Wollstonecrafts on The Rocks!

That rather anonymous strip of land on George Street North, under the shadow of the Cahill Expressway and adjoining the Museum of Contemporary Art, is traversed by thousands of pedestrians each day.

Figure 1: George Street, Sep 2010. SHFA

But in the early 19th century, it was a solid row of shops and houses, Sydney’s original town centre, and home to the prosperous merchants of Governor Macquarie’s Sydney.

Figure 2 George St 1829, with notations. SHFA. Wollstonecraft and Berry’s building is the three story house in the centre of the image.

Prominent among them were business partners Edward Wollstonecraft and Alexander Berry. Wollstonecraft’s sister, Elizabeth, was also married to Berry.

But the Wollstonecrafts were also related to some of the most prominent names in British history. In fact, some accounts suggest that Edward Wollstonecraft had left England to escape the notoriety of his relations. His aunt was the renowned early feminist, and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Figure 3. Mary Wollstonecraft. John Opie. Wikipedia Image (National Portrait Gallery, London: NPG 1237)

Her daughter, also Mary (who was the author of the famous novel Frankenstein), married the revolutionary poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their unconventional lives scandalised Britain, and Edward’s nomadic life as a trader perhaps allowed him to escape the family’s notoriety. On Mary Shelly’s death in 1851, a lock of her hair was sent to Alexander Berry as a keepsake, it is now held by the Mitchell Library.

Figure 4. Mary Shelly. Reginald Easton. Wikipedia Image (not credited)

Figure 5. Frontispiece Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus London, 1831. U.S. National Library of Medicine, website (Courtesy Singer-Mendenhall Collection, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

It was on a voyage from Lisbon in 1812 that Wollstonecraft – a “tall, formal-looking young man, dressed in black” – was introduced to Alexander Berry, and the pair became friends and business partners.

They shared lodgings in London with Elizabeth Wollstonecraft until 1819 when all three set sail for NSW.

There, both Wollstonecraft and Berry received a series of land grants. By 1825, Wollstonecraft had been confirmed as owner of 500 acres (202 ha) on the northern side of the harbour, which he named ‘Crow’s Nest’, in the area now known by his family name.

But he preferred, it seems, to live “above the shop” in The Rocks. His combined home-warehouse was one of a row of shops and houses where First Fleet Park is now located, virtually under the Cahill Expressway. By all accounts, Wollstonecraft was a rather solemn and driven man. Even Berry, his friend and partner, would say after his death that his behaviour towards the end of his life was “such as to render my existence hardly tolerable”.

Figure 6. George St in 1847 (detail). Capt Owen Stanley. Mitchell Library. Wollstonecraft lived in the three story building at the centre of the image.

In The Rocks, his neighbours were other merchants like the former convict and wealthy businesswoman Mary Reibey and Anna Maria Bunn, who would write, in the 1830s, Australia’s first novel, The Guardian: A Tale by an Australian. The offices of the Sydney Gazette were nearby, as was the post office.

Figure 7. George St 1848. Fowles. The Australian Hotel, had been the 1st Post Office in 1809, Wollstonecraft’s townhouse and offices stands out above its neighbours, the last building on the right was the Sydney Gazette offices from 1803-1842.

It was a handy location for the local merchants, whose houses backed right on to Sydney Cove, allowing their ships to be unloaded almost directly into the warehouses. Without exception, the houses all turned their backs on the harbour that today would guarantee them multi-million dollar prices.

Figure 8. Lower George St. 1889. SHFA. Wollstonecraft’s building is the tallest on the left.

It seems that Edward was the ‘stay-at-home’ partner in the business, while the more energetic and restless Berry traded in the South Seas and to Britain.

In the 1820s, under Governor Brisbane, the two were granted a further 10,000 acres (4047 ha) on the Shoalhaven River, called Coolangatta, a site favoured by Berry who created access to the sea by carving out a canal.

Wollstonecraft, meanwhile, was involved in a proposal to cut a road through The Rocks to Millers Point, a project which, a decade or more later, became the Argyle Cut.

He had risen to prominence in the Sydney business community, being appointed a magistrate, a director of the Bank of NSW and the Bank of Australia, and chairman of the Chamber of Commerce.

Figure 9: Argyle Cut in the making, 1853. National Library of Australia

But he died, aged only 49, in 1832. He had never married, so Berry and his wife, Elizabeth, returned to Sydney from the South Coast where they lived at Wollstonecraft’s Crows Nest estate.

