The Man O'War Steps – Farm Cove – The Navy's Landing at Bennelong Point – From Macquarie to the Opera House

 

Down on the eastern side of the Opera House, where the cruise boats and water taxis tie up beside the Botanic Gardens wall, there's a dog-legged old sandstone jetty that most people walk straight past. That's the Man O'War Steps. For well over a century it was the front door to Sydney for the Navy. Sailors on shore leave came up those steps, so did admirals and new Governors, and on two of the harbour's worst days the dead and injured of the Greycliffe and the Rodney were brought ashore there too. It's on the State Heritage Register, and the Heritage NSW listing calls it the only structure left that's tied to Governor Macquarie's old Fort Macquarie.

Fort Macquarie and the Man of War Steps, a watercolour by Alfred Tischbauer, August 1893. Alfred Tischbauer; photograph by Johnorchard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Where the Steps Are

The Steps sit at Farm Cove Crescent, on the eastern side of Bennelong Point, right next to the Opera House and on the north-western edge of the Royal Botanic Garden. The heritage listing describes them as a sandstone pier of big, irregular blocks with chamfered capstones, about 45 metres long and about 7 metres wide. The pier dog-legs out to the north-west, and on its inner side a flight of 12 steps runs down to a larger stone landing at the water, where boats would come in to unload.

From the end of the jetty you look out over the eastern harbour to Fort Denison, Garden Island and Middle Head, which are all part of Sydney's military story as well. Above you is the Tarpeian Way and the Bennelong Lawn.

Before any of this, the point was Tubowgule, on Gadigal country. The heritage listing says that when the First Fleet arrived in 1788 Tubowgule was a small rocky island with shoals and big shell middens, an old gathering place. It's called Bennelong Point today after the Wangal man Bennelong, who lived in a brick hut there.

Who Built Them and When?

This is the part of the story that's changed most as people have dug into it.

The old version, which was in the original heritage listing and is still on Wikipedia, starts with a quote: "On December 17, 1817, Governor Macquarie laid the foundation stone of the fort now bearing his name. Prior to this, he had built for his private use a small landing place known as Man O'War Steps." That account says the first landing was probably a wooden one, about the same shape as today's jetty, and that it enclosed a little beach and boat harbour that was known for a while as "Port Lachlan", after Macquarie's son Lachlan.

The heritage listing, updated in 2026, is more careful. It says Greenway's Fort Macquarie work did include private landing steps for the Governor, and that people have often assumed those were the Man O'War Steps. But it points out that maps as early as 1822 show the Governor's private landing on the west side of Bennelong Point, and an 1843 map shows the two landings side by side. It also says maps from the 1820s and 1830s show no structure where the Steps are now. The dog-legged jetty first turns up on a map in 1843, next to Fort Macquarie and probably built of local stone. So the honest answer is that nobody knows the exact year. The listing gives the construction years as "1810–" and its modifications as "c.1820", and it says most of the stonework you see today probably belongs to the Farm Cove seawall works of the 1850s and 1860s.

There's also a nice puzzle from 1837. When the site of the new Government House was chosen that year, one of its advantages was "private access by water from the steps at Fort Macquarie". The listing says it isn't clear whether that meant the Governor's private landing or the Man O'War Steps.

The Fort Next Door

Fort Macquarie was the reason the jetty was there at all. Macquarie laid its foundation stone on 17 December 1817, Francis Greenway designed it, and it was finished in February 1821. The heritage listing says it was built to stop ships, including ones carrying escaping convicts, from leaving the harbour without permission, and to defend the colony. Greenway's work reshaped the point with land reclamation, quarrying and sea walls. In 1901 the Minister of Works decided to pull the fort down, and it was replaced by the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot, whose battlemented walls copied the old fort's towers. The jetty stayed, right beside the depot.

Circular Quay and Sydney Harbour about 1868. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Watering Place

Farm Cove was where the ships anchored, and the jetty was where their boats came for water. The Wikipedia account says that by 1850 the Admiralty was calling it a "stone pier", in use for watering the shipping anchored nearby. The 1973 plaque on the gate pillar says the jetty "for a period formed one of the walls of a small boat harbour named 'Watering Place'". The Naval Historical Society's version of the same plaque text says it was named "Watering Place" in Admiralty charts dated 1857. The heritage listing agrees that the Steps were marked as "Watering Place" on Admiralty charts, which suggests that filling up with water was one of their main jobs.

How It Got Its Name

A "man o' war" is an old name for a warship, and Farm Cove was where the warships anchored. The Wikipedia account says the shipping that watered at the jetty was often, and sometimes mostly, warships, "hence the name". It adds that nobody has been able to pin down when people started using the name, but that it was probably towards the end of the 1860s. The heritage listing says that by the 1880s they were firmly known as the Man O'War Steps.

You'll see the name written every which way in the old papers: Man-o'-War Steps, Man-o-War steps, Man of War Steps and Man o' War Stairs. They're all the same place.

The Girls Who Landed in the 1850s

One part of the story I didn't expect is the female immigrants. The heritage listing says that in the 1850s the Steps were the likely landing place for women coming out under assisted migration schemes, such as Earl Grey's Famine Orphan Scheme, to work as servants. Hyde Park Barracks was the Female Immigration Depot from 1848 to 1886. After a fortnight or so at the Quarantine Station, the women were brought round to the Steps and walked up to the Barracks. Not everyone thought that was good enough. The Empire of 28 May 1852 complained that "these useful women were, on landing, escorted to Hyde Park Barracks, (formerly a refuge for criminals), not privately as might reasonably have been expected, but openly through the streets, exposed like criminals to the sneers and gaze of the mob".

The older account quoted on Wikipedia says the same thing more plainly: "In the '50s, female immigrants were landed at Man O'War Steps and marched through the Gardens and the Domain to their barracks."

The Navy's Front Door

The Royal Navy set up a separate command for these waters, the Australia Station, in 1859. The Naval Historical Society says its first commander was Commodore William Loring in the sailing frigate HMS Iris, who hoisted his broad pennant on 26 March 1859. From then on, Farm Cove was where the squadron lay at anchor, and the Steps were where the boats came and went.

The Wikipedia account lists the everyday jobs: liberty boats, watering, handling stores and putting crews aboard. Merchant ships used the jetty a lot as well. Around the 1890s Sydney Ferries Limited seem to have used it now and then as a city terminus, and from early on the little harbour on the western side was used by watermen and later by commercial launches.

Ships of the Imperial Squadron, Australia Station, at anchor in Farm Cove, about 1893–94. Possibly Arthur Phillips, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Crowds, Processions and Fanfare

The heritage listing paints a lively picture of the late 1800s. Crowds gathered at the Steps to watch the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron in 1892, and to see warships and liners come and go, like HMS Thalia in 1886 and an Orient liner in 1889. They also turned out to welcome visiting Admirals, and in 1887 they flocked there to watch the light shows for Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Guns were often fired from Fort Macquarie. The Steps were also a handy landing for the Governors of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, who were cheered by the crowds before walking the short way up to Government House.

The Steps were where troops came home from overseas too. The listing mentions men who arrived back on the RMS Victoria in 1897. Naval officers who died abroad were also brought home there, with funeral processions leaving from the Steps.

Spectators packed onto the Man O'War Steps watching a squadron dressed overall in Farm Cove, with Fort Denison in the distance, about 1895. William Hall collection, Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Warships at the Man O'War Steps, Farm Cove, about 1890. Hall collection, Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

"The Habitual Resort of Idlers"

Around 1900 a waterman's base and waiting room went up at the entrance to the Steps. The heritage listing describes it as a Federation weatherboard cottage with gable detailing and a passage through the middle. It was meant mainly for the Navy, but ferry passengers used it as a waiting shed as well, and the Navy wasn't happy with the company. In 1902 Rear Admiral Beaumont called the waiting room "the habitual resort of idlers". The next year Captain G. H. Field complained about the idlers again, "especially those disreputable ones of the female sex who make it a most objectionable waiting place for the wives of Officers and Men."

In 1908 there was a proposal to run a promenade from the Steps right along the Botanic Gardens to Rose Bay. The listing says these improvements were ready just in time for the visit of the American fleet in 1908, which drew a big crowd.

The Man o' War Stairs, from a William Henry Broadhurst photograph, about 1900–1927. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Encounter Pinnace Disaster – 5 January 1909

Not every trip to the Steps ended well. Early on the morning of 5 January 1909, a pinnace from the cruiser HMS Encounter was taking sailors from Garden Island to the Man O'War Steps. From there they were going on to rifle practice. Off Mrs Macquarie's Point the boat was run down by the coastal steamer Dunmore. The men were in full marching order with rifles slung across their backs, and the weight dragged some of them under. Fifteen sailors drowned.

Wikipedia's account of the Dunmore says a large crowd watched the funeral procession leave the Man O'War Steps and go along Macquarie and Elizabeth Streets to Central Station, where the 15 coffins were put on a funeral train. The men lie together in the Anglican naval section at Rookwood under a memorial put up by their shipmates. The Naval Historical Society says that after the court of inquiry, sailors stopped slinging their rifles in boats.

From the Royal Navy to the RAN

On 4 October 1913 HMAS Australia came through the Heads flying the flag of Rear Admiral Sir George Patey, the new Commander-in-Chief of the Australia Station. The Naval Historical Society says the outgoing Royal Navy chief, Admiral Sir George King-Hall, struck his flag in HMS Cambrian that day, "thereby ending 125 years of continuous Royal Naval presence in our waters". The plaque on the northern gate pillar puts it simply: "This landing area, erected for the Royal Navy, was taken over by the Royal Australian Navy in 1913."

When the First World War broke out, a big timber pier was built off the north-east of the Steps. The heritage listing says the extra room was needed because the Steps were handling British and New Zealand troops as well as Australians.

Princes, Fleets and Governors

In 1920 the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, came ashore at the Man O'War Steps to meet the Premier and the crowds, according to the heritage listing.

In July 1925 the United States fleet came to town. The Australian National Maritime Museum's notes on the Sam Hood photo below say the fleet arrived on 23 July 1925 and left for New Zealand on 6 August, with the battleships California, Colorado, Tennessee, Maryland, West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi and Idaho.

