William Charles Wentworth – Explorer, Poet and Patriot – The 1813 Blue Mountains Crossing, Vaucluse House and Sydney's First State Funeral – 1790 to 1872

William Charles Wentworth, studio portrait by Dalton's Royal Photographic Gallery, 1861 to 1862. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Of the three young men who walked over the Blue Mountains in May 1813, only one was born out here. William Charles Wentworth was 22, a currency lad with a convict mother and a father who had dodged a highway robbery charge by signing on as a surgeon. Over the next 60 years he became an explorer, a poet, a barrister and a newspaper man. He also built Vaucluse House, helped found the University of Sydney, and drafted the constitution that set up our state parliament. When he died, Sydney gave him the colony's first state funeral.

This page follows his whole life, but the mountains are where it starts. For the other two men, see my pages on Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson. There's also my older post Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson and the Crossing of the Blue Mountains. For the family and the house, see The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse and Vaucluse House on Historic Sydney Mansions.

Born at sea off Norfolk Island

The Dictionary of Sydney records his birth aboard the Surprize in August 1790. That was a Second Fleet transport, which had then taken 150 convict women from the Lady Juliana to Norfolk Island. His mother was Catherine Crowley. The Dictionary says she was convicted at the Staffordshire Assizes in July 1788 of stealing "wearing apparell" and was sentenced to seven years' transportation. She met D'Arcy Wentworth aboard the Neptune and became his common-law wife.

Wikipedia describes D'Arcy as a member of the aristocratic Anglo-Irish Wentworth family. It says he had escaped prosecution for highway robbery by taking the post of assistant surgeon in the new colony. The Dictionary of Sydney is kinder and calls him an Irish-born soldier and doctor who became "one of the early colony's richest men, despite his unconventional private life".

Wikipedia notes there has long been confusion about William's exact birth date, because his mother was a convict and his parents weren't married. D'Arcy acknowledged him as his son all the same. As a little boy on Norfolk Island he was known as William Crowley and was taught by "a woman of good character".

Parramatta, Greenwich and home again

The family came to Sydney in 1796 and lived at Parramatta, where D'Arcy did very well for himself. Catherine died in 1800. William and his brothers Dorset and Matthew were then sent to England to Alexander Crombie's school at Greenwich. The sources differ on the year. Wikipedia's Wentworth article says 1803, which matches the Dictionary of Sydney's "Departed Sydney 1803". Wikipedia's article on the crossing says 1802.

Wikipedia says he failed to get into both the East India Company's college and the Royal Military Academy, so he came home in 1810. He won his first bit of fame on horseback, riding his father's horse Gig to victory at the first official race meeting in Hyde Park. In 1811 Macquarie made him acting Provost Marshal and gave him 1,750 acres on the Nepean, which he called Vermont.

Over the Blue Mountains, May 1813

Wikipedia's account of the crossing says Gregory Blaxland got Governor Macquarie's approval early in 1813 and asked Lawson and Wentworth to come along. Blaxland was 34, Lawson was a 38-year-old army lieutenant, and Wentworth was the young one with something to prove. They left Blaxland's farm on South Creek on 11 May with four servants, four horses and five dogs. Wentworth opened his journal this way:

"On the Eleventh of May our party consisting of Mr. Gregory Blaxland, Lieutenant Lawson and Myself with four servants quitted Mr. Gregory Blaxland's farm on the South Creek..."

Each day they cut their way along the ridges, and on 31 May they stood on Mount Blaxland looking west over open grass country. Lawson kept the distances and Blaxland later published the official account. Wentworth's journal gives you the feel of the place:

"A country of so singular a description could in my opinion only have been produced by some Mighty convulsion in Nature."

William Charles Wentworth's journal of the expedition across the Blue Mountains, 11 May to 6 June 1813. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Wikipedia records that, like the others, he was granted 1,000 acres for his part. Blaxland later claimed he had led the expedition. Wikipedia's crossing article says the records from the time suggest the three were joint leaders.

"The Blue Mountain pioneers at the summit of their expedition", lithograph by M. Emile Ulm, Sydney Mail, 1880. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Upper Wentworth Falls in the Jamison Valley. The falls and the town are named after him. Photo by Diliff, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

He didn't sit still for long afterwards. In 1814, Wikipedia says, he joined a sandalwood voyage to the Pacific in the Cumberland. At Rarotonga there was a fight with the locals and five of the crew were killed. Wentworth only got back to the ship with the help of a pistol.

Cambridge, and a poem called 'Australasia'

In 1816 he went back to England to study law. Wikipedia says he attended Magdalene and Peterhouse at Cambridge and was called to the bar in 1822. In 1819 he published A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, which argued for an elected assembly, a free press, trial by jury and free immigration. He also tried to marry Elizabeth Macarthur, John Macarthur's daughter. Wikipedia says it came to nothing after he argued with her father over his convict background and a loan.

In 1823 came Australasia. Wikipedia calls it the first book of verse by a native-born Australian poet. He worked the mountains into it:

"Hail mighty ridge! That from thy azure brow
Survey'st these fertile plains, that stretch below"

Near the end come these lines:

"And Australasia float, with flag unfurl'd,
A new Britannia in another world!"

Wikipedia notes the poem also gives a romanticised picture of Aboriginal life.

William Charles Wentworth, about 1861. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The Australian and a free press

In 1824 Wentworth sailed home with his fellow barrister Robert Wardell, and the two founded The Australian. The Dictionary of Sydney dates the paper to 1824 and names both men as founders. Wikipedia says it was the colony's first privately owned paper, and that once it was running uncensored, Governor Brisbane saw no point in censoring the Sydney Gazette either. It says the paper often clashed with Governor Darling, who tried and failed to have it banned in 1826. Wentworth championed the emancipists against the "exclusives", and he called for trial by jury and "Taxation by Representation".

Front page of The Australian, Thursday 14 October 1824. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Vaucluse House and Sarah

D'Arcy died in 1827, and Wikipedia says William inherited a large part of his fortune. The Dictionary of Sydney says that same year he bought the Vaucluse estate, where the convict Henry Browne Hayes had built a cottage in 1805. He enlarged it greatly into the Gothic-style house we know today.

On 26 October 1829, at St Philip's Church, he married Sarah Cox, the daughter of two convicts. He had acted for her in 1825 in a breach of promise case, which Wikipedia says was the first of its kind in Australia. They already had a daughter, Thomasine, named after Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. The whole family is set out on my Wentworth Family of Vaucluse page.

Vaucluse House, Wentworth Road, Vaucluse. Photo by Bgabel, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Vaucluse House in the 1930s. Royal Australian Historical Society, Osborne Collection, via Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

Sarah Wentworth, née Cox, portrait by William Nicholas. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Squatter, politician, and the 'bunyip aristocracy'

Wikipedia says that through the 1830s and 1840s he built up huge pastoral holdings across the colony, including Windermere on the Hunter and runs on the Macquarie, Namoi and Murrumbidgee. In 1839 he tried to buy a huge slice of New Zealand's South Island from Ngāi Tahu chiefs, and Governor Gipps stopped the deal. In 1843 he was elected to the Legislative Council for the Town of Sydney. By then he was one of the richest men in the colony, and Wikipedia says his politics had turned conservative. He spoke for the squatters, and Wikipedia says he backed bringing in indentured Chinese labour once transportation ended.

Wikipedia says he pushed through the University of Sydney Act on 24 September 1850 after two attempts, and sat on the first senate. In 1853 he chaired the committee that drafted the colony's new constitution. His draft called for a colonial peerage, and Daniel Deniehy famously mocked it as a "bunyip aristocracy". Wikipedia says the final constitution was made more democratic, although the upper house stayed appointed. The same committee also floated a General Assembly of the Australian colonies, which Wikipedia calls the first official outline of a future Commonwealth.

The Main Quadrangle, University of Sydney. Photo by Jason Tong, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Statue of William Charles Wentworth by Pietro Tenerani of Rome, in the Great Hall, University of Sydney. Photo by Merryjack, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

England, and the last years

He left for England in March 1854. Wikipedia says his farewell speech at Circular Quay got both cheers and jeers. In London he founded the General Association for the Australian Colonies and turned down a baronetcy. He came back briefly in 1860–61 as President of the Legislative Council, but otherwise lived at Merly House in Dorset.

William Charles Wentworth leaving Sydney in 1854 with his daughter Fanny and her husband John Reeve. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Sydney's first state funeral

Wentworth died at Wimborne, Dorset, on 20 March 1872. He had asked to be brought home, and his body was shipped back to Sydney. Dr Lisa Murray's Dictionary of Sydney entry on the funeral says the government voted unanimously for a State funeral, the first in colonial New South Wales. It was held on Tuesday 6 May 1873, and the Governor declared the day a public holiday.

The service was at St Andrew's Cathedral, which was hung with black cloth. The coffin was polished cedar with silver handles, and two of the wreaths on the lid were made from plants native to Vaucluse. Then the cortège wound its way out to the family vault at Vaucluse. Murray describes people perched in trees, on gateposts and on drinking fountains, and legs dangling over shop awnings. The Empire reported that when the head of the procession reached the toll-bar at Rushcutters Bay, the last carriages still hadn't left George Street. It got to Vaucluse at about 2 o'clock, by which time "the patience of the beholders was well-nigh exhausted".

The size of the crowd depends on who you read. Murray, in the Dictionary of Sydney, says between 50,000 and 70,000 Sydneysiders came out to watch. Wikipedia gives a single figure of about 65,000. Wikipedia also says the mausoleum was built over his grave soon after, with his wife Sarah overseeing the work. The Dictionary of Sydney says Sarah commissioned it at her husband's request.

"The Funeral of the Late Mr. W. C. Wentworth at Sydney", wood engraving, 1873. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The Wentworth Mausoleum, Chapel Road, Vaucluse. Photo by Collywolly, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

His name around the place

Wentworth Falls in the mountains, Wentworth Park at Glebe, the federal seat of Wentworth and the Wentworth Building at the uni all carry his name. Wikipedia says Vaucluse House became Australia's first official house museum in 1915, and that a bust of him was unveiled at Coronation Park in Wentworth Falls in 2016. He was a complicated man. He fought for a free press and trial by jury, and as an old squatter he wanted a colonial peerage. On a fine day at Vaucluse, though, you can still see why he wanted to be brought home.

