Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 - 1954), Thursday 2 October 1952, page 5


HISTORIC LANDMARKS SYDNEY AND ITS

ENVIRONS

(By "BARTLE FRERE")

SYDNEY-SIDE

Run of rocky shelves at sun-rise, with their base on ocean's bed— Homes of Coogee, homes at Bondi, and the lighthouse on South Head; For in loneliness and hard-ship—and with just a touch of pride— Has my heart been taught to whisper "You belong to Sydney-side." Toiling out beyond Cool-gardie—heart and back and spirit broke. Where the rover's star gleams redly in the desert by the soak— "But," says one mate to the other, "Brace your lip and do not fret; We will laugh on trams and 'buses—Sydney's in the same place yet. HENRY LAWSON. Coolgardie (W.A.). Sydney derives its name from Thomas Townshend Viscount Sydney, Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Ministry of William Pitt, who adopted the suggestion of Captain James Cook (R.N.) and re-commended the establish-ment of a colony to New South Wales. Orders-in-Coun-cil for establishing this colony were issued in London on December 6, 1785. Sydney Cove was named by Governor Arthur Phillip (R.N.) on his arrival with the First Fleet on January 22, 1788. No proclamation naming Sydney was ever made. The Governor's des-patches were at first headed Sydney Cove, and there are records inferring that the infant town might have been called Albion. The natives named it Warrane. An ances-tor of the abovementioned Viscount Sydney introduced the Government sign of the broad arrow. On October 25, 1786, H.M.S. Sirius (540 tons), 20 guns, 160 men, lying at Dept-ford, was commissioned and the command given to Cap-tain Arthur Phillip (R.N.) for the projected expedition to found an English settle-ment in New South Wales. John Hunter was appointed second captain of the Sirius, with the rank of Port Cap-tain. The First Fleet began to rendezvous at the Mother Bank, Isle of Wight, as fol-lows: Sirius, H.M. Frigate (Captain John Hunter): Sup-ply, H.M. Armed Tender (Lieutenant Henry L. Ball); Golden Grove, store ship; Borrowdale, store ship; Fish-burn, store ship; Scar-borough, transport carrying one captain, 33 marines, 208 male convicts; Lady Pen-rhyn, transport, carrying one captain, 2 lieutenants, 3 pri-vates and 102 female con-victs; Friendship, transport, carrying one captain, 44 marines, 77 male and 20 female convicts; Charlotte, transport, carrying one cap-tain, 43 men, 88 male and 20 female convicts; Prince of Wales, transport, carying two lieutenants, 30 marines and 50 female convicts; Alexan-der, transport, carrying two lieutenants, 35 marines and 213 male convicts. Captain Arthur Phillip hoisted his flag on board the Sirius as commodore of the squadron and weighed anchor at daybreak, setting sail for New South Wales on May 13, 1789. Total number of persons who embarked in the First Fleet on Sunday, May, 13, 1787; Civil officers 10, marines, including officers 212, wives 28 and children 17, of above 45, other free persons 81, male convicts 504, female convicts 192, total 1044. The Supply, having on board Governor Phillip and Lieutenant Gidley King, sighted the coast of New South Wales on January 3, 1788, and anchored in Botany Bay on the 18th. The Sirius, with the remainder of the convoy arrived and landed 1030 persons by the 20th. Governor Phillip, accom-panied by Captain Hunter and several other officers, set out in boats for a bay north of Botany Bay, mentioned by Captain Cook and called Broken Bay. They entered a place on the way marked Port Jackson, and selected a cove about half a mile in length and a quarter of a mile across the entrance, situated six miles inside this harbour, as the place for the new settlement. On January 23, 1788, the Governor named it Sydney Cove in honour of Viscount Sydney. In passing a point of land in the harbour of Port Jack-son, the Governor named it Manly Cove, in consequence of the confidence and manly behaviour of the natives there. Governor Phillip, having sufficiently explored Port Jackson and found it in all respects highly calculated to support such a settlement as he was appointed to estab-lish, returned to Botany Bay on January 24, 1788. On the following day Gov-ernor Phillip quitted Botany Bay in the Supply, and to-gether with the whole of the First Fleet, sailed into Port Jackson (January 25, 1788). The British flag was dis-played on shore in the har-bour of Port Jackson and around the flagstaff the Gov-ernor and the principal offi-cers assembled and drank the King's health and suc-cess to the new colony (Janu- ary 26, 1788). On the same day the colony of New South Wales was formally taken possession of in the name of the King of England by Governor Arthur Phillip and the British colours hoisted on Dawes Battery. On a space previously cleared, the whole colony was assembled, the military drawn up under arms, the convicts stationed apart, and around the Governor those who were appointed to hold the principal offices in the new British settlement. The royal commission establish-ing a regular form of gov-ernment on the coast of New South Wales was read by Mr. David Collins, the judge ad-vocate (February 7, 1788). By this instrument Arthur Phillip was constituted Cap-tain-General and Governor over the territory called New South Wales (thus named by Captain Cook), including all the islands adjacent thereto. The office of Lieutenant-Gov-ernor was conferred on Major Ross, of the Marines. The Imperial Acts of Parlia-ment establishing the courts of Judicature were also read and lastly the patents under the Great Seal. On September 30, 1788, the Sirius, Captain Hunter, was sent to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa (Cape-town) for supplies and on May 9, 1789, this ship return-ed with four months' provi-sions. This caused great re-joicing in the colony. Between June 6, 1789, and July 13, Governor Phillip and party explored Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury River, examined the Windsor and Richmond Bottoms and trav-ersed the country adjacent to Kurrajung Mountain, the Nepean River (named after the Secretary to the Ad- miralty) and Grose Vale

