My Country - Dorathea McKeller

 

My Country 

The Love Of Field & Coppice, 
Of Green Shaded Lanes 
Of Ordered Woods And Gardens
Is Running Through Your Veins 
Strong Love Of Blue Grey Distance
Brown Streams & Soft Dim Skies
I Know But Cannot Share It
My Love's Otherwise 


I Love A Sunburnt Country
A Land Of Sweeping Plains
Of Ragged Mountain Ranges 
Of Droughts And Flooding Rains
I Love Her Far Horizons
I Love The Jewel Sea

Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners

If you have ever walked along Forbes Street or up Darlinghurst Road past the long sandstone walls of the National Art School, you have walked past the place where Sydney hanged its condemned prisoners for more than sixty years. In my earlier post on Darlinghurst Gaol and Darlinghurst Court I covered the buildings themselves: the convict-quarried sandstone, the radial wings, and how the old gaol became the art school. This time I wanted to look at the darker side of the place, the hangings, and the people who are remembered because of it.

Before I start, a word about how I have gone about this. Nearly every name here belongs to someone who was killed or badly hurt, and to families who had to live with it. Where the records name the victims I have used their names, except for children who were sexually assaulted. Where my sources disagree, I say so.

Darlinghurst Gaol from the air in 1930, with the courthouse at the front and the radial wings behind the walls. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (scan uploaded by Adam.J.W.C.), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From George Street to Darlinghurst

In the years before 1841, Sydney's hangings were carried out at the old Sydney Gaol on the corner of George and Essex Streets in The Rocks. The last man hanged there was Michael Lynch, a sawyer from the Illawarra, on 4 June 1841. Three days later, on 7 June, the prisoners were walked in chains from the old gaol to the new one on Darlinghurst hill, 407 men and 39 women, by one count.

That date matters, because plenty of lists online mix the two gaols up. You will sometimes see the seven men hanged for the Myall Creek massacre listed as executed at Darlinghurst. They were hanged at the old Sydney Gaol on 18 December 1838, nearly three years before Darlinghurst opened, so it always pays to check a date against 1841.

The public hangings, 1841 to 1852

The first hangings

The first two men hanged at Darlinghurst went to the gallows together on 29 October 1841. George Stroud (sometimes spelt Stroode) had murdered his wife Sarah at Concord, and Robert Hudson had killed a fellow convict, Dean West, at the General Hospital in Macquarie Street. The scaffold was put up in the gaol yard and the public were let in to watch: between five and six hundred people, the papers said.

A year later the gaol tried something different. On 8 November 1842 four men convicted of piracy at Norfolk Island, George Beavor, John Jones, Henry Sears and Nicholas Lewis (alias Head), were hanged in the yard, but only people with a written order from the Sheriff, the visiting magistrate or the gaol governor were let in. The Colonial Observer approved: the more private such "disgusting and demoralising spectacles" were, the better. The next morning Stephen Brennan, convicted of murdering Pat Lynch on Norfolk Island, was hanged in the same yard before eighty to a hundred ticket-holders.

John Knatchbull and the scaffold outside the gate

That early attempt at privacy did not last. The first hanging held outside the gaol walls was the one people still talk about, the execution of John Knatchbull on 13 February 1844.

Knatchbull had been a Royal Navy captain who served in the wars against France. He came down in the world, was transported to New South Wales in 1824 under the name John Fitch, and later did years on Norfolk Island for forgery. On the night of 6 January 1844 he went into the little shop Ellen Jamieson ran from her home on the corner of Kent Street and Margaret Place and attacked her with a tomahawk to rob her. Ellen was a widow of about 35 with two small children, Mary and Robert. A neighbour, John Shalless, raised the alarm and the locals broke in and found Knatchbull hiding behind the door. Ellen died eleven days later, on 18 January.

John Knatchbull, from a lithograph sold in Sydney around the time of his execution in 1844. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

His barrister, Robert Lowe (later a British cabinet minister), tried what the judge called a brand-new defence, that Knatchbull had acted under an "irresistible impulse", a kind of moral insanity. The jury did not even leave the box. Knatchbull later confessed in writing, "I am Guilty of the Horrid Deed for which I am justly to suffer Death".

The gallows were built outside the gaol in Forbes Street, by the gate. The crowd that came up Darlinghurst hill on the morning of the hanging was put at about ten thousand: men, women and children, held back by soldiers and police. The rope was not set properly and he took at least two minutes to die. Afterwards a plaster cast was taken of his head "for phrenological purposes", and printers sold pictures of him and of Ellen Jamieson for a shilling.

The crowd outside the gaol (then often called Woolloomooloo Gaol) for the hanging of John Knatchbull, February 1844. State Library of NSW, artist not recorded, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The hangman in the hut by the wall

The man who hanged Knatchbull, and nearly everyone else in New South Wales for twenty-one years, was Alexander Green. He had arrived as a convict in 1824, worked for years as a flogger, and became the colony's executioner in February 1834. The older biography of him claimed he hanged 490 people, but the historian Pamela Harrison, working from the NSW Capital Convictions Database, puts it at about 251, which is still a frightening number.

In 1842 Green was allowed to build a whitewashed hut at his own expense outside the eastern wall of the gaol, and he lived there for about ten years. The spot later became Green Park, but here is the twist: the park is named after James Green, the local alderman from 1869 to 1883, not the hangman. Alexander Green drank heavily, did a stint as a prisoner in Darlinghurst himself in 1850, was certified insane in 1855 and died in 1879.

The old gaol gates, now the way in to the National Art School. Photo: Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The last public hanging at Darlinghurst

Through the 1840s the public hangings went on; John Ahern in 1845, William Fyfe in 1848 and Owen Molloy in 1849 are all recorded as public, Molloy dying "on the drop in front of Darlinghurst Gaol". The last public hanging there was Francis Thomas Green (no relation to the hangman) on Tuesday 21 September 1852. He was a sly-grog seller who had shot his partner, John Jones, "the Tinker", at Buckley's Creek on the goldfields near Bathurst. A neat dresser to the end, he changed his shoes because they had got dirty and went up the scaffold dressed in white with a small cross around his neck.

It was a drizzly morning, and Bell's Life was more interested in the crowd than the prisoner, complaining that women outnumbered men nearly three to one, including a carriage full of "women of respectable exterior" parked right in front of the drop. That sort of reporting tells you which way public opinion was moving.

You will often read that Francis Green was the last person publicly hanged in New South Wales. He was the last at Darlinghurst, but not in the colony. Public hangings carried on at country gaols for a while; Patrick McCarthy and an Aboriginal man recorded only as Paddy were hanged outside Bathurst Gaol in April 1853, for example. Darlinghurst simply had no more hangings until the law changed.

The law changes: executions move inside the walls

The NSW Legislative Council passed An Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals on 17 August 1853. Because it changed British law it had to wait for the Queen's assent, and it only took effect in January 1855: the Sydney Law Review says 11 January, while Rachel Franks of the State Library, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, says it was proclaimed on 10 January. From then on, hangings had to happen inside a gaol before officials and a few witnesses. Britain did not follow until 1868.

The first private hanging under the new law, and according to the historian Steven Anderson the first on the Australian continent, was at Darlinghurst on 28 February 1855. William Ryan had murdered his wife Catherine near the corner of Hay and Castlereagh Streets. The date was kept so quiet that hardly anyone knew, and the women and children gathered outside saw nothing: "the new arrangements prevented the gratification of their curiosity". It was Alexander Green's last job. When Samuel Wilcox and William Rodgers were hanged on 5 July 1855, the rope was handled by his successor, Robert Elliott.

Where the gallows stood

This is something I wanted to pin down, because you will see different answers. From what I have found, there were really four places over the years:

• 1841 and 1842: temporary gallows in the gaol yard, open to the public in 1841 and ticket-only in 1842.
• 1844 to 1852: the public scaffold outside the main gate on Forbes Street, on the north-west side. Wikipedia adds that it was later replaced by a platform above the gate, which I have not been able to confirm.
• 1869 to 1886: a permanent gallows inside the walls at the north-east corner, near Burton Street and Darlinghurst Road: a small platform in the angle of a building, so a prisoner could walk straight from the cell to the drop. Thomas Kelly was the first hanged on it, on 2 January 1872, and the names of those hanged there were recorded on the beam above.
• 1887 onwards: a new gallows in E wing, built by Hudson Brothers just before the Mount Rennie hangings in January 1887. The old one could be seen from high ground outside the walls, it was within earshot of any crowd outside, and it was too small to hang several people at once.

Between 1855 and 1869 the papers only say the hangings took place "within the grounds" or "within the precincts". In later years, witnesses with a Sheriff's order came in through the courthouse and signed a book before being led through to the gaol.

'The Gallows from the Keep Yard: The Scaffold at Darlinghurst, Drawn by a Confinee', 19th century. State Library of NSW, unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bushrangers on the Darlinghurst gallows

In the 1860s the bushrangers filled the condemned cells. Henry Manns was hanged on 26 March 1863 for his part in the Eugowra Rocks gold escort robbery planned by Frank Gardiner's gang. John Dunn of Ben Hall's gang shot dead Constable Samuel Nelson, the only policeman at Collector, during a hold-up in January 1865. Dunn was hanged on 19 March 1866, aged 19.

Thomas and John Clarke, brothers from the Braidwood district, ran the last big organised bushranging gang in New South Wales. After four special constables were ambushed and killed near Jinden in January 1867, the brothers were hunted down, and they were hanged side by side at Darlinghurst on 25 June 1867.

Captain Moonlite

The bushranger most people have heard of is Andrew George Scott, "Captain Moonlite". Irish-born and raised partly in New Zealand, he had already served time in Pentridge prison in Victoria. In November 1879 he and a band of young men, hungry and broke after being refused work, held up Wantabadgery station near Wagga Wagga. In the shootout with police at McGlede's farm that followed, Senior Constable Edward Webb Bowen was fatally wounded, and Scott's close companion James Nesbitt was shot dead.

Scott and Thomas Rogan were hanged together at Darlinghurst at 8 o'clock on the morning of 20 January 1880. Scott went to the gallows wearing a ring woven from a lock of Nesbitt's hair, and asked to be buried beside him: "My dying wish is to be buried beside my beloved James Nesbitt". The authorities refused. In January 1995 his remains were finally taken from Rookwood and reburied at Gundagai, near Nesbitt's grave. Another gang member, Thomas Williams (alias Frank Johns), was spared in 1880, but after he stabbed a fellow prisoner at Parramatta Gaol he was hanged at Darlinghurst on 14 July 1885.