American sailors at the Man O'War Steps during the US fleet's visit, July 1925, with the US and Australian flags on the jetty. Samuel J. Hood Studio, Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

New Governors landed there as well. On 8 April 1937 Lord Wakehurst came up the harbour in the liner Orford, switched to HMAS Adelaide and then came ashore from the launch Premier at the Steps. The Labor Daily wasn't impressed with the weather or the system. It said he "arrived in showery and miserable weather" and that "top-hatted and frock-coated Ministers of the Government made a brave showing when his Excellency disembarked from the launch Premier at Man-o'-War Steps to the accompaniment of a salute of 17 guns" fired from Mrs Macquarie's Chair. The Premier, Bertram Stevens, met him on the jetty, and Lord Wakehurst inspected the guard of honour before a drive through the city to the Cenotaph.

Lord Wakehurst speaks at the Man O'War Steps on his arrival as Governor, 8 April 1937, with Premier Bertram Stevens beside him. Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Greycliffe – 3 November 1927

The worst day in the harbour's history ended at these steps. Just after 4.15 on the afternoon of Thursday 3 November 1927, the Watsons Bay ferry Greycliffe was cut in two by the Union Company mail steamer Tahiti off Bradleys Head. Forty people died. It's still the deadliest accident on Sydney Harbour.

The survivors and the dead were brought round to the Man O'War Steps. The Melbourne Argus of 4 November 1927 reported:

"The open space in front of the naval offices at Man-o'-War steps was converted into a temporary casualty station when the Greycliffe's passengers were landed. The first of them were landed there about 5 o'clock, and for nearly an hour ambulance waggons were going to and from the hospitals. A naval launch brought several people, including a woman who was unconscious and a boy aged about 12 years, whose face was deathly pale."

The same report goes on: "Bodies were lying on the pathway near Man-o'-War steps. In several cases animation was restored after hard work on the part of the band of volunteers." The Maritime Museum's notes on Sam Hood's photographs say the eastern side of the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot became a casualty clearing station, with the dead and injured laid on the pathway at the Steps.

A man carries an injured boy at Fort Macquarie, beside the Man O'War Steps, after the Greycliffe disaster, 3 November 1927. Samuel J. Hood Studio, Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Rodney – 13 February 1938

Barely ten years later it happened again. On Sunday 13 February 1938, thousands of Sydneysiders came out to farewell the American cruiser USS Louisville, which had been in town for the 150th anniversary celebrations. The little ferry Rodney was packed with people following the cruiser down the harbour. Between Garden Island and Bradleys Head the crowd rushed to one side, and she rolled over and sank. Nineteen people died. Wikipedia's account says the survivors were brought ashore at the Man O'War Steps, and 12 ambulances took 100 people to Sydney and St Vincent's hospitals.

Ambulances wait at the Man O'War Steps to take survivors of the Rodney disaster to Sydney and St Vincent's hospitals, 13 February 1938. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Second World War

The heritage listing says that when war broke out in 1939, all shore leave for naval officers in Sydney was cancelled, and large numbers went back to their ships through the Man O'War Steps. That kept up for the rest of the war. Allied forces landed there too, including the French in 1943, who marched on to the Cenotaph in Martin Place. The jetties were extended again in 1944 and 1945 with more timber piers for the arriving British fleets.

The northern plaque remembers the cost: "From these steps 2,215 officers and sailors of the Royal Australian Navy left to serve their country in the Great War 1914–1918, the Second World War 1939–1945, Korea, Malaya and Vietnam, never to return to enjoy the fruits of their labours in their native land. Ye who tread their footsteps, remember their glory."

A 120-Year Argument

One of my favourite bits of the story is the paperwork. The Wikipedia account says a "prolonged and confused disagreement" broke out over who was responsible for the Steps, especially for keeping them up and policing them. It involved the colonial and later State Government, the Imperial Government, the Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Government, the Sydney Harbour Trust and the Maritime Services Board. It went on for the best part of 120 years. The Board's file shows it still hadn't been settled in 1971, and its research that year went back to a General Order of 1812 and letters from the 1850s. While all of them argued, the Public Works Department and the colonial departments before it did most of the building and repairs. Sometimes the Navy paid them back and sometimes it didn't. The old heritage statement calls it "one of the longest-running bureaucratic correspondences in the history of NSW".

The Opera House Years

When work started on the Opera House on the old Fort Macquarie site, the heritage listing says the buildings on the Steps were taken away and the wartime extensions were cut back to a smaller jetty for small commercial boats. Wikipedia's account says the whole precinct around it was cleared, but the jetty and steps survived.

The southern plaque, dated 20 October 1973, tells the next part: "In conjunction with the official opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1973, the stone jetty known as Man O'War Steps, was restored jointly by The Department of Public Works and the Maritime Services Board when a ramp and berthing pontoon were added to the structure." It's signed by W. H. Brotherson, President of the Maritime Services Board, and the Hon. L. A. Punch, Minister for Public Works. The Naval Historical Society said at the time that the work gave ferry access for people going to the Opera House.

The plaque on the northern pillar was put up by the Naval Association of Australia on 30 January 1983 and rededicated on 13 April 2003.

The Naval Association plaque at the entrance to the Man O'War Steps, 2019. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Steps Today

The Navy doesn't use the Steps any more. The Wikipedia account says naval use ended as the Navy built bigger berths for its major warships at Garden Island. Pontoons have come back and been tacked onto the old stone jetty, and it's now a major boarding point for harbour cruises. The heritage listing says it has become part of the wider Circular Quay precinct, used mostly by water taxis and small private boats. The heritage listing covers only the stone pier, not the modern timber and steel pontoons.

The Steps were added to the State Heritage Register on 18 April 2000 as listing number 01432. The listing says they are of State significance because of their long link with the defence of NSW, for the 1850s female migrants, and as rare surviving evidence of Fort Macquarie and of Macquarie-era harbour works that are still in use. When it was checked in 2026, the stone was in fairly good condition. The steps have been worn smooth by all the feet and salt water, there's some flaking on the faces, and shellfish have taken over the lower courses.

Next time you're at the Opera House, take a walk round the eastern side to the gate pillars and read the plaques. Then stand at the top of those 12 worn steps and picture the liberty boats coming in from the squadron.

The Man O'War Steps in 2019, with a modern pontoon alongside the old stone jetty. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Tubowgule, on Gadigal country, is a small rocky island with shell middens.
• 1810–1821 – Governor Macquarie's term. The older story says he built a private landing here.
• 17 December 1817 – Macquarie lays the foundation stone of Fort Macquarie. Greenway's fort is finished in February 1821.
• 1822 – A map shows the Governor's private landing on the west side of Bennelong Point.
• 1837 – The Government House site is chosen, partly for its "private access by water from the steps at Fort Macquarie".
• 1843 – The dog-legged jetty first appears on a map, alongside the Governor's landing.
• 1850 – The Admiralty calls it a "stone pier" used for watering ships.
• 1850s – Assisted female immigrants are likely landed here and walked to Hyde Park Barracks.
• 1857 – Admiralty charts name the stone jetty "Watering Place".
• 26 March 1859 – Commodore Loring hoists his pennant as the first commander of the Australia Station.
• 1850s–1860s – Farm Cove seawall works. Most of the present stonework probably dates from this time.
• Late 1860s to 1880s – The name "Man O'War Steps" comes into use.
• 1887 – Crowds gather at the Steps for Queen Victoria's Jubilee light shows.
• About 1900 – A waterman's base and waiting room is built at the entrance.
• 1901 – The decision is made to demolish Fort Macquarie. The tram depot replaces it.
• 1902–1903 – Rear Admiral Beaumont and Captain Field complain about "idlers" in the waiting room.
• 1908 – A promenade is proposed. The American fleet visits.
• 5 January 1909 – The Encounter's pinnace, heading for the Steps, is run down by the Dunmore, and 15 sailors drown.
• 4 October 1913 – The Royal Australian Navy takes over from the Royal Navy.
• 1914–1918 – A large timber pier is added for wartime traffic.
• 1920 – The Prince of Wales lands at the Steps.
• July 1925 – The US fleet visits.
• 3 November 1927 – Greycliffe survivors and the dead are landed at the Steps.
• 8 April 1937 – Governor Lord Wakehurst comes ashore at the Steps.
• 13 February 1938 – Rodney survivors are landed at the Steps.
• 1939–1945 – Heavy wartime use. The jetties are extended in 1944–45 for the British fleets.
• 1971 – Still no final answer on who is responsible for the Steps.
• 1973 – The jetty is restored, with a ramp and pontoon added, for the Opera House opening. The plaque is dated 20 October 1973.
• 30 January 1983 – The Naval Association plaque is put up. It is rededicated on 13 April 2003.
• 18 April 2000 – The Steps are listed on the State Heritage Register (No. 01432).

Where the Sources Disagree

• Who built them and when. The older account on Wikipedia, taken from the 1990s heritage listing, says Macquarie built the landing for his own use before December 1817. The updated Heritage NSW listing says the Governor's private landing was on the west side of Bennelong Point (1822 map) and that the Man O'War Steps don't appear on a map until 1843. The listing still gives the construction years as "1810–", with "c.1820" for the original work.
• "Watering Place". The 1973 plaque, as quoted on Wikipedia, says the jetty formed one wall of a boat harbour named "Watering Place". The Naval Historical Society's version of the plaque says the stone jetty itself was named "Watering Place" in Admiralty charts dated 1857.
• When the naval use began. The 1973 plaque says naval use "began early last century", which would be the 1800s, since it was written in 1973. The heritage listing ties it to Fort Macquarie from about 1817.
• The 1909 pinnace. The Naval Historical Society says there were 60 sailors on board, while Wikipedia's Dunmore article says 67. The Society names the range at Long Bay in one article and calls it "the Sydney rifle range" in another.
• "150 years". The 1983 plaque says the Steps served the British and Australian fleets for 150 years. The listing's evidence for the jetty itself starts in 1843, so treat that figure as a round number.

