Manly takes its name from a handful of Aboriginal men who waded out to Governor Phillip's boats in January 1788. Phillip liked their "confidence and manly behaviour" so much that he named the cove after them. Within two years the same beach had seen two kidnappings and the governor speared through the shoulder. After that it went quiet for the best part of sixty years, until a merchant called Henry Gilbert Smith decided it would make Sydney's answer to Brighton. This page follows Manly from the Aboriginal people of Kai'ymay through the 1788 encounters, the Quarantine Station on North Head, Smith's resort, the ferries and the Corso, the fight over daylight bathing and the coming of surfing, right through to today.
Manly Beach in October 2020. Photo by Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Before 1788 – The People of Kai'ymay
The sandy cove on the western side of the Manly peninsula had a name long before Phillip came along. It was Kai'ymay. Grace Karskens, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, explains that nobody knows for sure what the clan who lived there called themselves. It may have been Kai'ymaygal or Gayamaygal, because in the Sydney language "gal" was added to a place name to mean the people of that place. They may also have been the Cameragal, the powerful people of the north shore of the harbour, or closely tied to them. Paul Ashton's Dictionary of Sydney entry on Manly names the original people as the Cannalgal and Kayimai, and the old Manly Council used the name Guringai. I've set out these different names further down, because the sources don't line up.
What the sources do agree on is how these people lived. They were saltwater people who lived on fish, shellfish and seabirds. Karskens writes that the women were especially skilled in the bark canoes, called nowie, fishing with their babies on board and a small fire burning on a clay pad to cook the catch. The sandstone around Manly is still covered with their rock engravings of people, animals, birds and fish, along with grinding grooves where axes were sharpened. Spears and fishgigs were tipped with shell or with stone carried in from inland. A well-marked pathway ran from Kai'ymay north along the peninsula to Pittwater and Broken Bay.
They lived under their own law, and that law mattered at Manly Cove in 1790. Karskens points out that in 2005 the remains of a man were found at nearby Narrabeen who had died more than 3,600 years ago from spear wounds, with the stone barbs still in his spine. It was the first archaeological evidence in Australia of death by spearing.
January 1788 – How Manly Got Its Name
When the First Fleet found Botany Bay short of fresh water and open to the wind, Phillip took three boats north to look at Port Jackson. Somewhere in the north arm of the harbour, a group of about twenty men waded out to meet the boats. Phillip described the meeting in his despatch to Lord Sydney of 15 May 1788:
"The Boats, in passing near a point of land in this Harbour, were seen by a number of Men, and twenty of them waded into the water unarmed, received what was offered them, and examined the Boats with a curiosity, that gave me a much higher opinion of them, than I had formed from the behaviour of those seen in Captain Cooks Voyage. And their confidence, and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place."
– Governor Arthur Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788 (Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1, part 2, p. 129, as transcribed by the Fellowship of First Fleeters)
The old Manly Council put the visit "between 21st and 23rd January, 1788", the same trip on which Sydney Cove was named. It also admitted that the exact spot of that first meeting is uncertain. A Fellowship of First Fleeters study argues that the men waded out at what is now North Harbour Reserve, then a stretch of tidal mud and sand flats. It also points out that Hunter put the name "Manly Cove" there on his signed 1788 chart. That study goes further and says the name was probably not given in the first three days, but had been settled by the time Phillip wrote his despatch in May.
Karskens adds a lovely twist. On a later visit, on 29 January 1788, the officers finally met some of the local women. That was the first meeting with Aboriginal women anywhere in the harbour, and for a while the officers called the place Eve's Cove instead. Neither name was much used at first, and people simply called the area "down the harbour" or "North Arm". Karskens says "Manly Cove" only really caught on after Phillip's story was printed in The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay in November 1789.
Kidnapped at Manly Cove – Arabanoo, Bennelong and Colebee
The friendly start didn't last. The Eora soon stopped talking to the newcomers and kept well away from the camp at Sydney Cove. Two convicts were killed by warriors in May 1788. By the end of the year Phillip still had little idea how many people lived around the harbour or what they intended. Karskens writes that he decided to kidnap a man to force open some kind of communication, and that he chose Manly Cove because he wanted one of the "manly" warriors he had met there.