(named after the commander of the New South Wales Corps in 1789). On April 17, 1790, the Sup-ply was sent to Batavia, in Java, under Lieutenant Ball for provisions and on June 20, 1790, the store ship Justinian, from England, arrived with a timely supply of provisions for the colonists. The Gorgon (44 guns), con-roying what is termed the Second Fleet arrived in Syd-ney with 1695 male and 68 female convicts—198 died on the voyage (September 21, 1791). The Atlantic, from Cal-cutta, arrived at Sydney with a much-required cargo of rice and other provisions on June 20, 1792. After many months' privation, the infant settlement was placed on full rations in the month of July, 1792. It was not until New South Wales had been in existence as a settlement on Port Jack-ion for six months that Gov-ernor Phillip gave orders to Lieutenant Dawes, of the Royal Marines, to build a re-doubt on the east side of Sydney Cove, near the end of Benelong Point. The work was begun in July, 1788, and was finished at the beginning of 1789, when a couple of guns were placed in it with a flagstaff along-side. Three years after that earthworks were placed on the western side of the little bay and a battery planted on Dawes Point opposite. The guns were from H.M.S. Sirius and the position of the bat-tery can now be located at the southern end of the Har-bour Bridge. Mr. J. H. M. Abbott in his writings, mentions that at the beginning of 1788, the French navigator, La Perouse, had mounted a couple of guns in a stockade erected on the north side of Botany Bay for the protection of working parties engaged in building boats to replace those lost in a disastrous fight with South Sea Islanders. So the first armed citadel in Australia flew the fleur-de-lis of Old France above the parapets. The leader of the French expedition dismantled his little fort at La Perouse two months afterwards, and sail-ed away into blue immensity, never to know of the ruin and disaster that were soon to overwhelm the flag and government of his ill-fated friend and master, Louis XVI. He went out of the world of which he had been so bright an ornament mer-cifully unaware of the bloody destruction about to overtake it. There is a spot at La Per-rouse on the northern shore of the big shallow inlet of Botany Bay where Captain