Andrew George Scott, 'Captain Moonlite', around 1879. Believed to be by Charles Nettleton; National Portrait Gallery (Victoria Police Historical Collection), restored by Adam Cuerden, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The man who shot a prince

One of the strangest cases is Henry James O'Farrell. On 12 March 1868, at a picnic at Clontarf, he shot and wounded Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son. The prince recovered. O'Farrell pleaded insanity but was convicted of wounding with intent to murder and hanged at Darlinghurst on 21 April 1868, after the first attempted political assassination in Australia.

"Nosey Bob", the hangman everyone knew

For most of the later hangings at Darlinghurst the hangman was Robert Rice Howard, known to all of Sydney as "Nosey Bob". He was born around 1832 at Marham in Norfolk, England, came out to Queensland in 1866 and drove a cab in Sydney. In the mid-1870s, while he was still working as a cabman, he lost his nose. He became assistant hangman in 1875 and chief executioner from 1877.

Over twenty-eight years he took part in 62 executions around the state, 59 of them as the man in charge. Rachel Franks, in her 2022 biography of him, counts twelve as bungled, where the prisoner strangled rather than died from the drop. From about 1887 he lived in a weatherboard cottage on Ben Buckler at North Bondi, where he kept bees, fished for sharks, and was said to have trained his horse to fetch beer from the Cliff House Hotel. In November 1887 a gang of young men set on him at Bondi and threatened to hang him. He retired in May 1904, died at North Bondi on 3 February 1906 and is buried at Waverley Cemetery. His assistant George Russell took over as hangman.

Robert 'Nosey Bob' Howard, as drawn in Truth two days after the hanging of Jimmy Governor, 20 January 1901. Truth (Sydney), unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Mount Rennie hangings, 1887

On 9 September 1886 a sixteen-year-old girl named Mary Jane Hicks was tricked into a hansom cab by the driver, Charles Sweetman, and taken to scrubland at a spot called Mount Rennie, in what is now the Moore Park and Waterloo area. There she was set upon and raped by a gang of young larrikins. A passer-by, William Stanley, tried to help her, was driven off with bricks and bottles, and ran all the way to Redfern police station.

Eleven young men were tried before Justice Windeyer in November 1886 and nine were sentenced to death. After a big public campaign five sentences were commuted. The other four, George Duffy, Joseph Martin, William Boyce and Robert Read, aged 17 to 20, were hanged together on the new E wing gallows on 7 January 1887, with about two thousand people waiting outside the gates. Howard made a mess of it: only Duffy's neck was broken, and Martin is thought to have lived for about ten minutes.

It is hard to read about now from either side. A teenage girl went through something terrible and then had her character dragged through some of the newspapers, and four young men died badly on the end of a rope. The reprieved men were all released in November 1896, ten years after their trial.

Louisa Collins, the last woman hanged in New South Wales

Louisa Collins was born Louisa Hall on 11 August 1847 at Belltrees station near Scone. At Merriwa she met Charles Andrews, a butcher, and married him, and the family later moved to Sydney and settled at Botany, where they took in boarders. Charles Andrews died after a sudden illness on 2 February 1887. Two months later Louisa married one of the boarders, Michael Collins, and in July 1888 he too died, after an illness very like her first husband's. The Government Analyst found arsenic in his body. Charles Andrews was exhumed and arsenic was found in his remains as well.

Louisa was tried four times. Three juries could not agree. The fourth, in December 1888, found her guilty of murdering Michael Collins. There was a public meeting at Sydney Town Hall on 3 January 1889 to try to save her, petitions went to the Governor, Lord Carington, and on 7 January two of her daughters went to Government House to plead with him. He would not see them himself and sent his secretary to give them the answer.

She was hanged at Darlinghurst on the morning of 8 January 1889. Even then it went wrong. The lever would not move because the pin holding it was stuck, and Howard's assistant had to knock it out with a mallet while she stood on the trapdoor with the cap over her head, "perfectly upright and motionless". She was buried at Rookwood that afternoon. No woman has been hanged in New South Wales since.

Louisa Collins, prison photograph dated 28 July 1888, not long after her arrest. Museums of History NSW, unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Other cases Sydney talked about

A few more of the Darlinghurst cases made headlines well beyond Sydney:

• John Makin, 15 August 1893. John and Sarah Makin were "baby farmers" who took in infants for money; babies' bodies were found at houses they had lived in, including Burren Street, Macdonaldtown. Sarah's death sentence was commuted. John was hanged for the murder of the infant Horace Murray.
• The Bridge Street burglars, 31 May 1894. Charles Montgomery and Thomas Williams were hanged together for wounding Constable Frederick Bowden with intent to murder, near Circular Quay.
• Alfred Grenon, 31 January 1895. A Frenchman who shot a watchman, Thomas Heavey, in Elizabeth Bay Road. Heavey lived; Grenon is said to be the last person executed in Australia for attempted murder.
• Frank Butler, 16 July 1897. Often called Australia's first serial killer. He advertised for mates to go prospecting, had them dig what they thought was a prospecting hole, then shot them and buried them in it. His known victims were Charles Burgess, Arthur Preston and Captain Lee Weller, at Glenbrook. On the scaffold he told Howard impatiently to "Let go!"

Jimmy Governor

Of all the people hanged at Darlinghurst, the one I most wanted to get right is Jimmy Governor, because his story is so often told badly.

Jimmy was born about 1875 on the Talbragar River, near Denison Town, in the central west of New South Wales; that is where the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Dictionary of Sydney place his birth. His father Tommy Governor (or Grosvenor) was an Aboriginal man from the Namoi River country, and his mother Annie Fitzgerald was raised near Mendooran. The eldest of eight children, Jimmy went to school at Denison Town, Wollar and Gulgong, worked as a fencer and horse-breaker, and was a police tracker at Cassilis from 1896 to 1897. In December 1898 he married Ethel Page, a sixteen-year-old white girl, at Gulgong. At his trial he said, "I always worked, and paid for what I got, and I reckon I am as good as a white man."

Jimmy Governor in 1900. NSW State Archives, unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Gilgandra district has a strong claim on his story, and people out that way rightly count him as part of their history. It was while he was breaking horses around Gilgandra that Jimmy met John Mawbey, who gave him a fencing contract at Breelong, on Wallumburrawang Creek about ten miles south-east of Gilgandra. Jimmy, Ethel, their baby, his brother Joe and their friend Jacky Underwood camped on the property. By the accounts given after the event, Jimmy and Ethel put up with plenty of small humiliations from the household: the women laughing at Ethel's baby, complaints about the rations bill, posts rejected.

On the night of 20 July 1900 Jimmy and Jacky Underwood attacked the Mawbey household. They killed or fatally wounded Sarah Mawbey, her children Grace, Percy and Hilda, and the young schoolteacher Ellen (also called Helen) Kerz, who boarded with the family and taught the children. The inquest was held at the homestead, Ethel was locked up at Gilgandra police station, and Underwood was later committed for trial at the Gilgandra Police Court.

Jimmy and Joe then spent fourteen weeks on the run across a huge stretch of the state. Along the way they killed Alexander McKay near Ulan, Elizabeth O'Brien and her baby at Poggy near Merriwa, and Kieran Fitzpatrick, aged 74, near Wollar. Hundreds of police and volunteers hunted them. Jimmy was shot in the mouth in mid-October and caught near Bobin, inland from Wingham, on 27 October 1900. Joe was never hanged; he was shot dead a few days later north of Singleton.

Jacky Underwood was hanged at Dubbo on 14 January 1901. Howard went straight back to Sydney, and four days later, on the morning of 18 January 1901, Jimmy Governor was hanged at Darlinghurst for the murder of Ellen Kerz. Thomas Keneally based his 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith on his life, and Fred Schepisi made it into a film in 1978. However you read the story, nine people died, and the racism that Jimmy and Ethel lived with is part of it too.

The last hanging at Darlinghurst

After Howard's final double hanging of Digby Grand and Henry Jones in July 1903, for murdering Constable Samuel Long at Auburn, there was only one more execution at Darlinghurst. Nicholas Baxter murdered Mary MacNamara, an older woman, at 2 Sarah Street, Enmore, in July 1907, and was hanged at Darlinghurst on 29 October 1907. The reports said it was carried out "quietly and quickly", and that he died holding rosary beads.

The new State Penitentiary at Long Bay opened in 1914 and Darlinghurst closed the same year. From then on, Sydney's hangings were at Long Bay. The last person executed in New South Wales was John Trevor Kelly at Long Bay on 24 August 1939, and the death penalty for murder was abolished in this state in 1955.

Famous prisoners who walked out again

Not everyone famous at Darlinghurst went there to die. A few of the better-known guests:

• Henry Lawson. Our best-known writer was locked up at Darlinghurst seven times between 1905 and 1909, mostly for drunkenness and unpaid maintenance, 159 days in all. His poem "One Hundred and Three" (his prison number, 1908) gave the place its nickname, "Starvinghurst Gaol".
• J. F. Archibald. The founding editor of The Bulletin, the man the Archibald Prize is named after, also did time there.
• George Dibbs. The future Premier refused to pay £2,000 damages after losing a slander case, and spent a year in Darlinghurst from May 1880, entertaining visitors and working at a lathe supplied by Henry Parkes. He came out more popular than when he went in.
• Henry Louis Bertrand. The man convicted over the 1865 murder of Henry Kinder was not hanged. He served about 28 years, most of them at Darlinghurst, and in 1891 he painted the watercolour of the gaol below, which is now in the State Library.

People sometimes ask about Ned Kelly's gang. None of them were hanged at Darlinghurst. The closest link is Thomas Reilly, a cousin of Ned and Dan Kelly, who was hanged at Wagga Wagga in November 1889 for shooting a drover's overseer.

Darlinghurst Gaol in watercolour, signed 'H.L. Bertrand 1891', painted by a long-term prisoner of the gaol. Henry Louis Bertrand, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

So how many were hanged at Darlinghurst?

This turned out to be the hardest question of all. There is no single official list that I could find online, and the figures do not agree:

• The Dictionary of Sydney says a total of 79 people were executed at the gaol.
• The Wikipedia article on the gaol, drawing on the old NSW Police history website, says 76.
• When I went through Wikipedia's List of people legally executed in New South Wales and picked out every hanging recorded at Darlinghurst between 1841 and 1907, I counted 76 names. That list is marked as incomplete, so the match with the 76 figure may be partly luck.