My Earlier Posts

• Fort Macquarie – Eastern Point of Sydney Cove / Western Point of Farm Cove – Bennelong Point
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails – 1788 to Today
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour – From 1788 to Today
• Pinchgut Island – Fort Denison – Sydney Cove
• Government House – Royal Botanic Gardens – Macquarie Street – Sydney
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• New South Wales and the Sudan War – 3 March 1885
• Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788
• The Royal Visit – 1954

Sources

1. Heritage NSW, State Heritage Inventory – "Man O'War Steps", SHR 01432 (updated 2026). https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5051356
2. Wikipedia – "Man O'War Steps" (based on SHR entry 1432; quotes both plaques). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_O%27War_Steps
3. Wikipedia – "Fort Macquarie". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Macquarie
4. Wikipedia – "Greycliffe disaster". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greycliffe_disaster
5. Wikipedia – "Rodney disaster". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_disaster
6. Wikipedia – "Dunmore (ship)". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunmore_(ship)
7. "Ferry Steamer Sunk", The Argus (Melbourne), 4 November 1927, p. 15. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3889383
8. "Reign of Overseas Governors Renewed – Ld. Wakehurst Arrives", Labor Daily (Sydney), 9 April 1937, p. 7. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/237447373
9. Naval Historical Society of Australia – "On the Australia Station". https://navyhistory.au/on-the-australia-station/
10. Naval Historical Society of Australia – "Man O'War Steps Restored – 1973". https://navyhistory.au/man-owar-steps-restored-1973/
11. Naval Historical Society of Australia – "HMAS Encounter (1905–1932)". https://navyhistory.au/hmas-encounter-1905-1932/
12. Monument Australia – "Man O'War Steps". https://www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/conflict/multiple/display/23298-man-o%60war-steps/photo/4
13. Splash Maritime – "The 1927 Tahiti-Greycliffe Disaster". http://www.splashmaritime.com.au/Marops/data/less/Colreg/Casualties/Greycliffe%20Collision.htm
14. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons – catalogue notes for the Sam Hood and Hall photographs (via Wikimedia Commons). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Man_o%27_War_Steps
15. Design and Art Australia Online – Alfred Tischbauer, "Fort Macquarie & Man of War Steps", 1893. https://daao.library.unsw.edu.au/bio/work/work_details/fort-macquarie-man-of-war-steps/
16. Quoted in Source 1: Empire, 28 May 1852. Also cited there: Sydney Mail 26 June 1886, 6 November 1886 and 30 October 1897; SMH 22 June 1887, 23 February 1901, 28 May 1908 and 4 September 1939; Daily Advertiser 26 July 1920; Le Courrier Australien 7 May 1943.

Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788 to the Ferries, the Quarantine Station and the Surf – A History

Manly takes its name from a handful of Aboriginal men who waded out to Governor Phillip's boats in January 1788. Phillip liked their "confidence and manly behaviour" so much that he named the cove after them. Within two years the same beach had seen two kidnappings and the governor speared through the shoulder. After that it went quiet for the best part of sixty years, until a merchant called Henry Gilbert Smith decided it would make Sydney's answer to Brighton. This page follows Manly from the Aboriginal people of Kai'ymay through the 1788 encounters, the Quarantine Station on North Head, Smith's resort, the ferries and the Corso, the fight over daylight bathing and the coming of surfing, right through to today.

Manly Beach in October 2020. Photo by Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Before 1788 – The People of Kai'ymay

The sandy cove on the western side of the Manly peninsula had a name long before Phillip came along. It was Kai'ymay. Grace Karskens, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, explains that nobody knows for sure what the clan who lived there called themselves. It may have been Kai'ymaygal or Gayamaygal, because in the Sydney language "gal" was added to a place name to mean the people of that place. They may also have been the Cameragal, the powerful people of the north shore of the harbour, or closely tied to them. Paul Ashton's Dictionary of Sydney entry on Manly names the original people as the Cannalgal and Kayimai, and the old Manly Council used the name Guringai. I've set out these different names further down, because the sources don't line up.

What the sources do agree on is how these people lived. They were saltwater people who lived on fish, shellfish and seabirds. Karskens writes that the women were especially skilled in the bark canoes, called nowie, fishing with their babies on board and a small fire burning on a clay pad to cook the catch. The sandstone around Manly is still covered with their rock engravings of people, animals, birds and fish, along with grinding grooves where axes were sharpened. Spears and fishgigs were tipped with shell or with stone carried in from inland. A well-marked pathway ran from Kai'ymay north along the peninsula to Pittwater and Broken Bay.

They lived under their own law, and that law mattered at Manly Cove in 1790. Karskens points out that in 2005 the remains of a man were found at nearby Narrabeen who had died more than 3,600 years ago from spear wounds, with the stone barbs still in his spine. It was the first archaeological evidence in Australia of death by spearing.

January 1788 – How Manly Got Its Name

When the First Fleet found Botany Bay short of fresh water and open to the wind, Phillip took three boats north to look at Port Jackson. Somewhere in the north arm of the harbour, a group of about twenty men waded out to meet the boats. Phillip described the meeting in his despatch to Lord Sydney of 15 May 1788:

"The Boats, in passing near a point of land in this Harbour, were seen by a number of Men, and twenty of them waded into the water unarmed, received what was offered them, and examined the Boats with a curiosity, that gave me a much higher opinion of them, than I had formed from the behaviour of those seen in Captain Cooks Voyage. And their confidence, and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place."
– Governor Arthur Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788 (Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1, part 2, p. 129, as transcribed by the Fellowship of First Fleeters)

The old Manly Council put the visit "between 21st and 23rd January, 1788", the same trip on which Sydney Cove was named. It also admitted that the exact spot of that first meeting is uncertain. A Fellowship of First Fleeters study argues that the men waded out at what is now North Harbour Reserve, then a stretch of tidal mud and sand flats. It also points out that Hunter put the name "Manly Cove" there on his signed 1788 chart. That study goes further and says the name was probably not given in the first three days, but had been settled by the time Phillip wrote his despatch in May.

Karskens adds a lovely twist. On a later visit, on 29 January 1788, the officers finally met some of the local women. That was the first meeting with Aboriginal women anywhere in the harbour, and for a while the officers called the place Eve's Cove instead. Neither name was much used at first, and people simply called the area "down the harbour" or "North Arm". Karskens says "Manly Cove" only really caught on after Phillip's story was printed in The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay in November 1789.

Kidnapped at Manly Cove – Arabanoo, Bennelong and Colebee

The friendly start didn't last. The Eora soon stopped talking to the newcomers and kept well away from the camp at Sydney Cove. Two convicts were killed by warriors in May 1788. By the end of the year Phillip still had little idea how many people lived around the harbour or what they intended. Karskens writes that he decided to kidnap a man to force open some kind of communication, and that he chose Manly Cove because he wanted one of the "manly" warriors he had met there.

In late December 1788 Lieutenant George Johnston and Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball went to Manly Cove and seized a man. Karskens describes the kidnapping as "violent and distressing". He wouldn't speak, so the British called him Manly until they learned his real name, Arabanoo. He was kept a prisoner in Sydney. When smallpox broke out among the Eora in April 1789 he nursed his own people in the hospital, caught the disease himself and died on 18 May 1789.

In November 1789 Phillip tried again. On 25 November Lieutenant William Bradley's boat crew grabbed two men on the beach at Manly Cove. They were Colebee, a Cadigal man from the south shore, and Woollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal man from the Parramatta River. As Karskens dryly points out, neither man came from the "manly" clan Phillip had been after. Bradley drew the scene himself, and it's one of the most uncomfortable pictures we have from those first years.

'Taking of Colbee & Benalon. 25 Novr 1789' – William Bradley's own drawing of the kidnapping on the beach at Manly Cove. William Bradley, from his journal A Voyage to New South Wales (c.1802), State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The two men were shackled in a guarded hut near Government House. Colebee cut through the rope tied to his leg irons and escaped on the night of 12 December 1789. Bennelong stayed on, keen to learn all about the British and their language, and he and Phillip became friends who often went walking together. Then, after about seven months, he too slipped away.

Bennelong, as engraved by James Neagle in 1798. He was taken at Manly Cove in 1789, and it was his invitation to the whale feast that brought Phillip back there in 1790. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

September 1790 – The Whale Feast and the Spearing of Phillip

In September 1790 a whale washed up at Manly Cove and a big crowd gathered for the feast. A party including Captain Nepean, Surgeon White and the Aboriginal boy Nanbaree was passing through on its way to walk to Broken Bay, and they spotted Bennelong and Colebee on the beach. Bennelong asked after the governor and sent him a big chunk of whale meat, so Phillip hurried over by boat from South Head.

At first it was a happy reunion. They talked for more than half an hour, gifts changed hands, and Bennelong asked after his old friends in Sydney and drank the King's health with a glass of wine. Then Bennelong moved away and a circle of warriors began to close around the governor. An older man Phillip didn't know, named Willemering, seemed agitated. Watkin Tench thought he was a stranger who hardly knew Bennelong or Colebee. Phillip walked towards him slowly with his hands open, as he usually did, and even threw down his dirk to show he meant no harm. Willemering threw a barbed spear that went right through Phillip's shoulder.

There was chaos. The spear was so long its end dragged on the sand, so Phillip couldn't run for the boat. The men shouted for the muskets, but when they reached the beach only one would fire. In the end Lieutenant Waterhouse broke off the tough shaft, and they bundled the governor into the boat and rowed for Sydney. The surgeons pulled the spear out and found the wound wasn't deadly, and Karskens says Phillip was up and about only ten days later.

The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove in September 1790, painted at the time by the unknown artist known as the Port Jackson Painter (detail). Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Historians have argued about what happened that day ever since. Several now suggest it was a payback ritual, with the governor made to answer under Aboriginal law for what his people had done, including the kidnappings on that very beach. What's remarkable is that Phillip refused to hit back, which annoyed his officers no end. Peace talks followed instead, and in October Colebee met Phillip to make peace and was given a metal hatchet. By November 1790 Bennelong had come into Sydney with his wife Barangaroo and their friends. Karskens calls it the first reconciliation between Aboriginal people and white settlers in Australian history.

Today the cove remembers it only in part. A stone monument put up in 1928 marks the arrival of "the first white man" in 1788. A second plaque corrects the first and admits Phillip didn't actually land in Manly Cove on that first trip. A third, added in 2006, records the spearing by Willemering. Karskens notes that apart from Willemering, none of them mentions the Aboriginal people at all.

