Wiki).

A 1881 smallpox epidemic resulting in a large number of internee deaths❧ at North Head facility exposed major shortcomings in the management of the Q-Station, including the lack of  a medical superintendent with a grasp of infection control; no clean linen and towels, soap or medical supplies for patients isolated with smallpox [Allen, Raelene, Smallpox epidemic 1881, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881, viewed 06 Sep 2021].

Aerial view of Nth Head Q-Station – c.1930 (Image: Office of Environment & Heritage)

Bulwark against plagues, viruses, bacteria, etc.
Over the decades the Q-Station at Manly has housed the victims of numerous diseases including smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, measles and the bubonic plague, as well as victims of natural disasters. The Q-Station provided a refuge for returning WWI veterans suffering from TB and VD. At war’s end it served as the frontline defence against the lethal assault of the Spanish Flu.

(Photo: environment.
nsw.gov.au)

Gradual obsolescence
Post-WWII, as air travel gradually replaced passenger ships, the Q-Station’s role diminished in importance. In its final decades of operation the quarantine station was put to diverse use…housing the unvaccinated (eg, pregnant immigrants), accommodating  Vietnamese orphans and as a temporary abode for women and children evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy decimated that city in 1974 [‘The plague, smallpox and Spanish flu: How Sydney quarantined sick travellers throughout history’, Sarah Swain, 9 News, 2020, www.9news.com.au; ’Q Station on Manly’s North Head echoes with history of pandemics past’, Kathy Sharpe, Mandurah Mail, 21-Jul-2021, www.mandurahmail.com.au].

The stairway (connecting the wharf with the housing) replaced the funicular in use during Q-Station period (Photo: Sydney Coast Walks)

No longer a quarantine station, the surviving 65 heritage buildings are set against the beautiful natural bush land of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Today the old Q-station is converted into a hotel complex (104 rooms including nine self-contained cottages, managed by Accor) with all the tourist trappings, including sleepovers and nocturnal “Ghost and Paranormal tours”.

Pt Nepean Q-Station (Photo: Parks Vic)

Footnote: Port Nepean, North Head’s counterpart
In Melbourne, that city’s historic quarantine station can be found on the Heads of Port Phillip Bay. Port Nepean Quarantine Station can point to a similar eventful history to that of the North Head facility. Like it, the Melbourne Q-Station owes it’s existence to an infected immigrant ship…the arrival of the SS Ticonderoga in 1852 with 300 passengers stricken from disease, necessitating the ship’s quarantining at Port Nepean, which led to it’s establishment as a Quarantine Station (originally called “the Sanitary Station”). By the 20th century Port Nepean Q-Station had developed a number of innovative processing features including the memorably named “Foul Luggage Receiving Store”. The station’s Disinfectant and Boiler buildings also became models for other quarantine stations in Australia [‘Quarantine Station’, Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au]. At one point animals were also quarantined at the location. By 1978 Port Nepean had ceased operating as a quarantine facility and was closed in 1980. Subsequent uses of the site and holdings include a military encampment and a temporary refuge for 400 Kosovar refugees fleeing the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.

➿➿➿➿➿➿➿ ➿➿➿➿➿➿➿

❅ “to prevent the introduction of the disease called the malignant Cholera and other infectious disease”

⌖ during that one-and-a-half centuries the Q-Station was the initial home in Sydney for an estimated 13,000 passengers

 ❧ and the need to build a third Q-Station cemetery to accommodate the rise in mortality