The Lunatic Reception House - Cnr Forbes Street & Burton Street - Darlinghurst 

On the corner of Forbes and Burton Streets, immediately behind the old Darlinghurst Gaol, sat a building whose job was to keep people out of the cells. The Lunatic Reception House opened on 24 July 1868 as a purpose-built observation ward for people thought to be mentally ill. The point was a hospital pathway that did not begin in the criminal justice system — a metropolitan portal into Sydney’s psychiatric hospitals that was meant to reduce the stigma of gaol admission for assessment.

It operated until 1961 (in its last years also known as the Darlinghurst Admissions Centre). The site then passed into mental-health care associated with St Vincent’s Hospital as the Caritas Centre from 1962. Fabric on the block includes the remodelled Reception House building known as Caritas House (origins 1867–68, significantly altered about 1935) and Caritas Cottage (c.1910).

The historic title “Lunatic Reception House” is the institution’s nineteenth-century legal name; modern writing may prefer “Darlinghurst Reception House” while retaining the historic form in the post title. Photographs here show the corner site and surviving related buildings.

Governor Macquarie's Report On What Was Beyond The Mountains

The title is the right door: this is Macquarie’s report, not another three-explorers school-poster. Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth left the Nepean in May 1813, followed the ridges, and from Mount Blaxland saw grass that looked like an answer to the colony’s hungry flocks. They did not stand on what we now call Mount Victoria, and they did not found a town. Wiradjuri country was already there.

What the governor actually published is in the Sydney Gazette of 10 June 1815 — Government and General Orders from Government House. George William Evans had pushed the line west in late 1813. William Cox and a convict road party then built the carriage road; Cox reported it finished on 21 January 1815. Macquarie and Elizabeth left Sydney on 25 April, named Mount York and Cox’s Pass on the way down, and on Sunday 7 May 1815 hoisted a flag and named Bathurst for Lord Bathurst. They were back in Sydney on 19 May.

Twenty-five years after 1788 is close enough arithmetic. Drop “first inland city” as a slogan; Bathurst is the first inland European town Macquarie marked out, on a river that was never going to float you to a western sea. The report is how the Crown told Sydney that the mountains had a far side.

Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson – Crossing the Blue Mountains

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In May 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth did what a generation of valley-hunters had failed to do: they took the ridges across the Blue Mountains. They left the Nepean on 11 May with servants, horses and stores, cut and marked their way west, dropped from Mount York, and pushed on to the sugarloaf later called Mount Blaxland — enough grass, they thought, to change the colonys fortunes. Leadership arguments came later; the journals read as a joint slog.

Macquarie sent George Evans to go further, then set William Cox to build a road in 1814–15 that still shadows their line. That road opened pastoral expansion onto the Bathurst plains — Wiradjuri country — with all the frontier consequences that followed. The much-photographed “Explorers Tree” near Katoomba is later folklore, not a journal entry; don’t navigate 1813 by a 1860s tourist marker.

This post is the crossing, not a Sydney CBD laneway. Keep the live plates; fix the title spelling; let the ADB trio and the journals carry the facts. Blood-and-wattle rhetoric without sources stays off the paste.

William Charles Wentworth, 1861–62 — Dalton’s Royal Photographic Gallery (SLNSW / Wikimedia Commons, public domain). One of the 1813 trio; Blaxland and Lawson portraits also survive in library collections.

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Australian Discovery By Land

This page is a contents list for inland exploration as the colonial archive told it — from the 1813 Blue Mountains crossing out to Stuart’s south–north runs and the Burke and Wills disaster. “Discovery by land” is a settler filing word. The routes crossed Wiradjuri and many other Peoples’ Country that was already known, named and lived in; the journals are how the colony wrote itself into the map.

Start with Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson if you want the Sydney-side door through the mountains — their joint expedition left on 11 May 1813; the fuller note is on Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson. Then the list runs the usual spine: Evans and Macquarie beyond the ranges, Oxley on the Lachlan and Macquarie, Hume and Hovell toward Port Phillip, Sturt on the Darling and Murray, Mitchell’s Australia Felix, Eyre’s desperate coast ride, Burke and Wills, Stuart. Treat each numbered line as a doorway, not a finished biography.