Bust of William Charles Wentworth at Wentworth Falls, unveiled in 2016. Photo by Will Thorpe, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Related pages: Gregory Blaxland · William Lawson · Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson and the Crossing of the Blue Mountains · The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse · Vaucluse House (Historic Sydney Mansions) · Robert Wardell and Petersham · Sir Henry Browne Hayes

Sources

• "Wentworth, William Charles", Dictionary of Sydney, dictionaryofsydney.org/person/wentworth_william_charles (including linked entries for Catherine Crowley, D'Arcy Wentworth, Surprize, The Australian, Vaucluse House and the Wentworth Mausoleum)
• Lisa Murray, "First State funeral", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013, dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/first_state_funeral
• Tony Dawson, "Lawson, William", Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/lawson_william
• "William Wentworth", Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wentworth
• "1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains", Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1813_crossing_of_the_Blue_Mountains
• W. C. Wentworth, Journal of an expedition across the Blue Mountains, 11 May – 6 June 1813, State Library of NSW
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture

William Lawson – Surveyor of the 1813 Blue Mountains Crossing – Norfolk Island, Veteran Hall and Bathurst – 1774 to 1850

William Lawson, watercolour on ivory miniature, about 1845, artist unknown. State Library of NSW (MIN 63), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Everyone who grew up around Sydney knows the three names. Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, rattled off in that order like a cricket batting line-up, with three Blue Mountains towns named after them. Blaxland gets the credit for the idea and Wentworth gets the speeches, so Lawson is the one people tend to forget. That's a pity, because he was the one carrying the compass and writing down how far they'd walked each day. When the expedition was over he went back over the mountains with his cattle and stayed on the far side.

This is his story, from a chandler's son in Finchley to "Old Ironbark" of Veteran Hall. For the other two men, have a look at my pages on Gregory Blaxland and William Charles Wentworth. My earlier post on the crossing itself is Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson and the Crossing of the Blue Mountains.

Finchley, a bit of surveying and a commission

The Dictionary of Sydney's entry by Tony Dawson says there have been several stories about where Lawson came from. The best evidence puts his birth at Finchley, Middlesex, on 2 June 1774. He was the son of John Lawson and his second wife, Hannah Summers. He had two half-siblings from his father's first marriage to Alice Dilworth, and four full siblings, James, Alice, Hannah and Rebecca. All of them turn up later in his letters or his will. Wikipedia adds that his father ran a successful chandler's business and that the family descended from the Lawsons of Cairnmuir in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh.

Then there's the surveying. It matters, because it's the skill that earned him his place in history. The sources lean different ways on it. Wikipedia says plainly that he was educated in London and "trained as a surveyor". Dawson is more careful. He says Lawson "appears to have undertaken some basic training in surveying" but that "there is nothing to suggest that he practised as a surveyor". Either way, he knew enough to keep a proper field book, and in 1813 that turned out to be what counted.

In June 1799 he bought a commission in the New South Wales Corps. Wikipedia puts the price at £300 for an ensign's commission. The following May he sailed from Portsmouth in the Royal Admiral, a 914-ton convict transport, and he reached Port Jackson on 20 November 1800.

Norfolk Island and Sarah Leadbeater

Almost straight away he was sent to the garrison on Norfolk Island, and Dawson says he stayed there five years. Wikipedia says he served under Major Joseph Foveaux, gained his trust, and sat on the island's military court, which was accused of corrupt practices. He also took up land there and ran sheep.

On Norfolk he met Sarah Leadbeater. According to Wikipedia she was a convict serving seven years for stealing clothes. When the pair came back to Sydney in June 1806 they had three boys with them, John, William and Nelson. Nelson had been born on the Lady Nelson during the voyage from the island, so you can guess where his name came from.

The Rum Rebellion

Back in Sydney, Lawson was promoted to lieutenant and fell in with the Corps' leading men. In January 1808 Governor Bligh appointed him one of the six officers who sat with Judge Advocate Richard Atkins at John Macarthur's sedition trial. Macarthur got the trial aborted, and Bligh was arrested and deposed. Dawson notes that Lawson signed the letter demanding Bligh's removal and took an active part in the revolt. He then became aide-de-camp to Major George Johnston. You'll find more on that crowd on my Rum Corps page.

Here the sources split on the details of his reward. Wikipedia says he got a 500-acre grant at Prospect. Dawson says the 500 acres were in the district of Alnwick, near present-day Maitland, and that he was also given the 370 acres he had built up at Concord. On Dawson's version, Lawson only decided to lease Concord and make a new home at Prospect in early 1810.

Newcastle is another tangle. Dawson has him sent to Newcastle as commandant soon after his 1806 promotion, and then back again after the rebellion to take temporary charge. Wikipedia says he was acting commandant briefly in 1807 and was then appointed commandant of the Coal River settlement in 1809. It says he held Bligh's supporters there, including Sir Henry Browne Hayes of Vaucluse and the lawyer George Crossley, and worked them as hard as the other convicts. Wikipedia also says he was replaced on 10 January 1810 after Governor Macquarie arrived. Crossley later sued him for false imprisonment and won £500, cut to £300 on appeal.

After that Lawson was shipped off to England as a witness for Johnston's court martial. Dawson says he was never actually called to give evidence. Sarah ran the Prospect farm alone for almost two years, until he came home in the Guildford in January 1812. His grants had been confirmed, and Dawson says the couple, who by then had four children, married at St John's, Parramatta. Dawson suggests this was partly out of respect for Macquarie's views on couples living together unmarried. Wikipedia says they went on to have eleven children.

Liverpool, wool, and an idea

Lawson came back as a lieutenant in the new Veteran Company, which had been made up from old Corps soldiers, and he was put in charge of the troops at Liverpool. Dawson says the duties weren't onerous and left him plenty of time for his farms. In England he had met Jeremiah Thompson, who owned two woollen mills at Rawdon near Leeds, and their talk about the wool trade made up his mind. He was going to grow wool. The only trouble was the Cumberland Plain, which was hemmed in on every side, with the sandstone wall of the Blue Mountains to the west.

Portrait of William Lawson, about 1846. Ambrotype copy, about 1855 to 1860, of an earlier daguerreotype, unknown photographer. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

May 1813 – over the mountains

Gregory Blaxland was the man behind the expedition. Wikipedia says that early in 1813 he got Macquarie's approval and asked Lawson and young William Charles Wentworth to join him. Dawson describes the party as Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson, four servants, five dogs and four horses. Wikipedia names two of the servants as James Burne (or Burnes), a guide and kangaroo hunter, and Samuel Fairs, a convict who had arrived in 1810. The other two have never been identified.

Lawson's own first entry, as quoted on Wikipedia from his journal, reads:

"Mr. Blaxland Wentworth and myself with four men and four Horses- Laden with Provisions etc- took our Departure on Tuesday the 11th May 1813. Crossed the Nepean River at Mr. Chapman's Farm Emu Island at four o'clock and proceeded SW. Two miles. Encamped at 5 o'clock at the foot of the first Ridge of Hills-."

Wikipedia says the party set out from Blaxland's South Creek farm, near today's St Marys. Their trick was to stay up on the ridges and keep out of the gullies that had beaten earlier parties. Each day the three gentlemen and two of the servants went ahead and marked a line, leaving the other two men at camp. Later they turned back and cut a track wide enough for the horses before moving the whole camp forward. It was slow and hard going.

Dawson says it was Lawson, "with his knowledge of the rudiments of surveying", who recorded the details of their track. The Wikipedia account of the crossing says much the same, describing him as the one who "kept detailed notes about the route itself including the distances covered each day". Blaxland eventually published his account and Wentworth wrote the poetry. Lawson's journal is the one you'd reach for if you wanted to walk the route again.

A page of William Lawson's journal of the expedition across the Blue Mountains, 1813. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Wikipedia says they first saw the plains beyond the mountains from Mount York. They then pushed on to Mount Blaxland, about 25 kilometres south of where Lithgow is now. They got there on 31 May, and Lawson wrote:

"...this Country will I have no doubt be a great acquisition to this Colony and no difficulty in making a good Road to it, and take it in a Political point of View if in case of our Invasion it will be a safe Retreat for the Inhabitance with their Familys and that for this part of the Country is so formed by Nature that a few men would be able to defend the passes against a large body."

Wikipedia's account of the crossing quotes him calling it "the best watered Country of any I have seen in the Colony". The way over took 21 days and the way home only six. The State Library holds the journal with the dates 11 May to 6 June 1813, and Dawson's notes cite it under that title.

Sketch of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth's route across the Blue Mountains in 1813, prepared by Frank Walker in 1913. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

"The Blue Mountain pioneers at the summit of their expedition", lithograph by M. Emile Ulm, Sydney Mail, 1880. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A thousand acres and the first cattle west

Each of the three explorers was granted 1,000 acres west of the mountains, and Wikipedia says Macquarie made that offer in February 1814. In the meantime Surveyor George Evans had followed their track and gone on to the Bathurst Plains, and Macquarie had William Cox build a road. Dawson writes that the Governor travelled it in April 1815 and proclaimed the site of Bathurst.

Lawson didn't waste any time. By the time the Government Domain was set up at Bathurst later in 1815, he had already driven cattle into the district. He left them grazing on the south side of the Fish River, near where it joins the Campbell to form the Macquarie. Dawson calls him the first pastoralist west of the mountains, "and, indeed, outside the Cumberland Plain". Wikipedia puts the mob at 100 head and says he named the run Macquarie.

Cox's Pass, watercolour by John Lewin, who travelled the new road with Macquarie in 1815. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Campbell River, watercolour by John Lewin, 1815. This is the country where Lawson grazed the first cattle west of the mountains. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Commandant at Bathurst

Dawson says the Prospect farm eventually grew to 3,000 acres, but that was nowhere near enough for the flocks Lawson had in mind. So when Macquarie offered him command of the Bathurst settlement in 1819, he took it. Wikipedia dates the appointment to September 1819. He hoped it would let him explore the country to the north.