I checked as many entries as I could against the original newspaper reports on Trove and the biographies of the two hangmen, and corrected three dates along the way: James Morrison (20 August 1889, not 19 July), Alfred Grenon (31 January 1895, not 7 February) and Frank Butler (16 July 1897, not 17 July). If you know of a name I have missed, please tell me in the comments.

The executions at Darlinghurst Gaol, 1841 to 1907

This list is based on Wikipedia's List of people legally executed in New South Wales, checked against Trove newspaper reports, the Dictionary of Sydney, and the Wikipedia biographies of Alexander Green and Robert Howard. Up to September 1852 these were the years of public hangings at Darlinghurst. From February 1855 every hanging was held privately inside the walls.

#	Date	Name	Crime
1	29 Oct 1841	Robert Hudson	Murder of fellow convict Dean West at the General Hospital, Macquarie Street
2	29 Oct 1841	George Stroud (Stroode)	Murder of his wife Sarah at Concord
3	8 Nov 1842	George Beavor	Piracy at Norfolk Island
4	8 Nov 1842	John Jones	Piracy at Norfolk Island
5	8 Nov 1842	Henry Sears	Piracy at Norfolk Island
6	8 Nov 1842	Nicholas Lewis (alias Head)	Piracy at Norfolk Island
7	9 Nov 1842	Stephen Brennan	Murder of Pat Lynch on Norfolk Island
8	13 Feb 1844	John Knatchbull	Murder of Ellen Jamieson, Kent Street
9	13 Aug 1844	George Vigors	Murder of James Noble in Clarence Street
10	13 Aug 1844	Thomas Burdett	Murder of James Noble in Clarence Street
11	7 Feb 1845	John Vidall	Murder of Thomas Warne in George Street
12	12 Aug 1845	John Ahern	Murder of his niece Mary-Anne Clark, near today's Railway Square
13	30 Apr 1847	John Kean (Liddell)	Murder of Ellen Hyndes near Campbelltown
14	4 Jul 1848	William Fyfe	Murder of Robert Cox at Kangaroo Point, Moreton Bay
15	22 Sep 1848	Francis Dermott	Rape, Shoalhaven district
16	7 May 1849	James Richardson	Murder of his wife Elizabeth at Campbelltown
17	18 Sep 1849	Owen Molloy	Murder of John Leonard at Moreton Bay
18	5 Nov 1850	Mogo Gar (Bundjalung man)	Murder of Daniel Page on the Bellinger River
19	5 Nov 1850	James Whelan	Murder of Catherine Byrnes near Kent Street
20	21 Sep 1852	Francis Thomas Green	Murder of John Jones at Buckley's Creek near Bathurst (last public hanging at Darlinghurst)
Public hangings end. The Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals takes effect in January 1855.
21	28 Feb 1855	William Ryan	Murder of his wife Catherine near Hay and Castlereagh Streets (first private hanging)
22	5 Jul 1855	William Rodgers	Murder of Joseph Allsopp at Baulkham Hills
23	5 Jul 1855	Samuel Wilcox	Murder of Johanna Smith in Liverpool Street
24	7 Sep 1858	James Moyes	Murder of William Alden aboard the ship Oliver Jordan in Sydney
25	22 Jul 1859	John Norris	Rape of a six-year-old girl near Prospect
26	16 May 1860	William Goodson	Murder of his wife Mary at Kissing Point
27	18 Mar 1863	Alexander Ross	Highway robbery and attempted murder of Harry Stephens at Caloola
28	18 Mar 1863	Charles Ross	Highway robbery and attempted murder of Harry Stephens at Caloola
29	26 Mar 1863	Henry Manns	Eugowra gold escort robbery
30	1 Feb 1864	Thomas McCann	Highway robbery and attempted murder of William Saville near Berrima
31	19 Mar 1866	John Dunn	Murder of Constable Samuel Nelson at Collector
32	14 Apr 1866	James Crookwell	Murder of Constable William Raymond in the Bargo Brush
33	11 Jun 1866	Michael Green	Murder of Andrew Shearer at Rushcutters Bay
34	18 Mar 1867	William Henry Scott	Murder of Anne Ramsden (Scott) in Sussex Street
35	25 Jun 1867	Thomas Clarke	Bushranging; attempted murder of Constable William Walsh at Jinden
36	25 Jun 1867	John Clarke	Bushranging; attempted murder of Constable William Walsh at Jinden
37	21 Apr 1868	Henry James O'Farrell	Shooting Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, at Clontarf
38	2 Jan 1872	Thomas Kelly	Attempted murder of William McLaren at Parramatta Gaol (first on the 1869 gallows)
39	18 Jun 1872	George Robert Nichols	Murders of William Percy Walker and John Bridger (Parramatta River murders)
40	18 Jun 1872	Alfred Lester (alias Froude)	Murders of William Percy Walker and John Bridger (Parramatta River murders)
41	8 Apr 1873	William McCrow	Murder of Margaret Ward at Woolloomooloo
42	8 Apr 1873	John Scource	Murder of Elizabeth Lee on Sydney Harbour
43	1 Jul 1873	Julius Krauss (William Cross)	Murder of Captain Longmuir aboard the Rifleman
44	23 Dec 1873	Henry Vincent Jarvis	Murder of James Muggeridge near Evans Plains Creek
45	10 Sep 1875	John McGrath	Rape near Bega
46	18 Apr 1876	Ah Chong	Murder of Po Tie at Parramatta Gaol
47	20 Jan 1880	Andrew George Scott ('Captain Moonlite')	Murder of Senior Constable Edward Webb Bowen, Wantabadgery
48	20 Jan 1880	Thomas Rogan	Murder of Senior Constable Edward Webb Bowen, Wantabadgery
49	29 Mar 1881	William Brown	Rape of his twelve-year-old daughter, Manning River district
50	23 Apr 1884	William Rice	Murder of James Griffin in Surry Hills
51	14 Apr 1885	Charles Watson	Murder of William Matthews near Hillston
52	14 Jul 1885	Thomas Williams (alias Frank Johns)	Attempted murder of prisoner William Roberts at Parramatta Gaol
53	8 Oct 1886	Alfred Reynolds	Murder of his wife Rhoda at Newtown
54	7 Jan 1887	George Duffy	Mount Rennie rape of Mary Jane Hicks
55	7 Jan 1887	Joseph Martin	Mount Rennie rape of Mary Jane Hicks
56	7 Jan 1887	William Boyce	Mount Rennie rape of Mary Jane Hicks
57	7 Jan 1887	Robert Read	Mount Rennie rape of Mary Jane Hicks
58	11 Sep 1888	Robert Hewart	Murder of Thomas Park in a cell at the Central Police Station
59	8 Jan 1889	Louisa Collins	Murder of her husband Michael Collins at Botany
60	20 Aug 1889	James Morrison	Murder of Constable David Sutherland at Potts Point
61	17 Nov 1891	Maurice Dalton	Murder of his wife Catherine in Foveaux Street, Surry Hills
62	13 Jun 1893	Edward Smedley	Murder of his wife Phoebe at Quirindi
63	11 Jul 1893	George Archer	Rape and murder of Emma Harrison in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst
64	15 Aug 1893	John Makin	Murder of the infant Horace Murray (baby farming)
65	31 May 1894	Charles Montgomery	Wounding Constable Frederick Bowden with intent to murder
66	31 May 1894	Thomas Williams	Wounding Constable Frederick Bowden with intent to murder
67	31 Jan 1895	Alfred Grenon	Shooting watchman Thomas Heavey with intent to murder, Elizabeth Bay Road
68	7 Jan 1896	Thomas Meredith Sheridan	Death of Jessie Nicholls after an illegal operation
69	16 Jul 1897	Frank Butler	Murder of Captain Lee Weller at Glenbrook
70	5 Apr 1899	Stuart Wilson Christopher Briggs	Murders of Margaret Dutt and her grandmother Margaret Millar at Petersham
71	18 Jan 1901	Jimmy Governor	Murder of Ellen (Helen) Kerz at Breelong, near Gilgandra
72	20 Dec 1901	Joseph Campbell	Rape of a nine-year-old girl near Queanbeyan
73	14 Apr 1903	Thomas Moore	Rape and murder of ten-year-old Janet (Janey) Smith at Ramsay's Bush
74	7 Jul 1903	Digby Grand	Murder of Constable Samuel Long at Auburn
75	7 Jul 1903	Henry Jones	Murder of Constable Samuel Long at Auburn
76	29 Oct 1907	Nicholas Baxter	Murder of Mary MacNamara at Enmore (last hanging at Darlinghurst)

It is strange to walk past those gates today, with art students sitting on the steps with their coffee. Most of the people on that list are forgotten now, and so are most of the people they hurt. I think it is worth knowing their names.

Sources

• Wikipedia – List of people legally executed in New South Wales
• Wikipedia – Darlinghurst Gaol
• Wikipedia – Alexander Green (executioner)
• Wikipedia – Robert 'Nosey Bob' Howard
• Wikipedia – John Knatchbull
• Wikipedia – Louisa Collins
• Wikipedia – Mount Rennie rape case
• Wikipedia – Jimmy Governor
• Wikipedia – Captain Moonlite
• Wikipedia – Henry O'Farrell
• Wikipedia – Clarke gang
• Wikipedia – John Dunn (bushranger)
• Wikipedia – Henry Lawson
• Wikipedia – George Dibbs
• Dictionary of Sydney – Darlinghurst Gaol
• Dictionary of Sydney – Rachel Franks, The last public hanging at Darlinghurst Gaol
• Dictionary of Sydney – Rachel Franks, Australia's first serial killer
• Dictionary of Sydney – Governor, Jimmy
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – Jimmy Governor
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – Sir George Richard Dibbs
• Jo Lennan & George Williams, 'The Death Penalty in Australian Law', Sydney Law Review (2012)
• Steven L. Anderson, 'Death of a Spectacle' (PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2016) (University of Adelaide digital library)
• Trove – 'The Norfolk Island Pirates', Colonial Observer, 9 November 1842
• Trove – 'Execution of Stephen Brennan, for Murder', Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1842
• Trove – 'Execution of Owen Molloy', Bell's Life in Sydney, 22 September 1849
• Trove – 'Confession and Execution of Francis Thomas Green', Bell's Life in Sydney, 25 September 1852
• Trove – 'Execution of Ryan, the Murderer', Bell's Life in Sydney, 3 March 1855
• Trove – 'Execution at Darlinghurst', Freeman's Journal, 7 July 1855
• Trove – 'Execution of James Moyes', Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1858
• Trove – 'Execution of Kelly in Darlinghurst Gaol', Australian Town and Country Journal, 6 January 1872
• Trove – 'Execution of the Wantabadgery Bushrangers', Yass Courier, 23 January 1880
• Trove – 'The Execution of Louisa Collins', Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1889
• Trove – 'The Execution' (James Morrison), Evening News, 20 August 1889
• Trove – 'Grenon's End', Evening News, 31 January 1895
• Trove – 'Execution of Frank Butler', Sydney Mail, 24 July 1897
• Always Askew – The Execution of Nicholas Baxter 1907 (quotes contemporary newspaper reports)
• Wikimedia Commons (image sources, as credited under each picture)

Further reading, not online: Deborah Beck, Hope in Hell: A History of Darlinghurst Gaol and the National Art School (Allen & Unwin, 2005); Rachel Franks, An Uncommon Hangman: The Life and Deaths of Robert 'Nosey Bob' Howard (NewSouth, 2022).