Figure 10: Alexander Berry, 1856. Mitchell Library

They too remained childless and although Elizabeth died in 1845, Alexander Berry – also a magistrate and member of the Legislative Council – lived until September 1873. Today his name lives on in the pretty south coast town of Berry, close to his Coolangatta estate, and a long way from The Rocks.

Fire Water, the Sydney Cove shipwreck

Over four chilly nights in June this year, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority staged a creative interpretation of the voyage of the Sydney Cove as told though the eyes of an 11-year-old Indian-Australian girl. During the event Campbells Cove was alive with food stalls, music and markets as the story was retold in dramatic Bollywood-style.

The Sydney Cove is the 8th oldest known shipwreck in Australian waters, and the first merchant vessel lost after the establishment of the colony at Sydney. The ramifications of this wreck were far-reaching—from its contribution to the development of the first export industry and the discovery of coal on the south coast to the exploration of Bass Strait and the beginnings of Tasmanian settlement.

The Sydney Cove was built in Calcutta under the original name Begum Shaw. She was designed for short coastal voyages and traded between ports on the Persian Gulf and India. In 1796 she was bought by the agency house (private trading firm) of Campbell and Clark, refitted and renamed in honour of her destination. She was loaded with one of the first speculative cargoes dispatched to Sydney, meaning the cargo wasn't ordered from the colony, but sent to be sold on arrival. As there were no free merchants resident in NSW, the purchase and distribution of cargo had been monopolised by those with access to currency, namely the officers of the NSW (Rum) Corps.

Figure 1. The Borrowdale, a ship the same size and rigging as the Sydney Cove. (Australian National Maritime Museum)

In November 1796 the Sydney Cove left Calcutta bound for the colony. The risk of the voyage was considerable as the route was arduous and largely unexplored and the returns of trading with the new colony were uncertain. On board was approximately 7,000 gallons (31,500 litres) of alcohol, mostly rum, sacks of rice and sugar, tobacco, salted meat, Chinese ceramics and tea, as well as barrels of tar, casks of vinegar, footwear, soap, candles, textiles and a range of smaller items. Also included in the cargo was a musical organ and a horse drawn buggy.

Figure 2. Chinese ceramics excavated from the Sydney Cove. (Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service)

The crew was made up of European officers and 44 Indian sailors known as lascars. The employment of Indian sailors was firmly established as there was a lack of European sailors in India. The lascars were poorly paid, poorly fed and poorly treated so even though more lascar crew were needed to man a ship, it was still cheaper than employing European sailors. However, it was unusual for lascars to undertake voyages into unknown cold southern oceans as they were mainly employed on short coastal cruises. The Fire Water event picked up on the lascar crew and told the story through the eyes of a young girl descended from one of these men.

The shipwreck itself was not a dramatic event. The ship had been leaking since December and the crew were manning the pumps constantly. The cold rough Southern Ocean was punishing on the ship and crew. She lost several sails and the leak became so bad there was more than 4 feet of water in the pump well. The cold and exhausting constant pumping and sail handling pushed the lascar crew beyond endurance. Five of them died from the cold and their exertions, and the crew had the beginnings of scurvy.

The ship sighted the west coast of Tasmania on 1 February 1797 and was to round the southern tip of the island as Bass Strait was unknown at this time. By 8 February she was on the northern and last leg of the journey however the constant bad weather had reopened leaks and ruptured the hull. This time the crew were unable to keep pace with the water and the ship was lightened by jettisoning bags of sugar, heavy bales and boxes.

Figure 3. Mathew Flinders map of Preservation and Rum Islands and the wreck and camp sites (British Museum)

The Captain Guy Hamilton had to beach his vessel and on 9 February in 6 metres of water she ran aground between two islands in the Bass Strait. The larger of the islands where they set up a camp earned the name Preservation Island. The smaller became known as Rum Island as the alcohol stores were moved there for safe storage after the crew were found breaching the rum barrels.

Figure 4. Broken alcohol bottles from camp site. Although Hamilton tried to stop the crew from plundering the alcohol, archaeologists found many alcohol bottles at both cargo storage areas and the campsite, indicating the crew were indulging. (Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service)

The wreck site was off very sparsely used shipping channels, so there was no chance of a ship passing close enough to be alerted to their plight. No one in Sydney was expecting the ship and the agency at Calcutta would not learn of the wrecking for months so the crew had no choice but to organise their own rescue. The ship’s carpenter set to work on the longboat to repair and strengthen it for the voyage ahead. On 27 February a party of 17, including 12 of the lascar crew, departed on the long and dangerous journey to Sydney.

