Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final …...Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final Report March 2007 Paul Davies Pty Ltd 4.3 Views 112 5.0 Significance 124 5.1

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review

Final Report

March 2007

prepared for

CITY OF SYDNEY COUNCIL

prepared by PAUL DAVIES Pty Ltd

180 Darling Street Balmain NSW 2041 PO Box 296 Balmain NSW 2041 T 02 9818 5941 F 02 9818 5982

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final Report March 2007 Paul Davies Pty Ltd

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary 1 1.0 Introduction 4 2.0 History Development Phases 9 3.0 Thematic History 23

3.1 Environment-natural landscape 23 3.2 Aboriginal Cultures 25 3.3 Convict 26 3.4 Ethnic Influences 27 3.5 Migration 27 3.6 Commerce 28 3.7 Communication 32 3.8 Environment cultural landscape 34 3.9 Events 35 3.10 Science 37 3.11 Health 39 3.12 Industry 40 3.13 Technology 41 3.14 Transport 44 3.15 Accommodation 47 3.16 Land Tenure 54 3.17 Towns, Suburbs and villages 58 3.18 Labour 61 3.19 Education 64 3.20 Defence 66 3.21 Utilities 70 3.22 Government and Administration 71 3.23 Law and Order 74 3.24 Creative endeavour 75 3.25 Leisure 76 3.26 Religion 79 3.27 Persons 80 3.28 Welfare 82

4.0 Description 83 4.1 Character 83 4.2 Area Descriptions 91

4.2.1 Kent Street 91 4.2.2 High Street 93 4.2.3 Argyle Street and Argyle Place 94 4.2.4 Merriman Street 97 4.2.5 Dalgety Street 98 4.2.6 Bettington Street 100 4.2.7 Munn Street 101 4.2.8 Windmill Street 102 4.2.9 Lower Fort and Trinity Avenue 103 4.2.10 Hickson Road and The Wharfs 105 4.2.11 Observatory Hill Area 109

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final Report March 2007 Paul Davies Pty Ltd

4.3 Views 112 5.0 Significance 124

5.1 Introduction 124 5.2 Limitations to Assessing Significance 125

5.2.1 Introduction 125 5.2.2 Cultural Heritage Assessment Limitations 125 5.2.3 Limitations to Indigenous Heritage Assessment 125

5.3 Methodology for Assessing Significance 125 5.3.1 Criteria for Assessing Significance 125

5.4 Levels of Significance 127 5.5 Gradings of Significance 128 5.6 Application of Assessment Criteria 129 5.7 Significance of Elements 136 5.8 Contribution Ratings for Sites 140 5.9 Rankings for Streets within Conservation Areas 141 5.10 Statement of Cultural Significance 147

6.0 Recommendations 151 6.1 Conservation Area 151 6.2 Heritage Items 153 6.3 Views and Vistas 163 6.4 General Recommendations 164 6.5 Summary 165

Appendix 1-Historic Themes 171 Appendix 2-SHI for Conservation Area 178 Appendix 3-SHI for individual items and elements Separate

Volume Appendix 4- Character Statement and Objectives for Special Areas: Millers Point (Schedule 6 Sydney LEP 2005)

180

Front Cover Image Windmill Street. Mitchell Library Holtermann Collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G & J. Storey Waterfront Sydney (1984)

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final Report March 2007 Paul Davies Pty Ltd 1

Executive Summary

Paul Davies Pty Ltd was commissioned to undertake a heritage review of the Millers Point and Walsh Bay area in the City of Sydney LGA. At present the area does not have heritage status as an area within the City of Sydney’s planning instruments. This study has examined the heritage value of the area and an overview of the work and recommendations are summarised below. At present various layers of heritage or planning status apply to the area. Generally the boundaries of these and management are inconsistent. The current layers include:

• Millers Point Special Area in the Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2005 (SLEP). • Millers Point and Dawes Point Precinct, Millers Point Conservation Area and Walsh

Bay Wharves Precinct (listed on the State Heritage Register). • The majority of individual buildings (271) in the Millers Point area are listed in

Schedule 8, Part 1, Heritage Items of SLEP. • Of these heritage items, 94 are also listed on the State Heritage Register. • On 1 August 2005, State Environmental Planning Policy (Major Projects) 2005 was

gazetted and designated the City of Sydney as the consent authority for non-State significant development in Walsh Bay, except for Wharf 2/3.

This review has provided an excellent opportunity to examine the Millers Point and Walsh Bay area as a whole. This study involved detailed examination of the character of the Millers Point and Walsh Bay area based on a comprehensive field survey, and analysis of the historical and current context of the study area. The heritage values of both areas have been studied extensively over the past decade, with each area addressed individually. These precincts, however, have much in common in regard to historical development, topography, built environment, etc. and harbour side setting. This review has taken a holistic approach to identify what is common to both precincts as well as their unique qualities and results in a consistent approach to developing recommendations to retain and manage the heritage significance of the area. The review work undertaken involved the following approach:

• A thematic history of the area to produce a concise and thorough overview;

• A review of statutory planning controls and all mapping;

• Identification, assessment and documentation of the non-indigenous cultural heritage of the Study Area;

• Consultation with Council planning, heritage and history officers and significant stakeholders;

• Identification, description and documentation of the visual character of the study area;

• Identification of the key landscape, streetscape and built form characteristics and visual elements of the identified most significant items.

• review and assessment of the cultural significance of the area and identification of defining characteristics of the area in order to direct the future management of a proposed HCA;

• Mapping of all items as contributing, neutral or detracting development;

• Assessment of significance;

• Examination of threats and issues and development of guidelines for the proposed conservation of the area in light of identified threats and issues;


• Examination of heritage value of all aspects of the area and consideration with of need for further heritage listings (local and State);

• Review of existing policy and development of recommendations for reference in planning instruments to retain the significance of the area;

• Determination of applicability of HCA status and boundaries and inventory details; and

• Updating State Heritage inventory data sheets. The report provides an examination of the area as a whole and consolidation of this material into one report with mapping. The report is structured as follows:

Introduction - a brief overview of the purpose and objectives of the review;

History Development Phases – overview of the main development phases and change throughout the area’s history;

Thematic History – a detailed historical overview of development in accordance with themes developed by the NSW Heritage Office; Physical Description – identification of the key existing physical elements and sub-precincts within the area and proposes the overall strategic direction for the study area; Significance – examination and identification of the levels of cultural, indigenous and natural significance within the area;

Recommendations – consideration and recommendations regarding the area and heritage conservation, planning and development controls and specific heritage items.

The Review concludes that Millers Point/Walsh Bay area has outstanding heritage significance within the local area, the City of Sydney and the State of New South Wales. It contains an exceptional collection of housing and warehousing interspersed with civic and commercial buildings that evoke its early history, its later development for modern port facilities and its most recent change from port and industry to cultural, residential and recreational uses. The ongoing residential occupation of most of the housing stock is a rare example of continuing use in an area that would normally have experienced re-development, changes of use and significant upgrade and adaptation of buildings and features. The retention and adaptation of the wharf buildings is also a rare surviving example of former wharfage practices that once characterised the whole of the working harbour and is now found only here, in Woolloomooloo Bay and Jones Bay Wharf. Retention of these heritage values, at all levels, is of high importance in the overall strategy for the future of the City area. Based on the research undertaken, the analysis of the area and by comparison with other places of heritage values, the high heritage values of this area are confirmed and the prime recommendation is that the current Special Area under the LEP be changed to a Heritage Conservation Area (HCA) that includes both the current Special Area and the adjacent Walsh Bay area (and identifies the suggested boundary for the HCA). This is consistent with the broader management of heritage across the City Council Area. This recommendation reflects the unique and rare character and qualities of this small and separated part of the city that requires a high level of management to ensure that its unique qualities are not lost The specific recommendations arising from this study are in summary:

1 The current “Special Area” should become a Heritage Conservation Area in the new LEP

2 The boundaries of the area should be adjusted to remove development to the south along Kent Street that is not consistent in character with the aims of the Heritage Conservation Area and to rationalise the other boundaries as set out in detail in the report.


3 The Walsh Bay area be included within the proposed Heritage Conservation Area. 4 Recommend to the NSW Heritage Office that the listing boundary in their inventory

sheet be adjusted to reflect the City of Sydney Council revised boundaries. 5 Add 41 properties identified to the City of Sydney Council Heritage Schedule as

separate Heritage Items 6 Recommend to the NSW Heritage Office that all buildings identified in the City of

Sydney Council Heritage Schedule within the Millers Point Walsh Bay area should also be entered on the State Heritage Register reflecting the high overall heritage value of this area and to provide consistency with the present listings.

7 Liase with the Department of Housing to rectify minor inconsistencies between heritage schedules and mapping between the Department and the City of Sydney Council.

8 Correct minor inconsistencies between names of heritage items on the City of Sydney Council Heritage Schedule and the State Heritage Register for ease of identification of properties.

9 Establish controls that conserve the heritage significance of the area. These controls will be a combination of LEP and DCP controls that relate to Heritage Conservation Areas in general and to the Millers Point HCA in particular.

10 Council adopt the revised heritage inventory data sheets and incorporate them into the City of Sydney Heritage database.

The recommendations relate to the creation of a Heritage Conservation Area, identification of places of individual heritage significance, planning considerations and management of both the private and public aspects of the proposed HCA. The recommendations are proposed within the framework that the whole of the area is of very high heritage value, that overall it should be retained and managed as it is currently being managed and that there should not be major or dramatic changes to the area or its character. It is also noted that there is limited opportunity for new buildings or elements to be added to the area, the recent development having occupied most of the vacant and available development sites.


1.0 INTRODUCTION

This report is prepared as part of the Millers Point/Walsh Bay Special Area review being undertaken by the City of Sydney Council. Currently under the Sydney Local Environmental Plan (LEP) 2005, Millers Point is designated as a “Special Area”. In August 2005, SEPP (Major Projects) 2005 was gazetted and land at Walsh Bay which was formerly controlled by SHFA moved under the governance of the City of Sydney. The two adjacent areas are and historically have been intrinsically linked through port activity and supporting residential and commercial activity. Consequently studying the whole area allows those links to be re-established and further investigated. It is one of a number of studies being undertaken reviewing existing and potential Heritage Conservation Areas within the City’s boundary. Currently under the Sydney Local Environmental Plan (LEP) 2005 Millers Point is designated as a ‘Special Area’, which does not give it ‘heritage status’ as an area. On 1 August 2005, State Environmental Planning Policy (Major Projects) 2005 was gazetted and designated the City of Sydney as the consent authority (previously SHFA) for non-State significant development in Walsh Bay, except for Wharf 2/3. This study looks at Millers Point and Walsh Bay’s heritage value and status and provides an excellent opportunity to examine the Millers Point and Walsh Bay area as a whole, and enables a better insight into the areas history through an understanding of the relationship between the wharves on Walsh Bay and the distinct development of Millers Point. The majority of individual buildings 9271) in the Millers Point area are listed in Schedule 8, Part 1, Heritage Items of Sydney LEP 2005. Of these heritage items, 94 are also listed on the State heritage Register. The area is also listed on the State Heritage Register as the Millers Point and Dawes Point Precinct, Millers Point Conservation Area and Walsh Bay Wharves Precinct. (Figure 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3) The study has a number of specific objectives:

• to prepare a brief thematic history of the area to assist in understanding the potential Heritage Conservation Area and its components

• to describe the area in detail • to review the present ‘Special Area’ and its boundary and compare it with other heritage

listings of the area prepared by the NSW Heritage Council, the Department of Housing and the National Trust of Australia (NSW) to determine whether the area should remain a ‘Special Area’ or become a ‘Heritage Conservation Area’ and then to identify a boundary for the precinct that reflects its heritage values.

• to review the various heritage listings for the area, to complete incomplete heritage inventory sheets, to add places that should be included in the heritage schedule and conversely to recommend removal of any places that should not be on the heritage schedule, the outcome from this is a revised set of inventory sheets

• to review the statements of significance for the area • to make recommendations on the management of the heritage of the area that can form

the basis of future controls both as part of a consolidated DCP and more specifically in relation to this precinct.

The Millers Point/Walsh Bay area is a place of high heritage interest and value that has been extensively studied and researched over time. Over recent years there have been major developments undertaken particularly in the Walsh Bay area that have included detailed heritage studies and management plans being prepared. A number of books on the history of the area have also been written. The area has also been well studied in terms of its built heritage with comprehensive listings already in place for many of the components. These studies have been prepared by the City


of Sydney Council, the Department of Housing, the National Trust and the NSW Heritage Office. Despite this there has not been to date a study of the ‘Special Area’ as set out in the current Sydney Local Environmental Plan (LEP 2005) that can form the basis for a review of the heritage values of the area. This study then largely draws from existing material to provide a framework that is consistent with other heritage studies within the city area to provide a sound basis to make recommendations on significance and to understand the history and development of the area. From this understanding the study then makes recommendations on what elements and how these should be conserved and managed and sets parameters to guide future work. It is important to set out at the beginning of the study that all of the recommendations, policies and proposed new heritage listings are within the context that the whole of the proposed Heritage Conservation Area is of high heritage significance as a place of State level heritage value. Even though gradings of significance are used to understand the place in detail the whole of the area is of high heritage value and all of the component parts (with the exception of places that detract from that significance) are important. Often in heritage studies grades of significance indicate that some places should be retained where others of a lesser grading may be adapted or removed. In this area this is not the case. Every identified place is of high heritage value and all of the recommendations are made to protect that value. The report is structured with an historical background (sections 2.0 and 3.0), an analysis and description of the area separated into distinct streetscape areas and in terms of views (section 4.0), an assessment of the significance of the area as distinct from individual places within it (section 5.0) and recommendations on management and future controls (section 6.0). Data sheets have been prepared for each separate place as well as the Heritage Conservation Area as a whole. These are contained at appendices 2 and 3, Appendix 3 forming a separate volume. The existing data sheets that cover most of the sites being reviewed have been assessed and where required updated to achieve a higher level of consistency in information and to align the assessments with those of other agencies, in particular the Department of Housing data sheets. Where applicable the Department of Housing data has been used on the City of Sydney data sheets. The draft study has been reviewed by the City of Sydney, the Department of Housing, the National Trust, the Millers Point Resident Action Group, the NSW Heritage Council and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (not a landowner or consent authority for the area but the manager of adjacent lands). Where applicable comments and recommendations from those reviews have been incorporated into the study.


Figure 1.1: Existing Special Area and Proposed Heritage Conservation Area Boundaries


Figure 1.2: Map of Principal Land Ownership within the Proposed Heritage Conservation Area


Figure 1.3: Map of Land Uses within the Proposed Heritage Conservation Area


2.0 HISTORY - DEVELOPMENT PHASES

Introduction The thematic history has been prepared to provide an understanding of the places and physical fabric that comprise the study area. A number of themes have shaped the development of the study area. The history is not limited to the built environment but as the ‘heritage study’ focuses on the built and natural fabric and features and how to manage them the thematic history has been prepared within that context. Appendix 1 sets out a table of the key themes and how they apply to the study area. The history is then set out in two distinct sections. The first is a chronological overview of how the area developed by reference to the key development periods. This sets the broad context. The second section is a more detailed thematic approach where 27 separate themes are explored with examples of places and physical fabric within the study area that demonstrate the significance of each historical theme. The history is drawn from a wide range of sources, mostly secondary but also some primary material. Due to the nature of the history, the most common sources are not referenced at each point they are used. A section on sources is contained that sets out the material used in the preparation of the history. In the thematic section photographs of each place have not been included, they are found in the data sheets that form Appendix 3 of this study. The following series of sketches demonstrate the development of the study area at key periods. The drawings were prepared by the NSW Department of Housing as part of Conservation Management Guidelines for their Miller’s Point properties in 2002 and are used with their permission. The drawings are provided at the commencement of the study to use as a reference in understanding the themes but also the sequence and patterns of development that have impacted on the area as it is now found.