The Early Grants and the Quiet Years

For decades after 1790 Manly was a long way from anywhere. The old Manly Council described the road trip from Sydney as about 70 miles, going round through Parramatta, Hunters Hill, Lane Cove and Narrabeen. The only other way in was by punt across the harbour at North Sydney and again at The Spit. The Dictionary of Sydney says a ferry was crossing at The Spit from 1834.

The first land grants in Manly, according to the conservation history of St Patrick's Estate, went to Richard Cheers (100 acres) and Gilbert Baker (30 acres) on 1 January 1810. The western boundary of Cheers' grant ended up as the line separating North Head from what became Manly. More land changed hands later. John Crane Parker was granted land in 1837 and John Thompson in 1842, and those were the two big parcels Henry Gilbert Smith bought in 1853.

The Aboriginal people of the area didn't simply vanish, whatever older histories say. Karskens notes reports of camps around Manly from the 1850s until at least 1881. That year a number of Aboriginal people from Manly were persuaded by the Reverend Daniel Matthews to join his mission at Maloga. Ashton records a sadder scene from 1868. The Sydney Morning Herald of 13 March reported a "troupe" of Aboriginal people being brought to the ocean beach to put on "war games" for the day-trippers.

The Quarantine Station at North Head

North Head became Sydney's front door for disease. Its isolation was put to use in 1828, when the Bussorah Merchant became the first ship quarantined at Spring Cove. On 14 August 1832 Governor Darling's Quarantine Act set aside the whole of North Head for quarantine, mainly out of fear of the cholera then sweeping Europe. At first the sick were kept on board their own ships. That changed after the long and costly detention of the Lady Macnaghten in 1837, when the owners claimed heavy compensation for the delay. From then on the sick were brought ashore while the ship was cleaned, and permanent buildings started going up on the headland.

Some of the worst moments came with the big immigrant ships. In 1853 the Beejapore arrived with more than a thousand people aboard, when the station could hold about 150. Fifty-five had died on the voyage, and another sixty-two died at North Head of measles, scarlet fever and typhus. Most of the passengers had to live in tents. An old hulk called the Harmony was moored in Spring Cove as a hospital ship.

From 1881 to 1894 the smallpox hospital ship Faraway lay off the station. After the poor results of the 1881–82 smallpox epidemic it was refitted in 1884 at Mort's Dock as a proper floating hospital with 100 beds. The heritage records say the procedures worked out at North Head became the basis for handling Sydney's smallpox, plague and influenza outbreaks right up to the 1920s. When the soldiers came home from the Great War in 1919 there were fears of Spanish flu, and men from the Argyllshire were landed at North Head. The site wasn't ready and they had to clear it themselves, reportedly killing 60 snakes on the first night. On 11 February 1919, 900 soldiers marched out and were allowed to see out their quarantine at the Sydney Cricket Ground instead.

The ferry Kookooburra at the Quarantine Station wharf in 1930, bringing ashore passengers off a liner that had reported disease aboard. Unknown photographer, 1930, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The station was laid out by class and by race. First, second and third class passengers had separate compounds, with fences in between, and the Asian quarters were set apart below the third class. There were three cemeteries over the years. The first, used from about 1837 to 1853, sat at the junction of the Wharf and Hospital roads, in full view of everyone, and nothing of it can be seen now. The second, from 1853 to 1881, lay east of the third-class area, and a few headstones still stand there. The third, from 1881 to 1925, is on what became Commonwealth land at the School of Artillery, with 241 burials registered. All told, between 1828 and 1984 at least 580 vessels were quarantined there. More than 13,000 people passed through, and an estimated 572 of them died and were buried on the headland.

People in quarantine also left their mark in the rock. Along the escarpment by the wharf, and at the rock formation called Old Man's Hat, there are hundreds of carved inscriptions dating from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s. Some were cut by trained stonemasons and are beautifully done.

One of the many inscriptions people in quarantine carved into the sandstone near the wharf at North Head. Photo by Sardaka, 2007, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Commonwealth took over quarantine after 1909. Better medicine and vaccination slowly made the place unnecessary. Sydney took in nearly 700,000 assisted immigrants between 1946 and 1980, yet only four ships were quarantined in that time. The station finally closed on 29 February 1984. North Head is now part of Sydney Harbour National Park, and the whole 277-hectare headland was added to the National Heritage List on 12 May 2006. The old station is now Q Station, with a hotel, conference centre and restaurant, so you can stay the night where the immigrants once waited. Percy Nolan, a Manly alderman and mayor, had pushed for years to have the station moved out and the land opened to the public, and he was proved right in the end.

Henry Gilbert Smith and the "Brighton of the South Pacific"

The man who turned Manly from a few farms into a resort was Henry Gilbert Smith. He was born in Northamptonshire in 1802 and reached Hobart in August 1827, then came on to Sydney. There he set up the importing firm of Smith Bros in Macquarie Place with his brother Thomas and became a director of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. He sat in the Legislative Council from 1856 to 1858. The council's history says that when he arrived at Manly in 1853, only a handful of people lived there, scratching a living from fishing and farming. Ashton puts the population in the mid-1850s at about 70.

Henry Gilbert Smith (1802–1886), the merchant who set out to turn Manly into a seaside resort in the 1850s. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In June 1855 Smith wrote to his brother in England about how much he loved it:

"the amusement I derive in making my improvements in Manly is, no doubt, the cause of my greater enjoyment, in fact I never feel a dull day while there. I should long ere this have been with you if it had not been for this hobby of mine, in thinking I am doing good in forming a village or watering place for the inhabitant of Sydney"
– Henry Gilbert Smith, June 1855, as quoted by Manly Council

Smith wanted to sell land, and to sell land he needed people to come and look at it. In 1853 he chartered the wooden paddle steamer Brothers to bring visitors across. He built a wharf on the harbour side, which Wikipedia's Manly article and the historian Lumby date to October 1855, while the wharf's heritage history gives 1856. Across the sandy neck to the ocean he laid out a promenade named after the Via del Corso in Rome. He built cottages, hotels, a church, a school, pleasure grounds he called Vauxhall Gardens, baths, a camera obscura and a maze. In 1856 he put up a stone kangaroo on the cliff looking out to sea. He also had a lot to do with planting the first Norfolk Island pines along the ocean front. They are still the trees everyone pictures when they think of Manly.

His own home was Fairlight House, designed by Edmund Blacket and built by Alexander Dean from local sandstone. The Northern Beaches Council library says it was finished in May 1860, with eight bedrooms, a bowling green and a tennis court. Smith named it after the village in Sussex where his first wife, Eleanor Whistler, had once lived. His second wife, Anne Margaret, died of tuberculosis there in 1866, and Smith went back to England and never returned. He died at Brighton in England on 1 April 1886. The house was demolished in 1939, but the suburb of Fairlight still carries its name.

Fairlight House, Smith's sandstone home above the harbour, photographed around 1930. It was demolished in 1939. Unknown photographer, c.1930, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ashton says Smith was the first of many to sell Manly as "the Brighton of the South Pacific". When locals met on 5 January 1876 to petition for a municipality, the name they first asked for was "Brighton", and it was soon changed to "Manly". The Municipal District of Manly was incorporated on 6 January 1877. Its first meeting was on 15 February 1877, when Thomas Rowe was elected the first mayor. Manly stayed the only council on the Northern Beaches until Warringah Shire was proclaimed in 1906, and in 2016 it was merged into the new Northern Beaches Council.

The Manly Ferries

You can't tell the Manly story without the ferries. After the Brothers, the paddle steamer Emu was running two trips a weekday by 1855, followed by the Black Swan and Pelican. In 1859 the Phantom arrived as the first double-ended ferry, and that design has been standard on the Manly run ever since. The Port Jackson Steamboat Company was formed in 1876 and became the Port Jackson & Manly Steamship Company in 1881. In 1883 it brought out the Brighton, the biggest paddle steamer ever to work the harbour.

The big paddle steamer Brighton at Manly Wharf around 1885, with St Patrick's College going up on the hill behind. Henry King, c.1885, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fares caused a fight in the 1890s. The single fare was a shilling, and when the company announced a rise in 1892 some Manly residents started a rival co-operative charging sixpence. The two then undercut each other down to threepence until neither could make money, and in 1896 they merged. Naval architect Walter Reeks then designed the Manly (II) of 1896 and the steel Kuring-gai of 1901, and those set the pattern for every Manly ferry after them. Then came the Binngarra, Burra Bra, Bellubera, Balgowlah, Barrenjoey and Baragoola, followed by the Scottish-built Curl Curl and Dee Why in 1928 and the South Steyne in 1938.

The ferries even gave Australia its first film. In 1896 Marius Sestier filmed Passengers Alighting from Ferry Brighton at Manly, and it was shown at the Salon Lumière in Pitt Street from 27 October 1896. Sadly no copy is known to survive.

The company was sold to Brambles in 1972, and the State Government took over the service in December 1974. Hydrofoils ran from the mid-1960s, and JetCats replaced them around 1990–91 until they were withdrawn at the end of 2008. The Freshwater-class ferries came in during the 1980s. The trip to Circular Quay is seven nautical miles, and the ferry is now route F1.

"Seven miles from Sydney, a thousand miles from care"

The old slogan is still the best line ever written about Manly. Both the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia credit it to the steamship company that ran the ferries, though they give the company's name in different word orders. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was used "since the 1920s". I couldn't find an earlier date in any source I checked, so I'm leaving it at that. It was clearly famous enough that Pauline Curby used it as the title of her 2001 history of Manly.

The harbour side of Manly some time between 1885 and 1895. Kerry & Co., State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Corso, the Pines and the Seaside Town

The track between the cove and the ocean beach was old long before Smith. Aboriginal people had worn it over thousands of years. Smith's boardwalk went in in 1855, with a hotel at each end. The Pier Hotel faced the wharf, and the Steyne Hotel was designed by Blacket in 1858–59. By 1861 there were three hotels and a temperance hotel. St Matthew's Church went up halfway along the Corso in 1865, partly paid for by Smith. In the 1880s most families in business lived above their shops on the Corso, and there was an aquarium and "Sovereign" Smith's Gallery of Amusements.