The longboat sailed more than 300 kilometres to the north and sighted the mainland on 1 March. However when they attempted to land in the rough surf the longboat was irreparably damaged, leaving the crew cut off from Preservation Island and facing an unknown overland journey of 600 kilometres to Port Jackson. The crew had actually come ashore at the northern end of Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria. The journey north would take two months and only three men would survive it. On 15 May the three men were picked up at Port Hacking and arrived in Sydney the next day. They notified Governor Hunter of the shipwrecking and preparations were made to rescue the rest of the crew from Preservation Island and salvage the ship’s cargo.

The schooner Francis and the sloop Eliza were despatched on 30 May and arrived at Preservation Island on 10 June. The ships were loaded with some of the salvaged cargo and crew and set off back to Sydney. Five of the lascar crew, under the command of trek survivor John Bennet, remained on the island to protect the last of the cargo. On the first day of the return voyage the two ships were separated by a heavy gale. Only the Francis arrived back in Sydney after a slow journey through very heavy weather. The Eliza was lost with all hands. The Francis was to visit the wreck site several times for salvage operations.

On 20 August some of the Sydney Cove crew departed the colony to return to India to report on the loss of the vessel. The Captain Guy Hamilton remained in Sydney to arrange the salvage and sale of the ship’s cargo. He had trouble finding another vessel to return to the wreck site due to the lack of suitable craft in the colony. He also had trouble disposing of the alcohol due to Government opposition to its sale. The Governor had previously prevented other ships from off-loading their spirits and in normal circumstances this would have applied to the Sydney Cove’s cargo as well. It was known in the colony that the majority of the alcoholic cargo was still at the wreck site and three months after Hamilton arrived in Sydney, a group of convicts stole a boat with the intention of reaching the wreck. As this was the 2nd incident within a month, the Governor arranged to purchase the spirits for the commissariat.

The wrecking of the Sydney Cove and the subsequent events had far reaching effects. The survivors of the overland trek reported discovering coal about 50 kilometres south of Port Jackson. The southern coastlines were charted and were partly responsible for further explorations by George Bass, including the discovery of Bass Strait. In January 1798 Bass attempted to reach the wreck site but was prevented by poor weather. He saw smoke on an island close to Wilsons Promontory and upon investigation discovered seven starving and miserable convicts—the men who stole the boat the previous year in the vain hope of repairing the Sydney Cove and escaping overseas.

In February Lt Matthew Flinders accompanied the Francis on another salvage voyage to Preservation Island. During this trip he surveyed and charted the features around the islands and also noted a number of seal colonies. Robert Campbell would exploit these colonies and sealskin became Australia’s first export industry.

The loss of the Sydney Cove did not deter the agency Campbell and Clarke. They acquired another vessel and renamed it the Hunter, after the NSW Governor. Robert Campbell, the younger brother of the senior partner of the agency, accompanied the ship to wind up the affairs of the Sydney Cove and sell the Hunter’s cargo. He arrived in Sydney on 10 June 1798, just before the death of the Sydney Cove’s Captain, Guy Hamilton.

While in Sydney, Campbell purchased the lease on a waterside house and property and arranged an agent to acquire more land for him. He also attempted to gain Government and supply contracts. The stay convinced him of the colony’s potential and gave him some idea about the most suitable cargo to send. He left Sydney and returned to Calcutta to convince merchants of the value of sending further cargo to the colony. Campbell came back to Sydney in 1800 to permanently represent the agency. He built his wharves, warehouses and house on the waterfront land he had acquired, which subsequently became known as Campbells Cove, the site of the 2010 Fire Water event.

Figure 5. Fire Water event, June 2010, Campbells Cove, Sydney. (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority)

References:
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=1736

Mike Nash, Flinders University. Investigation of a Survivors Camp from the Sydney Cove Shipwreck 2004

Mike Nash, Navarine Publishing. Cargo for the Colony. 2001

Sustainability in The Rocks

Long before sustainability became fashionable it was being practised on the shores of Warrane, the area known as Sydney Cove today.

Drawings and descriptions show that Sydney Cove was almost certainly in pristine condition at the time of European settlement. In 1788 Lieutenant Ralph Clark observed

“This is the poorest country in the world… overrun with large trees, not one acre of clear ground to be seen.”

For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans the local Aboriginal people had been hunting, fishing and gathering without destroying the natural habitat.

In 1788 with the arrival of the First Fleet all that was about to change. The new settlers began to chop down trees and modify the environment to make it feel more English and to enable them to grow food. It was not their aim to co-exist with the Aboriginal people or with the environment.