It did. Dawson lists the trips. The first left Bathurst on 8 November 1821, came back 17 days later, and reached the Cudgegong River near Mudgee. The second went about 50 miles past Mudgee to the Talbragar River near Dunedoo. The third began on 22 November 1822 and reached the upper Goulburn and Krui rivers, which Lawson wrongly took to be the head of the Hastings. Wikipedia counts four expeditions in 1821 and 1822 instead of three. It also says he followed information from James Blackman and was guided by a local Aboriginal man named Ering (Aaron).

This part of the story has a hard side that's no good skipping over. Wikipedia covers the violence between settlers and the Wiradjuri around Bathurst in some detail. Lawson's stockmen were caught up in it, and so were his properties. It says the authorities replaced him with Major James Morisset in late 1823 as things got worse. Dawson puts it differently, saying Lawson resigned in November 1823 after more than four years. Wikipedia says that in 1824 he signed the settlers' petition for troops, and that he commanded one of the divisions of Morisset's punitive expedition after martial law was declared. That was the Bathurst War, and it ended with the Wiradjuri leader Windradyne suing for peace.

Veteran Hall and "Old Ironbark"

Back at Prospect, Lawson settled into the house he called Veteran Hall, after his old Veteran Company. Wikipedia says the house was finished in 1821. Dawson calls it his "newly named farm" when he returned to it in 1823. In 1824 he imported a thoroughbred sire named Baron from England, and Dawson says he became a successful breeder of both stock horses and racehorses.

Veteran Hall, Prospect, the Lawson family home, photographed in 1913 for Frank Walker's edition of Blaxland's journal. Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

His real money was in sheep. He applied to buy 5,000 acres where the Talbragar River meets Coolaburragundy Creek. Dawson says he was knocked back at first, because the land was outside the "limits of location" and hadn't been surveyed, but was approved later. It became his well-known Talbragar station. In the 1828 census he admitted to 10,000 sheep and 1,200 cattle. Dawson says some estimates run as high as 84,000 sheep and almost 15,000 cattle. His sons William and Nelson held big runs in the same districts.

Sarah died on 11 July 1830 after a long illness. Dawson calls her "a tower of strength for the family". After her death Lawson spent less time out on the stations, though he never stopped buying land. He was known as "Old Ironbark" for his strength and endurance.

Wikipedia also records the less comfortable side of his wealth. It says assigned convicts worked his properties, that runaways were sometimes flogged, and that after transportation ended he pushed for cheap imported labour. It says he brought in labourers from Chile in 1841 and later employed Chinese workers.

The Legislative Council

In 1843 Lawson was elected member for Cumberland in the first partly elected Legislative Council. Dawson says he attended regularly at first but didn't feature much in debates. Wentworth, his old companion from the mountains, was one of the big parliamentary figures by then, and Lawson didn't agree with all his views. He opposed him on a number of proposals. From 1846 Lawson turned up only now and then, and he didn't stand again in 1848. His son Nelson took his place.

Death at Veteran Hall

William Lawson died at Veteran Hall on 16 June 1850, less than a fortnight after his 76th birthday. Dawson says his goods were sworn at under £12,000, but his real wealth was in land, more than 85,000 acres. That land was left in trust to his son William and his friends Thomas Agars and Thomas Icely for his surviving children and grandchildren. Wikipedia gives a bigger figure for the 1840s, saying he held 150,000 acres with 84,000 sheep and 15,000 cattle.

He was buried in the churchyard of St Bartholomew's at Prospect, a church Dawson says he had helped to establish. Veteran Hall was knocked down in 1926, and most of its land now lies under the water of Prospect Reservoir.

How we remember him

The town of Lawson in the mountains carries his name, and so does a lot of local history. Wikipedia notes that his granddaughter Susanna married John Rendell Street, the founder of the Street family. In 1963 Lawson appeared with Blaxland and Wentworth on an Australian postage stamp marking the crossing. There are memorials to the three of them along the route, including one in Lawson itself and a cairn on Luddenham Road at Orchard Hills.

The Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth memorial in Lawson, Blue Mountains. Photo by Clytemnestra, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

The Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson memorial cairn, Luddenham Road, Orchard Hills. Photo by JohnsonL623, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

So next time you're on the train up the mountains and it pulls into Lawson, spare a thought for the bloke with the field book. He counted the miles, liked what he saw, and was the first to take his cattle across.

Related pages: Gregory Blaxland · William Charles Wentworth · Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson and the Crossing of the Blue Mountains · The Rum Corps

Sources

• Tony Dawson, "Lawson, William", Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/lawson_william (draws on E. W. Dunlop, ADB vol 2, 1967, and Lawson's journal, Mitchell Library)
• "William Lawson (explorer)", Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lawson_(explorer)
• "1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains", Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1813_crossing_of_the_Blue_Mountains
• E. W. Dunlop, "Lawson, William (1774–1850)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 2, 1967, as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney
• William Lawson, Journal of an expedition across the Blue Mountains, 11 May – 6 June 1813, State Library of NSW (Mitchell Library)
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture

Gregory Blaxland – Fordwich to Brush Farm – the Blue Mountains Crossing, the Rum Rebellion and the Brush Farm Wine Medals – 1778 to 1853

Most Sydneysiders know the name Blaxland from a Blue Mountains town, a railway station or a federal seat out west. Fewer know much about the man himself. Gregory Blaxland was a Kentish gentleman farmer, a cattle dealer, a wine pioneer and, by most accounts, a hard man to get along with. He fell out with three governors, helped push one of them out of office, and in 1813 walked into the Blue Mountains with William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth. His story ends badly, at Parramatta on New Year's Day 1853.

Portrait of Gregory Blaxland, 1813. Credit: [unknown artist], via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

From Fordwich in Kent

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Gregory was born on 17 June 1778 at Fordwich, Kent. He was the fourth son of John Blaxland, mayor of Fordwich from 1767 to 1774, and Mary, daughter of Captain Parker, R.N. The family had owned estates nearby for generations. The Brush Farm heritage listing puts the family in Kent "since St. Augustine's time", on an estate called Newington. Gregory went to The King's School, Canterbury, and in July 1799 he married Elizabeth Spurdon at St George the Martyr, Canterbury. They had five sons and two daughters.

St Mary's Church, Fordwich, Kent, the little town where Gregory Blaxland was born. Credit: John Salmon, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The old Town Hall at Fordwich. Gregory's father John Blaxland was mayor of Fordwich from 1767 to 1774. Credit: John Salmon, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Sir Joseph Banks and the move to Sydney

The Blaxlands were friends of Sir Joseph Banks, and the ADB says Banks seems to have strongly influenced Gregory and his eldest brother John to emigrate. The government was keen on "settlers of responsibility and Capital" and promised them land, convict servants and free passages. The heritage listing adds that John negotiated 6,000 acres, 60 "useful convicts...for 18 months" and six Spanish sheep, and that Gregory got half those terms because he could only raise £3,000.

Gregory went first, in the William Pitt, with his wife, three children, two servants, an overseer, a few sheep, seed, bees, tools, groceries and clothing. The sources don't agree on the sailing date. The ADB says he sailed on 1 September 1805. The State Heritage Register listing for Brush Farm says the William Pitt left on 4 August 1805 and reached Sydney on 11 April 1806.

He didn't waste time. The ADB says he sold many of the goods he'd brought at a good profit, bought eighty head of cattle to get into the meat trade, located 4,000 acres of land and was promised forty convict servants. True to form, he also started legal action against the master of the William Pitt. Brother John followed in April 1807.

Brush Farm

Brush Farm, up on the ridge at Eastwood, is where Gregory's name sticks in Sydney. It began as two 1794 grants to NSW Corps privates Zadoc Pettit and Thomas Bride, which William Cox bought up in 1801–03 into an estate of over 500 acres. When Cox got into trouble over regimental funds, part of the estate went to D'Arcy Wentworth in 1805 and then to Blaxland in 1807. The ADB has it as 450 acres bought from D'Arcy Wentworth for £1,500. The heritage listing gives 455 acres in one place and "nine farms" of 460 acres in another. Blaxland moved there in 1808.

The house that stands today was built around 1820. The heritage listing says the central core went up about 1819–20, and quotes Ron Buttrey dating it to 1819–21: a four-room, two-storey house on sandstone foundations over a cellar, with wings added through the 1820s. Elsewhere the same listing calls it "the c. 1816 original core", so even the official record isn't settled on the date. Macquarie himself admitted it was "a very snug good farm and very like an English one in point of comfort and convenience".

Brush Farm House, Lawson Street, Eastwood, built by Gregory Blaxland around 1820. Photographed in 1999. Credit: Donald Garland, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Brush Farm House, Eastwood, in 2007, the year it reopened after Ryde Council's restoration. Credit: J Bar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

The house had a long second life. The heritage listing records that in 1831 Blaxland, in "acute financial difficulties", sold Brush Farm to his son-in-law Thomas Forster for £1,500. The estate later passed to his grandson William Forster, NSW Premier in 1859–60. It was subdivided in the 1880s and became a boys' reformatory in 1894. After that it was a home for girls, a home for mothers and babies, a home for children with disabilities and a Corrective Services academy. Ryde Council bought the house in 1990 and officially reopened it on 7 April 2007.

Rum Rebellion days

The Blaxlands were among the first truly respectable free settlers in the colony, and the ADB says they quickly worked out that the real money was in trading. In August 1807 the outgoing Governor Philip Gidley King warned William Bligh he would "be plagued with" Gregory Blaxland. King was right. Both brothers thought they were owed far more help than they got, and Bligh criticised their "speculative" and "mercantile" dealings.

So the brothers sided with the governor's enemies. In January 1808 they signed the letter asking Major George Johnston to arrest Bligh. That was the Rum Rebellion, which I've written up in The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808 and Arrest of Governor Bligh. It didn't take long for the Blaxlands to become "extremely troublesome" to Johnston as well. In a fight over who owned the ship Brothers they took the law into their own hands and assaulted the master. The ADB says they then used the trial "as a mask" for "vexatious opposition" to Johnston.