The town grew fast once the steamers got going. Ashton gives the population as 500 in 1871, 1,327 in 1881, 3,236 in 1891 and 5,035 in 1901. For most of the 1800s, though, Manly was still mainly a place for the well-off and the people who worked for them. Residents included the politician W.B. Dalley, the timber merchant W.H. Rolfe and the shipowner William Spier. Bits of Dalley's "Castle" can still be seen in the sandstone walls on Sydney Road opposite Ivanhoe Park.

Arthur Streeton's Manly Beach, painted in 1895. Arthur Streeton, 1895, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There's another Manly story linked to my Sudan page. In March 1885, as the New South Wales Contingent was about to sail, Premier William Bede Dalley received a cheque for £25 for the Patriotic Fund, "with my best wishes from a little boy at Manly". The "Little Boy from Manly" became a symbol of patriotism to some. To the war's opponents, helped along by Livingston Hopkins' cartoons in The Bulletin, he stood for mindless chauvinism.

Trams on the Corso around 1905. Star Photo Co., State Library of NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

In the 1920s a wave of flats and red-brick bungalows washed over the old Victorian village. Ashton counts about 400 flats built in Manly in that decade, the sixth highest of any Sydney municipality, and about the same number again in the 1930s. Ashton says the Spit Bridge opened in 1924, replacing the old punt (Wikipedia's ferry history says 1928), and government buses started in 1932. The Rialto Theatre opened on the Corso on 23 July 1923. St Matthew's was pulled down in 1929 to widen the Corso, and the new St Matthew's opened on 20 September 1930. The new Manly Town Hall followed in 1937.

St Patrick's College on the Hill

On the hill towards North Head, above the town, stands one of Sydney's great Gothic buildings. The land came from a grant to the Catholic Church, partly carved out of the Quarantine Grounds. The deed wasn't issued until 1879, and the grant came with the condition that it be used for education. Archbishop Roger Vaughan and Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran were behind it. The architects were Joseph Sheerin and John Hennessy, and building started in 1885. The seminary opened on 23 January 1889. By its centenary in 1989, 1,714 men had been ordained after training there, including four cardinals and 41 bishops. The poet "John O'Brien", Father Patrick Hartigan, studied there, and so did Thomas Keneally, who later set two novels in a version of it.

St Patrick's College on the hill above Manly, from a Broadhurst postcard of the early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The seminary moved to Strathfield and closed at Manly in November 1995. Since 1996 the buildings have housed the International College of Management, Sydney. Movie fans might know it as Jay Gatsby's mansion in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film, with the palm trees digitally removed to make it look like Long Island. It went on the State Heritage Register on 21 January 2011.

Daylight Bathing, William Gocher and the Surf Clubs

Up until the early 1900s you couldn't legally swim in the sea at Manly in the middle of the day. Local regulations banned sea bathing in daylight hours, mainly over decency, because there were no change sheds and proper costumes were rare. The man usually given credit for ending the ban is William Henry Gocher. He was an English-born painter and a former writer for John Norton's Truth, and he moved to Manly in 1900 and started a small paper, the Manly and North Sydney News.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography tells the story like this. In October 1902, after announcing it in his paper, Gocher swam at midday in a neck-to-knee costume. The authorities ignored him twice, so he complained about their lack of zeal. The third time he was escorted from the water and interviewed by police, who didn't charge him. In November 1903 Manly Council resolved to allow all-day bathing as long as a neck-to-knee costume was worn. Gocher claimed the win, and in 1907 friends gave him a gold watch and a purse of fifty sovereigns. A 2024 newspaper piece puts the swim on 2 October 1902. The ADB only says October 1902, so I've stuck with that.

Now for the other side, and it's a good one. In 2015 Manly's own historian, Pauline Curby, wrote that Gocher's role is "little more than an urban myth". She found no contemporary record of the stunt at all. The story first appeared in the Daily Telegraph in January 1907, five or six years later, and in an article Gocher wrote himself in 1910. According to Curby, daylight bathing really became legal after an incident at Bondi on 13 November 1902. Two police turned up taking names, and the Inspector-General of Police, Edmund Fosbery, then said publicly that nobody decently dressed would be stopped. Randwick was the first council to allow daylight bathing, in December 1902. Curby says Manly followed in November 1903 for three reasons. One was decency, another was surf safety with a council surf boat, and the third was the renewal of the lease on the harbour baths, which ran out on 1 October 1903. My page gives you both versions. You can make up your own mind.

Surf bathing at Manly around 1905, only a couple of years after the council allowed all-day bathing. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Once everyone could swim, people started drowning. Wikipedia says 17 people drowned at Manly in the first official bathing season of 1903. Somebody had to watch the water, but the sources don't agree on when Manly's surf club started. Manly Council's history says a surf club formed "a year later", which would be about 1904. Curby says the Manly Surf Club was formed in August 1907. The Manly Life Saving Club's own Wikipedia page says it was founded in 1911, with Mayor James Bonner as first president. Manly, Bondi and Bronte all claim to be the first, and I'm not going to settle that one here. The Dictionary of Sydney adds that freer bathing laws in 1903 and surfboard riding from 1915 helped make Manly a beach town after the Great War.

Duke Kahanamoku at Freshwater, 1914

Just north of Manly Beach, past Queenscliff, is Freshwater. Wikipedia says the Hawaiian Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku gave his famous surfboard demonstration there on 24 December 1914, and it's widely seen as a turning point for surfing in Australia. He shaped the board himself from a piece of pine bought at a local hardware store, and the Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club still has it. A statue of him by Barry Donohoo has stood on the headland at Freshwater since 1994. Strictly speaking, Freshwater is its own beach and suburb rather than Manly itself. Since 2012, though, the four kilometres from Freshwater to Shelly Beach have been the Manly–Freshwater World Surfing Reserve, so the two are tied together. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1915 for the start of board riding, while Wikipedia dates Duke's ride to Christmas Eve 1914.

The board Duke Kahanamoku shaped and rode at Freshwater in 1914, kept today by the Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club. Photo by Manon1998, 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Manly Wharf and the Fun Pier

The wharf you step off today is mostly a 1940s building. After years of local pressure, the Maritime Services Board decided in 1938 to build an "imposing" new wharf, and a fire there in 1939 hurried things along. The young modernist architect Arthur Baldwinson designed it, with curved and square shapes, a bay front facing the water and a clock tower with fins. The entrance was first meant as a tram terminus and turning area. It was finished in 1941.

Before the Spit Bridge opened, old passenger ferries carried cargo to Manly. When the cargo service closed, the east wharf was turned into an amusement park, the Manly Fun Pier. It shut in 1989, and both wharf buildings were redone in 1990. The wharf went on the State Heritage Register on 18 April 2000.

The Manly Art Gallery and the Manly Daily

Manly has had its own gallery longer than almost anywhere. A committee was formed in 1924, including the painter Antonio Dattilo Rubbo and Percy Nolan, and at first the pictures hung in the Town Hall. In 1930 the collection moved into the old outdoor concert pavilion on West Esplanade, opened in 1922. Its stage arch was closed in, and the Chief Justice of New South Wales opened it. It's described as the oldest metropolitan purpose-built regional gallery in New South Wales. Since 1982 it has also been a museum of beach culture and local history, and its collection now runs to more than 6,000 items, including 130 works by Rubbo.

Inside the Manly Art Gallery and Museum on West Esplanade, opened in 1930 in the old concert pavilion. Photo by Dicklyon, 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The local paper started small too. Edward Lincoln put out the first two-page Manly Daily on 28 July 1906. It missed only one issue in its history, on 24 February 1966, when humidity got into the switchboard and knocked out the power, so a double edition came out the next day. It stopped printing in April 2020 and has been online only since May 2020.

Decline and Comeback

After the Second World War Manly lost some of its shine. Ashton writes that old, worn facilities and a changing tourist market meant far fewer people stayed overnight, and things were bad by the early 1960s. Cars and backyard pools didn't help. Warringah Mall opened at Brookvale in 1963 and drained the shops on the Corso, and big names like Woolworths, Campbell's and H.G. Palmer's closed one after another. In 1973 residents on Eastern Hill asked the Builders Labourers Federation to put a green ban on two big tower blocks planned by L.J. Hooker, and the union agreed. From the mid-1970s a burst of local activity, including a successful fight to save the ferry services, turned Manly around.

Manly Today

Manly now sits about 17 kilometres north-east of the city and is one of the centres of Northern Beaches Council. At the 2021 census it had 16,296 residents. The Corso was partly turned back into a pedestrian street in the 1970s and had an $8 million facelift from 2007. The ferries still pour day-trippers onto the wharf, and the Norfolk pines still line the beach. The Manly International Jazz Festival takes over the October long weekend, and the beach from Queenscliff to Shelly Beach is protected as a World Surfing Reserve. Across the water on North Head, you can now stay the night at Q Station, where the immigrants once waited out their fevers. Down at the cove, the plaque for Willemering's spear reminds anyone who stops to read it that the whole story started on that beach.