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – From the 1978 March to Today

Every year at the end of summer, Oxford Street fills up with glitter, sequins, banners and a few hundred thousand people. It is easy to forget that the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras began on a freezing winter night in 1978, with a borrowed truck, a few hundred hopeful people, and a police response that ended in bashings, arrests and names printed in the morning paper. I have walked this part of Darlinghurst for years while writing about Oxford Street and the old gaol and courthouse at Taylor Square, and it struck me that one of the most important stories of these streets is not from the convict days at all. It is from living memory. So here is how Mardi Gras started, how it grew, and where it stands after the 2026 festival.

Sydney Before Mardi Gras

In 1978, sex between men was still a crime in New South Wales, carrying a penalty of up to 14 years in gaol. You could be sacked for being gay and there was no law to stop it. Police in the inner city were well known for targeting gay men, and the Summary Offences Act gave them wide powers to move people on and arrest them for all sorts of behaviour, including same-sex couples showing affection in public.

There had been gay rights activism in Sydney since the early 1970s. CAMP (the Campaign Against Moral Persecution) held what is usually described as Australia's first gay and lesbian rights demonstration in 1971, and Gay Pride Week in 1973 ended with a march from the Town Hall to Martin Place. But as the historian Garry Wotherspoon puts it in the Dictionary of Sydney, there had been no single dramatic event to bring everything to a head. That came on the night of Saturday 24 June 1978.

Saturday 24 June 1978: The First Mardi Gras

A day of protest and a night of celebration

The day was organised by the newly formed Gay Solidarity Group as Sydney's part in International Gay Solidarity Day, marking the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York. Activists in San Francisco had written asking for support, and Ken Davis, one of the organisers, has described how the plans came together through letters, phone calls, posters and word of mouth. There was a protest march in the morning from the Town Hall to Martin Place, which Davis says drew about 500 people, a public meeting in the afternoon, and then something new at night.

According to the ABC's detailed 2023 account, it was Ron Austin of CAMP who suggested a night-time street party, partly because it would be harder for anyone to be photographed and outed in the dark and in costume. Margaret McMann, responding to his idea, called it a "Mardi Gras". Lance Gowland arranged a police permit for a procession down Oxford Street to Hyde Park, and he drove the lead vehicle, a small yellow flatbed truck with a sound system on the back.

Darlinghurst Courthouse at Taylor Square. On the night of 24 June 1978 the first Mardi Gras crowd gathered here before heading down Oxford Street. Photo: Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Around 10pm, on a cold night, people gathered at Taylor Square. Some were in fancy dress, more were simply rugged up. Accounts of the numbers vary. The Australian reported about 1,000 people at the start; Ken Davis and the Mardi Gras organisation's own timeline put the crowd at around 1,500 as it moved along; and one marcher told the ABC it had grown to about 2,000 by the time it reached Kings Cross. As the truck rolled down Oxford Street people came out of the bars and clubs to join in, answering the chant "Out of the bars and into the streets!"

The police move in

Things turned as the procession neared the city end of Oxford Street. Police hurried the truck along, and at the Hyde Park end the truck was taken and the music stopped. Exactly what happened to Lance Gowland depends on who you read: the Mardi Gras timeline and Ken Davis say he was arrested, while the ABC's reconstruction says police threatened him and a witness saw them trying to drag him from his seat. Either way, the march was not allowed to finish in Hyde Park as planned.

Rather than go home, the crowd turned up College Street and William Street towards Kings Cross, the chant now "Stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks!" One marcher, Peter Murphy, told the ABC he counted 39 police vans arriving before he gave up counting.

Looking up William Street to the Coca-Cola sign at Kings Cross. In 1978 the marchers came up this hill and turned into Darlinghurst Road. Photo: 200ok, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

At the Cross the marchers were directed into Darlinghurst Road. With police blocking the far end near the El Alamein Fountain and the side streets closed off, the crowd was hemmed into a short stretch of road between the Coca-Cola sign and the fountain. That is where the worst violence happened. People were grabbed, thrown against vans and pushed into paddy wagons. Mark Gillespie, a young teacher who was there, later wrote that police near the fountain seemed to target women and the smaller and more vulnerable marchers. Some officers had removed their identification numbers.

The El Alamein Fountain at the Kings Cross end of Darlinghurst Road, where the 1978 marchers found their way blocked by police. Photo: Angus Fraser, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fifty-three people were arrested and taken to Darlinghurst Police Station on the corner of Forbes and Bourke Streets, right back near Taylor Square where the night had started. Inside, some of them were beaten. Peter Murphy has described being taken away from the others and beaten so badly he thought he would die. Outside, a crowd gathered, chanting for the prisoners' release and passing the hat for bail money.

The former Darlinghurst Police Station on Forbes Street, where those arrested in 1978 were held. Today it is home to Qtopia Sydney. Photo: Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Aftermath: Courts, Newspapers and "Drop the Charges"

On Monday 26 June the 53 appeared at the Central Court of Petty Sessions in Liverpool Street. The Dictionary of Sydney records that although the magistrate ordered the court open to the public, a large contingent of police blocked the doors, there were scuffles, and seven more people were arrested. Television cameras caught it all.

The next day, Tuesday 27 June 1978, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names, addresses and occupations of the 53 people arrested. At a time when you could lose your job for being gay, that was devastating. Some were outed to their families and workmates; some lost jobs or housing.

The protests kept going. A march in July ended with more arrests, and on 27 August another 104 people were arrested. The Herald printed those names as well. The Mardi Gras organisation counts 178 arrests across the whole period. A "Drop the Charges" campaign followed, and it worked. In the first case to be heard, film footage contradicted the police evidence and the case was dismissed; after that, most of the remaining charges were dropped.

The fallout reached Macquarie Street. In 1979 the Wran government repealed the Summary Offences Act. In 1982 the Anti-Discrimination Act was amended to cover homosexuality, and in May 1984 Neville Wran's private member's bill decriminalised sex between men in New South Wales. Readers who have seen my post on sodomy laws in the early colony will know just how long those laws had been on the books.

1979 to 1981: From Winter Protest to Summer Parade

The organisers held it again in June 1979, under the theme "Power in the Darkness". This time it was a week of events, including a fair in Hyde Park, film screenings and the first fundraising dance party at Balmain Town Hall. They were ready for trouble, with an emergency bail fund set aside, but although about 3,000 people turned out and there was a big police presence, nobody was arrested.

In 1980 the parade gained marshals and a new route, finishing at Paddington Town Hall, where the first post-parade party was held. Wikipedia puts the crowd at the party at about 700. It was bitterly cold again, and after that third parade the decision was made to move the whole thing to summer and loosen its tie to the Stonewall anniversary.

The first summer parade, in 1981, ran under the name Sydney Gay Mardi Gras. It nearly did not happen on time: torrential rain washed out the planned date of 21 February, and it was moved to 21 March. The Mardi Gras timeline says it is the only time weather has forced the parade to be postponed. About 5,000 people watched. The arguments of those years, about whether Mardi Gras was a protest, a party or both, have never really gone away.

The 1980s: Growing Up Fast

Floats, parties and the Showground

Mardi Gras grew quickly. In 1982 the first post-parade party was held at the Showground at Moore Park, and the first Sleaze Ball fundraiser was held at Paddington Town Hall. That same year a Narrandera man, Roger McKay, marched alone carrying the Aboriginal flag, the first time it appeared in the parade. By 1983 the artist Peter Tully had set up the Mardi Gras Workshop, and the floats were getting bigger and cheekier.

The Dictionary of Sydney describes the 1983 parade as having 52 floats and 15,000 people marching on a warm February night, "probably the largest parade not associated with war" to pass through Sydney's streets, yet none of Sydney's mainstream papers or TV stations covered it as news. Wikipedia gives different figures for that year (44 floats and 20,000 onlookers), which goes to show how rough the early counts were. In 1984 footage of the parade turned up in Cold Chisel's video for "Saturday Night".

The Royal Hall of Industries at Moore Park. With the Hordern Pavilion next door, it was home to the Mardi Gras party for decades. Photo: Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The parties became famous. The Royal Hall of Industries and the Hordern Pavilion at the old Showground became the party's home, and the money from the parties paid for the parade and the festival. According to the Mardi Gras timeline, the 1989 party drew a record 15,000 and that year's Sleaze Ball was the first Mardi Gras party to sell out.

The AIDS years

Mardi Gras's own history notes that Australia's first AIDS case was diagnosed in Sydney in 1982, and by the time decriminalisation came in 1984 the epidemic was already hitting the community hard. In 1985, amid hysterical media coverage, there were calls to cancel Mardi Gras altogether, and Fred Nile suggested it be replaced with compulsory public lectures about AIDS. The organisers went ahead with the theme "Fighting for Our Lives", the same motto under which community groups had agreed that February to form the AIDS Council of NSW (now ACON). ACON's first float, in 1986, urged gay men to "Get Bold About Safer Sex".

By 1991, more than 1,500 Australians had died of AIDS-related illnesses, and marchers carried placards reading "We Can't Wait" and "AIDS Drugs Now!" In 1992 the parade stopped at 10pm for a minute's silence for those who had died. Many of the 78ers themselves were lost in those years.