Figure 2.1 1788 - Natural Topography before European settlement. Based on G Aplin, A Difficult Infant Sydney, before Macquarie, Topographic Map 1988.

The topography shows two distinct points one with a small hill and a larger hill where the observatory is now located. This shows the original shore line when contrasted with later plans demonstrates the reclamation for port uses.


Figure 2.3 pre 1835 Based on ‘Parish of St Philip’ Surveyor General’s Office Sydney, March 27th 1835. AO Map No 286

At this time the shoreline is little altered and the topography remains largely unchanged. Note the alignment of Kent Street, Argyle Street and Lower Fort Street, that although adjusted from the basis of the access and development of the area.

Figure 2.4 1835-1880 Based on Woolcott and Clarkes Map of the City of Sydney 1854, Sydney Takes Shape p26-27

The foreshore is modified to provide for wharfage and most of the core Victorian housing is in place. The small western promontory and point remain as distinct features in the harbour.


Figure 2.5 1880 -1889 Based on Harvey Shore, City of Sydney Appendix 2, Harbour Maps, 1906 p186-187

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the character of the wharfs has changed with the use of finger wharfs and the shape of the foreshore is modified.

Figure 2.6 1900-1930 Based on Harvey Shore, From the quay Appendix Map, 1926

This plan reflects the extensive reconstruction of the foreshore with the new finger wharfs to north and west along with the construction of Hickson Road and the new worker housing.


Figure 2.7 1930-2002 Based on City Planning and Building Department, City of Sydney 2000

The recent form of the area shows a further major change with the infilling of the western finger wharf area for container handling with the removal of the buildings fronting Hickson Road.

1788-1810 – Settling at Sydney Cove European settlement of Australia with the arrival of the First Fleet and establishment of the penal colony at Sydney Cove and the banks of the Tank Stream. The high ground of the promontory on the west side of the Cove used for defence (battery), communication (flagstaff) and exploration (observatory). In this era the promontory is notable for the number of early events associated with the European settlement of Australia - first observatory at Dawes Point (1788), first flag station on Observatory Hill (1788), the first windmill (1797) and the fort on Observatory Hill (1804). The natural topography of the promontory however deterred permanent settlement with access from Sydney Cove limited owing to the rock outcrops.

1810-1830s – Moving to Millers Point The beginning of the transformation of Sydney from a penal outpost to trading port and the development of private enterprise to feed, clothe and shelter the population and the influx of free settlers as business opportunities opened. The building of the first generation of wharves and store houses in the 1820s principally engaged in the whale and seal trade. The area also supported quarrymen and tradesmen engaged in maritime activities. The first streets were laid out leading to the windmills erected by Nathanial Lucas and Jack Leighton (1810s probably). In the 1830s wharf building activity increased considerably as the colony’s economy entered into a boom driven by exports of pastoral products namely wool. Around Millers Point the likes of Henry Moore and J.B. Bettington and James Munn operated trading wharves as did T.G. Pittman, John Lamb and William Brown, and William Walker along Walsh Bay. The higher ground which offered views of the wharves and harbour surrounds and enjoyed beneficial cooling breezes and fresh air was utilised for building residences (freestanding dwellings and terraces) for the merchants, and a military hospital (1815). Houses for the working class were also erected.


Fig. 2.8 Detail of the ‘Plan of the Town of Sydney’ prepared in 1807 by James Meehan. Reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)


Fig. 2.9 Detail of the ‘Plan of Sydney with Pyrmont’ prepared in 1836, J. Basire, lithographer. Reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

1840s – Forming the village By the late 1830s a distinct street layout had emerged in Millers Point, but one which did not connect with the town centre to the east. Over the 1840s the village was connected to the town in extending Kent Street as quarrying of Observatory Hill progressed and the Argyle Cut was slowly put through from 1843 to extend Argyle Street and form Argyle Place. Other new streets were formed to service the wharf areas. The genesis of the village was formalised in the construction of the Holy Trinty Church and St. Brigid’s Chapel. Following the cessation of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1841, the colony faced a new and uncertain future with a severe economic downturn following the collapse of the pastoral boom. Associated with the birth of this new era came the town’s first municipal council established in 1842 and the provision of rudimentary services such as reticulated water and public works in street forming such as the Argyle Cut.


Fig. 2.10 Detail of the ‘Map of the City of Sydney’ prepared in 1843 by W.H. Wells. Reproduced in

Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

1850s – Gold Rush Discovery of gold in New South Wales and the onset of the Gold Rush brought a massive influx of migrants and capital which transformed colonial society. Representative government in New South Wales came in 1856, while expansion of the town of Sydney in the new suburban areas encouraged a drift of the middle classes away from the older settled areas. Changes in the education system and emerging interest in the sciences heralded the opening of the Fort Street Model School in the refurbished Military Hospital in 1850 and the construction of the Observatory, utilising the hexagonal walls of the former Fort Phillip, in 1859.


Fig. 2.11 Detail of the ‘Map of the City of Sydney’ prepared in 1854 by Woolcott and Clarke. Reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

1860s-1870s – Commercial Expansion The influx of capital generated through the expansion of the economy with the ongoing gold rush and emerging technologies such as steam powered machinery and ships, and ever larger traditional sailing vessels, led to a new wave of wharf expansion with new purpose built jetties and warehouses. The handling of goods became increasingly specialised with an emphasis on wool exports replacing more general cargoes. Around Millers Point there was an influx of workers to meet the demand for labour on the wharves, and a gradual withdrawal of the middle classes from the increasingly commercialised and industrialised harbour front.


Fig. 2.12 Detail of a ‘Birds-eye view’ of Sydney prepared in 1879 by Gibbs, Shallard and Coy. Reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

1880s-1890s – A city in crisis The dominance of wharf labourers in Millers Point with their seasonal, intermittent and poorly paid unskilled work became more pronounced and conflict mounted with the stevedoring companies over pay and conditions. The long simmering tensions resulted in the unsuccessful three month long Great Maritime Strike of 1890. The subsequent blacklisting of union members combined with the economic downturn of the early 1890s resulted in large scale unemployment and hardship in the area. A symptom of this social crisis of the time was the advent of the Push or gangs of larrikins terrorising residents and visitors. In the wider picture, the great building boom of the 1880s had placed enormous strains on government infrastructure in transport, water, sewerage and drainage, education, health services, etc. The port of Sydney which had evolved with little government oversight over the nineteenth century needed radical replanning to face the new century as the commercial wharf operators


faced new challenges to meet the demands of the technological advances in overseas shipping.

Fig. 2.13 Detail of a ‘Birds-eye view’ of Sydney prepared in 1888. Reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

1900-1940s – A Company Town On the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 the government’s initial response was in passing the Darling Harbour Wharves Resumption Act to resume the wharf areas. The government then moved to manage and rebuild the port facilities in appointing the Sydney Harbour Trust, and the City Improvement Advisory Board to consider the future of the Rocks Resumption Area. With federation in 1901 and the end of the drought that had depressed pastoral exports the finances of the government of New South Wales improved dramatically and many of the infrastructure problems of the late nineteenth century were remedied over first decades of the new century. The construction of Hickson Road and large modern finger wharfs at the newly named Walsh and razing of older residential and commercial building stock was achieved over 1906-1922. In 1901 an electric tram service to Argyle Place broke the sense of isolation from the city and may have helped diminish the debilitating effects of the local Push. Two world wars and the depression years however abated the rate of reform achieved earlier in the century, but the long held dream of a bridge over Sydney Harbour came to fruition in 1932. On the social front, the outbreak of war in the Pacific in 1941 placed great demands on the wharves and indirectly led to wide ranging labour reforms on the waterfront.


Fig. 2.14 Detail of an oblique aerial view of Sydney of 1937. Reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991)

1950s-1970s A different age The post war boom of the early 1960s resulted in major development pressures in the city with the coming of high rise buildings. Some of the earliest high rise buildings were erected fronting the southern and eastern frontages of Circular Quay and southern fringe of Millers Point. In 1963 there was an initial government proposal to redevelop The Rocks with high rise buildings, which was revised in 1968 and the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority established to oversee the development. While continuing under the administration of the Maritime Services Board, a similar move on Millers Point was widely anticipated. Concurrently, the Maritime Services Board embarked on a ten year plan in 1966 to remodel the Darling Harbour wharfs and build Port Botany to handle container and roll-on-roll-off shipping traffic. The Walsh Bay wharves having become increasingly ill suited to modern shipping requirements and largely obsolete for commercial shipping. The threat imposed by development on heritage buildings was abated through the Wran (Labour) Government introduced the NSW Heritage Act which culminating years of public agitation to protect sites of heritage significance from development.


Fig. 2.15 Detail of an oblique aerial view of Sydney of around 1970. Reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991)

1980s-2000 – A different outlook In confronting a depressed financial outlook in the early 1980s, the government instigated in 1983 the Efficiency Audit Division of the Public Service Board which resulted in Maritime Services Board being divested of all non-port related land and the public housing in Millers Point was transferred to the Housing Commission. Faced with redundant wharves at Walsh Bay, Pyrmont and Woolloomooloo the Maritime Services Board sought private investment to provide alternative uses. With development pressures afoot again measures were taken to protect the heritage values of individual buildings and the precinct as a Heritage Conservation Area in 1988. Over 1989-1999 the Walsh Bay wharves were redeveloped for non-commercial shipping related activities. A number of schemes were considered and in 1998 the Mirvac backed scheme was adopted. New residential apartments were also built in Millers Point for the first time since the 1910s albeit for a different client base.


Fig 2.16 A recent commercial development between Hickson Road and Windmill Street at Walsh Bay


Figure 2.17: Map of Historic Land Management of Millers Point and Walsh Bay Study Area


3.0 THEMATIC HISTORY

3.1 Environment - natural landscape

Local themes • Cliffs and escarpments influencing human settlement • Coasts and costal features supporting human activities • Environments important to Aboriginal traditional life

Aspects of the theme Examples of the theme

The localities of Millers Point and Walsh Point are located to the western side of the peninsula lying to the west of Sydney Cove, within Sydney Harbour. The harbour, which is a flooded river valley, was formed around 6000 years ago as the coastline receded owing to climatic changes. The eastern face of this peninsula, The Rocks, was settled at the outset of European settlement in Australia, while Millers Point was settled later due to its inaccessibility; Millers Point was and continues to be a relatively remote area of Sydney. The ridge of the promontory dividing Millers Point from The Rocks was defined in the nineteenth century by Princes Street which was removed in the 1920s for the construction of the southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The ridge necessitated scaling the steep and rocky inclines or trekking around the foreshore via Dawes Point.

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street

While the topography initially discouraged permanent settlement, its elevated height, abundance of sandstone, and a long shoreline of Aboriginal middens along Darling Harbour encouraged industrial, commercial and defence activities.

By mid 1788 the high ground of the peninsula, which offers commanding views of the harbour and surrounding districts, was reserved for a flagstaff, giving rise to its early name of Flagstaff Hill, later Observatory Hill. The point of the promontory, Dawes Point, had been used for fortifications since 1791.


The exposed promontory also provided ideal ground for the establishment of wind powered mills to grind the fledgling colony’s grain. The first government windmill was erected on Observatory Hill in 1797 and another followed in 1798. The private windmills came with the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie as governor with Nathaniel Lucas’ mill at Dawes Point erected by 1812 and John Leighton’s three mills and house on the conical knoll of the sandstone promontory projecting into Port Jackson. The windmills were landmarks in the topography of the harbour and are frequently depicted in early nineteenth century paintings and sketches of the penal settlement at Sydney Cove. Leighton’s mills must have been widely known to the greater populous for the area



bears his name, i.e. Jack the miller’s point. Over the following decades the exposed heights were sought after by the well to do of Sydney as places of residence in offering fine views and salubrious surrounds of fresh air and cooling winds.

The western foreshore of Millers Point/Walsh Bay fronts Darling Harbour which at European settlement was dotted with Aboriginal shell middens. This resource of Cockle Bay, as Darling Harbour was originally known, was excavated by the Europeans for making the lime for the mortar used in the construction of the masonry buildings of early Sydney. As the local supply diminished, shellfish was brought from the wider Sydney area to be burnt at Millers Point. This activity would seem to have continued into the mid nineteenth century as Michael Kennedy, owner and occupant of the terraces at 49-51 Kent Street, still described himself as the lime burner in 1855. Lime Street (now removed) once commemorated this trade in lime burning at Darling Harbour.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct

Another profitable industry that exploited local resources was the extraction of sandstone for the construction of housing and services in early Sydney. Quarrying was an established industry by the mid 1820s with Observatory Hill encircled by stone quarries. The relentless cutting of the hillside altered the natural topography and ultimately directed the development of the local streetscape and housing pattern through forming the alignment of Kent and Argyle Streets, and making the level area of Argyle Place at the foot of Observatory Hill. The extracted stone went into the building of early colonial Sydney and a large portion of Millers Point.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street

The remoteness of Millers Point to the early town centre around Sydney Cove and the Tank Stream encouraged the establishment of noxious industries such as slaughterhouses and whaling. An early name for the area was Slaughterhouse Point reflects the association with the colony’s first slaughter house near Dawes Point. The South Seas whaling industry had a more lasting effect on the history of the area initially as a place to berth off Walsh Bay and victual developed into places of mercantile activity. The whaler Captain Charles Grimes built the house at 50 Argyle Place in 1831 as his place of residence and then as a place of mercantile houses.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay


Fig 3.1.1 This detail of Joseph Lycett’s view of Sydney of the early 1820s shows the promontory capped by Fort Phillip and the windmills of Millers Point. The isolation and sparsely settled nature of the area provides stark contrast with Sydney Cove and the banks of the Tank Stream. Source: Susanna de Vries-Evans, Historic Sydney, as seen by its early artists (1987)

Fig 3.1.2 By the mid nineteenth century the ruinous state of the mills on Millers Point provided an image of a bygone era that drew the attention of artist such as Samuel Elyard. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.2 Aboriginal cultures

Local themes • Eora Nation - sites evidencing occupation • All nations - places of contact with the colonisers


The rocky promontory of Millers Point set between the bays originally known as Sydney Cove (Circular Quay) and Cockle Bay (Darling Harbour) was part of the wider indigenous Cadigal territory; the Millers Point area was known to the Cadigal as Coodye, and Dawes Point as Tar-ra/Tarra. The Aboriginies have inhabited Sydney for at least 20,000 years, although the majority of archaeological sites date to within at least 2,500 years ago.


Immediately upon the Europeans’ arrival the indigenous people’s environment was modified through removal of the bush to secure building materials and firewood, cutting away the sandstone bedrock and cliff overhangs used for shelter, rock engravings and axe grinding, and digging the shell middens, which demonstrated millennia of Aboriginal occupation in the area, for lime burning for the building of Sydney. The Cadigal population, as with the greater indigenous community, was devastated by the colonisation process with its introduction of diseases, land alienation, etc.