With the arrival of subsequent fleets and the growing population, the colony was under increasing pressure to supply itself with food. Importing food was expensive and the quality upon its arrival could not be guaranteed. The settlers had little concept of sustainability and instead were focussed simply on survival.

By 1803, just 15 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, the fresh water source that sustained the colony was so polluted that some action was taken to preserve it. It was decreed that

“If any person whatever is detected in throwing any filth into the Stream of Fresh Water … on Conviction before a Magistrate their houses will be taken down.”

Sydney mud oyster shells recovered from archaeological excavations in The Rocks. Often growing to 25cm in diameter these oysters became extinct by the 1850s; prized for their abundant flesh, their habitat was destroyed by harbour reclamations, pollution and the construction of stone sea walls.

This was the first time reference was made to looking after natural resources in the new colony.

Throughout the subsequent years of development around the harbour and in The Rocks, conservation took on a different meaning. By 1973 Green Bans were imposed on a number of development sites in Sydney, including The Rocks, to preserve communities and the colonial history of Sydney.

Following the Green Bans, the NSW Heritage Act was passed in 1977 and the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act in 1979.

By the 21st century, our understanding of our impact on the earth had evolved to incorporate human-induced climate change.

In 2009 Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (the State Government agency responsible for the care and management of The Rocks and Darling Harbour) adopted a sustainability policy to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions and potable water consumption.

The Authority aims to cut emissions and potable water consumption within the precincts it manages by 20 per cent by 2012 and by 80 per cent by 2020 based on year 2000 levels.

There is no doubt that the sustainability journey will continue to evolve and we should all continue to fight for conservation of heritage and the environment we need to sustain us.

High rise proposed for The Rocks in 1970. Developments like this were the focus for the growing environmentalist movement in the early 1970s and culminated in the NSW Government’s Environmental Planning and Assessment Act in 1979.

Telling The Rocks Stories - Historical Interpretation in The Rocks

Visitors to Sydney come to The Rocks looking to experience Old Sydney; stories about the wonderful heritage buildings, the landscape of laneways and streets that date from the earliest days of the colony and the many prominent and ordinary people that lived and worked in The Rocks – the way Sydney was for much of the 19th century, a hard place with a strong community and a big heart. Every building and street corner has a story to be told, some intriguing, some sad and some amusing. In fact The Rocks has been a witness and often participant in the many social, political and cultural changes that have characterised the progression of Australia from oppressive convict colonialism to a democratic multicultural nation – from the rum rebellion to federation, The Rocks has played a role.
The Foreshore Authority recently prepared an interpretation strategy called ‘Telling The Rocks Stories’ which aims to bring the history of our buildings, places and people into the streets and laneways, so our visitors can ‘discover’ and experience the stories where they happened and in their own leisurely way.
The strategy was constructed as a ‘toolbox’ of ways and means to present the many stories in the public domain; and to inspire and encourage further enquiry through The Rocks Discovery Museum. The toolbox includes:

• Presenting in-situ historic pictures of streets and places from the past
• Presenting through pictures and facts, the life and achievements of both the distinguished and common people of The Rocks
• Building partnerships with our tenants by encouraging the integration of the stories of their buildings; people, events, activities and chronology into their marketing and store presentation

• Marking through footpath inlays stories of lost fabric, places of interest, people and events
• Exposing and interpreting remaining original fabric in unique ways

A wide range of stories have already been completed and installed in footpaths, on the sides of buildings and around the streets and laneways. A selection of these stories is presented below.

George Street – the colony’s first street and woodblock paving
Information panel at 55 George Street, The Rocks


Fig 1 Panel on the wall of the Holiday Inn, 55 George Street including an interpretation installation of woodblock paving

George Street in The Rocks was the first road made by Europeans following their arrival in Sydney Cove in January 1788. The original track was determined by the lines of tents erected for shelter, including a hospital and bakehouse. Within weeks an observatory was established at Dawes Point and the track extended to it. The “road” was little more than a dirt path; there were no carriages, carts or other wheeled vehicles and only a handful of horses, and so the population walked. The track ran partly along a ledge of flat rock above the waterline. It is most probable that this track may have been made by the Cadigal people who had been living in the area for millennia and who continued to bake fish on the flat rocks by the water’s edge after the arrival of the Europeans.