In late December 1788 Lieutenant George Johnston and Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball went to Manly Cove and seized a man. Karskens describes the kidnapping as "violent and distressing". He wouldn't speak, so the British called him Manly until they learned his real name, Arabanoo. He was kept a prisoner in Sydney. When smallpox broke out among the Eora in April 1789 he nursed his own people in the hospital, caught the disease himself and died on 18 May 1789.
In November 1789 Phillip tried again. On 25 November Lieutenant William Bradley's boat crew grabbed two men on the beach at Manly Cove. They were Colebee, a Cadigal man from the south shore, and Woollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal man from the Parramatta River. As Karskens dryly points out, neither man came from the "manly" clan Phillip had been after. Bradley drew the scene himself, and it's one of the most uncomfortable pictures we have from those first years.
'Taking of Colbee & Benalon. 25 Novr 1789' – William Bradley's own drawing of the kidnapping on the beach at Manly Cove. William Bradley, from his journal A Voyage to New South Wales (c.1802), State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The two men were shackled in a guarded hut near Government House. Colebee cut through the rope tied to his leg irons and escaped on the night of 12 December 1789. Bennelong stayed on, keen to learn all about the British and their language, and he and Phillip became friends who often went walking together. Then, after about seven months, he too slipped away.
Bennelong, as engraved by James Neagle in 1798. He was taken at Manly Cove in 1789, and it was his invitation to the whale feast that brought Phillip back there in 1790. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
September 1790 – The Whale Feast and the Spearing of Phillip
In September 1790 a whale washed up at Manly Cove and a big crowd gathered for the feast. A party including Captain Nepean, Surgeon White and the Aboriginal boy Nanbaree was passing through on its way to walk to Broken Bay, and they spotted Bennelong and Colebee on the beach. Bennelong asked after the governor and sent him a big chunk of whale meat, so Phillip hurried over by boat from South Head.
At first it was a happy reunion. They talked for more than half an hour, gifts changed hands, and Bennelong asked after his old friends in Sydney and drank the King's health with a glass of wine. Then Bennelong moved away and a circle of warriors began to close around the governor. An older man Phillip didn't know, named Willemering, seemed agitated. Watkin Tench thought he was a stranger who hardly knew Bennelong or Colebee. Phillip walked towards him slowly with his hands open, as he usually did, and even threw down his dirk to show he meant no harm. Willemering threw a barbed spear that went right through Phillip's shoulder.
There was chaos. The spear was so long its end dragged on the sand, so Phillip couldn't run for the boat. The men shouted for the muskets, but when they reached the beach only one would fire. In the end Lieutenant Waterhouse broke off the tough shaft, and they bundled the governor into the boat and rowed for Sydney. The surgeons pulled the spear out and found the wound wasn't deadly, and Karskens says Phillip was up and about only ten days later.
The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove in September 1790, painted at the time by the unknown artist known as the Port Jackson Painter (detail). Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Historians have argued about what happened that day ever since. Several now suggest it was a payback ritual, with the governor made to answer under Aboriginal law for what his people had done, including the kidnappings on that very beach. What's remarkable is that Phillip refused to hit back, which annoyed his officers no end. Peace talks followed instead, and in October Colebee met Phillip to make peace and was given a metal hatchet. By November 1790 Bennelong had come into Sydney with his wife Barangaroo and their friends. Karskens calls it the first reconciliation between Aboriginal people and white settlers in Australian history.
Today the cove remembers it only in part. A stone monument put up in 1928 marks the arrival of "the first white man" in 1788. A second plaque corrects the first and admits Phillip didn't actually land in Manly Cove on that first trip. A third, added in 2006, records the spearing by Willemering. Karskens notes that apart from Willemering, none of them mentions the Aboriginal people at all.
The Early Grants and the Quiet Years
For decades after 1790 Manly was a long way from anywhere. The old Manly Council described the road trip from Sydney as about 70 miles, going round through Parramatta, Hunters Hill, Lane Cove and Narrabeen. The only other way in was by punt across the harbour at North Sydney and again at The Spit. The Dictionary of Sydney says a ferry was crossing at The Spit from 1834.