In spite of radical modifications to the environment with European settlement, Aboriginal midden sites have been rediscovered since 1980s through archaeological excavations in locations nearby but outside the study area. At the site of Moore’s Wharf, the middens demonstrated both pre and post contact Aboriginal habitation. At Dawes Point there was evidently a rock engraving site known to the post-contact Aboriginal community in the late nineteenth century but is assumed to have been destroyed by European development.


3.3 Convict

Local Theme • Working for the Crown


Sydney was settled as a British penal colony in 1788 with the arrival of 1,350 convicts and their military overseers on eleven ships under the command of Arthur Phillip. Over the following few decades much of infrastructure associated with the administration, housing and welfare of the convicts was located on the western side of Sydney Cove. The neighbourhood of the present day The Rocks by the early 1820’s had developed into a centre of cottage industries established extensively to serve the convict garrison.

# Argyle Cut Holy Trinity Anglican Church and Hall, 60-62 Lower Fort Street

Convict labour would have been intermittently used throughout Millers Point culminating initial stage of making of the Argyle Cut at the tail end of the convict transportation system in New South Wales in the early 1840s. Convict labour was also used to clear the site for the building of the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church at the same time.

Earlier government works engaging convicts would include the fortifications at Dawes Point and Observatory Hill, the government windmills, and probably the lime building sites and stone quarries.

The initial stage of making of the Argyle Cut was constructed using convict labour from 1843 at the tail end of the convict transportation system in New South Wales (it was finally completed in 1859 using council labour). Convict labour was also used to clear the site for the building of the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church.


3.4 Ethnic influences

Local theme • Sailors and merchants


Millers Point in the nineteenth century had a diverse ethnic mix reflecting the seafaring nature of the area with sailors, artisans and merchants. The ethnic population was predominantly Scottish, while other nationalities such as Americans, Chinese, German, Scandinavians were represented to a degree not visible elsewhere in the city, while Robert Towns’ South Sea trading enterprise also brought islanders.


Given this breakdown it is perhaps surprising that no non-conformist churches were erected in Millers Point and no public hotels reflect discernible sectarian affiliations. This is perhaps indicative of the transient nature of the local population.


3.5 Migration

Local theme • Church support


Millers Point in being an area long associated with overseas shipping is association with the story of migration to Australia. This is demonstrated at Pier 1 at Walsh Bay which was used by the large ocean liners of British shipping companies prior to the 1950s. Associated with is the hall of Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church which was used from 1924 as a branch office of the Church of England Migration Council, an organisation that offered services to assist the reception and settlement of British migrants. The Council would seem to have been a development of an earlier group known as Church of England Welcome Home for Overseas Arrivals which had premises in Gloucester Street in the 1910s.

Holy Trinity Anglican Church and Hall, 60-62 Lower Fort Street Walsh Bay Precinct – Pier 1, Hickson Road

Evidently associated with the Church of England Migration Council was the Empire Service Hostel in Windmill Street, which started to accommodate newly arrived migrants in 1925.


3.6 Commerce

Local themes • Warehousing and storage for commercial enterprises • Serving residents and visitors


The impetus for the development of wharf and storage facilities at Millers Point/Walsh Bay came with the pastoral expansion of the colony and the wool export trade of the 1830s. The prominent merchants of this era included William Walker and Co., John Lamb, Aspinall and Brown, and Timothy Gordon Pittman. These men and their companies had established in the 1820s wharves on the foreshore of what is today known as Walsh Bay. By the early 1850s nine commercial wharves were operating in the area including Robert Towns’ wharf at the end of Kent Street, Moore’s wharf on Millers Point, and the wharves of Bott, Macnamara, Ebsworth, Alger, and Duke.


Moore’s wharf was typical of the enterprising spirit of these merchantile houses. The company was founded by Captain Joseph Moore who settled in Sydney in 1820 on acquiring a share in the firm of Jones and Walker, and in 1837 acquired William Long’s wharf at Millers Point. His son, Henry, developed the company through the nineteenth century. Much of the bullion sourced form the gold fields of the colony was exported from Moore’s wharf in the 1850s, while the first direct English mail delivered under contract arrived at Moore’s wharf in 1853. Moore’s bond store, built in 1835 by William Long using local stone, was relocated by the Maritime Services Board in 1978 to the northern edge of Walsh Bay.

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct # Moore’s Bond Store, Walsh Bay

The export of wool and other goods, such as gold, brought the construction of new storage facilities for wool stores and bonded warehouses (where goods are held for payment of government duties). From the 1860s the foreshore area of Walsh Bay became increasingly devoted almost entirely to warehousing. Further to the west along Darling Harbour the Grafton warehouses were established in the 1830s but principally date from 1881 (and are now substantially demolished).

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Grafton Bond Store and Sandstone Wall, Hickson Road Dalgety’s Bond Stores, Former Group of Buildings (1870s & 1908), 6-20 Munn Street Oswald Bond Store (1892 & 1903), 1-17 Kent Street

During the 1880’s there was a shift to investing in new wool stores such as Hentsch’s (now Oswald’s Bond Store) with the extensive capital backing required being secured through shares in public companies. Representatives of this change was the Australasian Mortgage and Agency Company, the owners of the Central Wharf at Walsh Bay. The company was

Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 8/9 & Shoresheds, Hickson Road


formed by a large Edinburgh based financial company in 1879 with a capital of 1,500 pounds. Initially trading from Melbourne, the Sydney company office was opened in 1881 with the operations at Walsh Bay being established in 1887 with the newly formed Central Wharf Co. The board of directors of Central Wharf Co. included prominent graziers James White and George Henry Cox. The initial temporary facilities at Walsh Bay were markedly upgraded with the construction of the Central Store in Windmill Street around 1892. The Central Wharf Co. continued to trade at Walsh Bay, but as a stevedoring company, well into the twentieth century.

The largest warehouse of the twentieth century was Dalgety’s for which a large longshore berth and woolstore complete with modern mechanical handling devices was completed by the Sydney Harbour Trust in the early 1900s (Walsh Bay Wharf 11 and Darling Harbour Wharves 1a, 1b & 2. Dalgety & Co had extensive premises throughout the city but centralised its wool and bond stores at Millers Point with the New Bond and Free Stores in Munn Street, and wool stores in Merriman Street. Dalgety’s continued to operate its wool handling facility operation at Millers Point into the 1950s.

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct

In servicing the needs of the local residents and visiting seamen, many Sydney ‘business identities’ in the nineteenth century secured a reliable source of income in operating a licenced public hotel. The Lord Nelson was built by the former plasterer William Wells in the 1830s as a residence and later as a hotel, while the stonemason George Paton (builder of part of the Garrison Church) built the Hero of Waterloo in 1843. The ‘Old Whalers Arms’ was possibly demolished when Pottinger Street was realigned by the Harbour Trust.

Shipwright’s Arms Inn (former) (1831-1833), 75 Windmill Street The Old Whalers Arms (1831), eastern corner of Pottinger Street and Windmill Street Whalers Arms (former) northeast corner of Argyle and Windmill Streets (Fitzgerald/Keating, p37) Shipwrights Arms later Sailors Return then Quarrymans Arms (1831-1840s), northeast corner of Argyle and Kent Streets (The Australian Pub p73-74) Lord Nelson Hotel (1830s), 19 Kent Street Shop and Residence (pre 1842), 79 Lower Fort Street (formerly the Young Princess and from 1848-1855 called ‘Whalers Arms’) Hero of Waterloo (1842-5), 81-83 Lower Fort St Captain Cook Hotel


(c.1877-1880, 33-35 Kent Street Terrace (1899), 69 Windmill Street

Other basic services were provided by grocers, bakers, butchers and the like. By 1880 there was a cluster of these stores along Argyle Street near Kent Street and isolated examples elsewhere.

Royal College of Pathologists (former) (1855-7) 84 Windmill Street Stone Shop (1858-63), 67 Windmill Street

Few shops of the nineteenth century survived the demolitions of 1900-1910’s. The building at Lower Fort Street is one example built in 1842 as a hotel (The Young Princess and later The Whalers Arms), but was used for nearly a century as a shop. Another is 56-58 Bettington Street which was built in 1877 and used as a grocer’s shop.

Terrace (1870), 18-22 Kent Street Edwardian Terrace (1877), 56-58 Bettington Street Shop and Residence, 79 Lower Fort Street

The Sydney Harbour Trust built a number of purpose built shops to replace the older retail built a number of purpose built shops to replace the older retail building stock. The shops at 1-7 and 6-12 Argyle Street are such development completed in 1910 and 1905 respectively. A singular example is 75-76 Lower Fort Street which was completed in 1927 and was used as fruiterers.

Terrace, 67 Windmill St 84 Windmill St (c 1855-97) Terrace and Musgrave Grocer Shop (1858-97) Shops (1905), Argyle Street 10 Ferry Lane (demolished 1904) Building Group (1910), 1-7 Argyle Street Shops and Residence (1909), 9 Argyle Street Building (1927), 75-77 Lower Fort Street

The Sydney Harbour Trust designed their new retail premise to suit particular uses. This is evident at the former ‘Kentish Dining Room’ at 9 Argyle Street completed in 1910 and probably originally associated with catering for the needs of the local labourers.

Another form of investment, property, was popular in the nineteenth century as it is in today’s hyperventilated market. New building stock was constructed for the rental market by local investors as well as from the ‘bigger end’ of town. Solicitor George Wigram Allen’s Alfred Terrace in Kent Street is an example of the later, but in the same street a number of terraces were built for local shipwrights in the 1870s at the end of the shipbuilding era in Millers Point with the closure of Cuthbert’s yard. Examples include 53-55 Kent Street (1876/77), 82-88 Kent Street (1868/70), 71-73 Kent Street (1876/77), and 75-79 Kent Street (1875). In Lower Fort Street there is Robert Drysdale’s Eagleton Terrace of the same era (1876).

Alfred Terrace, 37-47 Kent Street Eagleton Terrace (1876), 67-73 Lower Fort Street Terrace (1864/7), 53-55 Kent Street Blyth Terrace (1868/70), 82-88 Kent Street Winsbury Terrace, 75-79 Kent Street


The need for accurate time led to the decision to build a visible Time Ball, which was operated by an astronomer for the benefit of an increasing volume of shipping to allow the Colony to engage in commerce and business.

Observatory

Fig 3.6.1 Parbury’s Wharf at Walsh Bay in 1895. Parbury’s at this time was a long shore wharf with a large open apron area for transhipping goods. The wharf was rebuilt shortly after the year of this photograph and completely demolished by the Sydney Harbour Trust in the new century. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

Fig 3.6.2 Moore’s wharf and stores presented an impressive sight in the port when this watercolour was painted in 1835 by Frederick Garling. The stores were dissembled by the Maritime Services Board in the early 1970s and rebuilt at the northern end of Walsh Bay. This part of Millers Point was then redeveloped for alongshore berths. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.6.3 Dalgety’s store in Munn Street built in 1875 survived the Sydney Harbour Trust redevelopment and today provides an evocative insight into the late nineteenth century commercial townscape of the area. The photograph was taken around 1901. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

Fig 3.6.4 Town’s wharf in the 1870s. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in State Library of NSW, This Working Life (2004)


Fig 3.6.5 The nineteenth century commercial wharves of Walsh Bay and the residences of Windmill Street and Argyle Street behind are evocatively recorded in this Bernard Holterman photograph of 1885. The step terrain, wharves and stores are all evident. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Ashton, P. & D. Waterson, Sydney Takes Shape, A history in maps (2000)

Fig 3.6.6 Windmill Street and the wharves and stores at Walsh Bay are depicted as a place of thriving activity in this watercolour by John Rae of 1842. Note the gas lantern outside the Whalers Arms, which was a government requirement of the time. While the commercial portside has been redeveloped, the heights of Millers Point with its fine merchant houses can still be experienced today. Source: A City Council collection painting reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


3.7 Communication

Local theme • Shipping Intelligence


Some months after land fall at Sydney Cove in 1788 the tip of the promontory of Millers Point was utilised for a flagstaff on present day Observatory Hill to communicate with the maritime fleet. This role was expanded in 1790 with a second flag station erected at South Head to notify the arrival of vessels. Following the completion of Fort Phillip the flagstaff was relocated around 1808-1811 to an area east of the rampart, and became known as Flagstaff Hill.

Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Sydney Observatory, Upper Fort Street

Under Governor Macquarie the system of flag stations was upgraded to a telegraph (or semaphore system) with the erection around 1821 with semaphores and flags at Fort Phillip and South Head. The first master of the telegraph station at Fort Phillip was James Stewart who was provided with a residence at the fort.

In the mid 1820s the telegraph system was extended to Mays Hill on the heights above Government House at Parramatta with two intermediary relay stations (Gladesville and Dundas). The telegraph stations at Fort Phillip and South Head were converted to electric telegraph in 1857 to improve shipping intelligence, but the communication system was also extended to Liverpool at same time.

Fig 3.7.1 A sketch by John Carmichael of the signal station at Fort Phillip in the late 1830s. Source: Originally published in Macahose’s Pictures of Sydney of 1838 and reproduced in Kerr, J.S., Sydney Observatory, a conservation plan. (1991).


3.8 Environment – cultural landscape

Local themes • Landscapes of urban development • Places important in conservation movement


Charged with total control over Port Jackson and a large portion of land located to the west of the Sydney CBD, the work of the Sydney Harbour Trust is unique in the sense that it had the mandate to reorganise wharfage in Sydney and this by sweeping away at the birth of a new century the baggage of a nineteenth century townscape - poorly aligned and graded roads, uncoordinated development of valuable foreshore space, and inadequate workingmen’s housing. The impact this work is discernible to this day in Hickson Road, Pottinger Street and High Street, stone retaining walls (rear of Milton Terrace, Lower Fort Street), pedestrian stairs (Windmill and Hickson Road Steps), and public housing and amenities.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Hickson Steps, Hickson Road Sandstone Wall, Hickson Road

The role of the City Council in listing the whole of the Millers Point/The Rocks as an area of historic and architectural significance in its Strategic Plan of in 1971 reflects recognition by the wider community of the historic value of the area since the 1950s. The Argyle Place precinct for example was listed in the late 1950s by the Historic Building Committee of the now defunct Cumberland County. The National Trust of Australia (NSW), established in the 1940s, also listed buildings and townscape features such as Argyle Place in the early 1960s. However in an era without statutory protection for historic built environment militant unions such as the NSW Branch of the Builders Laborers Federation effectively stymied developers’ proposals through ‘Green Bans’.

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Argyle Place Park, Argyle Street

The first statutory protection of the area came in 1977 with the passing of the Heritage Act and establishment of the Heritage Council by the newly elected Wran Labour government. While individual buildings in Millers Point were protected under the provisions of the Act, in 1988 the Heritage Council acknowledged the Millers Point Heritage Conservation Area as being of state and national significance. In mid-1989 the Central Sydney Heritage Inventory identified Millers Point as a heritage precinct. In 1999, the Millers Point Heritage Conservation Area was placed on the State Heritage Register (SHR). Other listings included the Observatory and the Garrison Church Group, and a separate SHR listing protecting Walsh Bay wharves and its related structures. Both individual and group listings of buildings and structures relating to Millers Point have also

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay


been identified by the Register of the National Estate, including the Walsh Bay Wharves and The Rocks Heritage Conservation Area.

The work of the Sydney Cove Authority (now absorbed into the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority) from the late 1980s increasingly emphasised the heritage of The Rocks and adjoining areas of Millers Point though the provision of guided walks, interpretative signage, etc. Recent private development of the Walsh Bay Precinct under the supervision of the Heritage Office as consent authority has resulted in comprehensive interpretation schemes to inform both the local and overseas visitors about the history of the area.