James Cook (R.N.) rested for a week in the Endeavour in 1770, and the grassy hill-side slopes gently down to the waters of Frenchmen's Bay that is fairly familiar to Sydney people. For 125 years a tall column has stood there to mark the site of the encampment of some members of the expedi-tion when the little squadron of two ships, commanded by Jean Francois Galaup, Comte de La Perouse, anchored in the adjacent Botany Bay at the beginning of 1788. About 100 yards north-east of it is the tomb, en-closed by iron railings, which is the last resting place of Le Pere Receveur, chaplain and naturalist to the French, squadron, who was, as far as is known, the second white man to be buried in New South Wales. The first was Forby Sutherland, a seaman of the Endeavour, in 1770, who lies in an unknown grave at Kurnell, on the other side of Botany Bay. For many years even be-fore the monument was erected—this peaceful and beautiful locality has been a place of pilgrimage for French visitors to Sydney. The pediment of the column bears testimony to this in the numerous brass plates af-fixed to it, recording such pious visits. It was placed there about the year 1827, after a visit by the Baron de Bougainville, in command of another French expedition, which called at Sydney, in 1825, aboard the ships Taetis and Esperance. In 1829 four Norfolk Island pines were planted round the monument, and every French warship which has dropped her anchor in Sydney Har-bour has left a memento of her stay in the shape of an inscribed plate within the railed enclosure at La Per-ouse tramway terminus. This little plot of ground has a tradition that is sacred to all the fellow countrymen of the great and unfortunate navigator. At Kurnell, on the south side of Botany Bay, the land-ing of Captain James Cook (R.N.) in 1770 is com-memorated by an obelisk at which celebrations are held in the month of April in each year. Eighteen years later, on January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., the First Governor of New South Wales and the Commander of the First Fleet establish-ed a permanent settlement in Sydney Cove (named by Cap-tain Phillip as abovemen-tioned and now more familiarly known as Circular Quay), which extended far-ther towards the centre of the city before the retaining wall along the line of the ex-isting ferry wharves was built. The first Government House was erected on the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets

where a monument and tablet now stand. The prin-cipal Government offices were located in the vicinity and many of them are still situat-ed in the neighbourhood. In Macquarie Place Park, at the corner of Bridge Street and Macquarie Place is an anchor taken from H.M.8. Sirius, in which Governor Phillip sailed from England with the First Fleet and which was wrecked at Nor-folk Island in 1790. An obelisk, erected here in 1818, marks the starting point for the measurement of all roads of the State. The water supply of the in-fant settlement of Sydney in 1788 was obtained at the out-set from the Old Tank Stream which, rising near Hyde Park, ran through the township into the harbour near Bridge Street. The site of the first church erected in Sydney in 1793 is marked by a memorial at the intersection of Hunter and Bligh Streets. It was a struc-ture of split wattle poles cemented with clay. The oldest church still extant is St James, at the top of King Street. This was built in 1822. At the period of the orig-inal foundation by Captain Arthur Phillip (R.N.) at Syd-ney Cove, the waters washing the foreshoe reached as far as Dalley Street and a water-course, fed from swamps situated on the site of Hyde Park, and also from a spring in what is now Spring Street entered the cove at its south-west corner.

It was possible to row in a small boat along what are now Pitt and Hamilton Streets, as far as Hunter Street, passing under the bridge, built in the year 1811, from which the present Bridge Street derives its name. The creek, in the rocky bed of which a tank 15 feet deep, with a capacity of about 8000 gallons was excavated, be-ams known in 1792 as the Tank Stream, for that rea-son. It constituted the sole water supply of the town as late as June 1873, as a tun-nel, commenced in 1827 to bring water from Lachlan Swamp to near the head of King Street, was not complet-ed for 10 years. Carriers at his time and for many years subsequently filled their carts at these sources and peddled the water throughout the city. The Harbour Information Bureau of the Sydney Ferries Limited tells us of these early landmarks and in its publication compares the views of Circular Quay to-day with those of the late 19th century. Looking round the Quay now, one cannot but be struck by the changes that the last 50 years have brought about. Imagine the gigantic modern liners wiped out, together with a great part of the unbroken lines of wharf on each side. Substitute full-rigged sail-ing snips, their lofty spars and intricate rigging sil-houetted against the sky above the lower buildings of that day, lying head to stern both sides of the Quay, and in places where no wharves existed, boomed off from the rough foreshore road suffi-ciently to keep them clear of the rocks while heaving their cargoes of wool bales along 60 foot skids from shore to rail. From a few small and partly uncovered wharves at the head of the Cove, small ferries plied so inadequately that the waterman's steps in the centre still did a roaring trade, while on the Quay roadway a few horse-drawn buses and hansom cabs took the place of the present trams and motor vehicles. On the eastern point the old convict built Fort Mac-quarie was a happy substitute for the present tram depot and the unsightly sheds in front of it and careful con-sideration will probably lead us to doubt whether the so-called progress of those 50 years leaves us much for which to be thankful. A further radical change is now in progress at the Quay. Ultimately electric trains will be running across a viaduct at the southern end, with the mass of an overhead railway station shutting out the view of the buildings in the cen-tre. (To Be Continued)