The first land grants in Manly, according to the conservation history of St Patrick's Estate, went to Richard Cheers (100 acres) and Gilbert Baker (30 acres) on 1 January 1810. The western boundary of Cheers' grant ended up as the line separating North Head from what became Manly. More land changed hands later. John Crane Parker was granted land in 1837 and John Thompson in 1842, and those were the two big parcels Henry Gilbert Smith bought in 1853.
The Aboriginal people of the area didn't simply vanish, whatever older histories say. Karskens notes reports of camps around Manly from the 1850s until at least 1881. That year a number of Aboriginal people from Manly were persuaded by the Reverend Daniel Matthews to join his mission at Maloga. Ashton records a sadder scene from 1868. The Sydney Morning Herald of 13 March reported a "troupe" of Aboriginal people being brought to the ocean beach to put on "war games" for the day-trippers.
The Quarantine Station at North Head
North Head became Sydney's front door for disease. Its isolation was put to use in 1828, when the Bussorah Merchant became the first ship quarantined at Spring Cove. On 14 August 1832 Governor Darling's Quarantine Act set aside the whole of North Head for quarantine, mainly out of fear of the cholera then sweeping Europe. At first the sick were kept on board their own ships. That changed after the long and costly detention of the Lady Macnaghten in 1837, when the owners claimed heavy compensation for the delay. From then on the sick were brought ashore while the ship was cleaned, and permanent buildings started going up on the headland.
Some of the worst moments came with the big immigrant ships. In 1853 the Beejapore arrived with more than a thousand people aboard, when the station could hold about 150. Fifty-five had died on the voyage, and another sixty-two died at North Head of measles, scarlet fever and typhus. Most of the passengers had to live in tents. An old hulk called the Harmony was moored in Spring Cove as a hospital ship.
From 1881 to 1894 the smallpox hospital ship Faraway lay off the station. After the poor results of the 1881–82 smallpox epidemic it was refitted in 1884 at Mort's Dock as a proper floating hospital with 100 beds. The heritage records say the procedures worked out at North Head became the basis for handling Sydney's smallpox, plague and influenza outbreaks right up to the 1920s. When the soldiers came home from the Great War in 1919 there were fears of Spanish flu, and men from the Argyllshire were landed at North Head. The site wasn't ready and they had to clear it themselves, reportedly killing 60 snakes on the first night. On 11 February 1919, 900 soldiers marched out and were allowed to see out their quarantine at the Sydney Cricket Ground instead.
The ferry Kookooburra at the Quarantine Station wharf in 1930, bringing ashore passengers off a liner that had reported disease aboard. Unknown photographer, 1930, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The station was laid out by class and by race. First, second and third class passengers had separate compounds, with fences in between, and the Asian quarters were set apart below the third class. There were three cemeteries over the years. The first, used from about 1837 to 1853, sat at the junction of the Wharf and Hospital roads, in full view of everyone, and nothing of it can be seen now. The second, from 1853 to 1881, lay east of the third-class area, and a few headstones still stand there. The third, from 1881 to 1925, is on what became Commonwealth land at the School of Artillery, with 241 burials registered. All told, between 1828 and 1984 at least 580 vessels were quarantined there. More than 13,000 people passed through, and an estimated 572 of them died and were buried on the headland.
People in quarantine also left their mark in the rock. Along the escarpment by the wharf, and at the rock formation called Old Man's Hat, there are hundreds of carved inscriptions dating from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s. Some were cut by trained stonemasons and are beautifully done.
One of the many inscriptions people in quarantine carved into the sandstone near the wharf at North Head. Photo by Sardaka, 2007, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Commonwealth took over quarantine after 1909. Better medicine and vaccination slowly made the place unnecessary. Sydney took in nearly 700,000 assisted immigrants between 1946 and 1980, yet only four ships were quarantined in that time. The station finally closed on 29 February 1984. North Head is now part of Sydney Harbour National Park, and the whole 277-hectare headland was added to the National Heritage List on 12 May 2006. The old station is now Q Station, with a hotel, conference centre and restaurant, so you can stay the night where the immigrants once waited. Percy Nolan, a Manly alderman and mayor, had pushed for years to have the station moved out and the land opened to the public, and he was proved right in the end.