3.9 Events

Local theme • Place of pestilence


The general unhealthy atmosphere of the wharf areas had been regularly noted in the late nineteenth century with their unhygienic sewerage and water services, noxious smells of the wharves and waterside industry, and disease spread from the passing ships. In January 1900, at the dawn of a new century, a flea-born outbreak of plague carried by rats arrived in Sydney via the overseas trading wharves. The first recorded infection was Arthur Payne of Ferry Lane. By February the first victim was claimed, a resident of Sussex Street, Darling Harbour. The localisation of the outbreaks to many of the wharf areas of Sydney was no coincidence as the construction of the nineteen century wharves (earth fill construction infested by rats) was a major contributing factor. As were the old and neglected houses of poor construction, some dating back to the 1820s. The plague spread rapidly throughout Sydney where there were many more deaths occurred from the plague in Newtown and Redfern where many of the then wharf and markets employees lived. However these suburbs were not resumed en masse.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Ferry Lane, Millers Point

During early March there was a general air of public panic in Sydney, and on the 23rd legal control of the wharf areas was assumed under the Quarantine Act of 1897. The plague promoted bipartisan action by members of the Legislative Assembly under Premier W.J. Lyne to sign a petition to resume the foreshores of Darling Harbour as an excuse for the later development of Walsh Bay wharves and the building of a bridge over the harbour. The resumption was proclaimed in May with the Darling Harbour Wharves Resumption Act. Resumed areas included most of the waterfront property from Dawes Point down Windmill, Kent and Sussex Streets



beyond Pyrmont Bridge. A program of quarantine, cleansing and disinfecting was rigorously implemented. Wharf activities were effectively suspended, and many labourers and shipping employees detained in quarantine zones.

The residential areas neighbouring the wharves around Millers Point, Dawes Point and The Rocks, the Observatory Hill Resumption Are, were proclaimed to be resumed within two years from 1900. The AGL gas works were excluded from the initial resumption, but was subsequently resumed in 1912. In all 900 properties were acquired.

The resumption, at a cost of over one million pounds, directly cleared the way for the government under the Sydney Harbour Trust and City improvement Advisory Board to rebuild the wharves to meet modern shipping standards and indirectly endowed Sydney with a large area of historic waterside commercial and residential buildings in public ownership.

Fig 3.9.1 The humble abode of Arthur Payne in Ferry Lane in 1904; Payne was the first recorded sufferer of the bubonic plague in 1900. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


3.10 Science

Local Theme • Exploring beyond the earth


Within months of the Europeans settling at Sydney Cove a makeshift observatory had been established by Lieutenant William Dawes on the tip of the promontory (Dawes Point) to the west of the settlement. Dawes had a particular interest in astronomy had enjoyed the friendship and patronage of the Astronomer Royal, the Rev. Dr Maskelyne.


The Observatory, Sydney’s first, was disbanded with the return of Dawes to England in 1791. Interest in astronomy in the colony was revived in 1821 with the establishment of an observatory at Parramatta with the support of Governor Brisbane. Over the 1840s the need for new observatory was debated in the colony and the site of Fort Phillip initially settled on in 1850, although it was not until 1857 that the site was confirmed and tenders called for its construction under the direction of colonial architects Alexander Dawson. The building was completed in 1859 and the new government astronomer, the Rev. William Scott settled in with his family. Plans for Sydney Observatory began as a simple time-ball tower, to be built near the signal station. Every day at exactly 1.00pm, the time ball on top of the tower would drop to signal the correct time to the city and harbour below. The erection of the time ball was a result for the need of an accurate time device and the subsequent decision to build a visible time ball at the Observatory, operated accurately by an astronomer for the benefit of the increased volume of shipping to allow the Colony to engage in commerce and business. At the same time a cannon on Fort Denison was fired. It was soon agreed to expand the tower into a full observatory. Designed by Alexander Dawson, the observatory consisted of a domed chamber to house the equatorial telescope, a room with long, narrow windows for the transit telescope, a computing room or office, and a residence for the astronomer. In 1877, a western wing was added to provide office and library space and a second domed chamber for telescopes. Under Henry Chamberlain Russell, in the 1880s Sydney Observatory gained international recognition. Russell took some of the first astronomical photographs in the world and involved Sydney in one of the greatest international astronomy projects ever undertaken being the astrographic catalogue and measurement of the transit of Venus. The catalogue was the first completed atlas of the sky. The Sydney section alone took 80 years and 53 volumes to complete. In 1877

Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street Sydney Observatory (1859), Upper Fort Street


Russell published the first daily weather map in the Sydney Morning Herald. After federation in 1901, meteorological observations became a Commonwealth government responsibility, but astronomy remained with the states. Sydney Observatory continued working on The astrographic catalogue, keeping time, making observations and providing information to the public. Every day, for example, the Observatory supplied Sydney newspapers with the rising and setting times of the sun, moon and planets. Observatory Hill is significant as the site of the first dedicated building for meteorology in Australia in 1859 and as one of the key locations from where Sydney’s weather is still measured.

The choice of the site in close proximity to the city was soon found to be unsuited to its role being disadvantaged by high levels of city light, traffic vibration and magnetic disturbance. The transfer of some of the utilitarian aspects of the work of the Observatory, especially meteorology in 1908, with the establishment of Bureau of Meteorology, reduced its profile with the public and government. In 1917 the Bureau moved to the Messenger’s cottage for Sydney Observatory. The purpose built Weather Bureau Building was occupied by forecasting and technical staff, as well as a residence for the Regional Director between 1922 and 1963. After this time it was occupied by technical staff until 1992 when it became unoccupied and remains so to date. By the mid 1970s the increasing problems of air pollution and city light made work at the Observatory more and more difficult. The commitment of the Observatory to an international observing program began in 1890 prevented the government from closing it down in the 1920s, but also stopped it from taking part in the 20th century advances in modern astronomy. The scientific work at the Observatory continued until 1982, in turn it became a museum of astronomy and a public observatory.


Fig 3.10.1 The Sydney Observatory shortly after completion, 1860. Source: Kerr, J.S., Sydney Observatory, a conservation plan. (1991).

3.11 Health

Local theme • The military hospital


The heights of Millers Point were favourable to the establishment of a hospital for the military garrison at Sydney Cove. The hospital was completed early in Governor Macquarie’s term in 1815 to a design prepared by his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant John Watts. The hospital was designed to accommodate one hundred patients in large open wards over two floors, with separate quarters for surgeons at each end. The hospital featured a sweeping double storey verandah (one of the first examples in Australia) and enclosed grounds for the patients to recuperate. With the removal of the soldiers to new barracks outside of the town at Paddington in the 1840s, the hospital was closed and converted to a public school – The Fort Street National School or Model School.

Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street National Trust Centre (Associated Buildings), Upper Fort Street

In the 1920s the Sydney Eye Hospital government services in the area returned. In the 1950s the Baby Health Centre in Lower Fort Street was opened. This was a joint venture run by the Department of Health in conjunction with the City Council.

# Baby Health Centre (1952), 87 Lower Fort Street


Fig 3.11.1 This detail of Major James Taylor’s marvellously detailed engraved aquatint panorama of the town of Sydney of around 1820-1822 clearly depicts Macquarie’s Military Hospital erected in 1815 on Observatory Hill. In later years this quaint Georgian building was transformed into the National School, which is now the NSW headquarters of the National Trust. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Susanna de Vries-Evans, Historic Sydney, as seen by its early artists (1987).

3.12 Industry

Local themes • Boat building and shipwrighting


Unlike many of Sydney’s inner city suburbs or villages Millers Point was never an area associated with colonial industry. Ship building was undertaken on a limited scale through to around 1880.

The first of the ship building yards in the area was established by James Munn by 1825 located at the foot of Munn Street and Clyde Street. Other yards of this era were operated by John Redgrave, Joseph Faris and Andrew Summerbell.


In the mid 1840s Lawrence Corcoran took over Munn’s yard, which in turn was acquired by John Cuthbert. Cuthbert’s yard was one of the most extensive in the colony employing upward of 250 men at the ed of the 1960’s. Cuthbert’s yard at Millers Point opened in 1856. A number of steam ships were built here for local shipping firms such as the A.S.N. Co. and the government. The yard area measured about four acres, much of which was reclamation. There was a large jetty and yard comprising blacksmiths’ shops, carpenters’ sheds, sail lofts, steam saw mill, etc and large store of timbers, most sourced from the Sydney region. In


1862 Cuthbert won a silver medal for a selection of local timbers displayed at the Great International Exhibition in London. In addition to new construction, the yard had a profitable business in refitting vessels, many from England requiring repair.

The yard closed in the 1870s and the site was redeveloped by T.A. Dibbs for wharfage. The site is now part of the longshore wharf scheme on Darling Harbour built by the Maritime Services Board in the 1970s.

Smaller boat building yards also operated in the area including Langford’s yard to the South of Cuthbert’s on Darling Harbour. This yard had an enviable reputation for its watermen’s skiffs.

Fig 3.12.1 Cuthbert’s shipyard below Millers Point is evocatively recorded in this Bernard Holtermann photograph of 1873. A number of large ships were built here over the years of the yard’s operation from 1850. This place of industry was replaced by Dibb’s wharf within the decade. Source: A Mitchell Library Holtermann collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.13 Technology & Engineering Challenges

Local themes • Windmills • First electricity cables (5 Kv) as part of first supply to northern suburbs laid from

Dawes Point across to Milsons Point in 1915 (from Pyrmont Power Station) • Technologies of wharfs and seawalls • Technologies of machinery • Technologies of roads and bridges



The local topography of the Millers Point and Walsh Bay area characterised by rock outcrops and escarpments presented from the outset of European settlement unique engineering responses.


In the mid nineteenth century the Argyle Cut was put through over 1840s and 1850s by the government, and later in the decade private capital built some of Sydney’s unique wharfs at Walsh Bay. The noted civil engineer Norman Selfe designed costly improvements at the Central Wharf and Parbury’s Wharf which presented ‘problems never before encountered in the city’. The terracing of the northern face of Observatory Hill was probably undertaken soon after the Argyle Cut with the steps and retaining walls completed in 1866. The levelled but ill-formed area below the Observatory Hill was realigned and the present day Argyle Park vested with the City Council and dedicated a reserve for public recreation in 1867.

Argyle Cut (1840s) Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Terracing of Observatory Hill, 1860s

In the twentieth century the Sydney Harbour Trust redeveloped the wharves at Walsh Bay to accommodate the largest ships of the time providing jetties comparable to the ports of San Francisco and New York.


The engineers of the Sydney Harbour Trust were at the forefront of introducing reinforced concrete technology to New South Wales with the construction of a concrete sea wall between 1902 and 1910 along the eastern shore line of Darling Harbour and Walsh Bay. The wall was a direct response to the general panic experienced in Sydney at the time due to the outbreak of plague with its design being rat-proof and self-cleansing.


In the nineteenth century, the handicap of low berths backed by high escarpments at Walsh Bay necessitated hydraulic equipment to haul goods. At least three hydraulic plants were operated by Parbury’s, Dalton’s and Central Co’s wharves. In the twentieth century the wharves were fitted with hydraulic and electrically operated machinery. At Pier 8/9, originally the best equipped wharf at Walsh Bay, the mechanised handling equipment reflected the primary use of the wharf for wool handling by the Central Wharf Co.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Walsh Bay Precinct - Wharves 8/9 & Shoresheds Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 8/9 & Shoresheds (1912), Hickson Road

At the centre of the Sydney Harbour Trust scheme for the reconstruction of Sydney’s wharfage is Hickson Road intended to improve road access to the berths. The road was initially planned to extend from Dawes Point to Sussex Street and on to Darling Island. While the full scheme was never completed the wide low level road allowed for access to all of the Sydney Harbour Trust’s wharves from Circular Quay West to Darling Harbour. In doing so, the Sydney Harbour Trust engineers built a road network on a scale not experienced to that time. Hickson Road is also notable for the reinforced concrete bridges over Munn, Windmill and Argyle Streets completed over 1910-1914 permitting high-level access to the wharfs,

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Bridges over Hickson Road, Hickson Road


and the intersecting New Pottinger Street which for most of its length is a reinforced concrete viaduct.

The construction of the Harbour Bridge was the ultimate demise of the Dawes Point battery and Greenways Guardhouse both being razed to the ground and on completion the ground levels were then changed around them. Engineers building the bridge, including Dorman and Long were accommodated in the Officers Quarters and another Officers’ residential building to the north of the battery. The southern approach road of the Harbour Bridge was constructed from materials brought to the site by barge. To facilitate this a railway was built from the northernmost tip of Dawes Point to George and Cumberland Streets. The railway was elevated on timber supports and bogies were winched up the incline. The railway was dismantled by late 1925 when excavation commenced for the South Pylon. At the same time the eight piers were erected, two of which impinged on the remains of the battery. In the second half of 1925 the site of the Greenway Guardhouse was demolished and became an important part of the construction of the bridge. In order to hold back each half of the Bridge’s arch until they met in the middle “U” shaped tunnels were excavated to depths of some 40 meters on either side of the harbour. The inlet for the southern shaft was situated on the site of the former guardhouse). On completion of the Bridge in 1932 any remaining battery buildings were demolished, although some of the sandstone retaining walls and steps in the vicinity of the Officer’s quarters were retained.

Harbour Bridge 1920s-1932, associated stairs

The expressway was first proposed in 1945 as part of an overall expressway plan for Sydney. Public opposition began when the proposal was first made public in 1948, with the Quay Planning Protest Committee being formed. Despite the opposition, construction on the elevated section of the expressway went ahead in 1955. Funding was provided by the Sydney Council and the NSW Government, and the elevated section was opened on 24 March 1958. Work on the sunken section commenced almost straight away after that, and the additional section was opened on 1 March 1962 (articlehttp://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/history/sydneystreets/How_to_Build_a_Street/Cahill_Expressway/default.html), How to Build a Street.) The Expressway is named after the then NSW Premier Joseph Cahill, who also approved construction of the Sydney Opera House. While a vital link in the Sydney road system, it is generally not well loved by Sydneysiders, for its ugly appearance and the way it divides the city from its waterfront. The Cahill Expressway was controversial from when it was first proposed. Its elevated nature, proximity to the city and utilitarian appearance meant that when the design of the elevated section was first unveiled to the public, it was described as ridiculous, ugly, unsightly and a monstrosity. An early example of freeway revolt. Sydney Morning Herald writer Elizabeth Farrelly describes the freeway as 'doggedly

Cahill Expressway Circuit Reconstruction of the Harbour Bridge Arch over Argyle Street


symmetrical, profoundly deadpan, severing the city from the water on a permanent basis' (SMH, 12/02/02-Opening up the Cahill Expressway won't be a dynamic change).

Fig 3.13.1 Part of the extensive reinforced concrete seawall under construction in 1907. The Sydney Harbour Trust commissioner, R.R.P. Hickson, surveys the work in progress. Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.14 Transport

Local theme • Maintaining maritime transport routes • Harbour Crossings


The location of Millers Point with its extensive water frontage was ideally suited for shipping purposes, and merchants tapped in to its potential by erecting private jetties and wharves with associated storage for goods. The first wharf at Walsh Bay was established by William Walker in the 1820s adjoining Dawes Point.