Dykes on Bikes and a new name

1988 brought two changes that stuck. The Dykes on Bikes rode in the parade for the first time, and they have led it off ever since. That year Aboriginal dancer Malcolm Cole also created the first First Nations float, dressing as Captain Cook in a longboat pulled by white men in the Bicentenary year. And the organisation changed its name to include the word "Lesbian". The Mardi Gras timeline says this was decided at a Special General Meeting in December 1988; Wikipedia calls it an Extraordinary General Meeting. Either way, by the 1989 season it was the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Dykes on Bikes opening the 2006 parade on Oxford Street. They first rode in 1988 and have led the parade ever since. Photo: Jez Arnold, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The 1990s: On Television and at Its Peak

Crowd estimates in the 1990s get very large, and I would treat them with care, since most come from the organisers. The Mardi Gras timeline gives 200,000 in 1989, half a million in 1993, 650,000 in 1996 and 700,000 in 1998. Wikipedia's longer-term view is that since the mid-1990s the parade has drawn around 200,000 to 250,000 people along the route.

In 1994 the ABC televised the parade for the first time, on the Sunday night after the parade. A petition signed by 90 federal MPs failed to get it shifted, and the broadcast won its timeslot. By 1997 coverage had moved to Channel Ten.

1998 was the 20th anniversary, and it was an emotional one. Around 220 of the original 1978 marchers were invited to lead the parade, and the group that came to be known as the 78ers has led it ever since. It was also the year NSW Police first marched, near the 78ers, under a banner reading "We're here because we care". Both the Mardi Gras timeline and the police's own Pride in Police network date that first police entry to 1998. The 1998 party was the biggest ever, with 27,000 tickets sold, and Fair Day moved that year to its long-time home in Victoria Park.

A word about Fair Day. Sources differ on when it started. Wikipedia says a business association fair joined the Mardi Gras program in 1985 and Mardi Gras took it over in 1989. The Mardi Gras timeline describes the "first Mardi Gras Fair Day" in 1990 at Jubilee Park in Glebe, attracting about 1,000 people. Both agree it outgrew Glebe, and it now draws tens of thousands to Victoria Park.

Fair Day in Victoria Park, Camperdown, in 2012. It is the big free daytime gathering of the festival. Photo: Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2002: Mardi Gras Goes Broke, and Comes Back

Not many people remember now how close Mardi Gras came to disappearing. As the ABC's History Listen team explained in 2018, the 2001 party was the first in ten years not to sell out. Then came the September 11 attacks and the slump in international travel, rising insurance costs, and higher venue costs after the government sold the Royal Hall of Industries and the Hordern Pavilion. The 2002 parade and party went ahead, but the party sales fell again.

The size of the loss is reported differently. The Mardi Gras timeline puts it at about $500,000 and the ABC says the organisation was more than $500,000 in debt, while Wikipedia and SBS give a loss of $400,000. In August 2002 the company went into voluntary administration.

The community rescued it. ACON, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, Pride and Queer Screen put together a rescue plan and formed a new organisation, New Mardi Gras, co-chaired by Stevie Clayton and Michael Woodhouse. Volunteers ran things from scratch, shaking donation buckets on stage at the Imperial in Erskineville. The 25th anniversary festival in 2003 went ahead, and the timeline says it made a profit of almost $350,000. The organisation later went back to the name Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

2003 to 2015: Steady Ground

From 2008 the NSW Government began funding Mardi Gras and added it to the state's major events calendar. The 30th anniversary parade that year was described as the largest yet, with about 9,500 participants and 134 floats. In 2010 the parade and party were held on separate Saturdays for the first time, and the last Sleaze Ball was held that year.

In 2011 the organisers tried to change the festival's public name to just "Sydney Mardi Gras" to be more inclusive, but many members argued strongly for keeping "Gay and Lesbian", and the full name was restored. In 2013 the Australian Defence Force marched in uniform for the first time.

2013 was also the year of the rainbow crossing. For the 35th anniversary the City of Sydney painted a temporary rainbow crossing across Oxford Street at Taylor Square. It was removed in April 2013 under a condition set by the roads authority, and the removal sparked a "DIY rainbow" protest, with people chalking rainbows on footpaths all over the country.

The temporary rainbow crossing across Oxford Street at Taylor Square, photographed in March 2013, a few weeks before it was removed. Photo: User:Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0 AU, via Wikimedia Commons

2016: The Apologies

The 78ers had waited a long time. In April 2015 the City of Sydney passed a motion calling for a formal apology, and in February 2016 three apologies came within about a week of each other.

On Wednesday 24 February 2016 the Sydney Morning Herald's editor-in-chief, Darren Goodsir, issued a statement: "We acknowledge and apologise for the hurt and suffering that reporting caused. It would never happen today." Some 78ers felt that statement fell short, and in June 2016 Goodsir met a group of them and apologised in person.

The next day, Thursday 25 February 2016, the Liberal member for Coogee, Bruce Notley-Smith, moved a motion of apology in the NSW Legislative Assembly. "For the mistreatment you suffered that evening, I apologise and I say sorry," he said. The motion put on record an apology to the participants of the first Mardi Gras for the harm caused when police broke up the demonstration and the Herald published their names, and for past discrimination against LGBTIQ people. The SMH reported it passed unanimously in both houses, and around 70 of the original marchers and their supporters in the gallery gave a standing ovation.

On 4 March 2016, the day before that year's parade, Superintendent Tony Crandell of Surry Hills apologised on behalf of the NSW Police Force, saying he had Commissioner Andrew Scipione's full support. A number of 78ers said it should have come from the Commissioner himself. That happened in 2018, the 40th anniversary year, when Commissioner Mick Fuller gave a formal apology to the 78ers.

2016 to 2020: Momentum

The 2016 parade was one of the biggest, with more than 170 floats and 12,500 participants according to the organisers. The marriage equality campaign ran through the floats in these years, and after the 2017 postal survey and the change to the Marriage Act, the 40th anniversary in 2018 had a lot to celebrate. More than 200 original marchers led that parade.

In February 2019 the City of Sydney installed a new curved rainbow crossing at the corner of Bourke and Campbell Streets beside Taylor Square, at first on a six-month trial. Mardi Gras described it as the first crossing in the world to have both the shape and colours of a rainbow. The 2020 parade went ahead just before the COVID-19 pandemic reached Australia, and the ABC later noted it was the last public mass gathering before the lockdowns began.

The curved rainbow crossing at Bourke and Campbell Streets, Taylor Square, photographed in March 2020. Photo: MDRX, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2021 and 2022: The Parade Moves to the SCG

For the first time ever, the parade left Oxford Street. On 6 March 2021, under COVID rules, it was held as a ticketed event inside the Sydney Cricket Ground, with the theme "Rise". The ABC reported 36,000 people in the seats, and the Mardi Gras put the number of marchers at around 5,000. The Dykes on Bikes still led off, though with 68 bikes instead of the usual 150 to 200. Not everyone was happy about the move, and a few hundred people marched down Oxford Street that day under a health exemption, to keep the street protest alive. The 2022 parade was held at the SCG again.

The 78ers at Mardi Gras 2021, the year COVID took the parade off Oxford Street. The original marchers have led the parade since 1998. Photo: Bruce Baker from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2023: WorldPride Comes to Sydney

In October 2019, InterPride chose Sydney to host WorldPride 2023, the first time it had been held in the southern hemisphere. The combined festival ran from 17 February to 5 March 2023, marking the 45th Mardi Gras.

Just before it began, the NSW Government added the Mardi Gras parade route to the State Heritage Register, including parts of Oxford Street, Flinders Street, Anzac Parade and Darlinghurst Road, and the former Darlinghurst Police Station. The parade came home to Oxford Street on 25 February 2023, and Anthony Albanese became the first sitting Prime Minister to march in it. On 5 March, the Harbour Bridge was closed to traffic and about 50,000 people walked across it in the WorldPride march. I never thought I would see that.

The Opera House sails lit up for WorldPride in February 2023. Photo: Tristien, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2024 to 2026: Hard Questions and a Heritage Listing

In February 2024, Qtopia Sydney opened as a permanent centre for queer history and culture in the old Darlinghurst Police Station at 301 Forbes Street, the very building where the 1978 marchers were held. The 2024 parade, on 2 March, took place under a shadow. The alleged murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies by a serving police officer led the Mardi Gras board to ask police not to march; after talks with Commissioner Karen Webb, officers marched out of uniform. The parade, under the theme "Our Future", opened with a minute's silence at Taylor Square, and the ABC reported about 12,000 marchers and some 200 floats. In 2025 the theme was "Free to Be".

The 2026 festival ran from 13 February to 1 March under the theme "Ecstatica", with Fair Day at Victoria Park on 15 February. It was a tough year for the organisation. On 3 February, chief executive Jesse Matheson announced that the official post-parade party, which had once drawn Kylie, Cher and Dua Lipa, would not go ahead because of significant financial losses, though he said the organisation was committed to bringing it back. The parade itself went ahead on Saturday 28 February 2026. The ABC reported more than 150 floats and 9,000 marchers, a noticeably smaller crowd than the year before and a heavy police presence after the Bondi terror attack in December. The 78ers marched with a banner from 1978: "Stop Police Attacks on Gays, Women and Blacks".

Two days earlier, on 26 February 2026, the federal government added the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade Route to the National Heritage List, covering both the original 1978 route and today's route. For a stretch of road where people were arrested and bashed for walking down it, that is quite a turnaround.