The arrest of Governor Bligh, 1808, a watercolour by an unknown artist held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Gregory and John Blaxland signed the letter asking Johnston to arrest him. Credit: Unknown author, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Cattle, Macquarie and a coastal squeeze

The ADB says the brothers sometimes traded in partnership with Simeon Lord. They bought a stockyard on the site Macquarie later turned into a Sydney market, and they kept building up their herds. In 1809 Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson granted Gregory 2,000 acres at Evan. Macquarie confirmed it, added 2,280 acres there in place of King's original grant, and then 500 acres in the district of Cooke in 1812. Macquarie considered that settled everything Gregory was owed, and he grew critical of the brothers for staying "restless and dissatisfied" and for refusing to grow grain.

The Brush Farm listing tells it more kindly. It says Macquarie saw cattle and sheep as a lazy pursuit and didn't appreciate that the brothers had supplied the government stores with 88,396 lb of fresh meat in nearly three years, bringing the price down from 2s 6d to 1s a pound. Then came the drought of 1812. Gregory's flocks and herds were outgrowing his coastal land, Macquarie wouldn't hand big flock owners more land on the coast, and the ADB says Blaxland "drew the correct conclusion": the answer lay over the mountains. He had already explored part of the Nepean River in 1810.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie, painted by Arthur Levett Jackson in 1874. He approved the 1813 expedition but clashed with Blaxland before and after it. Credit: Arthur Levett Jackson (1834-1888), via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Over the mountains, May 1813

Early in 1813 Blaxland got Macquarie's approval and signed up Lieutenant William Lawson, a trained surveyor, and young William Charles Wentworth, D'Arcy's son. According to Wikipedia, Blaxland himself had already made two unsuccessful attempts. The party had four servants, four pack horses and five dogs. Two of the men have been identified as James Burne (or Burnes), a guide and kangaroo hunter, and Samuel Fairs, a convict who arrived in 1810. The other two are still unknown.

William Lawson, watercolour on ivory miniature, about 1845, State Library of NSW. Credit: [unknown artist], via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

William Charles Wentworth, the youngest of the three, in a portrait by James Anderson. Credit: James Anderson [1] , died 1877, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

They left Blaxland's South Creek farm, near today's St Marys, on 11 May 1813 and crossed the Nepean that same day. Earlier explorers had tried to get through by following the rivers and valleys and kept running into cliffs. This party stuck to the ridges. Each day the three gentlemen and two of the servants went ahead and marked a trail, leaving the other two men at camp. They came back to cut a path for the horses, and the next day the whole party moved up.

Sketch of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth's 1813 route across the Blue Mountains, prepared by Frank Walker for the 1913 centenary, with the later Great Western Road marked in. Credit: Gregory Blaxland (1778-1853); edited by Frank Walker (1861-1948), via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

From Mount York they got their first look at the country beyond. They pushed on past Cox's River to a sugarloaf hill later named Mount Blaxland, about 25 km south of where Lithgow is now. The ADB quotes the view from the top as "enough grass to support the stock of the colony for thirty years". Lawson, the surveyor, called it "the best watered Country of any I have seen in the Colony". They had taken 21 days to get there. The trip home took just six.

It's worth being honest about one thing here. The Gregory Blaxland article on Wikipedia notes that the expedition "stopped short of actually crossing over the mountains". Mount Blaxland sits on the western edge of the range, and it was Surveyor George William Evans, sent out by Macquarie in November 1813, who went on past it to the Macquarie and Lachlan rivers and the site of Bathurst.

A tree marked on the 1813 route, cemented over to preserve it. From the Royal Australian Historical Society's 1913 centenary edition of Blaxland's journal. Credit: Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons (No restrictions).

The Explorers Tree near Katoomba. Claims that the three men carved their initials here aren't universally accepted, and the tree isn't mentioned in their journals. Credit: Sardaka 09:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Whose expedition was it?

That depends on who you ask. The ADB says that "as early as 1816" Blaxland was claiming to have been the leader, but that contemporary records suggest none of the three took that role and that it was a joint effort. All three kept journals. Lawson's notes are a surveyor's record of distances and directions, and Wentworth's are more taken with the scenery. Blaxland was the only one who published. His A Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains in New South Wales came out in London in 1823, written in the third person.

A page from Gregory Blaxland's journal of the 1813 expedition. Credit: Gregory Blaxland, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The rewards

On 12 February 1814 Macquarie issued a General Order recognising the discovery and granting each explorer 1,000 acres in the new country. Evans got 1,000 acres in Van Diemen's Land. William Cox built the road with convict labour, starting in July 1814 and finishing in six months, and got 2,000 acres near Bathurst. Macquarie drove over it in 1815 and named it the Great Western Road.

For Blaxland, though, 1,000 acres wasn't the point. The ADB says that in 1814, nearly broke like many others after the drought and depression, he asked Macquarie to back a big agricultural company to open up the interior, much like the later Australian Agricultural Company. Macquarie said no, and he wouldn't give Blaxland inland land for his own flocks either. Blaxland had to sell off stock. In 1819 he gave Commissioner John Thomas Bigge a scathing account of Macquarie's government.

The wine man of Brush Farm

This is the part of the story I find most surprising. The heritage listing says Gregory collected vine cuttings at ports on the voyage out, and that he picked out healthy vines already growing around the colony, mostly "Black Constantia", a muscat. Later he planted what he took to be claret grapes, probably Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, and then Shiraz and Pinot on terraced slopes below the house. By 1821 he had three and a half acres under vine. His first wine in 1816 was, in his own words to Macquarie, "little better than water". The ADB says he found a vine resistant to blight and that his vines came from the Cape of Good Hope. He also brought buffalo grass into the colony.

In 1822 he took about 86 gallons of wine in two casks to England on the Royal George. The sources tell the medal story slightly differently:

• The ADB says he took the sample to London in 1822 and won a silver medal. On a second trip, after Elizabeth died in December 1826, he won "another medal in 1828". It doesn't name the society or the type of medal.
• The State Heritage Register listing says the Royal Society of Arts awarded him its silver medal in 1823 as the finest NSW wine to date, and a Gold Ceres medal in 1828. Both medals are now in the Mitchell Library.

The listing calls this possibly the first commercial quantity of wine exported from Australia. It also says James Busby later described Blaxland's vineyard as a showplace, and that cuttings from Brush Farm supplied early vines for Wyndham Estate at Dalwood in the Hunter.

Later years

Elizabeth Blaxland died in December 1826. In January 1827 a public meeting chose Gregory and two others to take a petition to Governor Darling asking for "Trial by jury" and "Taxation by Representation". According to the ADB, he carried that cause to England as well. In London he got the Colonial Office to allow a drawback on duty for brandy "actually used in the manufacture of wine". He also got an order for 40,000 acres for growing tobacco, but it was conditional. The ADB says Governor Ralph Darling reported Blaxland had got it by deception and allowed him only 1,280 acres at Sutherland, and that land was "transferred to his Creditors".

In 1831 he sold Brush Farm to his son-in-law and moved to a leased vineyard in North Parramatta. After that, the ADB says, he "disappeared from public activity". He took his own life on 1 January 1853 at Parramatta, aged 74, and his death was "scarcely noticed in the press". Wikipedia gives his burial place as All Saints, Parramatta. The ADB sums him up as "always a man of moody and mercurial character", and the Australian Museum says he opposed Bligh "and his two successors".

Plaque honouring John and Gregory Blaxland. Credit: John Lawrence, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Whose country they walked through

The mountains weren't empty and they weren't unknown. The Wikipedia history of the crossing says the local Aboriginal people knew at least two routes over them. One ran along the Bilpin Ridge, which Archibald Bell later followed with help from the Darug people, and which is now Bells Line of Road. The other followed the Coxs River. Brush Farm itself sits on Wallumedegal country, the Wallumetta of the Dharug-speaking clans on the north side of the Parramatta River, according to the heritage listing.

What the crossing opened up came at a heavy cost to the people further west. Settlers poured onto Wiradjuri land around Bathurst, and that led to the Bathurst war. The ridge route was a triumph for the colony's graziers. For the Wiradjuri it was the start of losing their country.

Remembering Blaxland

• The town of Blaxland in the lower Blue Mountains is named after him. The sources disagree on when the name changed. The ADB says the town, 62 km west of Sydney, was originally Wascoe after the local innkeeper and was renamed in 1914. Wikipedia puts it 65 km west and says the area was known as Wascoe "prior to 1879".
• Mount Blaxland, the turnaround point of 1813, near Lithgow.
• The federal Division of Blaxland, as well as Blaxland Creek near his western Sydney grant and Blaxland Road.
• Memorials along the route, including the Explorers' Pavilion on Mount York, built for the 1913 centenary. The Evans monument in Bathurst (1920) also honours the three explorers.
• A 1963 postage stamp marking 150 years since the crossing, and in 2013 a re-enactment walk, a 70-aircraft flypast and a silver coin from the Royal Australian Mint.

The Explorers' Pavilion at Mount York, erected in 1913 for the centenary of the crossing. Royal Australian Historical Society collection. Credit: Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons (No restrictions).

The Blaxland Memorial in the town of Blaxland, Blue Mountains. Credit: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The old Pilgrim Inn at Blaxland, an early stop on the road over the mountains. Credit: Unknown author, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

If you're after more on the walk itself, have a look at my earlier post Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson – Crossing the Blue Mountains, plus Governor Macquarie's Report On What Was Beyond The Mountains, The Rum Corps, Philip Gidley King, The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse and Parramatta.

Sources

• Jill Conway, 'Blaxland, Gregory (1778–1853)', Australian Dictionary of Biography: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-gregory-1795
• 'Gregory Blaxland', Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Blaxland
• '1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains', Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1813_crossing_of_the_Blue_Mountains
• 'Brush Farm', NSW State Heritage Register (Heritage NSW): https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045464
• 'Brush Farm', Wikipedia (text from the NSW State Heritage Register, CC BY 4.0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_Farm
• 'Blaxland, New South Wales', Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaxland,_New_South_Wales
• 'Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth, William Lawson', Australian Museum: https://australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/trailblazers/gregory-blaxland-william-charles-wentworth-william-lawson/
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, Category:Gregory Blaxland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gregory_Blaxland

Zetland – From the Waterloo Swamp and Victoria Park Racecourse to the BMC Car Plant and Green Square – A History

A note for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers: this page talks about the Gadigal people and their Country, and it names Aboriginal people. Some of the sources linked here may contain images and names of people who have died.