The original road was called High Street, until Governor Macquarie changed it to George Street in 1810, named in honour of King George III. It was a dirt track for the first decades of its existence and threw up clouds of dust in the dry weather and became a muddy quagmire in the wet. Skilled engineers began arriving in the 1820s and the roads benefited from the new road building methods of Thomas Telford and John MacAdam. Their techniques were adapted to colonial conditions, and the old method of simply ‘throwing up’ a road was abandoned. Roads began to be constructed in strata of graded broken stone, laid in cambered beds and given a final coat of ironstone.

Fig 2
George Street around 1880, showing stone paving prior to woodblocks.
(Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority collection).

Woodblock Paving

By the 1880s, Sydney was a thriving commercial centre with a growing population and expanding city precinct. A city of dirt streets presented poorly and contributed to muddy erosion, much to the annoyance of shopkeepers. Steel shod horses, buggies and carriages, being the backbone of personal and commercial transportation, needed a firm and stable surface with good traction and the ability of the surface to minimise noise.

Experiments with sandstone proved a failure in heavy traffic areas as stone paving readily wore and cracked. Woodblocks were selected because they reduced noise, looked attractive, minimised dust, were durable and easily cleaned. Australia also had an ample supply of suitable hardwood timber.

Fig 3
A Block Boy c1900
(City of Sydney archives)

The woodblocks were washed down every night, and the addition of disinfectant was believed to lower risk of disease. To keep the streets clean through the day, the council employed ‘block boys’ to pick up rubbish and horse droppings. They were affectionately called ‘sparrow starvers’ because in the droppings were undigested seeds, that the sparrows ate. It became a much sort after job by local lads and often led to a career on the council.



Where were they used?


Fig 4
Plan of Sydney showing the general extent of woodblock paving in early 20th century.
(City of Sydney archives)

Woodblocks began to be used by the Sydney City Council as a road surface from the 1880s, and by 1900 much of Sydney from Broadway to Dawes Point and from Darling Harbour to Kings Cross was paved in woodblocks. The last woodblocks were laid during the 1930s. The use of woodblocks for road surfacing had been tried in Britain and the United States but found to be unsatisfactory, possibly due to rot from higher rainfall and the use of poorer softwoods which are more common in these countries.


How were they used?

The section of George Street between Dawes Point and Argyle Street was paved in 1888 and used to trial various specifications for preparing and laying of woodblocks. Sydney Council experimented with the use of tar and pitch, block spacing, bedding and surface finishing. The best timbers for woodblocks were found to be Australian Class 1 hardwoods including blue gum, red gum, ironbark, black butt, tallowwood, mahogany and turpentine.

Fig 5
Laying woodblock paving at the intersection of George Street and Queen’s Wharf, now First Fleet Park in the 1930s.
(Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority collection)

The blocks were brick-shaped and laid in a stretcher bond pattern. The surface of the woodblocks was top-dressed with tar, pea-gravel and sand to provide a firm surface and to combat slipperiness. Consequently George Street North did not require maintenance for five years, proving the cost and labour effectiveness of woodblocks.

Fig 6
Demonstrating the patterns of laying woodblocks in the Warren Report, 1901.
(Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority collection)


Where did they go?
The gradual replacement of horse and cart with much heavier automobiles saw an increase in wear of the woodblocks. They were progressively removed from most parts of the city and replaced with asphalt. The woodblocks were considered perfect for firewood and during the Great Depression, young boys were often caught helping themselves to one or two to heat the family home and cook dinner. The Council also gave redundant woodblocks to the elderly and disadvantaged.
Fig 7
Woodblocks exposed in George Street 2006.









Francis Greenway 1777 to1837 - convict architect
Information panel situated at rear of 85 George Street, Greenway Lane, off Argyle Street The Rocks – where Francis Greenway lived between 1816 - 1836.

Francis Greenway was born in Mangotsfield near Bristol and studied architecture under John Nash. He started his practice in 1805 but in 1812 was convicted of forging a building contract and sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation for fourteen years. Greenway arrived in Sydney in February 1814 and set up a practice soon after at 84 George St. In 1816 Governor Macquarie appointed him the first Government Architect. With the post came lodgings in the Assistant Surgeon’s house which formerly stood at 91 George Street. Greenway designed most of Sydney’s public buildings during Macquarie’s period as governor from 1810 to 1822. His grand designs and arrogant nature often brought him into conflict with his clients and led to much ill will towards him. After Macquarie returned to England and without his patronage, public servants and builders began to alter his designs, the ultimate insult. He was dismissed in 1822 by Governor Brisbane after further disputes; however he refused to give up his house in The Rocks and produced a title deed of ownership which is now suspected of being a forgery. In his six years as Government Architect he is credited with designing 40 buildings, 11 still remain today. A selection of surviving Greenway buildings is shown below:


Fig 9 - 11
St James Church, Queens Square, Sydney
Hyde Park Barracks, Macquarie Street, Sydney
Conservatorium of Music, (formerly Government House stables) Conservatorium Road, Sydney

Larrikins and Donahs in Suez Canal
Information panels in Suez Canal, one of the known haunts of The Rock’s Push

As the night was slowly falling over city, town and bush, From a slum in Bludgers Alley slunk the Captain of the Push, And his whistle loud and piercing woke the echoes of The Rocks, And a dozen ghouls came sloping round the corners of the blocks… (Henry Lawson. The Captain of the Push)

During the 19th century, The Rocks was depicted as a place where ‘slang and vulgarity were mixed in lavish quantities, where harlots and riffraff, ex-convicts and the scum of all the oceans collected’. "Suez Canal" (supposedly a pun on "sewers"), was one of the most unsavoury places in Sydney in its time. It was haunted by prostitutes and larrikins, there were brothels, sly grog shops and an opium den. At the end of a laneway in the courtyard near the British Seaman’s Hotel locals gathered to place their bets on blood sports like cock fighting. It was a brave or foolish person who wandered down the alleyways of The Rocks at night.


Fig 12-14
Interpretive images of larrikins located in Suez Canal

Most cities have their version of Sydney’s Larrikins, young men out for a good time and trouble, they organised themselves into street gangs that were known as ‘Pushes’. The larrikins were said to be; “characteristically a city dweller, tough, defiant, reckless, and given to exaggerated dress. He hung about in gangs, or pushes, which indulged in violence and fringe crime; and spoke a clannish jargon that few outsiders understood. His well-fed companion gave rise to the simile, ‘as fat as a larrikin’s dog’. The larrikin was a flashy dresser; Banjo Patterson described them as wearing “black bell-bottomed pants, no waistcoat, very short black paget coat, white shirt with no collar, and a gaudy neckerchief round the bare throat. Their boots were marvels, very high in the heel and picked out with all sorts of colours down the sides.

The gangs were engaged in running warfare with other Sydney gangs of the time such as the Straw Hat Push, the Glebe Push, the Argyle Cut Push, the Forty Thieves from Surry Hills and the Gibb Street Mob. They conducted such crimes as theft, assault and battery against police and pedestrians in the Rocks area. Female companions of the Push, called ‘Donah’s,’ would entice drunks and seamen into dark areas to be assaulted and robbed by the gang.

Women were warned never to go near Suez Canal, there were stories of young women who were kidnapped and forced to work in the brothels where the women were not much more than sex slaves. Ruth Park wove this into her novel of The Rocks ‘Playing Beatie Bow’ where the heroine, Abigail, is abducted and forced into a disused warehouse full of unsavory characters. Fortunately she is rescued before we find what hideous fate her abductors had in mind for her.

Fig 15-16
Cartoon images of larrikins and donahs from The Bulletin c 1900

In 1891 it was reported that there was an opium den in Suez Canal, and several others spread through The Rocks, where the activities that were said to go on in them were shocking. Opium dens were the worst places in the city, much worse than sly grog shops and ordinary brothels. The Chinese residents of The Rocks were accused of using opium to drug young women and take advantage of them. When this was investigated, there was no truth to it, but the reputation was established and hard to shift.

The combination of gambling, prostitution, drugs and violence that occurred here in the 19th century all helped to form the popular reputation that The Rocks was a slum and deserved to be demolished.

Brown Bear Lane mural
A mural in-situ – on the corner of the Galleria at 155 George Street

One of the colony’s earliest streets, Brown Bear Lane, was located close to this spot. The Rocks' very first pub, The Romping Horse, was located on the corner of the lane from 1789. The pub was later known as The Brown Bear (1836–1900) while further up the lane was another hotel known as The Black Dog (1804–1848).

Brown Bear Lane became Little Essex Street in the 1890s. The lane disappeared around 1913 when a row of shops was built between Essex Street and this location. The row was partly demolished in 1956 when the railway viaduct was built.

Fig 17 Brown Bear Lane photograph 1901. (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Collection)

Fig 18 Brown Bear Lane mural being painted on the side wall of 155 George Street, 2006

In 1844 Thomas Warne was brutally murdered by his servant in a tenement on this corner. His body was cut up and then burned in the chimney. The remains were put in a chest and taken to Cadman's Cottage, located further north on George Street. A boatman was hired to dispose of the chest in the harbour however he became suspicious and alerted a police constable who discovered the gruesome crime.