Timeline at a Glance

• 24 June 1978 – First Mardi Gras; 53 arrested at Kings Cross and held at Darlinghurst Police Station.
• 27 June 1978 – Sydney Morning Herald publishes names, addresses and occupations of those arrested.
• 27 August 1978 – Another 104 arrested at a protest; 178 arrests in all, by the Mardi Gras count.
• 1979 – Second Mardi Gras, about 3,000 people, no arrests; Summary Offences Act repealed.
• 1980 – First post-parade party, Paddington Town Hall; decision to move to summer.
• 1981 – First summer parade (postponed by rain to 21 March) as the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras.
• 1982 – Anti-Discrimination Act amended; first Showground party and first Sleaze Ball.
• May 1984 – Male homosexuality decriminalised in NSW.
• 1985 – "Fighting for Our Lives" parade in the face of AIDS hysteria.
• 1988 – First Dykes on Bikes and first First Nations float; name changed to include "Lesbian".
• 1994 – First television broadcast, on the ABC.
• 1998 – 20th anniversary; 78ers lead the parade; NSW Police march for the first time.
• 2002 – Organisation goes into voluntary administration; New Mardi Gras formed.
• 2013 – Temporary rainbow crossing at Taylor Square.
• February–March 2016 – Apologies from the SMH, NSW Parliament and NSW Police.
• 2018 – Police Commissioner Mick Fuller's formal apology.
• 2019 – Curved rainbow crossing at Bourke and Campbell Streets.
• 2021–2022 – Parade held at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
• 2023 – State heritage listing; WorldPride; 50,000 walk the Harbour Bridge.
• 2024 – Qtopia opens in the old Darlinghurst Police Station.
• 2026 – Party cancelled; route added to the National Heritage List; 48th parade on 28 February.

Visiting: Seeing It Today

You can walk the whole 1978 story in an hour or so. Start at Taylor Square, outside the Darlinghurst Courthouse, where the crowd gathered. A short walk up Forbes Street brings you to the old Darlinghurst Police Station, now Qtopia Sydney, which also uses the old substation and the underground toilet block at the northern end of Taylor Square. Have a look at the rainbow crossing at Bourke and Campbell Streets on the way.

Then follow the 1978 route down Oxford Street towards Hyde Park, up College Street and William Street to the Coca-Cola sign, and along Darlinghurst Road to the El Alamein Fountain. For today's parade route, carry on from Taylor Square down Flinders Street towards Moore Park.

On a plaque: First Mardi Gras Inc., the 78ers' own group, reported in March 2023 that the City of Sydney had put up a temporary plaque about the first Mardi Gras on a pole on the Kinselas side of Taylor Square, with a permanent one planned. I have not been able to confirm the permanent one, so keep an eye out when you are there.

If you want to dig further, the Pride History Group has recorded oral histories with people who were there, and the Australian Queer Archives, the City of Sydney Archives and the State Library of NSW hold posters, photographs and papers. Fair Day in Victoria Park, held each February, is free, and the 78ers usually have a tent there.

Sources

• Dictionary of Sydney – Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (Garry Wotherspoon, 2008)
• ABC News – How one night of violence in 1978 forever changed Australia's LGBTQIA+ movement (2023)
• Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – 1978–2022 Timeline, Google Arts & Culture
• Mark Gillespie – Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978, The Conversation (2016)
• Pride History Group – Mardi Gras: 1979 and 1980
• ABC News – The Sydney Mardi Gras is officially 40, but it nearly didn't turn 25 (2018)
• ABC Radio National, The History Listen – The Making of Mardi Gras 1979–81
• SBS Voices – The history of Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade (2017)
• Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – Today is World AIDS Day (2021)
• ACON 40 – ACON through the years
• Sydney Morning Herald – The Sydney Morning Herald apologises to Mardi Gras founders the 78ers (24 Feb 2016)
• Sydney Morning Herald – Publication of Mardi Gras names and addresses a stain on the Herald's record (24 June 2016)
• NSW Legislative Assembly – Procedural Digest No. 1/2016 (apology motion, 25 Feb 2016)
• Sydney Morning Herald – NSW Parliament apologises to the 78ers (25 Feb 2016)
• ABC News – NSW Police apologise over '78er' arrests and bashings (2016)
• Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – Police Commissioner apologises to 78ers (2018)
• Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – Sydney's rainbow crossing returns with pride (2019)
• ABC News – Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras at SCG gets thumbs up (2021)
• The Conversation – Homage, pilgrimage and protest: why Sydney's Mardi Gras parade should go back to the streets (2022)
• Sydney Morning Herald – Mardi Gras parade route added to state heritage register (2023)
• ABC News – Sydney Harbour Bridge closed as 50,000 march for WorldPride (2023)
• ABC News – Historic moment as Anthony Albanese marches at Mardi Gras Parade (2023)
• First Mardi Gras Inc. (78ers) – March 2023 newsletter (plaque, bus tour)
• ABC News – Qtopia opens at permanent site in Darlinghurst police station (2024)
• ABC News – Sydney Mardi Gras parade pays tribute to Jesse Baird and Luke Davies (2024)
• The Guardian – 'Free to be': Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras begins (2025)
• ABC News – Sydney Mardi Gras pulls plug on party weeks out from parade (3 Feb 2026)
• ABC News – Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade draws thousands with politics at forefront (28 Feb 2026)
• City of Sydney – Fair Day 2026
• Minister for the Environment – Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade Route added to Australia's National Heritage List (26 Feb 2026)
• Wikipedia – Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station

In short: For close to fifty years the ground where Central Station now stands was Sydney's main burial ground, known as the Devonshire Street Cemetery or the Sandhills. The first burial took place in September 1819 and the ground was consecrated in January 1820. New burials were banned from 1 January 1867, though families with vaults kept using it for years after. In 1901 the government took the land for a new railway terminus. Relatives had two months to claim their dead. Roughly 8,400 to 8,500 known remains went to other cemeteries, and more than 21,000 others, most of them unnamed, were carried by tram to a new cemetery at Botany. More than a century later, Sydney Metro's archaeologists found the job had never been quite finished.

Thousands of us walk through Central every day without a thought for what used to be under our feet. I wrote about it in 2015 in The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery, where I put up Arthur Foster's old talk on the cemetery, and again in Central Station – From Cemetery to Train Station. This time I wanted the whole story.

The Old Cemetery, Devonshire Street, painted by Julian Ashton in 1894. Julian Ashton, 1894, State Library of New South Wales (ML 207), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Sydney Needed a New Burial Ground

The Old Ground on George Street

Sydney's first proper burial ground was on George Street at the corner of Druitt Street, where the Town Hall and St Andrew's Cathedral stand now (see Old Sydney Burial Ground – Town Hall Area and Sydney's First Cemetery). By Governor Macquarie's time it was full, and the Sydney Gazette of 22 January 1820 said "the nature and quality of the ground" had made it "offensive to the inhabitants in the neighbourhood". The Sydney Metro archaeologists, going back through the records, say parts of it had become a rubbish dump, and people were driving pigs, cows and horses into it.

Macquarie had reserved a new site in 1818, well out of town past the cattle and hay markets and beyond the Brickfields, on a range of sandhills at the southern edge of the settlement. Major George Druitt called for tenders for a brick wall four feet six inches high and fourteen inches thick to go around it. In his 1822 report Macquarie listed "a new burial ground at the southern extremity of the town, consisting of four acres of ground surrounded with a brick wall".

Opening the New Ground, 1819–1820

The first burial came before the official opening. Quartermaster Hugh McDonald of the 46th Regiment died on Thursday 9 September 1819, and on Saturday 11 September the Governor and most of the officers in town followed his coffin to "the new burial ground (being the first there)", as he had asked. Even he comes with a puzzle. The Gazette said he was in "the 36th year of his age", but his headstone, as copied by the Herald in 1901, read "aged 30 years".

On 22 January 1820 the Gazette announced that the new ground, "situated at a short distance beyond the Brickfields", would be consecrated on Thursday 27 January after a service at St Phillip's, and that from the 28th all funerals would go there. A week later the Government and General Orders confirmed the consecration and said the old ground had been "closed, barred, and locked".

Where It Was and How It Was Laid Out

Location and Boundaries

The cemetery sat on the high sandy ridge at the top of Brickfield Hill, roughly the block bounded today by Eddy Avenue, Elizabeth Street, Chalmers and Devonshire Streets and the Pitt Street side of Central. Arthur Foster described it as "one of a range of sandhills lying south of the Brickfields", with a valley and a stream between them where Belmore Park and the Haymarket are now (see Brickfield Creek). Its nearest neighbours were Carters' Barracks (1819) and the Benevolent Asylum (1820).

Foster preferred to call it the "Sandhills Cemetery". He thought "Devonshire Street Cemetery" was "somewhat of a misnomer" for the original ground, which faced Belmore Park. Devonshire Street didn't even exist in 1820. A road was formed along the southern boundary in the first half of the 1830s and took that name.

Seven Burial Grounds Side by Side

At first the four acres belonged to the Church of England, though Foster noted that people of every denomination were buried there in the early years. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, the Catholics and Presbyterians were given land in 1825, and over the next fourteen years grants followed for the Jewish community, the Wesleyan Methodists, the Quakers and the Congregationalists (Independents). By 1836 there were seven burial grounds side by side, about twelve acres in the Dictionary of Sydney's figure or eleven acres according to the Sydney Metro report. Even the Jewish ground's start date varies. The Metro report says Jewish burials began in 1820 and the land was promised by Governor Darling in 1830 and formally granted in mid-1835. Wikipedia says the Jewish section was used from 1832.

It wasn't really one cemetery at all. Each church held its own freehold grant, with its own fence, gate and fees. "You could not walk from area to area," as the Dictionary of Sydney puts it. Foster described the Church of England ground at the northern end facing Belmore Park, with "a winding thoroughfare", Belmore Road, running past its iron gateway. A brick wall with stone coping separated it from the Catholic and Presbyterian grounds. Further south were the Friends' Meeting House and its little ground, then the Congregational, Wesleyan and Jewish grounds facing Devonshire Street, opposite the old railway station.

Plans for the Sydney Railway, 1849, showing the land proposed for the railway, part of today's Central, before the first terminus was built. State Records NSW (SR Map 6408), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Rules of 1820

The orders of 29 January 1820 set out how the ground was to be run. Vaults had to be "placed uniformly in line with each other" on one side, and graves had to run "East and West, according to the Order established in the Mother Country". One corner was set apart "for peculiar and special Purposes", which the Dictionary of Sydney suggests probably meant the unbaptised, executed criminals and suicides. Fees were five shillings for the chaplain, two and six for the clerk and two and six for the gravedigger, who was to live in the lodge.

Filling Up and Falling Apart

Full Within Twenty Years

Sydney grew far faster than anyone planned. When the Sydney Monitor took a "Walk Through Sydney" in March 1829, the new ground was "already half filled up", and it had been open only nine years. In November 1839 the eastern wall of the Protestant ground fell down, and when Elizabeth Street was lowered around 1841 the cutting and wall collapsed again. In September 1843 Bishop Broughton said the Church of England ground was so full it was "impossible to find room for more bodies". His answer was a new cemetery at Camperdown, consecrated in January 1849 (see St Stephen's, Camperdown). Families with vaults kept using the Sandhills, though, and the other churches kept burying in their own grounds.