If you catch the train to Green Square today you step out into glass towers, a sunken library, a beach-style pool and a brand-new high street. It's hard to picture that you're standing on what was a swamp, then a mill pond, then a woolwash dam, then a pony track, then a car factory, then a Navy store, and that for about 150 years this was one of the smelliest, dirtiest corners of Sydney. Zetland has had more lives than most suburbs, and plenty of them weren't pretty.

This is the story of how a patch of Gadigal wetland, four kilometres south of the city, went from sandhills and waterbirds to tanneries, wool scourers, a racecourse, the Mini, an incinerator the locals called the "Zetland Monster", and finally one of the biggest urban renewal jobs in the country.

Green Square Town Centre in 2022. Kksuppo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gadigal Country – Sandhills, Swamps and Waterbirds

Long before anyone thought of drawing a street grid here, this was Gadigal Country. The City of Sydney's history of the area describes a system of sand dune wetlands that stretched across what we now call Green Square, with a rich mix of plants and animals. Aboriginal people would have gathered to forage around the body of water that later became known as the Waterloo Swamp. The apartments on Gadigal Avenue sit right in the middle of where that swamp used to be.

The City's park history for Joynton Park says the Waterloo Swamp was part of a chain of wetlands running from Botany Bay north to Redfern. When the City Historian, Lisa Murray, went looking for a possible Aboriginal name for the area in 2014, she painted a picture of it: Sheas Creek and the swamp ringing with oyster catchers, water hens, teal, bitterns, quail, ducks, bronze-winged pigeons, brolgas and black swans, with brush wallabies, echidnas and bandicoots in the undergrowth and gliders and possums in the trees at night. Aboriginal people would have hunted many of these birds and animals and collected the eggs of the waterbirds. Two of the names she put forward were Badu, the Sydney language word for water, and Yurungi, wild duck, both recorded by First Fleet writers.

The Lachlan Swamp in Centennial Park after rain. The country around Zetland was once part of a chain of sandhill wetlands like this, running from Botany Bay up towards Redfern. Lloyd0038, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The water from these swamps drained away south-west into Sheas Creek, then into the Cooks River and Botany Bay. In 1896, while workers were digging out Sheas Creek for the Alexandra Canal, they turned up dugong bones, Aboriginal stone hatchets and the remains of an ancient forest in the estuarine clay below low tide level. Ron Ringer's Dictionary of Sydney entry on the canal says the Australian Museum's curator, Robert Etheridge, found the dugong had been butchered with a blunt cutting or chopping tool. It's one of the best bits of evidence for how long Aboriginal people have lived around these waters.

Digging out the dugong bones found in the bed of Sheas Creek in 1896. Stone hatchet heads were found nearby, a reminder of the Aboriginal people who lived around these waters long before the canal. Australian Museum Archives, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mills, Convicts and the Waterloo Estate

The same water that fed the swamp caught the eye of the early colonists. The City of Sydney's house history for 22 Gadigal Avenue says the first water mill went up in 1815 to make use of the swamp.

In 1823 the Crown granted 1,400 acres here to William Hutchinson. His story is a very Sydney one. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in 1796 for theft, had it changed to transportation, and arrived in 1799. He was caught stealing again and sent to Norfolk Island, where he worked his way up to superintendent of convicts. Governor Macquarie then made him principal superintendent of convicts and public works in Sydney in 1814. In 1820, with Samuel Terry, he was part owner of the Waterloo flour mill. Wikipedia's Waterloo article talks about the "Lachlan and Waterloo Flour Mills" and says the mill was in what's now Kensington.

Another former convict, Daniel Cooper, became a partner in Hutchinson, Terry & Co. (the Waterloo Company) in 1821. The ADB says Cooper had been transported for life in 1815 for stealing, arrived in January 1816, and was fully pardoned by 1821. In 1825 Cooper and Solomon Levey became the sole owners of the company, which people then knew as Cooper & Levey. The Dictionary of Sydney's record for the Waterloo Estate shows Cooper owning it from 1825 until his death in 1853, when it passed to Daniel Cooper junior. Wikipedia says he was Cooper's nephew and the first Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly. The estate wasn't carved up until the 1880s.

That long ownership is the key to the whole area. The City's Green Square infrastructure plan says that for most of the 19th century almost all of Alexandria, Beaconsfield, Waterloo, Zetland and Rosebery belonged to the Coopers. Lisa Murray notes that the Cooper Estate's leases shaped how the district grew, and that the land for Waterloo Town Hall, Alexandria Town Hall and South Sydney Hospital was all donated by the estate.

Where the Name Zetland Comes From

Zetland is an old spelling of Shetland, but the suburb didn't get its name from the islands. It got it from a racing stable.

In 1874 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Hercules Robinson, set up a big horse training stable here called Zetland Lodge. It stood back from where Bourke and Elizabeth Streets meet. Lisa Murray's 2013 report on the name says Elizabeth Street was supposedly extended out to Zetland Lodge because the Governor wanted it, and was declared a main road so the colonial government had to keep it up.

Governor Sir Hercules Robinson, the keen racing man who set up the Zetland Lodge stables in 1874. Freeman Brothers Studio, Powerhouse Museum collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Robinson was mad about racing. He was patron of the Australian Jockey Club at Randwick, the Northern Jockey Club and the Hawkesbury Racing Club. He hired the trainer Thomas Lamond to run Zetland Lodge, and the winners came thick and fast: Fitz Yattendon, Kingsborough, St Leger, Hyperion and Habena. His colours were the "Zetland" or "Aske Hall" spots, red spots on white. When his daughter Nora married in 1878, her travelling dress was done in her father's racing colours.

So why "Zetland"? The Earl of Zetland, Thomas Dundas, was a huge figure in English racing and freemasonry. Wikipedia says he was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England from 1844 to 1870, a senior member of the Jockey Club, and won the Derby and St Leger with his horse Voltigeur in 1850. He died at Aske Hall in Yorkshire, the name that went on Robinson's racing spots. Exactly how he was connected to Robinson depends on who you read (more on that below).

Thomas Dundas, 2nd Earl of Zetland, painted by Francis Grant in 1841. The suburb ends up with his title by way of Robinson's stables. Francis Grant, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Earl of Zetland as "The Most Worshipful Grand Master" in Vanity Fair, 4 December 1869. He was Grand Master of the English Freemasons and a big name on the English turf. James Tissot, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When Robinson left to become Governor of New Zealand in 1878, he handed Zetland Lodge over to Thomas Lamond. Lamond made it one of the best-known stables in Sydney. He trained four Sydney Cup winners and the 1881 Melbourne Cup winner, Zulu. He also sat on Waterloo Council for 21 years, from 1887 to 1907, and was mayor four times. When he died in 1912, aged 72, Zetland Lodge was the oldest racing stable in metropolitan Sydney, and his son Stanley had taken over.

The name spread from the stable to the streets. In 1885 William Cooper decided to subdivide the land around Zetland Lodge. The "Zetland Estate" first went up for auction on 13 June 1885, with blocks fronting Bourke Street and Botany Road that ran right back to the dam of Geddes Brothers' woolwashing works. Waterloo Council dedicated the new streets, Merton, Dundas, Portman and Tilford, in August 1885. The Zetland Hotel opened in 1886, and by 1895 people were just calling the area "Zetland". It took a long time to become official, though. The Geographical Names Board only formally assigned Zetland as a suburb on 19 July 1996.

A leafy street in old Zetland. Pockets of terraces and lanes from the 1885 Zetland Estate subdivision still survive among the new towers. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Bills horse trough in Zetland, a small leftover from the days when this was horse country, with training stables serving the racecourses all around. Mattinbgn, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Smelliest Corner of Sydney – Tanneries, Wool Scourers and Brickworks

The swamps that made the land hard to build houses on made it perfect for industry. Mills needed water power, wool washers needed water to scour fleeces, and everyone needed somewhere to get rid of their waste.

Ron Ringer's Dictionary of Sydney entry on Sheas Creek explains the push. The Slaughter House Act of 1849 made all the "noxious trades" move more than a mile (1.6 kilometres) out of the city. That sent brickmakers, tanners, wool washers and chemical works out to places like St Peters, Alexandria and Waterloo. He doesn't mince words: "the stench created by industrial processes must have been truly appalling." Waste was got rid of the simple way, by letting it run into Sheas Creek.

The City's Green Square plan says that by the 1850s the Cooper Estate had become an industrial suburb, with brickworks, candle and soap factories, tanneries, breweries and wool washing firms, as well as schools and churches. The industries drank so much water that by 1869 the wetlands were radically changed. The Waterloo Mills Woolwashing Establishment was big enough to make the Australian Town and Country Journal in 1877. On top of the factory waste, from 1882 to 1916 the southern outfall sewer carried the southern suburbs' sewage from Surry Hills down to a sewage farm at the mouth of the Cooks River, and part of it was an open channel.

The NSW Shale & Oil Company's refinery in Botany Road, Waterloo, from the Australian Town and Country Journal of 10 April 1875. Smoke, smells and runoff were part of everyday life on the old Waterloo Estate. Australian Town and Country Journal, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The "Comet" kerosene works in Botany Road, Waterloo, from the Illustrated Sydney News, 23 March 1878. Illustrated Sydney News, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The area also had a strong Chinese presence. The Green Square plan notes that the streets around Retreat Street in Alexandria have had Chinese residents since at least the 1870s, that the district had the biggest concentration of Chinese market gardeners in Sydney in the 1880s and early 1900s, and that the Chinese Temple in Retreat Street was built in 1909. There was also a large dairy that supplied milk to much of the eastern suburbs. The City's Transform history walk, put together by the City Historian, adds clairvoyants, shopkeepers and factory workers to the mix, and promises to tell you "why the area used to smell so bad".

When the Cooper Estate was broken up, big blocks of land came free for purpose-built factories. Alexandria Council boasted in 1943 that it had "not less than 550 factories", making it "the largest industrial municipality in Australia", and called itself the "Birmingham of Australia". The Green Square plan puts the workforce at 22,238. Minties, Jaffas, Akubra hats and Kooka ovens all came out of factories in the Green Square area.