Commissariat Stores – colonial government storehouse
Information panel on George Street opposite First Fleet Park
Fig 19
Panel located on the stairs leading to First Fleet Park

The Commissariat Stores were built in 1809 and 1812 and stood until 1939. They served as the colonial government’s storehouse, purchasing cargos for re-sale to the people of New South Wales. In later years they were offices for construction of public works, such as Circular Quay, and in the 1930s administered employment and unemployment benefits during the Depression.
The current building on the site was built between 1940 and 1953 as the Maritime Services Board offices, becoming the Museum of Contemporary Art in the early 1990s.

Fig 20 Commissariat Stores seen from George Street 1880s. (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Collection)

Fig 21 Commissariat Stores (building at the left) as seen from Circular Quay in 1866. (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Collection)

Describing the vicinity in 1829, ex-convict Thomas Dowse wrote:

Attached to the Commissariat Store was a Guard room at which a detachment of the Military Garrison kept guard over the property of the Imperial Government.

The daily relief which took place at 11 o'clock a.m. was quite a military display, the Regimental band performing for about an hour upon the green at the opposite side of the street whilst the sentries were being relieved.

The old wharf, how shall I describe that pretentious structure, having the grandiloquent name of the King's Wharf. It had a frontage to the cove of about a hundred feet, just sufficient space for a moderate sized vessel's gangway to lay alongside her bow then overlapping the waterman's steps placed at its southern end.

Next to the King's wharf, and at nearly the head of the cove, was the Liverpool wharf, a small wooden structure so named for the cutter "Lord Liverpool", making that spot her point of departure every Saturday afternoon, wind and weather permitting, for Newcastle with HM mail.

Cumberland Street Archaeological site

Dirt on The Rocks is a new bi-monthly blog for The Rocks. Each update you’ll be able to get an in-depth insight into a museum artefact, exhibit or a recent archaeological discovery in The Rocks.

This post, the first of many, focuses on an archaeological site on Cumberland Street.

In November 2009, Youth Hostels Australia (YHA) opened their latest hostel in at 110 Cumberland Street, The Rocks on the site of an archaeological excavation with remnants of more than 30 convict buildings dating back to the 1790s.

An archaeological excavation of the site was undertaken in 1994 recovering evidence of the lives of more than a thousand people who had lived, worked and died here over the previous century. The remains of their houses, and three quarters of a million artefacts of daily use, are an important resource for the study of Sydney’s past.
http://www.yha.com.au/hostels/view_photo.cfm?photoid=2716 .

In a unique partnership, this site bordered by Cumberland and Gloucester Streets was released to YHA for 100 years, on the proviso exposed archaeological remains would be conserved and open for viewing by the public.

The site had been open space since the demolition of a large shed in the 1930s. The shed, an engineering workshop built in 1917, had itself taken the place of some 30 houses and shops, the earliest built in 1795, which were demolished around 1900.

The Pre-European Landscape and the Cadigal
The people who lived on the shores of the harbour were the Cadigal, a clan of what were known as the Eora, or coastal Darug, people. To them the end point of this peninsula was Tarra, and the cove to its east Warrang. These people ranged over the harbour from the coast inland to the bay that is now known as Darling Harbour.

No remains of the Cadigal’s presence were found on this site. The ruggedness of the sandstone no doubt made it a fairly hostile and exposed place. The soils here were thin, supporting shrubs and small trees clinging to the crevices in the rock. With the arrival of the Europeans the landscape was cut, terraced and drained, in all likelihood destroying evidence of earlier occupation.

The History and Archaeology of the site, 1788-1915
The Rocks quickly became home to many convicts who set about transforming the rugged landscape - initially setting up temporary tents and huts.

Tracks led up from the harbour. One of these, Cribbs Lane passed through the site pre-dating Cumberland and Gloucester Streets - part of the regularised street pattern created in 1810.

Ann Armsden and her First Fleeter husband, George Legg, first built a house on the site around 1795. Following George’s death in a boating accident on the harbour in 1807, Ann married her neighbour, baker George Talbot and rebuilt their house in stone.

Irish rebel, Richard Byrne, lived here from around 1805. Byrne was a stonemason, and may have been responsible for some of the quarrying for his neighbours’ houses. One pre-1820s quarry can still be seen, and it is most likely houses here were constructed from materials from the site.

