Central is the station everyone knows — the big sandstone terminus that officially opened on 4 August 1906 (passengers from 5 August), to designs associated with Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon. The clock tower and great façade face Eddy Avenue, formed by realigning the earlier Garden Road when the new station pushed one block closer to the city than the old Devonshire Street terminus.

What most people don’t clock while they sprint for the Country Link gates is what sat under their feet. The station block was resumed from a dense layer of earlier uses. Most famously it occupies much of the former Devonshire Street Cemetery (the Sandhills Cemetery) — Sydney’s main burial ground from the 1820s until Rookwood took over in the 1860s. In 1901–02 remains and monuments were exhumed — claimed burials to metropolitan cemeteries, unclaimed largely to Bunnerong/Botany — so the railway works could proceed. Other resumed sites on the block included successors to Carters’ Barracks (police barracks, convent, female refuge), the Benevolent Asylum, Christ Church parsonage and related institutions.

Photographs here show Central’s Eddy Avenue frontage — a civic face built over one of colonial Sydney’s most consequential land clearances.

Central railway station is Sydney’s principal terminus, officially opened on 4 August 1906 (passengers from 5 August) to designs associated with Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon. The great sandstone façade and clock tower face Eddy Avenue, which was formed by realigning the earlier Garden Road when the new station pushed one block closer to the city than the previous Devonshire Street terminus.

The station block was resumed from a dense layer of earlier uses. Most famously it occupies much of the former Devonshire Street Cemetery (also called the Sandhills Cemetery), Sydney’s main burial ground from the 1820s until Rookwood took over in the 1860s. In 1901–02 remains and monuments were exhumed — claimed burials to metropolitan cemeteries, unclaimed largely to Bunnerong/Botany — so railway works could proceed. Other resumed sites on the block included Carters’ Barracks successors (police barracks, convent, female refuge), the Benevolent Asylum, Christ Church parsonage and related institutions.

Photographs here show Central’s Eddy Avenue frontage — a civic face built over one of colonial Sydney’s most consequential land clearances.

Central Station opened in 1906 on the site of the former Devonshire Street Cemetery, and it remains Sydney’s principal railway hub. Its sandstone façade and grand clock tower face Eddy Avenue, while the station connects suburban, intercity and regional services.

Central Station And Eddy Avenue - Built On The Grounds Of The Devonshire Street Cemetery Known As The Sandhills Cemetery. After 1903