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Kai'ymay is home to saltwater people (named variously as Kai'ymaygal/Gayamaygal, Cameragal, Cannalgal and Kayimai, or Guringai).
• 21–23 January 1788 – Phillip explores Port Jackson, and about twenty men wade out to his boats in the north arm.
• 29 January 1788 – First meeting with Aboriginal women at the cove, briefly called "Eve's Cove".
• 15 May 1788 – Phillip's despatch to Lord Sydney explains the name "Manly Cove".
• Late December 1788 – Arabanoo kidnapped at Manly Cove. He dies of smallpox on 18 May 1789.
• November 1789 – Phillip's voyage published, and the name "Manly Cove" catches on.
• 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colebee seized at Manly Cove. Colebee escapes on 12 December.
• 7 September 1790 – Phillip speared by Willemering at the whale feast.
• 1 January 1810 – First Manly land grants to Richard Cheers and Gilbert Baker.
• 1828 – Bussorah Merchant quarantined at Spring Cove.
• 14 August 1832 – Quarantine Act sets aside North Head.
• 1837 – Lady Macnaghten detention. The sick start being landed, and the first cemetery is in use.
• 1853 – Henry Gilbert Smith buys land and charters the Brothers. The Beejapore is quarantined.
• 1855–56 – Smith's wharf and the Corso boardwalk.
• 1856 – The stone kangaroo is put up.
• 1859 – Phantom, the first double-ended Manly ferry.
• May 1860 – Fairlight House finished.
• 6 January 1877 – Municipal District of Manly incorporated.
• 1881–1894 – Smallpox hospital ship Faraway off North Head.
• 1883 – Paddle steamer Brighton enters service.
• March 1885 – The "Little Boy from Manly" letter.
• 23 January 1889 – St Patrick's College opens.
• 27 October 1896 – Sestier's ferry film shown, the first film made in Australia.
• October 1902 – Gocher's midday swim, as told by the ADB.
• November 1903 – Manly Council allows all-day bathing in neck-to-knee costumes.
• 28 July 1906 – First Manly Daily.
• 1907 / 1911 – Manly surf club founding dates (sources differ).
• 24 December 1914 – Duke Kahanamoku surfs at Freshwater.
• 11 February 1919 – 900 soldiers march out of North Head quarantine.
• 1924 – Spit Bridge opens.
• 1928 – Phillip monument erected at Manly Cove.
• 1930 – Manly Art Gallery opens on West Esplanade.
• 1941 – New Manly Wharf completed.
• 1974 – Government takes over the Manly ferries.
• 29 February 1984 – Quarantine Station closes.
• 1989 – Manly Fun Pier closes.
• November 1995 – Seminary leaves Manly.
• 12 May 2006 – North Head added to the National Heritage List.
• 10 March 2012 – Manly–Freshwater World Surfing Reserve declared.
• 12 May 2016 – Manly Council merged into Northern Beaches Council.

Where the Sources Disagree

• The people's name. Karskens (Dictionary of Sydney, 2015) says the clan name isn't known for certain. It may have been Kai'ymaygal or Gayamaygal, or the people may have been Cameragal. Ashton (Dictionary of Sydney, 2008) and the old Manly Council name the Cannalgal and Kayimai. The council also used Guringai, and Wikipedia uses "Kay-ye-my clan" of the "Gayemaygal".
• When the name was given. Manly Council says between 21 and 23 January 1788. A Fellowship of First Fleeters study argues the name wasn't given in the first three days but was settled by 15 May 1788. Karskens says it only came into common use after November 1789.
• William Gocher. The ADB credits Gocher's October 1902 swim with leading to all-day bathing at Manly. Pauline Curby (Honest History, 2015) says there's no contemporary record of the swim and calls the story "little more than an urban myth". She puts the real change down to the Bondi incident of November 1902, Randwick's by-law and Manly's baths lease. A 2024 newspaper piece gives the date as 2 October 1902, which the ADB doesn't.
• The first Manly surf club. Manly Council says "a year later" (about 1904), Curby says August 1907, and Wikipedia's Manly Life Saving Club page says 1911.
• The first wharf. Wikipedia's Manly article says it was finished in October 1855, and Lumby (2016) also says 1855. The heritage-based wharf history says 1856.
• The slogan. The Dictionary of Sydney says "Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care" was used "since the 1920s" and calls the company the "Manly and Port Jackson Steamship Company". Wikipedia credits the "Port Jackson & Manly Steamship Company" and gives no date.
• Board riding. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1915 for the introduction of surfboard riding, while Wikipedia dates Duke Kahanamoku's Freshwater demonstration to 24 December 1914.
• The Spit Bridge. Ashton (Dictionary of Sydney) says the Spit Bridge was built in 1924, and the Dictionary of Sydney's Spit entry agrees. Wikipedia's ferry and wharf pages refer to "the first Spit Bridge in 1928".
• Smith's death. The ADB and Wikipedia's text say 1 April 1886. Wikipedia's infobox gives 4 January 1886, so I've gone with the ADB.

My Earlier Posts

• Entrance to Sydney Harbour – North Head
• Vaucluse from North Head
• Woolaware Bennelong
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East – Australia's First Stock
• Captain Arthur Phillip & The First Fleet Arriving At Botany Bay – January 1788
• New South Wales and the Sudan War – 3 March 1885
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – From 1788 to Today
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point
• Taronga Zoo – From Moore Park to Bradleys Head
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• The Great Sydney Coastal Walk
• Bondi Beach and Surrounds – Pictures

Sources

1. Grace Karskens, "Manly Cove, Kai'ymay", Dictionary of Sydney, 2015 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/manly_cove_kaiymay
2. Paul Ashton, "Manly", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/manly
3. "Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care", Dictionary of Sydney (artefact) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/artefact/seven_miles_from_sydney_and_a_thousand_miles_from_care
4. Dictionary of Sydney, "Smith, Henry Gilbert" (person) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/smith_henry_gilbert
5. Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1 pt 2, p. 129, quoted in "Manly, Warringah and Pittwater: First Fleet Records of Events, 1788–1790", Fellowship of First Fleeters – https://fellowshipfirstfleeters.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/phillips-first-three-days-champion.pdf
6. The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (London: Stockdale, 1789), p. 58 – https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Voyage_of_Governor_Phillip_to_Botany.html?id=0iAQAAAAYAAJ
7. Manly Council, "Manly Heritage & History" (archived council site) – https://www.manlycouncil.info/council/about-manly/manly-heritage--history/index.html
8. Bruce Mitchell, "Gocher, William Henry (1856–1921)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gocher-william-henry-6408
9. "Smith, Henry Gilbert (1802–1886)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-henry-gilbert-2671
10. State Library of NSW, NSW Parliamentary Papers, "Smith, Henry Gilbert, 1802–1886" – https://parlpapers.sl.nsw.gov.au/parliamentarians/smith-henry-gilbert-17400/
11. Pauline Curby, "An urban myth or surfing history?", Honest History, 17 June 2015 – https://honesthistory.net.au/wp/urban-myth-or-surfing-history/
12. "When daylight swimming was illegal at Manly beach", Brisbane Times / Fairfax, May 2024 – https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/when-daylight-swimming-was-illegal-at-manly-beach-20240503-p5fomp.html
13. Northern Beaches Council Library, "How Fairlight got its name", 28 June 2021 – https://www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/library/your-library/news/how-fairlight-got-its-name
14. Wikipedia, "Manly, New South Wales" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly,_New_South_Wales
15. Wikipedia, "North Head Quarantine Station" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station
16. Wikipedia, "Manly Wharf" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Wharf
17. Wikipedia, "Manly ferry services" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_ferry
18. Wikipedia, "The Corso, Manly" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corso,_Manly
19. Wikipedia, "St Patrick's Seminary, Manly" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing and the Tanner & Associates Conservation Management Plan) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Patrick%27s_Seminary,_Manly
20. Wikipedia, "Manly Council" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Council
21. Wikipedia, "Henry Gilbert Smith" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gilbert_Smith
22. Wikipedia, "William Gocher" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gocher
23. Wikipedia, "Bennelong" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennelong
24. Wikipedia, "Colebee" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebee
25. Wikipedia, "Arabanoo" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabanoo
26. Wikipedia, "Duke Kahanamoku" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kahanamoku
27. Wikipedia, "Manly Life Saving Club" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Life_Saving_Club
28. Wikipedia, "Manly Art Gallery and Museum" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Art_Gallery_and_Museum
29. Wikipedia, "Manly Daily" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Daily
30. Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with each picture's credit and licence given in its caption.

New South Wales and the Sudan War – 3 March 1885 – The Contingent That Sailed from Circular Quay

 

On Tuesday 3 March 1885 the biggest crowd Sydney had ever seen packed the streets from Victoria Barracks down to Circular Quay to watch about 750 local men march off to a war in the Sudan. They sailed that afternoon on the troopships Iberia and Australasian, landed at Suakin on the Red Sea on 29 March, and were home again by June. They marched once to Tamai, came under a bit of fire, laid railway line across the desert, and some rode camels. Three men were wounded and a handful died of disease. It sounds small, and in military terms it was. But it was the first time an Australian colony raised its own contingent of soldiers, paid for it, and sent it overseas to fight in one of Britain's wars. People argued about it then and they still argue about what it meant.

Composite photographic portrait of the New South Wales Contingent, Soudan Campaign, 1885. A copy was presented to Queen Victoria in 1886. Barcroft Capel Boake, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I've always been drawn to this one because so much of it happened on streets I walk all the time – Oxford Street, the Barracks at Paddington, George Street and the old wharves where the Opera House forecourt is now. So here's the whole story as best I can piece it together from the War Memorial, the old newspapers and the history books.

Was It Really "Australia's First War"?

It's often called that, and you can see why. The Dictionary of Sydney describes it as "the first time that Australian soldiers had been sent to fight overseas", and the War Memorial calls it the first time "soldiers in the pay of a self-governing Australian colony were to fight in an imperial war". The Army's first battle honour, "Suakin 1885", comes from it.

But it's worth being a bit careful with the word "first". Back in April 1860 the colony of Victoria sent its warship HMCS Victoria to the First Taranaki War in New Zealand. The War Memorial says its crew became "the first colonial military unit committed to active service overseas", and the Navy now counts "New Zealand 1860–61" as its earliest battle honour. Then in 1863 and 1864 around 2,500 men from the Australian colonies signed up for New Zealand's military settler regiments in the Waikato and Taranaki fighting. Those men were recruited by New Zealand though, not sent by an Australian government.

So the fair way to put it is this: the Sudan contingent was the first body of soldiers raised by an Australian colony and sent overseas to fight. That's how Wikipedia and the War Memorial frame it, and that's how I'll frame it too.

The Background – Gordon, the Mahdi and Khartoum

'The Mahdi. Mahomet Achmet', as he was drawn for British readers in 1886. From The War in Egypt and the Soudan (Blackie & Son, 1886), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the early 1880s the Sudan was ruled by Egypt, and Egypt was more or less run by Britain. A Muslim cleric named Muhammad Ahmad began preaching renewal of the faith and freedom from the Egyptians, proclaimed himself the Mahdi – the promised redeemer – and by 1881 was in open revolt. In 1883 an Egyptian army under a retired British officer, William Hicks, went out to crush him and was wiped out near El Obeid, with only about 500 surviving.

The British decided the Sudan should be abandoned and sent General Charles Gordon to Khartoum to organise the evacuation of the Egyptian garrisons. The War Memorial puts it bluntly: Gordon disregarded his instructions, tried to hold on and beat the Mahdi instead, and ended up besieged in Khartoum. A relief force left Cairo in September 1884 and fought its way up the Nile, but it was too late. Khartoum fell on 26 January 1885 after a siege of 313 days, and Gordon was killed.