The early shipping industry was predominantly associated with the South Seas whaling and sealing trade victualing vessels while in port. The impetus for the large scale redevelopment of wharfage facilities came with pastoral expansion of the

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay First Ferry to North Shore at bottom of


1830s and the demand for wharves capable of accommodating international shipping. Coinciding with the growth in wool exports was an increase generally in shipping following the relaxation of duties imposed by the British East India Company, which had a longstanding government sanctioned monopoly on trade in the Indian and Pacific oceans. By 1835 at Millers Point were aforementioned Walker’s wharf, Lamb’s wharf (later Parbury’s), Aspinall and Brown’s wharf (later Central) and Bettington’s (later Dibb’s wharf). Ferry Lane was built in 1848. It ran from Lower Fort Street to the harbour and was the main pedestrian access way to reach the North Shore ferry berthed at the bottom of the laneway (plaque).

Pottinger Street (c1840)

An early impediment to the development of wharfs was the deep water off Walsh Bay which required expensive piling. Nevertheless by 1860 finger jetties had appeared along the shoreline and continued to be built over the 1870s. This era of wharf-building heralded the introduction of new wharf designs, such as the two-storey jetty shed (where loading into ships was from the upper level and unloading from the lower level). At Parbury’s wharf a deep water frontage of 85m could accommodate large vessels on the overseas trade and a large open area to store goods in transit.


With reorganisation of the wharfage in the area between 1910 and 1922 by the Sydney Harbour Trust, the principal commercial activity at Walsh Bay continued to be shipping general overseas cargo. The number of operators was reduced to three principal companies - Central Wharf Co. (Pier 8/9), Burns Philp & Co. (Pier 6/7), and the Commonwealth Government Line of Steamers (Pier 4/5). A number of other companies used the facilities offered at the Sydney Harbour Trust’s open wharves (Piers 1, 2/3), and the Blue Funnel Line used the Central Wharf Co’s Pier 8/9. Of these, the Central Wharf Co. was the only company which operated out of Walsh Bay both before and during the resumption. Pier 1 was provided for international passenger ships and fitted with specialised machinery and areas to suit this traffic.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Walsh Bay Precinct – Pier 1 (1913), Hickson Road Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 2/3 & Shoresheds (1921), Hickson Road Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 4/5 & Shoresheds (1921), Hickson Road Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 6/7 & Shoresheds (1918), Hickson Road Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 8/9 & Shoresheds (1912), Hickson Road

The decline in shipping using Port Jackson commenced in the 1930s with a 43% decrease in the number of ships handled in the port between 1937 and 1954. However for the same period there was a 9% increase in the total tonnage of goods going through the port due to the larger and more specialised ships (containerisation, roll-on-roll-off, and bulk materials handling, etc.)


Over the 1970s Port Botany was developed to handle this shipping traffic and the older facilities at Walsh Bay were either closed or redeveloped. Indicative of these changes was the demolition of Walsh Bay wharves 10A/10B and 11 and Darling Harbour wharves 3-6 in the mid-1970s for the construction by the Maritime Services Board of new facilities for international containerised shipping. The harbour control tower at Millers Point was constructed in 1974 as part of this ambitious port redevelopment.


At a local level a steam ferry service to North Sydney berthed at the end of Pottinger Street from the 1850s.


Fig 3.14.1 The busy port area of Walsh Bay in the 1870s lying below the fine houses of Lower Fort Street and Argyle Street. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

Fig 3.14.2 The redeveloped Walsh Bay in 1917 with steam ships berthed at the recently completed Central Wharf (Piers 8/9). Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


Fig 3.14.3 New Pottinger Street in 1922. Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.14.4 Pier 1 around 1920. Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.15 Accommodation

Local themes • Housing workers and artisans • Housing ship owners and maritime traders


The relatively secluded enclave of the heights of Millers Point was the residence of many of the city’s merchants who had commercial interests in the wharfs and warehouses situated along the foreshore areas of Darling Harbour, Millers Point and Circular Quay. The merchants in this era also had business interests elsewhere in the world which necessitated frequent trips aboard. The merchant’s housing was more often than not leased.


Around the point, Spencer Lodge was initially tenanted by the merchant Captain John Lamb, Moorecliff was built for Henry Moore and tenanted by Captain Robert Towns, and the eclectic Albion House (now demolished) overlooking Darling Harbour was built around 1826 for William Dawes. Of the houses in Lower Fort Street, a street described by one visitor to Sydney as being ‘probably one of the best neighbourhoods in Sydney, is Clydebank. It’s succession of owners included Joseph Moore, John Terry Hughes and Robert Campbell, Junior. Today the interior is open as a house museum. Of the 1830s housing stock, a particularly fine example of Georgian style townhouses is at 39-41 Lower Fort Street which was designed by John Verge in 1836. Aside from the proximity to their business premises, the area in the early and mid nineteenth century offered the middle classes in their elevated houses a locale with favourable cooling fresh air off the harbour and views to the largely undeveloped harbour and northern harbourside localities.

Undercliffe Cottage (former) (1831-1834), 50 Argyle Place Terrace (c.1832), 24-32 Argyle Place Terrace (1832-1834), 21-23 Lower Fort Street Linsley Terrace (1833-34), 25-33 Lower Fort Street Building (1835), 45 Lower Fort Street Royal College of Radiologists (1833-1834), 37 Lower Fort Street Terrace (pre 1834), 46-48


At the other end of the social scale the wharves generated the establishment of small firms of skilled artisans such as shipwrights, transient seamen and labourers who also lived in the neighbourhood in more modest accommodation. The seasonal and casual nature of employment necessitated leasing of rental housing stock; in 1845 84% of the building stock was rental property. As elsewhere in Sydney tenements of between one and four rooms were built to meet this demand with terraces of like buildings indicative of speculative development, although the vast majority of this rental building stock around the wharves has been demolished a number of good examples remain, including:

• Milton terrace in Lower Fort Street which comprises a terrace of ten, three storey houses built in 1880 for Donald Larnach, the son-in-law of the merchant William Walker who had established a trading wharf at Dawes Point in the 1820s. these grand houses were leased during the late nineteenth century by the late 1880s some were being used as boarding houses. The terraced row was still in possession of the Larnach family in 1900.

• The fine Regency style townhouses at 67-61 lower Fort Street were erected in 1855/57 for the opticians and jewellers John & Henry Flavelle. The Flavelle’s built the neighbouring terrace at 63-65 Lower Fort Street in 1891. Both terraces were still owned by the Flavelles in 1900.

• Alfred Terrace at 37-47 Kent Street, was built in 1870 for the solicitor George Wigram Allen.

• The local ship’s blacksmith George Talbot built a number of terraces around the Point in the 1840s including 7-13 Dalgety Terrace, which were retained in family ownership to 1900.

Argyle Place Georgian Townhouse (1837-9), 39-41 Lower Fort Street Stone Cottage & Wall (1837-44), 14-16 Merriman Street Building (1839-41), 24 & 26 Lower Fort Street Townhouses (1841-3), 20-22 Lower Fort Street Undercliff Terrace (1842-48), 52-60 Argyle Place Darling House (1842-43), Trinity Avenue Clydebank (c1844) 43 Lower Fort Street Osborne House (1845-8), 34 Argyle Place Dalgety Terrace (1845-48), 7, 9, 11, 13 Dalgety Terrace Terrace (1846-48), 123-125 Kent Street Cottage (1847-51), 18 Merriman Street Townhouse (1853-55) 28 Lower Fort Street Terrace (1855-6) 49-51 Kent Street Regency Townhouse


The village of the 1830s and 1860s was therefore insular and self-sufficient, existing primarily to service the shipping trade. This dichotomy of represented by members of the wealthy merchant class, skilled tradesmen, and labourers closely set together distinguished Millers Point from other areas of colonial Sydney.

(1855-7), 57-61 Lower Fort Street Building (1856-8), 90 Windmill Street Building (1856-8), 92 Windmill Street Royal College of Pathologists (former) (1857-8), 82 Windmill Street Former Royal College of Pathologists (1855), 84 Windmill Street Terrace (1858-61) 86, 88 Windmill Street Terrace (1860s), 46-48 Argyle Place Terrace (1864-7) 53-55 Kent Street Terrace (1868), 62-64 Argyle Place Terrace (1867-70) 20-34 Merriman Street Toxteth (1867-70) 94 Kent Street Alfred’s Terrace (1868-70) 37-47 Kent Street Blyth Terrace (1868-70) 82-86 Kent Street Terrace (1868-70) 90-92 Kent Street Building (1868-71) 28 Kent Street

By the 1870s the western half of the city was the most urbanised, and contained the city’s oldest building stock. At Millers Point with the expansion of the wharves and warehouses some of the wealthier landlords moved out and the majority of residents were labourers who because of the casual nature of wharf works required rental accommodation close to the place of employment so labourers would not to miss the pick-up of mustered men by the stevedoring company for the days’ work. Speculative developers and absentee landlords were again active in this era with demand for wharfside accommodation reflected in higher rents. Evidence of these tenements has now largely been removed through the slum clearance of the early years of the twentieth century of cottages on the south side of Windmill Street, the east side of Upper Fort Street and the tenements of the now removed Hart Street, Clyde Street, Wentworth Street and Unwin Street.

Terrace (1870-1), 36-38 Merriman Street Terrace (1871-3), 40-42 Merriman Street Building (1871-3), 30 Kent Street Building (1871-3), 32-40 Kent Street Building (1871-3), 42 Kent Street Terrace (1871-3), 46 Kent Street Group of Buildings (1873-6) 48 -54 Kent Street


At the same time the speculative property boom of the 1880s and improvements in the railway and tramway networks brought an exodus of middle class to the city’s southern, western and eastern suburbs. The exodus from Millers Point was protracted for fine town houses continued to be built through to the 1880s, as represented by Milton Terrace (1-19 Lower Fort Street) in 1880.

Hexham Terrace (1875-6), 59-63 Kent Street Winsbury Terrace (1875), 75-79 Kent Street Terrace (1875-6), 71-73 Kent Street Terrace (1876), 44 Kent St Eagleton Terrace (1876), Lower Fort Street Katoomba Terrace (1876-7), 81-83 Kent Street Terrace (1876-7), 56-62 Kent Street Terrace (1877), 44-48 Merriman Street Victorian Terrace (1877), 56-60 Bettington Street Milton Terrace (1880-82), 1-19 Lower Fort Street Milton Terraces (1882-8), 36-44 Argyle Place Argyle House (mid 1880s), 85 Lower Fort Street Terrace (1887), 47-53 Lower Fort Street Terrace (1888), 115-121 Kent Street Terrace (1889), 65 Windmill Street Terrace (1889-1900), 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 Trinity Ave Vermont Terrace (1891), 63-65 Lower Fort Street Terrace (1899), 71 Windmill Street

While the initial aim of the Sydney Harbour Trust was the commercial redevelopment of the area vested in it, this purpose soon included the provision of housing for workers to reside near their place of work. The Trust (and later the Housing Board) reshaped worker’s housing in the area. This was undertaken in two ways: the demolition of much of the older housing stock during the period 1901-1910 as a plague-prevention measure and to make way for new warehousing and wharfs (for example 40 buildings were demolished in Thornton Street, Munn Street and Argyle Street in connection with the Walsh Bay wharfs), and the construction of new ‘model’ housing intended for the rental market for single men and families.

Shops (1905), 6, 8, 10, 10a, 12, 12a Argyle Street Terrace (1907-08), 1-63 Windmill Street Terraces (1908), 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27a, 29a, 31a, 33, 35a Dalgety Terrace Terraces (c.1907) 50, 52, 54, 56 Lower Fort Street Residence (1910) 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42 Lower


The model housing followed the recommendations put forward in 1902 by the City Improvement Advisory Board (whose chairman was architect Varney Parkes). This Board was established in 1901 to provide advice on the properties which the Government had resumed. It recognised the need for wharf labours to live near their place of work and proposed model housing which incorporated flat dwellings. Purpose built boarding houses, such as the eight room premise at 9 Argyle Street, were also completed in this period to meet the demands of the single person.

Between 1907 and 1917 the Sydney Harbour Trust, the Housing Board and the Government Architect’s Branch of the Public Works Department constructed dwellings and shops throughout Millers Point. Much of the housing stock built by the Trust pre-dates the wharves they built : 1905 –four combined shops/dwellings in Argyle Street designed by the Sydney Harbour Trust 1908 – thirty two model houses in Windmill Street designed by the Government Architect’s Branch 1908 –twenty two dwellings in Dalgety Road designed by the Sydney Harbour Trust 1910 –seventy two flats along High Street with Lance Kindergarten designed by the Sydney Harbour Trust 1910 –four shops at the corner of Argyle and High Street designed by the Sydney Harbour Trust 1910 - twelve dwellings in Munn Street designed by the Sydney Harbour Trust 1910 – nine dwellings in Lower Fort Street and Trinity Avenue designed by the Government Architect’s Branch

With the exception of eighteen flats constructed in High Street in 1917, construction of new worker housing effectively ended with the declaration of the first world war, so that ultimately the number of hotels, housing and shops in Millers Point was considerably fewer in number than before the resumption and demolition. No new housing was constructed until the 1980s.

Fort Street Flats (1910) 2, 4 Trinity Ave Building Group (1910), 1-7 Argyle Street Shop and Residence (1910), 9 Argyle Street Terrace (1910) 18, 18a, 20, 20a Munn Street Terrace Duplexes (1910-15), 2-72 High Street Edwardian Shop/Residences (1910-11) 21-29 Kent Street Terrace Duplexes (1916-17), 74-80 High Street Terrace Duplexes (1916-17) 3, 5, 7, 9 High Street Building (1926-7), 75-77 Lower Fort Street

It is probable that the model housing provided by the government in this era was influenced by contemporary developments being completed in London by the Architect’s Branch of the London County Council (LCC). The LCC buildings were ‘walk up’ flats erected from 1900. In common with the housing at Millers Point the LCC buildings are striking in their bold architectural detailing drawing on the in vogue Arts and Craft style qualities of honesty, originality and urban presence.

Tentative advances in providing alternative modes of accommodation for the working classes following such overseas developments had actually been attempted in the final years of the nineteenth century as demonstrated by M. Stevens’ apartments at 73 Windmill Street.

Stevens’ Terrace (1900), 73 Windmill Street


The Anglican Church parish of Holy Trinity in its own modest way also contributed to this need to provide modern accommodation through the building in 1907 of the rectory and adjoining residential terraces on Lower Fort Street. The terraces were leased to local residents on a boarding house commercial basis.

Buildings (1907) 52-54 Lower Fort Street

Both the old and new housing was tenanted by people whose lives were bound up with the wharves, also allowing the Trust to maintain its own work force and in essence Millers Point became a ‘company town’ with the Trust, and later the Maritime Services Board, being landlord for these new properties as well as for the older housing stock, such as the former merchant’s townhouses that were converted to boarding houses.


While much of the housing stock within Millers Point has remained in government ownership, operated through agencies such as the Department of Housing, redevelopment pursued by private enterprise since the mid 1980s has rekindled interest in providing contemporary apartment and townhouse living for the city’s professional middle class. This accommodation includes adaptive reuse of former storehouses and wharves, and new infill development.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay # Residences (1984), 16-20 Argyle Street # Residence (post 1986), 62 Bettington Street # Residences (1980s), 54a & 54b Kent Street # Residences (1980s), 64-78 Kent Street # Residence (1980s), 80 Kent Street # Residence (after 1987), 26 Lower Fort Street # Nursing Home (1994 additions), 6-12 Trinity St # Residence (2000), 87 Kent Street

Between 2004 and 2005 there was a release by the Department of Housing of properties through the sale of 99 year leases, eg 80-92 Windmill Street. 79 Lower Fort Street has initiated a new series of development including expenditure on conservation works.