People then believed disease spread through "miasma", the bad air from rotting matter. In 1866 the City Health Officer, Henry Graham, told a select committee that bodies lay "so near the surface that you could just touch them with a walking-stick or umbrella".

Closure in 1867 (and After)

The Sydney Burial Ground Act of 1866 banned burials in the City of Sydney from 1 January 1867. The Necropolis Act of 1867 set aside 200 acres at Haslem's Creek for what became Rookwood. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Botany researchers give its opening as 1868. (See Rookwood Necropolis and Mortuary Station, just down the road from the old cemetery.)

But families could still be buried in existing vaults and family graves under a licence from the Colonial Secretary, and some big names went in after 1867:

• John Hubert Plunkett, the Attorney-General who prosecuted the Myall Creek murderers, died in Melbourne on 9 May 1869. The ADB says he was buried beside Father John Joseph Therry and Archdeacon McEncroe (see John Plunkett – Australian Hero).
• David Jones, the retailer, died on 29 March 1873 and was buried here on 31 March (see David Jones).
• Rev. John Dunmore Lang died on 8 August 1878. After a huge public funeral on 10 August he was buried on "the most elevated portion of the cemetery".
• William Perry, Paddington's first mayor, went into his family vault in the Congregational ground in 1882.

So the closing date depends on who you ask. Museums of History NSW says "the Devonshire Street Cemetery was closed in 1888", and Botany Descendants & Ancestors say that by 1901 it had been "closed for more than twelve years". The Dictionary of Sydney and the Metro archaeologists date it to 1 January 1867. The way I read it, 1867 is when ordinary burials stopped and the late 1880s is when the last vault burials ended.

A Morgue and a Wilderness

Something I didn't know before: in 1880 the government decided to build the South Sydney Morgue in the northern corner of the Anglican ground, facing Garden Road. It opened on 1 October 1881 with a retired police detective, Edward Bloomfield, as keeper. Foster remembered a "veteran caretaker—Edward Broomfield" with a cottage there. The names are close, but I can't prove they were the same man.

Nobody was paying for upkeep, and the place fell apart. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was "thoroughly neglected" by 1878, and parliament was already talking about taking it for the railway in 1882. In October 1900 a member of the Citizens' Vigilance Committee wrote in the Daily Telegraph of "a thick, disorderly, and in some places almost impenetrable scrub", with headstones leaning about "like a party of drunken men crossing a field".

The Devonshire Street Cemetery, from two old photographs in the Dixson Library joined together. Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, merged by Wayne Hill, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Buried There

Nobody knows exactly how many people were buried in the Sandhills. The State Library's 2019 exhibition "Dead Central" says "well over 30,000". Among them were some of the best-known names in early Sydney.

First Fleeters, Merchants and Printers

Foster found several First Fleeters in the Church of England ground: John Trace (1823), Elisabeth Beckford (1827), William Tyrrill (1827), Frances Mintz (1828), Thomas Prior, who died in 1836 aged 88, and Mary Marshall (1849).

• James Squire, the Kissing Point brewer, died on 16 May 1822 aged 67. His stone said "the hop plant was first cultivated in this settlement, and the first brewery was erected" under his care. The Australian Cemeteries Index records his reinterment at Botany.
• Isaac Nichols, Sydney's first postmaster, died on 8 November 1819 aged 49, one of the first burials in the new ground (see The First Post Office).
• George Howe, the government printer who started the Sydney Gazette, died on 11 May 1821. Foster says he went into the same grave as Edward Wills.
• Simeon Lord, merchant, died in 1840. His family vault is now at the Pioneer Memorial Park.
• Samuel Terry, the "Botany Bay Rothschild", died on 22 February 1838 (see Samuel Terry).
• Mary Reibey, the convict girl who became one of the colony's richest businesswomen and is now on our $20 note, died on 30 May 1855. Foster placed her altar tomb a few paces west of a Norfolk Island pine near Nichols' grave (see Mary Reibey).

Mary Reibey, about 1835. Her tomb was one of those moved to Botany. Unknown artist, c.1835, State Library of New South Wales (MIN 76), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Explorers, Judges and Clergy

The explorer and Surveyor-General John Oxley (died 1828) was buried here, according to the ADB. So was the botanist Allan Cunningham, in July 1839, along with James Anderson, Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, who died in 1842 and whose obelisk was "cracked from apex to base" by 1901. Judge John Stephen (died 1833) had a square enclosed vault. Foster also mentions the graves of Chief Justices Francis Forbes and Sir James Dowling, and of Robert Wardell, whose grave had a broken fluted column. Commodore Sir James Brisbane of HMS Warspite died on 10 December 1826. The clergy included Rev. Richard Hill of St James' (died 1836) and Rev. William Cowper of St Phillip's (died 1858). Wikipedia's Camperdown Cemetery article says Sir Maurice O'Connell (died 1848) was exhumed from Devonshire Street and reburied at Camperdown.

The 1844 Cunningham obelisk in the Royal Botanic Garden. Allan Cunningham's remains were placed inside it in 1901. Whiteghost.ink, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Irish Exiles and Cora Gooseberry

The Catholic ground held men transported after the Irish rising of 1798, including William Davis and Andrew Byrne. The best known was the Wicklow rebel Michael Dwyer. The ADB says he was first buried at Liverpool in 1825, then moved to Devonshire Street in 1878 by his grandson, Dean John Dwyer of St Mary's. In May 1898 he and his wife were moved again, to Waverley. The vault was opened on 19 May and the funeral to Waverley was on Sunday 22 May. The 1798 memorial over their grave there went up in 1900.

Cora Gooseberry, widow of Bungaree and a familiar figure around town, was found dead on 30 July 1852 at the Sydney Arms Hotel in Castlereagh Street. The ADB says the publican, Edward Borton, paid for her burial in the Presbyterian ground and her headstone. The stone later went to Botany, and Ethel Foster copied its fading epitaph in 1901.

Cora Gooseberry, drawn by W. H. Fernyhough in 1836. W. H. Fernyhough, 1836, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What the Headstones Said

The Herald printed a long list of inscriptions in February 1901, and they show how hard life was in the young colony:

• The oldest stone, near the Garden Road gates, was for William Chapman, plumber and glazier, who died on 15 June 1810 and left a "disconsolate widow with 9 children".
• Four seamen of HM sloop Bathurst drowned when their boat overturned on 18 August 1822. Their stone was put up by a lieutenant who had been in the boat with them.
• Constable Joseph Haynes was killed on duty in 1824. Samuel Lepton's 1825 stone named "the wicked Byron who shot me".
• John Ward was "accidentally shot on Christmas morning, A.D. 1830".
• A stone sarcophagus held the remains of 17 people from the barque Charles Eaton, wrecked in Torres Strait in 1834. Their bones were recovered from the island of Aureed and buried here on 17 November 1836.
• One huge stone said only "Alas! Poor William Templeton, who died March 10, 1838, aged 23 years".

Foster found one more surprise. When the slab of Anthony Fenn Kemp junior (died 1824) was lifted for the move to La Perouse, the underside carried the inscription of Judge-Advocate Ellis Bent. Foster also wrote that Captain John Putland, Governor Bligh's son-in-law who died in 1808, had his lead coffin moved here from old St Phillip's and was "now at La Perouse". Wikipedia's Camperdown article says his headstone went to Camperdown in the 1850s. I can't tell which is right, so you get both.

The Railway Comes

A Terminus Next Door

The railway had been on the cemetery's doorstep for decades. Sydney's first terminus opened on 26 September 1855 just south of Devonshire Street, at the spot people unofficially called Redfern. By the 1890s it was far too small. Norman Selfe's 1894 scheme for bringing the line further in included a drawing of the Sand Hills burying grounds. In 1899 the Public Works Committee weighed up Hyde Park against the Devonshire Street cemeteries and chose the cemeteries as the cheaper and less controversial option (see Central Station and Eddy Avenue).

Norman Selfe's 1894 drawing of the Sand Hills Burying Grounds, made for his railway scheme. Norman Selfe, 1894, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Act of December 1900

The Secretary for Works, E. W. O'Sullivan, brought in the City Railway Extension (Devonshire Street) Bill on 3 December 1900. John Norton asked the House to show "some little reverence for the dead", and Mr Young pointed out that the bill said nothing about removing the remains or headstones. It turned out the government hadn't realised each burial ground was a freehold grant held by its church. The £140,000 set aside for resumptions only covered buildings: the Police Barracks, Benevolent Asylum, Christ Church parsonage, Female Refuge, Good Samaritan convent, tram depot, morgue and Friends' Meeting House. The Metro report says the bill became law on 11 December 1900. The same day the Herald ran a letter from Curwen Campbell demanding compensation for plot owners. A separate Devonshire-street Cemetery Act followed in 1901, and Museums of History NSW holds a copy dated 17 October 1901.

The extension of the railway terminus onto the Devonshire Street Cemetery, as recommended by the Public Works Committee in 1900. State Records NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Months to Claim Your Dead

The official notice, dated 17 January 1901 and signed by Robert Hickson of Public Works, gave relatives two months to apply to move their family's remains and headstones to a cemetery of their choice, at the government's reasonable expense. The unclaimed would be reburied at Rookwood. The other cemetery trustees weren't keen on taking thousands of unclaimed bodies, so on 20 February the government announced Botany instead, and its notices spoke of "creating a new cemetery at near La Perouse, in a beautiful position". That became Bunnerong, beside Botany Cemetery.

A board chaired by Harold F. Norrie ran the job. The Herald of 2 February 1901 said most early removals were going to Waverley, fees were capped at Necropolis rates, and men were guarding the graves "from interference by marauders or larrikins". Surveyors numbered the monuments in each ground: 1,229 in the Church of England ground, 1,451 Catholic, 1,006 Presbyterian, 318 Congregational, 256 Wesleyan and 268 Jewish. By 20 March O'Sullivan said there had been "some 1500 applications" but only about 300 exhumations, and family removals carried on until the end of May.

Clearing the Cemetery in 1901

Trenches, Sieves and a Tramway to Botany

The unclaimed dead were a much bigger job. On 16 April 1901 work started on a tramway from Devonshire Street into the Wesleyan and Congregational grounds. A second line ran from the tram depot to the base of the Anglican sandhill, roughly along today's Eddy Avenue. Surplus steam trams hauled the coffins out along the Botany line to the new cemetery, and by the end of June it was all running.