General Charles Gordon, whose death at Khartoum set the whole thing off. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The British also sent a second force, under Lieutenant-General Sir Gerald Graham, to Suakin, the Sudan's port on the Red Sea, in March 1885. That's the force our men ended up joining.

The News Reaches Sydney

Gordon was a hero right across the Empire, and when the telegraph brought word of his death to New South Wales in February 1885 there was a lot of anger at Gladstone's Liberal government in London for not acting in time. The War Memorial's records say the first report reached Sydney on 11 February.

The Premier, Stuart, was ill, so the man in charge was the Attorney-General, William Bede Dalley, who had been acting Colonial Secretary since 7 October 1884. Dalley, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, "electrified Australia" on 12 February 1885 by offering Britain a New South Wales contingent for the Sudan. The ADB entry on Colonel Richardson says the offer was partly at the instigation of Sir Edward Strickland.

The Hon. William Bede Dalley, the acting Colonial Secretary who made the offer. From The War in Egypt and the Soudan (Blackie & Son, 1886), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The War Memorial says the offer came with news of Canada's own offer of troops, and that to make it more attractive New South Wales offered to pay the contingent's expenses. What was offered was two batteries of artillery with ten 16-pounder guns, fully horsed, and an infantry battalion of 500 men. London accepted but asked that the artillery be cut to one battery of six guns, and insisted the men serve under British command. Similar offers from Victoria, Queensland and South Australia were turned down.

Dalley later explained his aim was "to testify to the readiness of the Australian colonies to give instant and practical help to the Empire". It was done, as one modern group puts it, "without apparent parliamentary approval or debate". Parliament approved it, overwhelmingly, in April, after the men had already sailed.

The Patriotic Fund and the People Who Said No

A Patriotic Fund was set up, and wealthy people put money in. But not everyone was cheering. The War Memorial notes that meetings called to launch the fund and back the government were poorly attended in many working-class suburbs, and many of those who did turn up voted against the fund. In some country centres there was a real anti-war response, and miners in rural districts were said to be in "fierce opposition".

The loudest critic in politics was Sir Henry Parkes. He wrote a fiery letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on 19 February 1885 attacking Dalley's decision. The Daily Telegraph didn't think much of it. On 25 February it called the letter "bad in temper, bad in argument, and bad in all its conclusions", and complained that Parkes had made "newspaper editors, the Chief Justice, the Speaker, the wealthy contributors to the Patriotic Fund, and the Government" all objects of abuse. Parkes called the whole business a "military craze", whipped up, he said, by the press, the government and assorted adventurers.

Then there was the Bulletin. The nationalist weekly, as the War Memorial puts it, "ridiculed the contingent both before and after its return".

The Contingent

Colonel John Soame Richardson, C.B., commander of the Australian contingent in the Eastern Soudan, 1885. From The War in Egypt and the Soudan (Blackie & Son, 1886), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The man put in charge was Colonel John Soame Richardson, the commandant of the colony's forces. He was born in Norfolk in 1836, schooled at Rugby, and had served at the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimea. He'd come out to Australia with the 12th Regiment in 1858 and, interestingly, had served in the Taranaki and Waikato campaigns in New Zealand himself before settling in New South Wales. He'd been commandant since 1871.

According to the War Memorial, the establishment agreed on was:

• an infantry battalion of 522 men and 24 officers
• one battery of six field guns with 212 gunners and 200 horses
• a 16-member band
• a Field Ambulance of 4 medical officers, 34 other ranks, seven wagons and 26 horses

The whole thing was raised and embarked in just 14 days after the agreement with Britain. Most of the men were armed with Alexander Henry rifles and carbines, and the ambulance men carried Winchester carbines. They left in scarlet jackets and white trousers.

The War Memorial has a photograph of the infantry volunteers gathered at Victoria Barracks, Paddington, just before they left, and the Dictionary of Sydney holds a picture titled "Preparing for the Sudan, Paddington Barracks 1885".

Tuesday 3 March 1885 – The Farewell

Departure of the New South Wales Contingent from Sydney for the Sudan, a hand-coloured lithograph adapted from a photograph of the troops on the march. Breckmann Brothers, London, c.1885, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The government declared a holiday, and the War Memorial says the send-off was described as the most festive occasion in the colony's history. The contingent gathered at Victoria Barracks that morning, said goodbye to their families and marched off just before noon for Circular Quay.

The Evening News of 4 March 1885 gives a terrific picture of the day. Under the headings "Crowds on the Circular Quay. A Terrible Crush. Pathetic Farewells", it said:

"It is needless to say, never before has so large a crowd been gathered together in Sydney as assembled on Tuesday to watch the procession of the Australian contingent from their barracks to the place of embarkation on board the transport vessels at the Circular Quay."

The paper said estimates of the crowd ran between 200,000, 300,000 and 400,000, and reckoned it was probably "somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000". At the Quay alone, it said, there were "not less than 100,000". Vehicles were banned from the area soon after midday. People climbed onto parapets, ledges "and even chimney pots". Ship owners charged people to stand on their decks. Nearly 1,000 people crowded onto the clipper Scottish Chief near the North Shore ferry landing, hanging off the rigging right up to the main royal. Mr Richard A. Watson of the Paragon Hotel and Muir's Hotel let spectators onto their roofs and balconies.

'Well done N.S.W. God speed' – the departure of the New South Wales Contingent from Circular Quay, 3 March 1885. Carl Leibinger, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The procession was led by mounted police and the Sydney Light Horse, then the Governor, Lord Loftus, in an open carriage with Dalley at his side. The Evening News says Dalley raised his hat to cries of "Well done, Dalley". Behind came the Cabinet, Major-General Scratchley, the naval officers, the Naval Brigade with their Gatling guns, the Permanent Force, and finally the contingent itself. When the men appeared there was "a loud burst of cheering, which was renewed again and again". Men waved hats and handkerchiefs, and some ladies even took off their bonnets and waved those.

Charles Bayliss photographed the line of troops marching onto Circular Quay under a banner wishing them "God Speed". The white-hulled Iberia is docked behind the building on the quay in his photograph, and the stern of the Australasian is just visible at the edge.

The contingent marching down to the troopships Iberia and Australasian at Circular Quay, 3 March 1885. Henry King, Powerhouse Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dictionary of Sydney also has a picture of Larry Foley's White Horse Hotel in George Street "with the Sudan regiment passing by".

Suakin and the Guards Brigade

Suakin and its defences, January 1885 – the War Office map showing the redoubts, wells and railway. Great Britain War Office Intelligence Division, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The two troopships anchored at Suakin on 29 March 1885. There the men were issued new khaki field uniforms in place of the scarlet and white, and their white helmets and webbing were stained brown to suit the country. They were attached to a brigade of Scots, Grenadier and Coldstream Guards – the ADB calls it being "honoured by being brigaded next to the Guards".

'The Australian contingent at Suakim. Meeting of Colonel Richardson and Lieut.-General Sir G. Graham, March, 1885.' From The War in Egypt and the Soudan (Blackie & Son, 1886), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The march to Tamai

Shortly after arriving they marched out with a huge square of about 10,000 men towards Tamai, a village about 30 kilometres inland. Wikipedia gives the start as 2 April. On the way, the War Memorial says, they "saw something of the reality of war" when they halted among the dead from a battle fought 11 days before. There was minor skirmishing that day and again on the next day's march. The Australians, by then at the rear of the square, had three men wounded, none fatally. They reached Tamai, burned whatever huts were still standing, and marched back to Suakin. Colonel Richardson was mentioned in dispatches.

General Graham, commander of the Suakin campaign, with his staff under a tent awning, 1885. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Railway work and guard duty

After Tamai most of the contingent was put to work on the railway line being laid across the desert towards Berber on the Nile, halfway between Suakin and Khartoum. The War Memorial says the men suffered mostly from "the enforced idleness of guard duties" – a long way from the adventure they'd signed up for. The ADB adds that the contingent was affected by fever.

The artillery saw even less. They were posted to Handoub and, with no enemy close enough to fire at, drilled for a month before rejoining the camp at Suakin on 15 May.

The camel corps

When a camel corps was raised, 50 men volunteered straight away. On 6 May they rode out on a reconnaissance to Takdul, 28 kilometres from Suakin. Here the sources tell it differently. Wikipedia says they were heavily involved in a skirmish in which more than 100 Arabs were killed or captured. The War Memorial says the only action that day involved two newspaper correspondents who left the patrol to file their stories, got surrounded, and one was wounded as they fled. On 15 May the camel corps made one last sortie, to bury men killed in the fighting back in March.

The men who died

Nobody in the contingent was killed by the enemy. Those who died, died of disease. The War Memorial holds a photograph of the grave at Suakin of Robert Weir, the first Australian to die on active duty in the Sudan.

Coming Home on the Arab

By May 1885 the British government had decided the campaign wasn't worth it and left only a garrison at Suakin. The contingent sailed for home on the Arab on 17 May.

The Protestant Standard of 27 June 1885 says the Arab came in through the Heads a little before 11 o'clock on the Friday night (19 June). The men had expected to land straight away, but they were put ashore at the Quarantine Station at North Head as a precaution against disease. There wasn't room in the buildings, so tents went up. Boats and steamers came down the harbour so friends could call out to them. Then on the Sunday night the rain started and didn't let up, flooding the tents, and Colonel Richardson ordered everyone back aboard the ship. The War Memorial says one man died of typhoid at the Quarantine Station before they were released.

On Tuesday 23 June the Arab came up to Circular Quay at a quarter past nine in the pouring rain. Richardson's farewell order was read to the men on board, thanking his officers and men and wishing that "the kindly [feeling] of comradeship which has happily animated the Contingent throughout may survive for many a [long] year".

The Protestant Standard describes the men marching ashore at 10 o'clock to bands playing "Home, Sweet Home", dressed in "thin kahkee clothing – a sort of calico" and pith helmets, looking "very miserably cold and wet". The grand review was called off. The procession went by George, Park, College and Oxford Streets to Victoria Barracks, with thousands jammed at the gates. Inside, the wet, shivering men stood while Lord Loftus passed on the Queen's congratulations. Richardson replied, regretting they hadn't been given a greater chance to distinguish themselves. Then they had to stand and listen while representatives of all the colonies read addresses of congratulation. The paper noted that some speakers were "humane enough" to cut theirs short and publish the full text in the papers instead.