80-92 Windmill Street


Fig 3.15.1 Lower Fort Street in the 1840s by Joseph Fowles. While the area to the right of the picture was demolished for the construction of the harbour bridge, the fine quality middle class houses remain. Source: A Mitchell Library picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig. 3.15.2

Looking from the heights of Observatory Hill west to the Parramatta River, this watercolour by Eugene Delessert records Millers Point before the changes wrought by the discovery of gold in showing a townscape with 1820s and 1830s residential development with the almost absurd imagery of the eclectic Albion House juxtaposed with a quaint post mill. Source: A Mitchell Library picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


Fig. 3.15.3 Humble mid-nineteenth century working man’s cottages in Clyde Street (now demolished) in 1901. The photographs are of the series taken during the cleansing operations of the quarantine area. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig. 3.15.4 A row of early nineteenth century cottages in Windmill Street. At the time this photograph of 1901 the houses had experienced years of poor maintenance and were demolished to be replaced by model working men’s terraces. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.15.5 The newly completed commercial precinct in Argyle Street and model working men’s terraces in High Street in 1910 provide stark contrast with the nineteenth century buildings they replaced. Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.16 Land tenure

Local themes • Establishing boundaries and rights of occupation • Resuming private lands for public purposes


• Naming places (toponymy)


European settlement of the Millers Point/Walsh Bay area commenced well before the 1820s although formal Crown grants were not issued until the 1830s. While some occupations were documented as granted leases, other parcels were evidently not and by the mid 1830s surety of land title necessitated a Crown Commissioner of Claims to issue land grants for most of Millers Point. The configuration, size and distribution of the grants acknowledged the existing land usage with large grants for water frontage land, with smaller allotments behind. The difficult terrain necessitated unusual measures to demarcate property boundaries in high retaining walls.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Agar Steps, Kent Street Grafton Bond Store and Sandstone Wall, Hickson Road Sandstone Wall, Hickson Road Wall, 14-16 Merriman StreetObservatory Park, Upper Fort Street

The available land records provide glimpses into the early land occupations. An area of Lower Fort Street around present day no’s 61-67, was granted to William Mannix under a leas of 14 years in 1810. Mannix sold the land to William Davis in 1817. About half the area of land fronting Argyle Place was in the possession of the two emancipists Susannah Place and Thomas Newman by 1820; Susannah ran a bakery and Thomas quarried the nearby hillside. On the harbour, an area of over one acre of land behind Lower Fort Street was leased to William Brown for 14 years in 1817 and sold to T.G. Pittman in 1828.

Over the nineteenth century the water frontage was reclaimed by the shipping companies and leased from the Crown. With the resumption by the government in 1900 the leases and freehold land were consolidated and on reversion to Crown land opened the way for large scale development unhindered by constraints imposed by traditional property boundaries.


On a broader scale, the colonisation of the area by the Europeans necessitated place names for specific land features and/or areas. By the time of Hoddle, Lanner and Mitchell’s map of 1831 the north-west promontory projecting into the harbour was known as ‘Miller’s Point. Walsh Bay in contrast is a comparatively recent name of around 1922 which commemorates the work of Henry Deane Walsh of the Sydney Harbour Trust. While Millers Point, Dawes Point/Ta-ra and Walsh Bay are the official locality names listed in the Geographical Names Register, there have been a variety of other names over time including Cockle Bay Point (the first name), Bunkers Hill, Maskelynes Point, Goodye, Slaughterhouse Point, Leightons Point, Jack the Millers Point, Tar-ra, Parish St Philip, Flagstaff Hill, West Point, and the Point.



Fig 3.16.1 The making of the streets of Millers Point in the first half of the nineteenth century necessitated extensive cut and fill often resulting in property boundaries being defined by retaining walls. These properties, demolished for the construction of the harbour bridge, backed onto the Argyle Cut.

Fig 3.16.2 Changes to the topography and property boundaries of parts of Millers Point under went dramatic changes in the 1910s and 1970s with the government improvements to the port’s wharves. In creating New Pottinger Street over 1916 both the natural topography and early colonial property boundaries were irrevocably changed. A Government Printing Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


Fig 3.16.3 Harper’s map of Sydney of around 1825 provides valuable insight into the topography and land tenure of early colonial Sydney. This detail depicts the area of Millers Point and Walsh Bay. Note the large waterfront grants and smaller town allotments fronting Argyle. Windmill and Kent Streets. Source: A State Records collection map reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


3.17 Towns, suburbs and villages

Local themes • Developing a village in response to topography • A maritime village


The nucleus of the village of Millers Point was formed in the early 1830s as maritime and other related enterprises radiated outwards from Sydney Cove in response to demands for increased wharfage and storage accommodation.


Owing to the topography of the peninsula, prior to the mid 1840s Millers Point was effectively physically removed from the main commercial, administrative and residential areas centred on Sydney Cove and relied on rough rock hewn steps for passage between the town proper and the village. While plans to provide easier access to Millers Point dated from the early 1830s in the Argyle Cut, construction was not commenced until 1843.

Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct # Argyle Cut

In building the Cut and the continuation of Argyle Street the four principal roads of the nineteenth century, Argyle, Kent, Windmill and Fort (Upper and Lower), formed the nucleus of the village with the centre being the park reserve of Argyle Place. The northern edge of the village was defined by the Holy Trinity (Garrison Church), the village church, while the southern edge was defined by a cluster of shops and hotels around the intersection of Kent and Argyle Streets.

Argyle Place Park, Argyle Street Holy Trinity Anglican Church and Hall, 60-62 Lower Fort Street

This commercial district was redeveloped in the early twentieth century by the government with the provision of shops, a coffee house and post office building. Another innovation of the time was the extension of the city tramway system into Millers Point in 1901. The tramway meandered from George Street North into Lower Fort Street and terminated at Argyle Place.

Millers Point Post Office (1900), 10-12 Kent Street Argyle Place Park, Argyle Street

The residents of the area comprised both the successful wharf-owners and their employees, and labourers and artisans serving the shipping trade mixed with a transient population of seamen. With the rebuilding of the wharves from the 1860s the artisans and merchant gentry gradually moved out and the number of transient seamen declined to be replaced by labourers.


The concentration of commercial, residential and ecclesiastical buildings within a geographically well delineated area set against a backdrop of wharves and warehouses came to define Millers Point as a harbourside district irrevocably associated with maritime activities and a largely self-contained community; something which is still



perceived today.

Fig 3.17.1 The residences of Kent Street under development around 1870 with Cuthbert’s shipyard in the background. Much of what is depicted sited west of the Lord Nelson has been demolished. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

Fig 3.17.2 Argyle Street in the 1870s. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).


Fig 3.17.3 Holy Trinity Church and Argyle Place from Observatory Hill in 1850. This watercolour by Frederick C. Terry gives an indication of the appearance of the church and its setting shortly after initial completion in the late 1840s. The painting is also interesting in emphasising the setting of the church within Argyle Place and the role of Observatory Hill as a place of leisure or sightseeing. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Susanna de Vries-Evans’ Historic Sydney as Seen by its Early Artists (1983).

Fig 3.17.4 Argyle Street and the Observatory Hill reserve in the early 1870s. This photograph provides a wealth of information about the nineteenth century townscape of Millers Point, which is principally defined by the improvements undertaken by the City Council in the late 1860s including the ramped road and stairs to the area round the quarried hilltop of the Observatory Hill reserve and the enclosed Argyle Place reserve. Shown at the western end of Argyle Street are the Lord Nelson Hotel and the rear of St. Brigid’s Catholic school and chapel. Source: Mitchell Library – Small Picture File Collection


Fig 3.17.5 In contrast to the residences of Argyle Street, Windmill Street possessed far humbler places of abode which probably dated from the 1830s. All were demolished around 1900-1910. Source: A Mitchell Library Holtermann collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

3.18 Labour

Local themes • Working on the waterfront • Workers organising workers


Employment in the Millers Point area in the first half of the nineteenth century was mostly associated with the maritime trade – be it labouring at the wharf or warehouse, engaged in a trade such as a shipwright, or signing-on as a seaman. Unlike other areas of Sydney such as Pyrmont, Balmain, and southern Darling Harbour there was no industry in the area aside from the limited number of shipyards.


Work at the wharves and associated warehousing was initially very labour intensive, but increasing mechanisation, in particular the use of hydraulic powered machinery such as wool presses and lifts, inevitably reduced the demand for labour. While the volume of trade increased over the late nineteenth century and the use of steam powered ships became more prevalent the demand for unskilled labour did not fully employ the pool of labour available as the range of work opportunities in the area also diminished. The oversupply of labourers led to ongoing widespread unemployment in the wharf areas; a situation exacerbated with the influx of rural workers migrating to the city over the winter months seeking work which was also a traditionally slack time for shipping dependent on exporting pastoral produce. In addition, in the overseas wharves at Walsh Bay the required



wharf labour was hired through the stevedoring companies which hired a gang of labourers for a specific period on the ‘pick up’ system. The livelihood of wharf labourers was therefore dependent on the seasons, the economy, and the goodwill of the stevedoring companies.

Waterside workers unions had been formed since the 1870s, but initial attempts to reform the labour conditions on the waterfront met with little success. The first true test of unionised labour came in August 1890 with the Maritime Strike which involved a wide variety of occupations aside from maritime workers. The unions lost because the employers were well organised and non-unionised labour was willing to take the strikers’ jobs. The loss not only diminished the status of the unions, but directly impacted on many of the strikers who were blacklisted by the employers; their plight being compounded by the economic downturn of the 1890s which reduced the number of ships calling into the port. Need less to say the pick-up system continued.


Over the twentieth century unionised labour gradually succeeded in reforming pay and conditions on the wharves, and the residents of Millers Point came to be predominantly associated with unionised wharf labourers. With federation the new arbitration system was used by the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) under the leadership of W.M. (Billy) Hughes, later prime minister of Australia, began to improve pay and conditions of its members. The war emergency of the 1939-1945 conflict was effectively used by the WWF under its general secretary Jim Healy to replace the pick up system of hiring labourers by the gang system with a rotating roster of work for union members. Further more far reaching reforms to working conditions and pay were gained over the 1950s. The wharf labourers at Millers Point enjoyed full employment through to the 1970s.


The housing at Millers Point funded and managed by the state was the domain of the men and their families who worked the wharves. Married labourers had access to the houses through local employment or family affiliation. The boarding houses managed on behalf of the state by landlords and landladies provided temporary accommodation for itinerant workers or single men on a long-term basis.


This close bond between labourer and the wharf in regard to places of employment and residence began to break down from the 1960s as regular working hours and improved pay coinciding with improvements in communication (radio call-ups) and transport (private motor car and improvement in the road network) and suburban expansion provided provide opportunities to move away from the area and thus sever the longstanding link between work and residence.

In Millers Point there are a number of places that demonstrate the role of organising wharf labour such as Abraham Mott Hall which includes the former Coal Lumpers Union office, and

# Abraham Mott Hall, Argyle Street Walsh Bay Precinct,


Towns Place which is associated with the pick-up’ system of wharf employment. In contrast there are few places directly associated with seaman such as the Rawson Building.

Walsh Bay House of Bodleigh, (1904), 24-26 Kent Street

Fig 3.18.1 This somewhat surreptitious photograph by Harold Cazneaux of Argyle Place around 1910 is unlikely to depict men waiting for a tram but rather unemployed wharf labourers. Source: Newton, G., (ed.), Philip Greeves presents Cazneaux’s Sydney 1904-1934 (1980)

Fig 3.18.2 Wharf labourers returning home through the Argyle Cut around 1918. Source: Newton, G., (ed.), Philip Greeves presents Cazneaux’s Sydney 1904-1934 (1980)

Fig 3.18.3 Wool bound for the wharves at Walsh Bay in 1917. The carters’ horse and wagon is indicative of the nineteenth century mode of transport which would shortly be supplanted by motorised transport. Source: A GovernmentPrinting Office collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).


3.19 Education

Local themes • Private schooling • Public schooling


From the beginning of European settlement until government reforms of the late 1840s, the provision of primary education was left entirely to the churches and private schools. The Anglican Church, as the colony’s only official religion, initially benefited from this policy through the receipt of state aid with the battle to secure a more equitable education system commencing in the mid 1830s under Governors Bourke and Gipps.

With increasing residential settlement of Millers Point in the early 1830s both the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Church moved to establish schools in the area respectively St Brigid’s in Kent Street opened in 1835 and the Anglican’s Holy Trinity (Garrison) school in the former Princes Street was established in 1844. The present former schoolhouse attached to the church was probably completed by the beginning of 1846. Another church school was attached to the nearby St Philip’s Church Hill.

St Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church & School (1835), 14-16 Kent Street Holy Trinity Anglican Hall (1844) 60-62 Lower Fort Street

St Brigid’s (or St. Bridget’s) initially offered co-education facilities under the instruction of lay teachers. In 1843 the Christian Brothers were charged with the care of the school and at this time became a boys’ school. In later years from 1880 the school was run by the Sisters of St. Joseph and from 1901 the Sisters of Mercy. The school operated in association with other neighbouring Catholic schools at St. Patrick’s and the demolished St. Michael’s.

In 1848 the church schools came under the administrative control of the Denominational School Board. Denominational schools were part of Governor FitzRoy’s reforms to provide for a secular public education system through the state run National Schools administered by the Board of National Education and concurrently retain the church system of parochial schools maintained by the churches under the umbrella of Denominational Schools.

The former National School on Observatory Hill opened in 1850 in the former Military Hospital of 1815. The former hospital was transformed by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis and the original graceful verandahs formed into arched arcades. The school was initially used as model school to instruct teachers on organising and managing a national school. The school was later named Fort Street and was the largest school in the National School system. Sir Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister, attended Fort Street School.

National Trust Centre (Associated Buildings), Upper Fort Street

State funding for all parochial schools ceased in 1882 with the passing of the Public Instruction Act, at which time the Anglican


Church (known as Trinity School) was absorbed into the government system and the school became, prosaically, Lower Fort Street School. Lower Fort Street School operated through to 1905. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church continued in funding its schools drawing on services of the Sisters of St. Joseph to care for the children St. Brigid’s and at the former St. Michael’s school and orphanage near the corner of Lower Fort Street and Cumberland Street (removed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge).

While the three schools were close neighbours, the quality of education, student numbers and facilities varied markedly. The best school was the ‘Model Public School’ but even by the early 1880s the design of the classroom accommodation was outmoded, the play grounds poor and the sanitation appalling. The conditions at St. Bridget’s were worse with an enrolment of 200 pupils but no playground and one water closet.

Operating concurrently with the church and government schools in the nineteenth century was the Ragged School in Lower Sussex Street from 1860 which expanded into the Rocks in 1862. It relocated to Millers Point in 1907 (location not known). The Ragged School movement was an example of Victorian philanthropy based on English example set up by members of the Anglican Church to provide free education of poor children unable to attend the state-aided primary system.

At the other end of the Victorian class system, to satisfy the aspirations of the merchant class families, a number of finishing schools for ladies were established in the fine houses of Lower Fort Street.


Sydney Observatory has over 15,000 school visitors per year and plays a major part in astronomy education, particularly to primary school students, senior physics students and disability groups.