For fresh water a number of wells were cut into the rock. A well dug by the Byrne family has a few steps cut into the sandstone leading to it. It was here, or a similar well in Cumberland Street, that a small child drowned in 1810.

The Byrne family remained here until the 1850s. Their descendants can still be found living in The Rocks area.

George Cribb, also a convict, lived on the site from 1809 to the late 1820s. George was typical of many of the early convicts who prospered in the new colony. He was a butcher, and though working for the government as part of his sentence, in his own time he slaughtered cattle, sheep and pigs sold as meat both within the colony and to ships leaving Sydney. His slaughterhouse was in the centre of his property. George brought soil in, and buried the discarded skulls, horns and limbs of his animals here. Thousands of animal bones were found, relating to George’s work and tell us much about the cuts of meat enjoyed by the people of Sydney.

As Cribb’s fortunes grew, he built and rented out a row of four tenements. In 1817, following his marriage to widowed publican Sophia Lett, he built a butcher shop and a hotel, the Turk’s Head. Around this time, George filled in his well with household “rubbish” including fine hand-painted Chinese porcelain and a butcher’s filleting knife.

For some time, George had been under surveillance by the authorities for suspicion of dealing in illegally produced alcohol. Although arrested, no evidence could be found to convict him. Among the items found in the well, however, was a small ceramic and tin ware still.


By the late 1820s George found himself in financial difficulties and his property was purchased by land speculators Raine & Ramsay. They subdivided it in the 1830s, creating Carahers Lane to provide access between Cribbs Lane and Longs Lane to the south. In 1830 Cribbs’ house was enlarged and became the Whalers Arms pub, a two storey stone building with stables at the back. Albert Nicholas bought the land on Cumberland Street and built five cottages over the former quarry.

On Carahers Lane six two-storey terraces were built, with three more on Cribbs Lane. Over the next 70 years these, and other houses on the site, were occupied by immigrants and their families, originating from Ireland, England, Scandinavia, Portugal and other parts of Europe.

The Byrne family sold off their land bit by bit in the 1840s and 50s. At the top of Cribbs Lane Robert Berry established his bakery in 1844. It was here the families of The Rocks often brought their Sunday roasts to be cooked in the baker’s ovens.

On the other side of the Lane, Berry’s sister Jane and her husband Thomas Share operated a pub called the Plymouth Arms Inn, later renamed The Australian. Jane and Robert Berry’s younger brother John died as a result of an epileptic seizure at the bakery in 1844. His body was taken to the cellar of the Plymouth Arms where a coroner’s inquest was later held. That same cellar was uncovered during archaeological work. When the pub was demolished in 1913, a new Australian was built nearby and remains today.

When the bubonic plague arrived in Sydney in 1900 it was thought the densely occupied Rocks would be hard hit. The Rocks had long been considered a “slum”, mainly because Sydney was spreading out into the suburbs and many no longer considered the old part of the city to be healthy. Water and the sewer had been connected from the 1850s; however negligent landlords had apparently allowed the systems to fall into disrepair. Likewise, some of the houses were poorly maintained.

In many houses rubbish was disposed of under the floorboards. In this way up to 40 centimetres of rubbish accumulated.

The rubbish discarded has told much about the inhabitants. They ate well; lamb, oysters, fish, chicken and duck, applied salad oils to salad and vegetables, added pickles and chutneys as side dishes and often ate off the finest bone china.

The well near the Byrne family’s house was filled with household rubbish, including a 3-legged iron cooking pot.

The insides of the houses were decorated with figurines, vases of flowers and often curios such as cowry shells and coral. The inhabitants adorned themselves with fashionable jewellery, sewed their own clothes by the light of the front and back doors, smoked clay pipes by the fireside, and the children played with dolls, miniature tea sets, marbles, toy soldiers, chess and dominoes.

Despite the fear that the bubonic plague would have disastrous effects on the crowded district, only three people in The Rocks died. The total number of deaths in NSW was just over 100. One of those who died was a 15-year-old paperboy named James Foy. He lived in a terrace Cribbs Lane, but probably contracted the disease on the waterfront. The Rocks was condemned to demolition, and the area was bought up by the Government after 1901. Over the next 14 years the site was cleared, as were other parts of The Rocks. Of the people who lived here, some moved to the suburbs, others stayed nearby. Apart from the engineering shed here between 1917 and the 1930s, no other substantial buildings were built, preserving the archaeological remains.


The book Inside The Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood, by historian Dr Grace Karskens, is available from The Rocks Discovery Museum, Kendall Lane, The Rocks.