The Quality Casting (later Qualcast) building in Waterloo, photographed by Sam Hood in 1944. By then the old Cooper Estate was lined with purpose-built factories. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Glass, Water Heaters and More

One of the biggest names was Australian Glass Manufacturers on South Dowling Street, Waterloo. The City's Sydney Barani site says glass was one of South Sydney's main industries by the late 19th century, and that by the 1920s AGM had a monopoly on glassmaking in Sydney. Its offshoot, Crown Crystal Glass, was formed in 1926 and made everything from crystal to Pyrex. By the late 1930s the company was turning out 9,634 different kinds of bottles and containers. Many Aboriginal people worked in the factories of South Sydney, including AGM. When the Green Square area was first rezoned in 1999, the former "ACI" site in Waterloo, now Crown Square, was one of the two biggest single sites, along with Victoria Park.

The Australian Glass Manufacturers works from South Dowling Street, Waterloo, in an aerial photo by Milton Kent from about 1948 to 1952. Factory roofs run all the way to the horizon. Milton Kent, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A three-wheel tractor and trailer belonging to Australian Glass Manufacturers, about 1935, probably taken by Sam Hood. State Library of NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Rheem was another. Rheem's own company history says the American drum maker began making drums in Australia in 1937 and built its first Australian water heater at Waterloo in 1939. The Housing Industry Association adds that the Waterloo plant made 44-gallon steel drums for the oil industry.

Sheas Creek Becomes the Alexandra Canal

All that water, and all that muck, flowed down Sheas Creek. In the 1880s the government decided to turn the creek into a proper canal, so barges could carry coal, blue metal and building materials, and so the swamps could be drained for more industry. Dredging started in 1887 where Sheas Creek met the Cooks River, and a lot of the digging was done by unemployed men on relief work during the 1890s depression. The canal was finished in 1905, but it silted up almost as soon as it opened, it was too shallow for big boats, and you had to time the tides. Ringer calls it a "white elephant". In 1912 work stopped altogether.

The railway bridge over the Alexandra Canal (old Sheas Creek) in 1925. Everything that drained off the swamps and factories around Zetland ended up down this way. Australian Railway Historical Society collection, University of Newcastle, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The canal is still a drain for this whole area. The Dictionary of Sydney says rainwater runoff from Newtown, Redfern, Erskineville, Alexandria and Zetland all ends up in it, and many people see it as Australia's most polluted stretch of waterway. I'll come back to that in the section on contamination.

Victoria Park Racecourse – The "VP"

The biggest change to the swamp came from one man: James Joynton Smith. According to the ADB, he was born in London in 1858, ran away to sea as a boy, did well running hotels in New Zealand, and came to Sydney around 1890. He went on to own the Carlton Hotel in the city, the Imperial at Mount Victoria and the Carrington at Katoomba. He was Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1918, sat in the Legislative Council, started Smith's Weekly in 1919, backed Sydney's first radio station, and was president of the NSW Rugby League from 1910 to 1928. The City's history notes he made his fortune from "the pastimes of the people". It also describes him as "moustached with one glass eye and a monocle".

James Joynton Smith in 1909, the hotelier who drained the Waterloo Swamp and opened Victoria Park Racecourse. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The City's house history says Smith bought the swampy land in 1904. Its bounds were Epsom Road, Joynton Avenue, South Dowling Street and what later became O'Dea Avenue. The Joynton Park history says it was drained in 1906 by cutting a trench through to Sheas Creek, which let the water run off to Botany Bay and left two to three metres of natural peat surrounded by sandhills. On 15 January 1908 Smith opened Victoria Park Racecourse.

Pony racing was the big draw. The races had bigger fields and shorter distances than the club courses, which meant closer finishes and better odds for punters. The Dictionary of Sydney says proprietary courses like this one, and others at Kensington, Rosebery, Ascot and Canterbury, meant Sydneysiders could go to the races almost any day of the week. Victoria Park had a reputation as the best of them. The house history says some Randwick trainers actually preferred to stable and work their horses at the VP. The ADB says it was the first course in Australia to give women their own retiring rooms, and the City says it used a totalisator, a machine that worked out the betting pool, instead of leaving it to the bookies.

Sand and fence posts at Victoria Park Racecourse, Zetland, photographed by Sam Hood in the 1930s. The old sandhills were never far away. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Another of Sam Hood's 1930s views of the sandy edge of Victoria Park Racecourse. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The VP wasn't just for horses. Wikipedia says a clay and cinder track 1.81 kilometres long was laid around the course in 1908 for car and motorbike racing. The first motor meeting, on 6 October 1908, had six horse races followed by a car race, the One Hundred Guinea Handicap. Fred Howarth won the final in a Sizaire-Naudin two days later, after the horse races ran late. In 1909 Colin Defries got a Wright Model A aeroplane, "The Stella", off the ground here for about 110 metres at around four and a half metres up. The City calls it one of Australia's earliest powered flights, and Wikipedia says Australian aviation historians credit Defries with the first aeroplane flight in Australia.

The cover of a Victoria Park, Zetland, racebook from July 1935. Ross Brothers, Sydney, Les Haigh Family Collection, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Inside the same 1935 Victoria Park racebook, with the day's starters and results. Ross Brothers, Sydney, Les Haigh Family Collection, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Rogilla, with jockey Darby Munro, in the Sir Herbert Maitland Stakes at Victoria Park in 1935, when they ran third. Sydney Morning Herald, Les Haigh Family Collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The racing ended with the Second World War. The house history says the last races were held in 1942, when the military took the course over. It reopened for horse training in 1945, but proprietary racing had been banned by then, so there were no more race days. Part of the old grandstand had a second life as the balcony of Smith's Carrington Hotel in Katoomba. The three-storey totalisator building, "the Tote", is the only part of the racecourse still standing on Joynton Avenue. Joynton Smith died at Coogee in 1943.

Royal South Sydney Hospital

Joynton Smith's other big local project was a hospital. Wikipedia says locals started raising money for a South Sydney hospital in 1908 and made Smith their provisional president. A 25-bed public hospital was built from 1912 and opened in 1913. It became "Royal" in 1917 and grew to 110 beds the next year. The ADB calls it Smith's favourite charity and says he was a director until he died. The land came from the Cooper Estate.

Royal South Sydney Hospital on Christmas Day 1936. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Staff of South Sydney Hospital on Christmas Day 1940. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

New brick buildings went up in 1976 and the hospital moved into rehabilitation, orthopaedics and community health. In 1991 it merged with the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, and the general services, including the emergency department, were run down. Wikipedia says that last part was controversial. The hospital closed for good in 2003 and the site went to South Sydney Council, later the City of Sydney. It sat empty for years. The old nurses' quarters reopened as the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre in May 2018, and Matron Ruby Grant Park now sits on the old hospital grounds.

A plaque on what was left of the Royal South Sydney Hospital in 2013, before the site became part of the Green Square town centre. Hippietrail, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Joynton Avenue Creative Precinct in 2025. The old nurses' quarters reopened as the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre in May 2018. ColonelLight, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Car Plant – Morris, Austin, the Mini and the P76

After the war, the empty racecourse was bought by Lord Nuffield, the head of Morris Motors. The City's house history puts the purchase in 1948, while Wikipedia says 1947. Nuffield wanted to use most of the land for a car factory and sell the rest for a mix of housing and industry. That was the first of the post-war housing fights here: the new Cumberland County Council had zoned the area for industry only, so the City Council knocked back the housing on its advice. The industrial subdivision was approved on 10 December 1951 and finalised in 1952, with Lot 12 becoming the car plant.

Wikipedia's BMC Australia article says Nuffield Australia opened its new 57-acre assembly plant in March 1950, building Morris Minors and Morris Oxfords from kits shipped out from England. In 1954 Nuffield and Austin merged into the British Motor Corporation (Australia), and Victoria Park became the company's head office, design centre and main factory. The house history gives the workforce as about 150 when the plant started, around 4,000 by the mid-1960s, and between 5,000 and 5,500 at its peak. The company changed its name to British Leyland Motor Corporation by 1969, and to Leyland Australia in 1972.

The BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group's reference book describes a whole industrial town on the old track. The CKD plant unpacked the kits from England and assembled, painted and trimmed the cars. The Unit Plant made engines, gearboxes and axles, and had its own apprentice school. Fisher & Ludlow ran a press shop with presses of up to 900 tons, and the newer Car Assembly Building was said to be one of the most modern in the world. In 1968 a new administration building opened on the eastern side, and the plant's official address moved from Joynton Avenue, Zetland, to South Dowling Street, Waterloo.

A 1964 Austin Freeway, one of the BMC Australia family cars of the 1960s. sv1ambo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Then came the Mini. The Heritage Group's MiniWorld book says the Morris 850 was announced in the papers on 23 March 1961, with the Cooper following in 1963, the van in 1964 and the Moke in 1966. BMC Australia wasn't sure Australians would buy it at all. Its product engineer worried that Aussies started out with a big second-hand "bomb" rather than a small car, and thought the best hope was the second-car market. It's a funny thing to read now, given how many Minis ended up on Sydney roads. Museums Victoria says the Australian Mini was built at Zetland from 1961 to 1974.

A 1961 Morris Mini Mk I 850. The Morris 850 was announced in March 1961, and Australian Minis were built at Victoria Park, Zetland, until 1974. Cars Down Under, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A 1970 Australian Moke. Moke production at Victoria Park began in 1966. Bob Adams, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The last big car to come out of Zetland was the Leyland P76. The City's Joynton Park history lists Morris, Austin and Wolseley cars and "the famous Leyland P76" among the plant's products. Wikipedia says the P76 won Wheels Car of the Year for 1973, but it had bad luck. Inflation was rising, industrial action was hitting both the parts makers and the Zetland plant, and the car came out just as the 1973 oil crisis killed demand for big cars. Leyland shut the plant in late 1974 (sources give October, December or simply 1975), and Mini and Moke production moved to Enfield.

A 1974 Leyland P76 Super V8. The P76 was built at Zetland and died with the plant in 1974. Sicnag, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Navy Moves In

Once Leyland had gone, the Royal Australian Navy took over the site. The house history says there were eight general factory buildings and an office block for about 450 staff. The Navy used most of them as stores that held everything from ship propellers and generators to frozen food and pencils, though not explosives or missiles. About 800 people, mostly civilians, worked there until 1990, when things began to wind down. By 1996 the Navy had gone.