Where this blog later grows a dedicated essay, cross-link it. Where it hasn’t yet, leave the year soft and the spelling clean — Wiradjuri, not “Weradjiri”; Blaxland, not “Bblaxland.” The blood-on-the-wattle feeling in the old draft can stay as honest mood; don’t fake a body count you can’t source.

LIST OF PRINCIPAL DATES 

1 - Blaxland's Story Of The Crossing Of The Blue Mountains 

**** it wasn't until 1813 that Bblaxland Wentworth And Lawson Finally Got Through A Small Passage at The Top Of The Blue Mountains, which Had Been Known And Used By The Local Tribes To Crossover Into Other Tribe Territory. 

**€**. This was the Land Of The WERADJIRI PEOPLE. 

The Eora and Cadigal Tribes Of The Sydney basin Region Had Pretty MuchBeen   destroyed By 1813. 

The Smallpox killed Thousands Of Matives In One Go, And White Men Woth Guns Had Taken Care Of The Rest. 

So THERE WAS TRULY BLOOD ON THE WATTLE. 

2 - Evan's Journal Of His Journey To TheBathurst  Plains.

3 - Governor Macquarie's Report On The Country Beyond The Mountains 

4 - Evan's Discovery Of The Lachlan 

5 - Oxley's Exploration Of The Lachlan. 

6 - Oxley's Exploration Of The Macquarie 

7 - Evan's Discovery Of The Castlereagh 

8 - Allan Cunningham's Explorations 

9 - Hume And Hovell's Journey To Port Phillip 

10 - Lockyer's Exploration Of The Brisbane River 

11 - Sturts Discovery Of The Darling 

12 - Sturt's Discovery Of The Murray 

13 - Mitchell's Exploration Of Australia Felix 

14 - Sturt's Journey Into Central Australia 

15 - Eyre's Journey From Fowler's Bay To Albany 

16 - The Burke And Wills Expedition 

17 - Stuart's Journey To The Centre Of Australia 

18 - Stuarts Journey Across Australia 

Your Country's Been Sold - Slim Dusty - Smokey Dawson - Australian Song

Your Country's Been Sold - Slim Dusty - Smokey Dawson

You Say You Belong To Australia My Friend
& Rightly You'd Die For This Land To Defend 
But Let Us Be Honest it's Sad But Is True 
Australia My Friend Doesn't Belong To You

Our Country's Been Sold By The Powers That Be 
To Big Wealthy Nations Way Over The Sea
We Couldn't Be Taken With Bayonet Or Lead
So They Decided To Buy Us Instead

And Talking Of Wars  & The Blood That Was Spilt 
The Widows; The Crippled &The Ones That Were Killed 
&I Often Wonder If They're Ghosts Can See 
What's Happening To Their Native  Country 

I wonder If Ghosts Of The Fallen Can See
The Crime; The Corruption & Poverty
With A Lost Generation Of Youth On The Dole 
Adrift on Life Oceans Without Any Goal

I Once Had A a Dream Of Our Country So Grand 
The Rivers Outback  Irrigated The Land
Towns & Canals In That Wasteland Out There 
With Big Inland Cities with Work Everywhere 
with Profit From Factory, Farming & Mine 

Was Used To Develop A Nation So Fine  

Then I Woke From My Dream To Reality 
That The Wealth Of Our Nation Goes Over The Sea 
 You Say You Belong To Australia My Friend
And Rightly You'd Die For This Land To Defend 

But Let Us Be Honest it's Sad But Is True 
Australia My Friend Doesn't Belong To You 

The Sandstone Cemetery

The title is doing too much work. These five photographs are sandstone and metal relics on a lawn, not a documented Sydney cemetery. There are no rows of headstones, no lychgate, no identifiable parish. What you can actually read is more interesting than a guessed graveyard.

One circular plaque is explicit: a building was opened by Her Excellency Lady Stonehaven on 5 May 1926. Ethel, Lady Stonehaven, wife of Governor-General Lord Stonehaven, spent that autumn opening wings and halls; this stone belongs to a civic opening, not a burial. Beside it sit a weathered shield marked V / 1924, another stone cut with 1924, a mushroom-shaped pier, and a broken length of carved sandstone with vine ornament — demolition salvage or garden ornament, not a plot plan.

Until a site is matched, leave the pin off the map. Do not fold this set into Devonshire Street, St Jude’s or Rookwood just because the folder said cemetery. If the Lady Stonehaven building turns up in a later pass, that is when this post gets a real name.