The ground was dug in trenches, the soil went through a sieve, and the bones went into new coffins, often several people to a coffin. A writer calling himself "Tackra" visited for the Evening News in July 1901. He saw ground like "a choppy sea of yellow and grey earth", men "about shoulder deep amongst the hummocks of clay", and a shed with "piles of coffins neatly placed in rows from floor to ceiling", marked "No. 133, Pres." or "1140 Wes.". His piece, "Nobody's Friends", ends with a line that stays with you: "Good-bye — good night — forgotten dead of long ago."

The Presbyterian ground was done by mid-August, then the Congregational and Catholic, and last the Church of England ground on the Belmore Park side. Work finished in early October 1901. The walls came down and the sandhills were carted away. The Public Works Department said about 80,000 cubic yards of sand went to build up Belmore Park.

Not everyone believed it had been done properly. In September Truth said "not a bone" would be left, but on 20 October it ran "The Cemeteries Scandal", claiming that only the Anglican and Jewish sections had been trenched to nine feet and the rest to barely four. As we'll see, Truth had a point.

The Devonshire Street Cemetery in a State Records photograph dated 1902. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How Many, and Where They Went

The figures depend on which report you read:

• Claimed by families: Botany Descendants & Ancestors counts 1,568 applications covering 8,460 known remains moved to other cemeteries. The Board's report, quoted in the Daily Telegraph in 1904 and cited by the Metro archaeologists, says 1,568 applications were approved for £16,856, covering 13,766 sets of remains, with 158 later withdrawn, and about 8,400 known sets went elsewhere. The Dictionary of Sydney says about 8,500.
• Sent to Botany: A return of 7 November 1902 lists 4,762 coffins holding 5,366 known remains and an estimated 16,330 unknown, reckoned at about ten sets of bones to a coffin.
• Total: Adding it up, Botany Descendants & Ancestors gets about 30,156. The Dictionary of Sydney and the ABC say about 30,000 unclaimed remains went to La Perouse.
• Headstones: About 4,500 monuments survived in 1901, and about 2,800 were re-erected on 25 acres beside Bunnerong Road.
• Cost: £26,890 for exhumation and £22,541 for reburial at Bunnerong. The Board wound up in September 1902.

Practically every Sydney cemetery took some: Rookwood, Waverley, Gore Hill, St Thomas' at Crows Nest, Balmain, Randwick, St Jude's, the Field of Mars, South Head and Woronora, but very few to Camperdown. Some went further, to Sandgate, Berkeley near Unanderra, Goulburn, Cootamundra and Kincumber. David Jones and his 1865 monument went to Rookwood. Hugh McDonald, the first burial, went with his wife Mary to the Coulson tomb at St Jude's, Randwick, though the Dictionary of Sydney says his headstone was broken. If you think an ancestor was here, the register of remains (NRS 15513) is held by Museums of History NSW, and they have an online index.

Building Central Station at the Devonshire Street end, around 1902. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Central Station Rises

The foundation stone of the new station was laid on 30 April 1902 at the corner of Pitt Street and the new Belmore Road. Walter Liberty Vernon's sandstone terminus opened officially on 4 August 1906, and the first passengers came through the next day. The clock tower followed in 1921. Old Devonshire Street vanished under the railway yards, surviving as the pedestrian tunnel under the platforms.

The approach road to the new Central Station, by 1906. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bunnerong and the Pioneer Memorial Park

For about seventy years the headstones stood in rows at Bunnerong near Botany Bay (see Botany Bay), and slowly they fell apart. Between 1969 and 1971, 2,285 of the stones there were transcribed, and Johnson and Sainty published the inscriptions in 1973. Bunnerong was incorporated into Botany Cemetery in 1972, and only 746 stones were kept, gathered together in the Pioneer Memorial Park. They include the Lord family vault, Mary Reibey, John Cadman, George Howe, Robert Watson and Ellis Bent. The park's start date varies. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1973 in one place and 1974 in another, Randwick City Council's plaque says "Established 1974", and Monument Australia and the Cape Banks Family History Society say the Botany Cemetery trustees, led by Fred W. Read, created it in 1976. Botany Cemetery is now part of the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park at Matraville.

Devonshire Street headstones in the Pioneer Memorial Park at Botany Cemetery, with newer graves beside them, 2010. Cemeterycare, 2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Found Again: The Sydney Metro Excavations

When Sydney Metro dug its new platforms under Central, the archaeologists went looking for graves left behind in 1901. Between November 2018 and December 2021 they found 74 graves and four burial vaults, the first mapping of individual graves there since the 1840s. So Truth's 1901 complaint wasn't far off the mark. Most of the graves ran east–west, as the 1820 orders required, but 24 ran north–south and five ran north-east to south-west. In 2019 the ABC reported the story of Joseph Thompson, whose coffin nameplate read "Joseph Thompson died July 1858 aged 80 years". The records said he had been moved to La Perouse in 1901, but there he was. He was a linen draper born at Daventry, Northamptonshire, in 1779, and a deacon of the Pitt Street Independent chapel. The ABC said he arrived in 1855, while the Metro report, drawing on family research, gives 30 April 1834. He was reburied at the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park on 26 November 2021.

They also found the Perry and Ham family vault in the Congregational ground, where William Perry, Paddington's first mayor, had been buried in 1882. His daughter Mary Hay Kilby had the vault's occupants moved to the Field of Mars on 22 March 1901, yet remains were still there. They were reburied in the Ham and Perry vault at the Field of Mars on 4 November 2022. Other identified remains were reburied as families wished and the unidentified at the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park. The dig also turned up NSW's first railway turntable, a 40-foot one from the 1855 station.

Timeline

• 1818 – Macquarie reserves the Brickfield Hill site.
• 11 September 1819 – First burial, Quartermaster Hugh McDonald.
• 27 January 1820 – Consecration. All funerals go there from the 28th.
• 1825–1830s – Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Wesleyan, Quaker and Congregational grounds added. Seven grounds by 1836.
• 1843 – Bishop Broughton says the Anglican ground is full.
• 26 September 1855 – First railway terminus opens just south of Devonshire Street.
• 1 January 1867 – New burials banned. Licensed vault burials carry on.
• 11 December 1900 – Railway extension bill becomes law.
• 17 January 1901 – Notice to relatives, two months to claim.
• April–October 1901 – Tramway built, ground trenched and cleared.
• 30 April 1902 – Foundation stone of the new station.
• 4 August 1906 – Central Station officially opens.
• 1970s – Bunnerong stones reduced to the Pioneer Memorial Park.
• 2018–2021 – Sydney Metro archaeologists find 74 graves and four vaults.

Seeing It Today

There isn't a headstone left at Central, but you can still follow the cemetery around Sydney:

• Central Station and the Devonshire Street tunnel. Stand at the Elizabeth Street side of the station and you're on the old cemetery ground. Walk through the tunnel and you're on the line of old Devonshire Street.
• Belmore Park, partly built up with cemetery sand.
• Pioneer Memorial Park, Botany Cemetery (Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, Matraville). The biggest collection of Devonshire Street headstones.
• The Cunningham Obelisk in the Royal Botanic Garden. Allan Cunningham's remains were placed inside it on 26 June 1901, in the obelisk his admirers had put up in 1844.
• Waverley Cemetery. Michael Dwyer's 1798 memorial.
• Rookwood. The David Jones family monument, among many others (see Rookwood Cemetery Necropolis and Rookwood Cemetery).
• St Jude's, Randwick and the Field of Mars, Ryde, where the McDonalds and the Perry/Ham family ended up.
• Mortuary Station in Chippendale, and the Shakespeare Hotel (1879) on the surviving bit of Devonshire Street in Surry Hills.
• In the archives. Ethel Foster's glass negatives of the headstones are in the Mitchell Library, and the Museums of History NSW index lists where people went.

Next time you're rushing for a train at Central, spare a thought for the 30,000 or so people who were buried under your feet.

Related Posts on My Blog

• The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery
• Central Station
• Old Sydney Burial Ground – Town Hall Area
• Mortuary Station
• Rookwood Necropolis
• St Andrew's Cathedral, George Street

Sources

• A. G. Foster, "The Sandhills: an historic cemetery" (read to the RAHS 1918, JRAHS 1919), reproduced on my blog
• Dictionary of Sydney – Devonshire Street Cemetery
• Sydney Metro – Central Station Excavation Director's Report, Volume 1 (2024)
• Botany Descendants & Ancestors – Devonshire Street Cemetery removals and reinterments
• Museums of History NSW – Devonshire Street Cemetery reinterment index
• State Library of NSW – Dead Central exhibition
• Sydney Gazette, 29 January 1820 – Government and General Orders on the new burial ground
• Sydney Monitor, 9 March 1829 – A Walk Through Sydney
• Public funeral of the Rev. John Dunmore Lang, August 1878
• Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 1900 – Curwen Campbell letter
• Evening News, 17 January 1901 – removals to begin
• Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 1901 – the removals
• Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1901 – inscriptions in the cemetery
• Evening News, 6 July 1901 – "Nobody's Friends" by Tackra
• Daily Telegraph, 20 September 1904 – Devonshire Street Cemetery Board report
• Dictionary of Sydney – David Jones
• Dictionary of Sydney – John Dunmore Lang
• Dictionary of Sydney – Samuel Terry
• Dictionary of Sydney – 1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – John Hubert Plunkett
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – Michael Dwyer
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – Cora Gooseberry
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – John Oxley
• Australian Dictionary of Biography – William Cowper
• Australian Cemeteries Index – James Squire
• Monument Australia – Allan Cunningham obelisk
• NSW Government – Cunningham Obelisk
• Monument Australia – Pioneer Memorial Park
• Randwick City Council – Pioneer Park plaque
• Cape Banks Family History Society – Botany Pioneer Memorial Park
• ABC News, 25 June 2019 – Sydney Metro construction unearths 160-year-old grave
• Sydney Morning Herald, 2019 – David Jones monument at Rookwood
• Wikipedia – Devonshire Street Cemetery
• Wikipedia – Camperdown Cemetery
• Wikipedia – Central railway station, Sydney
• Wikimedia Commons – Devonshire Street Cemetery category
• Image pages on Wikimedia Commons, linked from each picture above.