The Problems – Floods, Smoke and Poisoned Ground

None of this came without a price. By the time people started talking seriously about housing at Zetland, the place had three big problems: it flooded, the air was bad, and the ground and water were contaminated.

Flooding

You can drain a swamp, but the water still wants to go somewhere. The City's 2015 Green Square infrastructure plan says that since early colonial times the wetlands and creeks had held back development, and parts of Green Square sit on a floodplain where heavy rain causes serious flooding. The area is in the Alexandra Canal catchment, the biggest in the City of Sydney. It covers 1,141 hectares, or 43 per cent of the City's land, from Moore Park and Surry Hills right down through Zetland. In big storms the old pipes overflow and the water runs along the streets and pools in the low spots.

The fix was a 2.5-kilometre trunk stormwater drain from Link Road, Zetland, to the Alexandra Canal, running through the new town centre. The City and Sydney Water signed a deal to build it together in November 2013. The 2015 plan was blunt: without it, development in the town centre "could be severely hindered". The aim was to cut dangerous flooding on Joynton Avenue and Botany Road, with the drain due to be running by December 2017.

The "Zetland Monster"

Just as industry was fading, Zetland got a new neighbour it never asked for. Redfern News tells the story. In 1965 Waverley and Woollahra councils applied to build a rubbish incinerator in Botany Road, Waterloo. The City of Sydney said no, but in 1966 the Land and Valuation Court approved it. It was built over the filled-in Waterloo Dam, right next to Zetland's houses. The City's Green Square plan says its huge chimney poured out "stench, pollution and particle fallout round the clock". Locals called it the "Zetland Monster".

Residents were protesting within a year of it opening. In 1974 the State Pollution Control Commission ordered it shut, but it was overhauled and reopened in July 1976. In 1989 tests found dioxins in the emissions 30 to 60 times over world standards, and in 1992 further tests found levels up to 153 times over. Greenpeace blockaded it for a day in August 1992. After years of campaigning by the local action group ZCAG, Greenpeace and South Sydney Council, the incinerator closed in 1996. In its last year the EPA classed the ash as hazardous. It stood empty for years before it was knocked down to make room for the town centre.

Contaminated Ground and Water

A century and a half of tanning, scouring, refining, glassmaking and car-making leaves its mark in the soil. The worst of it sits in the canal. On 25 August 2000 the NSW Environment Protection Authority declared the bed of the Alexandra Canal, from Huntley Street, Alexandria, to the Cooks River, a remediation site under the Contaminated Land Management Act. The EPA found organochlorine pesticides (chlordane, DDT and dieldrin), PCBs and metals in the sediment. It said there was hardly any life left in the canal bed, that PCBs in the fish were over the legal limits, and that disturbing the mud would stir the poisons up again. The Dictionary of Sydney quotes a 2008 EPA report calling it "the most severely contaminated canal in the southern hemisphere", and says plans to make it a "Venice of Sydney" were dropped that year because cleaning it up would cost too much.

The Alexandra Canal in 2008, with the city skyline in the distance. In 2000 the EPA declared the canal bed a remediation site. Pigmypossum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On dry land, every old industrial block in Zetland has to be checked and cleaned up before people can live on it. NSW planning law (SEPP 55, "Remediation of Land") is there to make sure a change of use, especially to housing, doesn't put people's health at risk. A good example is 94–104 Epsom Road, the land next to Gunyama Park. A 2020 City of Sydney planning report says it was part of the racecourse, with army use during the war. Between 1952 and 1980 it was owned by Olympic Tyre & Rubber and used for car repair workshops and a petrol station, and from 1980 it was a council depot. The site investigation found hot spots with too much lead, PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and friable asbestos. The developer had to prepare a Remedial Action Plan to dig out the hot spots or bury them carefully, with sign-off from an accredited site auditor. The council also made it test for PFAS "forever chemicals" in the groundwater, which sits only about 3.5 metres down. The auditor's view was that the PFAS risk was very low and could be treated if it turned up.

The northern end of the Alexandra Canal in April 2025. Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Housing Debates

Housing versus industry is an old fight here. In the early 1950s, as noted above, the County Council's industrial zoning stopped Nuffield putting houses on part of the racecourse. Next door, Wikipedia's Waterloo article says there were slum clearance plans from at least the 1960s, protests against new towers in the 1970s, and a Builders Labourers Federation green ban in 1974 to protect low-income housing. Zetland ended up with the incinerator in the 1960s partly because other parts of Sydney saw it as a convenient place to put their waste.

From Factories to Flats – Green Square

The Green Square plan says that after the war, manufacturing either shrank or moved out west, leaving big empty industrial blocks. The downturn sped up from the 1970s. In August 1993 the Department of Planning launched the Green Square Strategy, an "urban village" for up to 30,000 people on the old industrial land east of the incinerator. Planning really got going in 1995, after the Airport Link railway and a station at Green Square were announced. A design competition followed, and in 1998 the Green Square Structural Masterplan was released.

Green Square railway station in 2011. The station opened in 2000 and gave its name to the whole renewal area. Gareth Edwards, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1996 the NSW Government set up the South Sydney Development Corporation to run the South Sydney Growth Centre, including the old Navy stores at Victoria Park. In December 1997 the Victoria Park land was sold to Landcom, the State's developer. Landcom put in the sewers, phone lines and roads (Gadigal Avenue among them), and its 1998 masterplan allowed for 2,500 homes for 3,800 people. Most of Green Square was rezoned in 1999 under the South Sydney plans, and the Victoria Park masterplan was approved the same year. By 1999 almost every building on the site had been knocked down except the heritage-listed Tote.

Council Boundaries

Zetland has changed councils several times. It sat in the old Municipality of Waterloo. Wikipedia's history of the City of South Sydney says a council by that name (first called Northcott) ran from 1968 to the start of 1982 and again from 1989 to 2004. The second South Sydney Council had its offices on Joynton Avenue, Zetland, until it moved to Redfern in 2001. In 2004 the State Government merged it with the City of Sydney. Along the way, the suburb boundaries were tidied up and Zetland was formally named a suburb in July 1996.

Victoria Park in the 1990s and 2000s

Private builders went to work on the cleared land. Among the first was 22 Gadigal Avenue, the ESP apartments, finished in 2004. It has 221 apartments and won an Australian Institute of Building award that year. The street names tell the site's story if you know how to read them. Levy and Hutchinson recall the old landholders. Joynton Avenue, Tote Park, Victoria Park Parade and Grandstand Parade recall the racecourse. Nuffield Park and Austin, Wolseley, Morris and Leyland Groves recall the car plant.

The ESP apartments at 22 Gadigal Avenue in 2006. Built in 2004, they stand on what was the middle of the Waterloo Swamp, and later the car plant. J Bar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Apartments on Victoria Park Parade in 2010. The street names keep the racecourse alive. OSX, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

East Village

East Village opened on 22 October 2014, with a supermarket, gym, shops and cafés, plus 206 apartments upstairs and a 6,500 square metre "Sky Park". Its address is Victoria Park, Cooper Place, so the Coopers are still on the map.

East Village at Victoria Park, which opened in October 2014 with shops below and apartments above. Turner Studio, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why It's Called Green Square

The name Green Square is much newer than Zetland, and it doesn't refer to grass. Lisa Murray found that in 1937–38, when O'Riordan Street was rebuilt, a small reserve was made where it met Botany Road. Alexandria Council named it Green Square after Alderman Frederick Green, a Labor man who pushed hard for local industry and jobs, was mayor in 1937–38 and 1945, and later served as Member for Redfern from 1950 to 1968. Hardly anyone knew the name until the railway station opened in 2000. In 2012 the Council named the new town centre plaza Green Square to keep it going. When Urban Growth NSW pushed in 2013 and 2014 to rename the town centre as a separate suburb called Green Square, the City Historian recommended against it. Her view was that Zetland had been in continual use for about 140 years and shouldn't be changed "for expediency or fashion". She suggested Green Square be an "urban place" within Zetland and Alexandria instead.

The Library and Plaza

The City opened the Green Square Library and Plaza in September 2018. Stewart Hollenstein with Stewart Architecture won a worldwide competition to design it. Most of the library is underground, which is no small thing on land the City notes "was once a swamp". It has 40 skylights, a sunken garden, an amphitheatre and a six-storey glass tower poking up through the plaza. Hanging in the atrium is Cloud Nation, an aeroplane by the artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, with a tiny world of people and houses built onto it. It's a nice nod to Colin Defries and his 1909 flight just up the road. In 2019 the library won the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture.

Green Square Library and Plaza in 2022, with the glass tower rising out of the plaza and the library itself underground. Kksuppo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another look at the Green Square library in November 2022. Sam Wilson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Green Square renewal in July 2021, with the library tower on the left. Drematros, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre

Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre opened at 17 Zetland Avenue on 1 February 2021. The City says it's the biggest pool complex built in Sydney since the 2000 Olympics. Andrew Burges Architects, Grimshaw and TCL won the 2014 design competition, and CPB Contractors built it. There's a 50-metre outdoor pool set inside a bigger, beach-shaped pool, a 25-metre indoor pool, a hydrotherapy pool, a kids' water play area and a full-size sports field. The planting draws on the old wetlands. Out front is Bangala, a bronze sculpture by Aunty Julie Freeman (Eora/Yuin) and Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi), modelled on the water carriers Aboriginal people used along the east coast. After more than a century of drains, dams and dirty water, it seems fitting that water is now what brings people here.

Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre in 2022. It opened on 1 February 2021 on land that was once part of the racecourse and later a council depot. Ampamci, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The entrance to the Drying Green, a 6,200 square metre park bounded by Portman Street, Geddes Avenue, Paul Street and Zetland Avenue. Ampamci, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Zetland Today

The numbers show how fast it's all happened. The City's 2015 plan says about 3,000 people lived in the Green Square area when it was rezoned in 1999, and 21,200 by 2014. At the 2021 Census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics counted 12,622 people in Zetland alone, with a median age of 30, in 7,466 private dwellings. Wikipedia gives 10,078 for 2016. The same 2015 plan expected Green Square to be home to 53,190 people by 2030.