Sydney Observatory


Fig 3.19.1 The Model School on Observatory Hill in 1848 at the time of the remodelling of the former military hospital by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis. The sketch appeared in Joseph Fowles’ Sydney in 1848 reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.19.2 The parish hall of the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Anglican church around 1905. The hall was built in the early 1840s as a school known as Trinity. In later years it operated as government primary school known as Lower Fort Street. Source: A Government Printing Office collection photograph GPO 1– Frame 12584

3.20 Defence

Local themes • Building colonial forts • Memorialising the defenders


The security of the penal colony established at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788 was initially provided by four specially raised companies of Marine Corps. The marines were encamped on the slopes above the western shore of Sydney Cove in The Rocks. The role of the marines was displaced in 1792 with the arrival of New South Wales Corp. The anchorage at Sydney Cove was protected through fortifications built at Dawes Battery (from 1791) and Fort Phillip (Observatory Hill) from 1804 as well as Fort Macquarie (Bennelong Point) in 1817.


The Dawes Battery or West Battery was armed with eight 12-pounders and a pair of 6-pounders. The Battery was remodelled in 1801. Dawes Battery was maintained through the nineteenth century. The battery comprised the fort, powder magazine and adjoining officer’s quarters, and



stood atop the northern edge of Dawes Point until 1925 when it was demolished for construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The foundations have recently been uncovered and now form a feature within the park area directly under the southern approach to the Harbour Bridge.

The Battery was soon supplanted by the larger Fort Phillip. The new fort was built in 1804 at the instigation of Governor King who had concerns about the potential for convict insurrection, which proved to be well founded given the Irish convict uprising at Vinegar Hill of that year. The fort was built around the tower of the disused windmill erected in 1797.

Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street Sydney Observatory (1804), Upper Fort Street

From the late eighteenth century up to the establishment of Victoria Barracks on the heights of the Paddington sand dunes in the 1840s, the troops of Sydney’s garrison were stationed on the western slopes of the valley of the Tank Stream at Wynyard Square. From humble tents and wattle and daub shelters, facilities associated with the garrison were improved through the 1800s and 1810s and a military hospital, designed by Lieutenant John Watts, was opened in 1815 (the present day headquarters of the National Trust of Australia (N.S.W.)) on Observatory Hill.

National Trust Centre (Associated Buildings), Upper Fort Street

As the port of Sydney developed in the 1820s and 1830s, and convict transportation ceased in 1841 the need for a large military headquarters in the commercial centre of the town diminished. Following the completion of new barracks erected at Paddington, the George Street barracks were vacated in 1848 and the 15 acres subdivided and sold to form Wynyard Square. The military hospital was converted into the Fort Street Model School at the same time. The hexagonal battlements of Fort Phillip of 1804, designed to carry 24 guns, were reutilised for the Observatory opened in 1859.

National Trust Centre (Associated Buildings), Upper Fort Street Sydney Observatory (1804), Upper Fort Street

With the reorganisation of the military defence of Australia in the 1870s following the withdrawal of Imperial troops, the role of the Imperial Navy came to the force and with it the need to establish a permanent depot to centre its operations in the Pacific Ocean. Garden Island became this depot, but in the years leading to it establishment Dawes Point was given serious consideration.


The association of the Dawes Battery and the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Anglican Church would seem to have been fostered through Captain Francis Hixson, RN. Hixson (1833-1909) was the long serving president of the Marine Board of New

Holy Trinity Anglican Church and Hall, 60-62 Lower Fort Street


South Wales, the commandant of the Volunteer Naval Brigade, and was resident at the Dawes Battery. He was also the chairman of the Sailors’ Home on Lower George Street, and was warden of Holy Trinity up to 1901. Hixson is reported to have ensured a squad of the Naval Volunteer Artillery (attached to the Naval Brigade) attended regular morning services at Holy Trinity; this practice possibly predates the Hixson years.

It is from Rev. S.G. Fielding’s ministry of 1904-1907 that the military associations of the church were instigated on a regular basis. Fielding was the chaplain of the Royal Navy stationed in Sydney and in this capacity drew large congregations of sailors from both the Imperial and Royal Reserve. These functions were no doubt fostered through the occasional attendance by Governor Admiral Sir Harry Rawson at services. At the time of Fielding’s ministry, Charles Rosenthal (later Sir), architect and soldier, was a member of the parish and soloist in the choir.


During the second world war, the parish hall of the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church was converted to a Church of England National Emergency Fund (C.E.N.E.F) hostel. The work of C.E.N.E.F. was widespread, but in this instance related to the provision of a canteen and hostel for servicemen on leave or travelling between postings. The C.E.N.E.F. function continued well into 1950 as a hostel for ex-servicemen forming part of the Anglican Church’s contribution to the provision of post war rehabilitation services.


The church was re-dedicated as Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church at a special memorial service held in 1952, formalising a name that had been in circulation since the time of the first history of the church published in 1940. The regimental insignia (still extant) showing the crests of the various regiments believed to have worshipped at the church were installed throughout the church at this time. In recent years the Royal NSW Regiment has become associated with Holy Trinity Church.


The drill hall was completed in 1916 by the Commonwealth of Australia. The need for the hall was perhaps associated with the first world war role in embarking and repatriating troops for until 1920 it was used as a military clothing store. In the inter war era it was the headquarters of the 30th Battalion (NSW Scottish Regiment. Its role in the second world war is not known, but in the post-war years the hall reverted to a battalion headquarters.

Drill Hall (1916), 58 Lower Fort Street


Fig 3.20.1 The silent guns of the Dawes Battery in 1842 painted by John Skinner Prout. Source: The Blaxland Gallery, Painted Panorama 1800-1870 (1985).

Fig 3.20.2 The silent guns of the Dawes Battery around 1875. Source: Oppenheim, P., The Fragile Forts, the fixed defences of Sydney Harbour 1788-1963 (2005).

Fig 3.20.3 The impressive battery of Dawes Point Battery in 1840. The battery, established in 1804 never fired a shot in anger. Source: The ‘fort on point of Sydney Cove’ by Rebecca S. Hall, 1840. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991). This could be a fanciful drawing and may be an amalgam between Fort Phillip and Dawes Point Battery.


Fig 3.20.4 The fortifications of the Dawes Battery around 1907 with associated residence and barracks, and powder magazines. Source: Coltheart, L. (ed.), Significant Sites, History and public works in New South Wales (1989). The picture was taken by Mervyn Vaniman from the newly completed chimney of the upper George Street power station, which later became the Mining Museum/Earth Exchange.

3.21 Utilities

Local theme • First Light


A major nineteenth century industry in the area to the south of Millers Point on Darling Harbour was the gasworks of the Australian Gas Light Company. In the age before electricity, reticulated gas supply was integral to the functioning of any major nineteenth century town and city and a technological advancement of civic pride.

The Australian Gas Light Company was a privately owned company formed in the financially buoyant 1837 and acquired land in Kent Street at the southern edge of the study area near Jenkins Street with water frontage to off-load coal, initially supplied from Newcastle. Darling harbour throughout the nineteenth century the centre in Sydney for the shipping of coal. The works opened in 1841 on completion of the gas holders and retorts and provided reticulated gas for domestic, industrial and municipal consumption (in the form of street lights). Gas production was progressively transferred to Haymarket in the 1850s and then Mortlake from the mid 1880s. The site was acquired by the government in 1912 and cleared by 1922 to allow completion of Hickson Road as the main port road.

MSB Stores Complex (1844), 2-4 Jenkins Street Jenkins Street, Jenkins Lane (off Gas Lane)

First electricity cables (5Kv) laid in 1915 from Dawes Point


to Milsons Point as part of the first electricity supply to the northern suburbs.

Fig 3.21.1 The congested AGL site on Darling Harbour around 1871. The site had been under continuous development from the early 1840s and continued to expand over the following decades. Source: A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Aplin, G. & J. Storey, Waterfront Sydney (1984).

3.22 Government and administration

Local themes • Developing roles for government - taking control of places affected by infectious

disease • Developing roles for government – managing ports • Developing roles for government - town and country planning • Developing roles for government - conserving cultural and natural heritage


Through the last half of the nineteenth century the Millers Point/Walsh bay area was administered by the City Council, the area being sited within Gipps Ward, which also included the neighbouring Rocks. The local alderman of the nineteenth century were:

• John Peacock, 1842-1843 • John Chapman, 1842-1845 • Daniel Egan, 1842-1853 • Thomas Ryan, 1843-1853 • Henry Fisher, 1844-1853 • George Paton, 1847-1851 • Robert Watson, 1852-1853, 1859-1864 • Owen J. Caraher 1859-1871 • Alexander Smail, 1864-1867


• James Merriman, 1867-1883 • (J.R.) Linsley, 1871-1875 • Thomas Playfair, 1875-1893 • John D. Young, 1879-1893 • Peter F. Hart, 1883-1890 • Isaac E. Ives, 1893-1898 • George E. Smail, 1893-1900 • Robert George Watkins, 1898-1904 • Gustavus A. Waterhouse, 1899-1900

Some of these local politicians were associated with maritime activities of the general area; Egan was a shipwright and Merriman was a ship owner as was Peacock. Others such as Paton were local builders and licenced hotel proprietors. Merriman, who was twice mayor in the 1870s, is commemorated in Merriman Street and the fine set of stained glass windows in the Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church. Linsley Terrace was probably named so for its association with John Richard Linsley as owner.

Hero of Waterloo (1842-5), 81-83 Lower Fort Street Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 60-62 Lower Fort Street Linsley Terrace, 25-33 Lower Fort Street

The council in this era was responsible for the provision of water and sanitation services (prior to 1888), the up keep of roads, street lighting, maintenance of park reserves and the swimming pool at Dawes Point etc. It was completed in the 1860s and was part of a number of notable civic improvements which today are rare as a collection in the context of the city. This work centred on Argyle Place and the relationship of it with the neighbouring Observatory Park and Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church. The first of these major works was the Argyle Cut initially completed in 1859. The terracing of the northern face of Observatory Hill was probably undertaken soon after with the steps and retaining walls completed in 1866. The levelled but ill-formed area below the Observatory Hill was realigned and the present day Argyle Park vested with the City Council and dedicated a reserve for public recreation in 1867. The landscaping of the reserve was probably completed in 1869 with the dedication of the public drinking fountain.

Argyle Place Park, Argyle Street Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street Argyle Cut, Argyle Street

From 1901 the Millers Point/Walsh Bay area had been administered by state government departments. The first being the Sydney Harbour Trust, which was established under the provisions of the Sydney Harbour Trust Act of 1901 and was empowered to administer the port areas resumed in 1900 and Millers Point which had been initially under the jurisdiction of the City Improvement Advisory Board. The Trust was initially administered by three commissioners, collectively representing the interests of the government, landlords and shipping: Robert R. P. Hickson, Thomas Francis Waller, and Lachlan Beaton.

At the time of the Sydney Harbour Trust control of Millers Point comprised in the resumed areas 401 dwellings, 82 shops or combined shop/dwellings, 23 licenced hotels, 45



factories and workshops. From around 1906 the Sydney Harbour Trust after its ‘vigorous onslaught ... upon the unsanitary conditions then prevalent at the various wharves’ redeveloped the port to provide essential infrastructure at a time when shipping was the principal mode of transporting goods interstate and overseas.


The Sydney Harbour Trust was replaced by the Maritime Services Board in 1936 with the Board being responsible for controlling all ports and inland navigable rivers in New South Wales. In managing the port, the Maritime Services Board MSB directly managed controlled the wharves and stores replacing the Sydney Harbour Trust practice of leasing to private companies. With the Maritime Services Board’s new offices at nearby Circular Quay, there were a number of sites at Walsh Bay that housed administrative support functions, inclusive of the Board’s motor garage at Towns Place, manager of bonds at Parbury’s Bond on Hickson Road, the iron and steel depot, blacksmith’s shop, fitters’ shop, electrical, building and wharf construction workshops all on Hickson Road. The sole new non-port related building at Millers Point completed by the Maritime Services Board was the Baby Health Centre in 1952 which was run jointly by the Department of Health and the City Council. Its completion was a forerunner of other changes in the administration of the area with the City Council re-asserting its role after over half a century of inactivity in matters relating to services for the local community. From the mid 1950s the council was partially subsiding the local kindergarten (and acquired the site in 1991). In 1960 the Coal Lumpers Union premises was taken over by the Council and converted to a community centre for the aged pensioners named after Abraham Mott. The neighbouring Harry Jensen Welfare Centre which included a gymnasium for the young was opened by the council in 1966.

# Baby Health Centre (1952), 87 Lower Fort Street Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay MSB Stores Complex, 30-388 Hickson Road/ 2-4 Jenkins Street Baby Health Care Centre (1952), 87 Lower Fort Street Lance Kindergarten (1921), 37 High Street Abraham Mott Hall Harry Jensen Welfare Centre

With the administration of Millers Point by Maritime Services Board post second world war development entirely took a different path to neighbouring areas under the administration of the City Council. While some of the city’s earliest post 1950 high rise office towers (Caltex House) were erected in Kent Street at the fringe of the resumption areas, elsewhere the peninsula evaded the commercial pressures. The first moves on the resumption areas came in 1967 when the government of Sir Robin Askin appointed a commissioner of enquiry, headed by J.W. Overall, to assess The Rocks and propose suggestions for its future. The outcome of this was the establishment of the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority (SCRA) in 1970 and a bold proposal for high rise development. At the same time the City Council in its Strategic Plan of in 1971 for future development of the City listed the whole of the Millers Point/The Rocks as an area of historic and architectural significance. The battle had begun and over the early 1970s the voice of government SCRA clashed with the voice of the people, the local residents,



National Trust and unionised building labourers. By 1975 the tide had turned and concern about heritage was on the rise.

During 1986 registrations of interest from developers were sought for the redevelopment of redundant wharves at Walsh Bay to retain and restore the historic wharf structures within a mixed commercial and residential development. By this time, Pier 1 (which ceased as a commercial wharf in 1977) had been redeveloped into a tourist-orientated complex of shops and restaurants, and in 1984 Piers 4/5 was redeveloped as the home of the Sydney Theatre Company. In recent years an additional theatre complex has been completed in Hickson Road.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Walsh Bay Precinct – Pier 1 (1913), Hickson Road Walsh Bay Precinct – Wharves 4/5 & Shoresheds (1921), Hickson Road

The transfer of the Maritime Service Board’s non-port related property to the portfolio of the Department of Housing commenced in the 1980s. The new landlord filled vacant Millers Point housing with people wanting the public housing thus breaking the tradition of the state funded houses being tenanted by wharf labourers or others associated with maritime activities. Other changes initiated by the Department of Housing included the construction of infill housing and commercial development along Kent Street during the 1980s. Other proposals were unsuccessful and contributed to a renewed determination by groups such as the Millers Point Resident Action Group to protect the unique nature of the precinct. Sale of 99 year leases by Department of Housing including 80-92 Windmill Street and 79 Lower Fort Street in 2004/2005. Shift in consent authority from SHFA to City of Sydney in 2005.

# Residences (1984), 16-20 Argyle Street # Residence (post 1986), 62 Bettington Street # Residences (1980s), 54a & 54b Kent Street # Residences (1980s), 64-78 Kent Street # Residence (1980s), 80 Kent Street # Residence (after 1987), 26 Lower Fort Street # Nursing Home (1994 additions), 6-12 Trinity Street # Residence (2000), 87 Kent Street

3.23 Law and order

Local theme • Living a life of crime

In the minds of some Sydney-siders, Millers Point has been associated with a locality bedevilled with the problems of criminal or ‘rough’ elements. In the late nineteenth century the Argyle Cut emerged as symbolic of a Sydney enclave of degeneracy and the Millers Point Push. The association with larrikinism was undeserved, with the neighbouring Rocks Push more responsible for nefarious activities however incidents such as the murder of seaman Tom Pert in 1893 in a brawl outside the now demolished Gladstone Hotel in Moores Road were widely reported.