Finally the men handed in their gear at the drill shed and were disbanded. Each was given a glass of spirits to keep the cold out, on Dr Mackellar's orders. Wives and mothers came and wrapped their men in overcoats and carried them off home. Country men were put up at the barracks and given free passes home.

The Mockery and the Controversy

The Bulletin kept up its ridicule after they came home, as the War Memorial notes. Dalley paid a price too. The ADB says the effort weakened his health, and in 1888 he told Robert Burdett Smith that he had "only tasted suffering and the grossest misrepresentation" over the Sudan contingent and now scarcely ever opened his mouth about it.

Even so, the War Memorial says it was generally agreed at the time that, however small its military weight, the contingent marked an important stage in colonial self-confidence and proof of the enduring link with Britain. Wikipedia sums up the modern view: it matters not for its size or its casualties, but for what it shows about how strong imperial feeling was in Australia then.

Honours and Medals

The men received the Egypt Medal with the clasp "Suakin 1885" and the Khedive's Star. Richardson was promoted major-general on 15 August 1885 and made a Companion of the Bath. In 1907 the New South Wales infantry regiments descended from the units that supplied the volunteers were given the battle honour "Suakin 1885", which became the Australian Army's first battle honour.

Richardson's own ending was a sad one. He retired in 1892, spent his last years in hospital, and died at Callan Park on 9 June 1896. He was buried at Waverley Cemetery with full military honours.

The Memorials

The Dictionary of Sydney notes that the earliest monuments to Australian soldiers in Sydney are those for the Sudan Contingent and the Boer War. One is a medallion in Sydney Town Hall, designed by Thomas Sapsford in 1885, to mark the departure and return of the contingent.

Down at East Circular Quay, on the sandstone escarpment in the Opera House forecourt, there are two bronze plaques. The top one, paid for by a bequest from Thomas Gunning of Mosman, reads in part:

"The New South Wales contingent for the Soudan War (consisting of some 750 men and 225 horses) embarked on the troopships "Australasian" and "Iberia" at the wharves on the North East side of the Circular Quay on March 3 1885. The contingent returned to Sydney in the troopship "Arab" on June 23 1885."

The Townsville Daily Bulletin of 11 July 1952 reported it was unveiled on 21 June 1952, and that the old "Soudan" spelling was kept on purpose. The lower plaque marks the centenary. The Governor, Air Marshal Sir James Rowland, unveiled it on 3 March 1985, after a parade at Victoria Barracks and a march through Sydney by Navy, Army and Army Reserve units, successors of the original contingent.

Dalley's statue in Sydney today. Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why It Mattered – The Precedent

The Dictionary of Sydney groups the Sudan and Boer War memorials together as Sydney's earliest soldier monuments, and K. S. Inglis called his 1985 history of the contingent The Rehearsal. The Boer War in South Africa followed in 1899. The 1885 contingent had already shown it could be done: a colony could raise volunteers in a fortnight, pay for them, and send them to fight for Britain on the other side of the world.

Not everyone liked that precedent. A modern group campaigning for Parliament to have a say on going to war points to Dalley's 1885 decision, made "without apparent parliamentary approval or debate", as an early example of what they object to. Whatever you think of it, it all started on a Tuesday at Circular Quay, with the whole town watching.

General Gordon's Last Stand, painted by George W. Joy in 1893 – the heroic picture of Gordon that the Empire wanted to believe. George W. Joy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 1881 – Muhammad Ahmad proclaims himself the Mahdi and rises against Egyptian rule in the Sudan.
• 3–4 November 1883 – Hicks's Egyptian army destroyed near El Obeid.
• 18 February 1884 – Gordon reaches Khartoum.
• 7 October 1884 – Dalley becomes acting Colonial Secretary while Premier Stuart is ill.
• 26 January 1885 – Khartoum falls and Gordon is killed.
• 11 February 1885 – First report of Gordon's death reaches Sydney (AWM).
• 12 February 1885 – Dalley offers Britain a New South Wales contingent (ADB; the Richardson ADB entry says 11 February).
• 19 February 1885 – Henry Parkes's letter of protest in the Sydney Morning Herald.
• 3 March 1885 – The contingent marches from Victoria Barracks to Circular Quay and sails on the Iberia and Australasian.
• 29 March 1885 – The ships anchor at Suakin.
• 2–3 April 1885 – The advance on Tamai; three Australians wounded.
• April 1885 – NSW Parliament approves the contingent.
• 6 May 1885 – Camel corps reconnaissance to Takdul.
• 15 May 1885 – Camel corps burial party; artillery rejoins camp at Suakin.
• 17 May 1885 – The contingent sails for home on the Arab.
• 19 June 1885 – The Arab enters Port Jackson; the men go into quarantine at North Head.
• 23 June 1885 – They land at Circular Quay, march through the rain to Victoria Barracks and are disbanded.
• 15 August 1885 – Richardson made major-general.
• 1907 – "Suakin 1885" battle honour awarded.
• 21 June 1952 – Soudan Contingent plaque unveiled at East Circular Quay.
• 3 March 1985 – Centenary plaque unveiled by Governor Sir James Rowland.

Where the Sources Disagree

• The date of the offer. The ADB entry on Dalley and the War Memorial's collection notes say 12 February 1885; the ADB entry on Richardson says 11 February.
• How many men went. The War Memorial gives 522 infantry plus 24 officers and 212 gunners, with a band and ambulance on top. Wikipedia says about 770 men and 200 horses. The Dictionary of Sydney says 758 soldiers. The ADB and the 1952 plaque say about 750. The State Library of Victoria's guide says around 900.
• Horses. 200 for the battery (AWM, Wikipedia), plus 26 for the ambulance (AWM); the plaque says 225.
• The crowd. The Evening News said guesses ran from 200,000 to 400,000 and put it at 250,000–300,000. Wikipedia says more than 200,000.
• The day they came home. Wikipedia and the War Memorial say 19 June, when the Arab arrived. The ADB and the plaque say 23 June, the day they actually landed at Circular Quay after quarantine. The Dictionary of Sydney says they "returned in May", which seems to mean the day they sailed from Suakin.
• The deaths. The Dictionary of Sydney says nine men were lost through illness. Wikipedia says nine died of disease during the return journey. The War Memorial mentions Robert Weir's grave at Suakin and one typhoid death at the Quarantine Station, without giving a total.
• Takdul, 6 May. Wikipedia says the camel corps was heavily involved in a skirmish with more than 100 Arabs killed or captured. The War Memorial says the only action that day involved two newspaper correspondents.
• "Hostilities had ended". The Dictionary of Sydney says the fighting was over before the Australians arrived, but the War Memorial and Wikipedia both describe skirmishing on the Tamai march and three wounded.

My Earlier Posts

• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – From 1788 to Today
• Customs House – 31 Alfred Street – Circular Quay
• Alfred and Albert Streets – Semi Circular Quay
• The Government Wharf – Circular Quay
• Government House – "The People's Domain"
• Dalley Street – Queen's Place – Charlotte Place
• George Street 1890 Sydney Heritage Walk
• Oxford Street – Darlinghurst – 1788 Onwards
• Sydney Town Hall – Druitt Street and George Street
• Vaucluse from North Head
• Chronology of Important Dates Since White Settlement

Sources

• Australian War Memorial, "Sudan (New South Wales Contingent) March–June 1885", https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/sudan
• Australian War Memorial collection, P05711.001, Charles Bayliss photograph of the contingent marching onto Circular Quay, 3 March 1885, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1194599
• Australian War Memorial, "First ship of war" (HMCS Victoria), Wartime 97, https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/97/first-ship-of-war
• Australian War Memorial, "The river and the redoubts", Wartime 97, https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/97/river-and-the-redoubt
• Royal Australian Navy, "Deployment of HMCS Victoria to the New Zealand Wars", https://www.navy.gov.au/about-navy/history/history-milestones/deployment-hmcs-victoria-new-zealand-wars
• State Library of Victoria, Australian colonial forces research guide: "Sudan 1885" and "New Zealand Wars 1860–1864", https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/colonialforces/sudan
• Gregory J. Pemberton, "Richardson, John Soame (1836–1896)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/richardson-john-soame-4475
• "Dalley, William Bede (1831–1888)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dalley-william-bede-3356
• Parliament of New South Wales, "Mr William Bede Dalley, QC (1831–1888)", former members profile
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Sudan War 1885", https://dictionaryofsydney.org/event/sudan_war_1885, and Neil Radford, "War Memorials for the Sudan and Boer Wars" (2014)
• NSW War Memorials Register, "Soudan Contingent Commemorative Plaques, Circular Quay", https://www.warmemorialsregister.nsw.gov.au/memorials/soudan-contingent-commemorative-plaques-circular-quay
• Monument Australia, "Soudan Contingent" (quoting the Townsville Daily Bulletin, 11 July 1952), https://www.monumentaustralia.org/search/display/23292-soudan-contingent
• "The Embarkation", Evening News (Sydney), 4 March 1885, p. 6, Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article111171535
• "Reception of the Soudan Contingent", Protestant Standard (Sydney), 27 June 1885, p. 7, Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210155546
• "Sir Henry Parkes's Protest", Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 25 February 1885, p. 4, Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237234542
• No War Without Parliament, "Executive decisions to go to war: 1885", https://warpowersreform.org.au/executive-decisions-to-go-to-war-1885/
• Wikipedia, "New South Wales Contingent", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_Contingent
• Wikipedia, "Mahdist War", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War
• K. S. Inglis, The Rehearsal: Australians at War in the Sudan, 1885 (Rigby, 1985), National Library of Australia catalogue, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1593942
• Peter Stanley (ed.), But Little Glory: The New South Wales Contingent to the Sudan, 1885 (Military Historical Society of Australia, 1985), as cited by the AWM and Wikipedia
• Pictures: Wikimedia Commons (State Library of NSW, Powerhouse Museum, and The War in Egypt and the Soudan, Blackie & Son, 1886), credited under each picture