Ebsworth Street now runs through the town centre and is billed as Sydney's first new high street in a century. Wikipedia says a new primary school is going onto the old hospital land on Joynton Avenue. The trams that ran through Zetland from 1902 until 1957 are long gone, as is the Zetland Post Office (1937 to 1983). But if you walk the Transform trail from the library you can still find old terraces, the horse trough and the Tote.

Ebsworth Street, billed as Sydney's first new high street in a century. Ampamci, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Zetland Avenue in 2022. Ampamci, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Gadigal Country of sandhills, creeks and wetlands, including the Waterloo Swamp.
• 1815 – First water mill built to use the swamp (City of Sydney).
• 1820 – Hutchinson and Terry part owners of the Waterloo flour mill.
• 1823 – 1,400 acres granted to William Hutchinson (the Waterloo Estate).
• 1825 – Daniel Cooper and Solomon Levey become sole owners of the Waterloo Company. The estate stays with the Coopers for decades.
• 1849 – Slaughter House Act pushes noxious trades a mile out of the city.
• 1850s – Cooper Estate has become an industrial suburb.
• 1874 – Governor Sir Hercules Robinson sets up Zetland Lodge stables.
• 1878 – Zetland Lodge passes to trainer Thomas Lamond.
• 1881 – Lamond's Zulu wins the Melbourne Cup.
• 1882–1916 – Southern outfall sewer runs through the district, partly as an open channel.
• 13 June 1885 – Zetland Estate goes to auction. Streets dedicated in August.
• 1886 – Zetland Hotel opens.
• 1887–1905 – Sheas Creek dug out as the Alexandra Canal.
• 1896 – Dugong bones and stone hatchets found in Sheas Creek.
• 1902 – Trams start running through Zetland.
• 1904 – Joynton Smith buys the swamp land.
• 1906 – Swamp drained via a trench to Sheas Creek.
• 15 January 1908 – Victoria Park Racecourse opens.
• 6 October 1908 – First motor race meeting at Victoria Park.
• 1909 – Colin Defries flies at Victoria Park.
• 1913 – South Sydney Hospital opens. It becomes "Royal" in 1917.
• 1938 – Green Square reserve named after Alderman Frederick Green.
• 1939 – Rheem makes its first Australian water heater at Waterloo.
• 1942 – Last races at Victoria Park. The military takes over.
• 1943 – Alexandria claims 550 factories and calls itself the "Birmingham of Australia".
• 1947/48 – Lord Nuffield buys the racecourse.
• March 1950 – Nuffield Australia's assembly plant opens.
• 10 December 1951 – Industrial subdivision approved. Housing is refused.
• 1954 – BMC (Australia) formed, with its head office at Victoria Park.
• 1957 – Zetland trams close.
• 23 March 1961 – Morris 850 (Mini) announced.
• 1966 – Moke production begins.
• 1972/73 – Waterloo Incinerator opens.
• 1973 – Leyland P76 launched.
• Late 1974 – Leyland closes the Zetland plant. The Navy moves in.
• 1989–2004 – Second South Sydney Council, with offices on Joynton Avenue until 2001.
• 1993 – Green Square Strategy launched.
• 1996 – Incinerator closes. The Navy has left. South Sydney Development Corporation set up. Zetland formally assigned as a suburb (19 July).
• 1997 – Victoria Park sold to Landcom.
• 1998 – Green Square Structural Masterplan and Victoria Park masterplan.
• 1999 – Most of Green Square rezoned. The old factories are demolished.
• 2000 – Green Square station opens. The EPA declares the Alexandra Canal bed a remediation site (25 August).
• 2003 – Royal South Sydney Hospital closes.
• 2004 – South Sydney merged into the City of Sydney. ESP apartments completed.
• 2007/08 – Incinerator demolished.
• 2013 – Trunk drain agreement between the City and Sydney Water.
• 22 October 2014 – East Village opens.
• 2018 – Joynton Avenue Creative Centre (May) and Green Square Library (September) open.
• 1 February 2021 – Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre opens.
• 2021 – Census counts 12,622 people in Zetland.

Where the Sources Disagree

• How the Earl of Zetland was connected to Robinson. The Dictionary of Sydney says the suburb was named after the Earl of Zetland in the 1870s "by his relative Governor Sir Hercules Robinson". Lisa Murray's City Historian report says the Earl was "reputedly a relation of his wife, Lady Robinson". Wikipedia says the stable was "presumably" named after the Earl because he was a friend of the Governor and a fellow mason. All three agree the suburb's name came through the Zetland Lodge stables. I couldn't find any source I could actually read that says the name came straight from a racehorse called "Lord Zetland". The racing link I could confirm is that the Earl was a leading turf man (his Voltigeur won the 1850 Derby) and that Robinson raced in the "Zetland" spots.
• When the swamp was drained and the course opened. The City's house history has Joynton Smith buying the land in 1904. The Joynton Park history says it was drained in 1906. The Green Square infrastructure plan says the racecourse was "created in 1906". The ADB and the Dictionary of Sydney both give the opening as 15 January 1908.
• When the racecourse closed. The house history says the last races were in 1942. The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and the Joynton Park history say 1944. Erik Nielsen's chapter title in Histories of Green Square runs "1908–1943". A 2020 City planning report says the Victoria Park company ran the site as a racecourse "from 1910 to 1946".
• What the course was used for in the war. The house history says the military took it over. Wikipedia says it was used for an aircraft factory. The 2020 planning report says part of it was an army base from 1939 to 1945.
• When Nuffield bought it and when the plant opened. Wikipedia says 1947, the City's house history says 1948. Wikipedia's BMC article says the plant opened in March 1950 (and elsewhere in the same article says it was "opened by Lord Nuffield in 1957"). The house history says it started as an assembly plant "around 1954 with about 150 employees".
• When the car plant closed. Wikipedia's P76 article says October 1974. The City's house history says December 1974. The Heritage Group book says "late 1974". The City's Joynton Park history and Wikipedia's Zetland and Victoria Park articles say 1975.
• The first mill. The City's house history says the first water mill went up in 1815. The Dictionary of Sydney says Hutchinson developed a water-powered flour mill in 1818. The ADB and the house history say Hutchinson was part owner of the Waterloo mill in 1820.
• The incinerator's dates. The City's Green Square plan says it ran from 1972 to 1996 and was demolished in 2008. Redfern News says it opened in 1973 and was demolished in 2007.
• Who founded the hospital, and when. The ADB says Joynton Smith founded (Royal) South Sydney Hospital in 1910. Wikipedia says fundraising began in 1908 with Smith as provisional president, building started in 1912 and it opened in 1913.
• When Green Square station opened. Lisa Murray's report says May 2000. The City's infrastructure plan says "late 2000".

My Earlier Posts

• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail – A History of Sydney Transport
• Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began – From Bidjigal Country to the Steam Trams
• The Old Moore Park Zoo – Sydney's First Zoo at Billy Goat Swamp – 1884 to 1916
• Glebe Island – Sydney – From Gadigal and Wangal Country to Abattoirs, Swing Bridges, Silos and the Anzac Bridge
• Juanita Nielsen – Kings Cross Publisher, Victoria Street Green Ban Campaigner and Her Disappearance from the Carousel Cabaret – 4 July 1975

Sources

• City of Sydney, House history: 22 Gadigal Avenue, Zetland, case study, February 2025 – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney, "History of Joynton Park", 27 March 2013 – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• Lisa Murray, City Historian, "History and heritage assessment of placenames – Zetland and Green Square" (5 August 2013) and "Zetland – Green Square Town Centre – alternative suburb names" (28 January 2014), City of Sydney committee papers, 10 March 2014 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney, Draft Green Square Infrastructure Strategy and Plan, March 2015 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney News, "Discover Green Square's history on foot with a new self-guided walk" – news.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney, "Building a new library at Green Square" – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney News, "In pictures: Green Square's new library and plaza", 25 September 2018 – news.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney, "Building state-of-the-art Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre" – cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• City of Sydney Local Planning Panel, "Development Application: 94–104 Epsom Road, Zetland – D/2019/1159", 1 July 2020 – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• Planning Ingenuity, "Independent Assessment Report – 94–104 Epsom Road, Zetland – D/2019/976", City of Sydney – meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• Laila Ellmoos, "Australian Glass Manufacturers", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney), 2013 – sydneybarani.com.au
• NSW Environment Protection Authority, "Declaration of Remediation Site No. 21008 – Alexandra Canal", 25 August 2000 – apps.epa.nsw.gov.au
• Ron Ringer, "From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013 – dictionaryofsydney.org
• Dictionary of Sydney, place records: "Zetland", "Victoria Park racecourse", "Waterloo Estate" – Zetland, Victoria Park racecourse, Waterloo Estate
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Culture and customs" and "Planning" – Culture and customs, Planning
• Paul Edwin Le Roy, "Hutchinson, William (1772–1846)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
• "Cooper, Daniel (1785–1853)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
• Bede Nairn, "Robinson, Sir Hercules George (1824–1897)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
• Chris Cunneen, "Smith, Sir James John Joynton (1858–1943)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au
• BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group, MiniWorld (look-inside extract) – leylandaustralia.com.au
• BMC-Leyland Australia Heritage Group, BMC-Leyland Australia Reference (look-inside extract) – leylandaustralia.com.au
• Museums Victoria Collections, "Morris (BMC) Mini" – collections.museumsvictoria.com.au
• Rheem Australia, "Company Profile" – rheem.com.au
• Housing Industry Association, "A plumb Australian legend", June 2021 – hia.com.au
• Redfern News, "Tracing the Troubled Past of the Waterloo Incinerator in Zetland", 18 April 2023 – redfernnews.com.au
• WeekendNotes, "East Village – Official Opening and Market Day", 17 October 2014 – weekendnotes.com
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, "Zetland – 2021 Census All persons QuickStats" – abs.gov.au
• Wikipedia: Zetland, New South Wales; Victoria Park Racecourse, Sydney; Royal South Sydney Hospital; BMC Australia; Leyland P76; Green Square, New South Wales; Waterloo, New South Wales; City of South Sydney; Thomas Dundas, 2nd Earl of Zetland
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.