# Argyle Cut Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct


3.24 Creative endeavour

Local themes • Inspirational environments and events • Urban landscapes inspiring creative responses


The promontory of Millers Point set within Port Jackson has elicited creative responses by Europeans over generations. In Colonial and early Victorian eras a succession of artists captured views of the promontory and its harbour setting from the heights of Observatory Hill or views of the promontory from the northern shore of the harbour. Countless such images have been generated by professional and amateur artists alike such as Joseph Lycett, Conrad Martins, Samuel Elyard, Joseph Fowles, Frederick Garling, Major Thomas Taylor, George Edward Peacock, John Rae, John Skinner Prout, Sir William Elliot Johnson and Frederick Charles Terry.

Walsh Bay Precinct, Walsh Bay Millers Point & Dawes Point Village Precinct Observatory Park, Upper Fort Street Argyle Place Park, Argyle Street # Argyle Cut

In the age of photography the painted image was supplanted by the mechanical with well known works of the area taken for documentary and/or artistic reasons by William Hetzer, Bernard Holtermann, Harold Cazneaux, David Moore, and the nameless photographers employed during the plague cleansing operations of 1901. The unique experience of the Argyle Cut, Observatory Hill, and Argyle Place continues to attract photographers. The fascination with the built character of the area continues in the present generation with occasional use of Hickson Road and the wharves as a backdrop to numerous commercial theatrical films, television series, and television advertising.

The historic built environment expressed individually and as a cohesive whole has engendered a number of creative responses to redundant building stock. An early example was the conservation of Moore’s store of the 1830s through relocation in the mid 1970s to northern shore of Walsh Bay. Concurrently, the Fort Street School was refurbished for use by the National Trust and the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1975 and 1978 respectively. On a more modest scale, a privately run ‘colonial museum’ opened in 1972 in Palmero Terrace in Lower Fort Street.

National Trust Centre (Associated Buildings), Upper Fort Street # Moore’s store, Walsh Bay

Work of Government Architects Branch under W.L. Vernon includes Millers Point Post Office (1900) Other architects that have worked in the area includes Hallen, Verge and speculation that Greenway designed 37 Lower Fort Street.

The SH Ervin Gallery with its promotion of artistic endeavour and Australian culture marks the beginning of a protracted and on-going program of organised cultural activities in the Millers Point/ Walsh Bay area. Wharf 1 was redeveloped



into a tourist-orientated complex of shops and restaurants and Wharves 4/5 were transformed 1984 into the production and presentation space of the Sydney Theatre Company. The other redundant wharves prior to their recent commercial and residential redevelopment were used intermittently through the 1980s and 1990s for events such as Sydney Biennale and the temporary home of the Museum of Fire. As part of the Walsh Bay Precinct redevelopment an entirely new theatre on Hickson Road has been completed as infill development.

3.25 Leisure

Local themes • Going to the pub – • Going swimming – • Enjoying public parks and gardens –


With a predominantly working class population, Millers Point has a close association in the minds of contemporary Sydney-siders with historic licenced hotels such as the Lord Nelson. Hotels are the traditional place for social interaction for the working class. Early accounts suggest that there was a proliferation of pubs in the area. By 1900 there were 13, but through redevelopment, changing demography and licensing laws, and the active prohibition movement of the early twentieth the number of pubs in the area has gradually been reduced.

The best known hotels are the rare survivors from the mid-nineteenth century, the ‘Lord Nelson’ (licensed 1842) and the ‘Hero of Waterloo’ (1843), but the Sydney Harbour Trust built hotels, the former ‘Dumbarton Castle’ (1908), the ‘Palisade’ (1912) and the ‘Harbour View’ (1922) are also well patronised.

Lord Nelson Hotel (1841), 19 Kent Street

Hero of Waterloo Hotel (1842-5), 81-83 Lower Fort Street Palisade Hotel (1912), 35-37 Bettington Street Harbour View Hotel and site (1922), 18 Lower Fort Street

The long gone nineteenth century hotels reveal the sectarian and/or trade affiliations, which demonstrate the historical diversity of the area. While some hotel names such as the ‘Quarryman’s Arms’ (late 1830s), ‘Shipwright’s Arms’ (1831) and ‘Blacksmith’s Arms (1836) clearly demonstrate trade associations, the symbolism of other names such as the ‘Old Cheshire Cheese’ and ‘Hit or Miss’ (evidently a hunting association), both in Windmill Street are not as readily apparent. The maritime association is today recalled by the ‘Lord Nelson’ and Captain Cook’ in Kent Street, but in the

Shipwrights Arms Inn (former), (1831-1833), 75 Windmill Street Shop & Residence (pre 1842), 79 Lower Fort Street Captain Cook Hotel (c.1877-1880), 33-35 Kent Street Terrace (1899), 69 Windmill Street


past there were also the ‘Crown and Anchor’. The military association of the area with the Dawes Point battery is reflected in the ‘Hero of Waterloo’. In the twentieth century hotels patronised by the Waterside Workers Federation members were the ‘Lord Nelson’, ‘Captain Cook’ and ‘Dumbarton Castle’. More recently ‘The Palisade Hotel’.

The natural advantages of the Millers Point area with its elevated public land and harbour foreshore has provided he local inhabitant and visitor alike to partake in some unique leisure activities. The heights of Observatory Park was from at least the Macquarie era Crown land reserved alienation for military uses. Aside from the fort and later observatory, and military hospital and later school promontory was not enclosed and judging from the numerous pictures and photograph created from its lookouts created over the nineteenth century popular with Sydneysiders. This role was formalised in the 1910s when the City Council erected a bandstand to the north of the observatory.

The sea baths at Dawes Point erected by the City Council in 1869 may have been a form of leisure activity in the nineteenth century but they were established to provide public baths for the working classes. In most countries such facilities draw on fresh water, but in Sydney in the mid nineteenth century the chronic shortage of water necessitated use of the harbour. The baths at Woolloomooloo Bay were first completed in 1858, Dawes Point followed in 1869 and Pyrmont in 1874. The rapid industrialisation of the harbour and the impact of the harbour sewerage impacted detrimentally on the amenity of the pool. By the time of its demolition by the Sydney Harbour Trust for Pier 1 the baths were managed by the council a under with the Eves family.

The site of the tennis court was originally a western facing slope of Kent Street that was likely to have been extensively quarried to obtain building materials for public works. The date of the quarry has not been determined but it may have been established by Macquarie. By the early 1830s the use of the government quarries lining Kent Street was diminshing as new quarries were opened up at Pyrmont. The building line of Kent Street (formerly a winding track) was established and allotments on the east side of the street were put for sale with a small portion being reserved 'to Supply Stone for a time for the completion of Public Works'. A plan by H Percy Dove in 1880 shows the tennis court site as vacant whilst the remainder of the street had been developed. This suggests that this one such area reserved for further stone quarrying. At the top of the hill to the east of the tennis court site was Fort Phillip, the mills and the Military hospital. The Military hospital was converted to the National School in 1854 with several extensions and additions including the Infants School in 1885. The site of the tennis court was linked to the above sites via the Agar

Tennis Courts adjacent to Agar Steps


Stair constructed between 1870-1880. In 1900 the tennis court site was included in the large scale resumption of land made under the Darling Harbour Wharves Resumption Act 'for the extension of a system of public wharves and approaches thereto at Darling Harbour'. The resumptions were part of a larger scale resumption of land at Millers Point and The Rocks, following an outbreak of Bubonic Plague. Although the land was resumed as part of the extensive remodelling of Sydney's wharfage and the surrounding suburb, it was never required for this purpose and the land most likely remained vacant. The letting of the land was controlled by the Housing Board, subsequently the Sydney Harbour Trust and then the Maritime Services Board. From the early 1900s, under the control of the Sydney Harbour Trust, it is most likely that the site served as a games court/recreational space for the National School which continued until the boys were relocated to Taverner's Hill in 1916, the infants department was relocated to a new school building near the Observatory in 1941 (Fort Street School) and the girls school was relocated to Petersham in 1974. It is likely that the site was turned into a tennis court in the 1960s to serve the recreational needs of Fort Street School. In 1983 much of the land in Millers Point came under the control of the Department of Housing including the tennis court site. During this time the Isles Delivery Services and Parking Station up the street at 64 Kent was used for new housing projects whilst the tennis court site was not developed. The tennis court and pavilion is currently under the control of Sydney City Council and has been leased by the Observatory Hotel since 1996-7. The federation style pavilion was most likely associated with the use of the site as a games court/recreational space. There are remnants of a iron palisade fence in the stone base that also identify this area as being enclosed land at an early date.

There are over 130,000 visitors annually to Sydney Observatory to stargaze and learn more about astronomy as part of their leisure time. They do this in family groups, as couples or individuals day and night. Seeking expertise or learning as part of leisure-time is a post-modern phenomenon. The Observatory has over 15,000 school visitors per year and plays a major part in astronomy education.


3.26 Religion

Local themes • Practising Anglicanism • Practising Catholicism


In the first decades of the penal settlement at Sydney Cove prior to the coming of Governor Macquarie there were few purpose built places of worship. The first permanent church in the colony was erected by the Rev. Richard Johnson, the chaplain to the First Fleet, in 1793. This wattle and daub structure, situated at the intersection of present day streets of Bligh and Hunter, was destroyed by convicts in 1798. A replacement church, St. Phillip’s, was quickly constructed on Church Hill in 1798, although it was not completed until 1810 and rebuilt in the 1850s.

The Anglican parish of St. Phillip is the largest in the city in incorporating the waterfront areas of Darling Harbour and Circular Quay, and the elevated plateau in-between. The parish was also, historically, one of the most populous in the city including the highly urbanised areas of The Rocks, Millers Point, and the wharf side residential areas along Sussex Street fronting Darling Harbour. The parish, when Sydney was a garrison town, also incorporated a significant number of early military institutions inclusive of the fortifications at Dawes Point and Fort Phillip and the military hospital on Observatory Hill.


By the 1830s, the parish’s population had increased markedly and the city’s merchants had moved away from Sydney Cove to the newer wharf areas such as Millers Point. This development placed pressures on the old parish church and resulted in the foundation of the Holy Trinity, or Garrison Church, in 1840. The new church had a number of prominent supporters including the Presbyterian Robert Campbell junior (1769-1846) whose special interest in the spiritual welfare of the local seamen and working classes ensured at least a quarter of the available sittings were provided free in an era of pew rents. This role was largely assumed by the Mariners’ Church on George Street North in the Rocks which was established by the Anglican Church associated Bethel Seamen's Union in 1856.

St Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church in Kent Street was completed in 1835 as a school house and chapel is the oldest Catholic building in Australia. The building is sited on land granted to the Church by Governor Bourke in 1833 and was designed by the colonial architect Ambrose Hallen. The Catholic Church subsequently expanded its activities in the 1840s through the new parishes of St Patrick’s in

St Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church & School (1835), 14-16 Kent Street


Grosvenor Street in 1840 (outside the study area), and St Michael’s later in the century in Cumberland Street behind Lower Fort Street (demolished).

Figure 3.26.1 Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church from Observatory Hill in 1858. This photograph by William Hetzer shows the appearance of the church at the time of alterations made by Edmund Blacket. The extent of Blacket’s work included a new vestry and chancel, which have yet to be constructed. The photograph also shows the relatively built-up urban nature of Millers Point at this time, with substantial housing along Lower Fort Street. Source: A Macleay Museum photograph reproduced in Groom, B. and W. Wickman, Sydney – The 1850s: The Lost Collections (1982).

3.27 Persons

Local themes • Associations with political figures • Associations with notoriety • Associations with the religious • Associations with merchants • Associations with military figures • Associations trade union organisers • Associations with public servants


The Millers Point/Walsh Bay area is associated with a number of persons of note in the history of the local area, the city and/or the state. The identification of persons in their role is an ongoing one and largely reflects the concerns and/or outlook of individual and/or community. In some instances these associations are demonstrated through naming of localities and local landmarks – Walsh Bay is named after the first chief engineer of the Sydney Harbour Trust, Henry Deane Walsh, Hickson Road is named after the Trust’s first chairman, Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson, Towns Place recognises Captain Towns wharf and his extensive nineteenth century South Seas trading empire, and Parbury’s bond store recalls Frederick Parbury.



In other instances, the contribution of persons established through memorialising and/or commemoration. The Holy Trinity (Garrison) Church for example has a stained glass east window installed in 1861 donated by Dr James Mitchell on behalf of his wife Augusta Maria Frederick (nee Scott). The Scott and Mitchell families were closely associated with The Rocks/Millers Point district in the 1830s/1840s. Of a later generation, James Merriman, a city ship owner, merchant and politician and resident of Osborne House at Argyle Place donated the stained glass Lyon and Cottier and Co.’s windows. Mott Hall is named after Abraham Mott who was a local Labour Party representative and highly respected member of local community in his day (1950s).


Other associations are more ephemeral: Australia’s first prime minister attended Fort Street School, Jack 'the miller' Leighton and Lieutenant William Dawes endowed the district with its name, Arthur Payne who lived in Ferry Lane and had the bubonic plague in 1900, William Morris Hughes, a prominent prime minister, was associated with the Waterside Workers Federation as was Jim Healy a generation later. The work of the Catholic Church is associated with the Sisters of St Joseph, Sisters of Mercy and Father Piquet.


There are many more persons who have made or are making a contribution to the area who are not identified for brevity. For instance activist Nita McCrae and Shirley Ball are significant for their long and effective leadership to the local community of Millers Point. Shirley was extremely active in the local community, and headed the Millers Point Resident Action Group and worked to ensure the area retained its character and historical importance in an ever-changing city. Established for more than 20 years, major achievements of the Millers Point Resident Action Group include: heritage listing of Millers Point, establishment of Darling House, a senior citizens residence, creation of a tennis club for local youth, general care and maintenance of the Millers Point area. In March 2003, the City of Sydney awarded Shirley the Key to Millers Point and officially dedicated a local park, known as The Paddock, in her honour.


Fig 3.27.1 Henry Moore (n.d). A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.27.2 Robert Towns (1794-1890). (n.d.). A Mitchell Library collection photograph reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

Fig 3.27.3 Portrait of Charles Parbury by William Carter, 1890. Source: A Mitchell Library collection picture reproduced in Fitzgerald, S. & C. Keating, Millers Point, The Urban Village (1991).

3.28 Welfare

Local themes • Charitable good works


Provision of the welfare and the charity for most of the history of Millers Point/ Walsh Bay was marginal until the government reforms which commenced at the turn of the twentieth century with the Old Age Pension in 1901.

In nineteenth century Sydney the charitable institutions operated bby the state and church were located in areas beyond the study area, However some church groups ran organisations that intermittently acted to alleviate local distress. The demolished St. Michael’’s Catholic Church cared for orphaned children in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Central Methodist Mission opened a Seamen’s Rest Home and the ffirst floor was converted into dormitories for seamen. From 1932 until the early 1950s the building was a relief depot for the local unemployed and destitute.

Documents

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final …...Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review Final Report March 2007 Paul Davies Pty Ltd 4.3 Views 112 5.0 Significance 124 5.1