Henry Gilbert Smith and the "Brighton of the South Pacific"
The man who turned Manly from a few farms into a resort was Henry Gilbert Smith. He was born in Northamptonshire in 1802 and reached Hobart in August 1827, then came on to Sydney. There he set up the importing firm of Smith Bros in Macquarie Place with his brother Thomas and became a director of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. He sat in the Legislative Council from 1856 to 1858. The council's history says that when he arrived at Manly in 1853, only a handful of people lived there, scratching a living from fishing and farming. Ashton puts the population in the mid-1850s at about 70.
Henry Gilbert Smith (1802–1886), the merchant who set out to turn Manly into a seaside resort in the 1850s. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In June 1855 Smith wrote to his brother in England about how much he loved it:
"the amusement I derive in making my improvements in Manly is, no doubt, the cause of my greater enjoyment, in fact I never feel a dull day while there. I should long ere this have been with you if it had not been for this hobby of mine, in thinking I am doing good in forming a village or watering place for the inhabitant of Sydney"
– Henry Gilbert Smith, June 1855, as quoted by Manly Council
Smith wanted to sell land, and to sell land he needed people to come and look at it. In 1853 he chartered the wooden paddle steamer Brothers to bring visitors across. He built a wharf on the harbour side, which Wikipedia's Manly article and the historian Lumby date to October 1855, while the wharf's heritage history gives 1856. Across the sandy neck to the ocean he laid out a promenade named after the Via del Corso in Rome. He built cottages, hotels, a church, a school, pleasure grounds he called Vauxhall Gardens, baths, a camera obscura and a maze. In 1856 he put up a stone kangaroo on the cliff looking out to sea. He also had a lot to do with planting the first Norfolk Island pines along the ocean front. They are still the trees everyone pictures when they think of Manly.
His own home was Fairlight House, designed by Edmund Blacket and built by Alexander Dean from local sandstone. The Northern Beaches Council library says it was finished in May 1860, with eight bedrooms, a bowling green and a tennis court. Smith named it after the village in Sussex where his first wife, Eleanor Whistler, had once lived. His second wife, Anne Margaret, died of tuberculosis there in 1866, and Smith went back to England and never returned. He died at Brighton in England on 1 April 1886. The house was demolished in 1939, but the suburb of Fairlight still carries its name.
Fairlight House, Smith's sandstone home above the harbour, photographed around 1930. It was demolished in 1939. Unknown photographer, c.1930, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ashton says Smith was the first of many to sell Manly as "the Brighton of the South Pacific". When locals met on 5 January 1876 to petition for a municipality, the name they first asked for was "Brighton", and it was soon changed to "Manly". The Municipal District of Manly was incorporated on 6 January 1877. Its first meeting was on 15 February 1877, when Thomas Rowe was elected the first mayor. Manly stayed the only council on the Northern Beaches until Warringah Shire was proclaimed in 1906, and in 2016 it was merged into the new Northern Beaches Council.
The Manly Ferries
You can't tell the Manly story without the ferries. After the Brothers, the paddle steamer Emu was running two trips a weekday by 1855, followed by the Black Swan and Pelican. In 1859 the Phantom arrived as the first double-ended ferry, and that design has been standard on the Manly run ever since. The Port Jackson Steamboat Company was formed in 1876 and became the Port Jackson & Manly Steamship Company in 1881. In 1883 it brought out the Brighton, the biggest paddle steamer ever to work the harbour.
The big paddle steamer Brighton at Manly Wharf around 1885, with St Patrick's College going up on the hill behind. Henry King, c.1885, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Fares caused a fight in the 1890s. The single fare was a shilling, and when the company announced a rise in 1892 some Manly residents started a rival co-operative charging sixpence. The two then undercut each other down to threepence until neither could make money, and in 1896 they merged. Naval architect Walter Reeks then designed the Manly (II) of 1896 and the steel Kuring-gai of 1901, and those set the pattern for every Manly ferry after them. Then came the Binngarra, Burra Bra, Bellubera, Balgowlah, Barrenjoey and Baragoola, followed by the Scottish-built Curl Curl and Dee Why in 1928 and the South Steyne in 1938.
The ferries even gave Australia its first film. In 1896 Marius Sestier filmed Passengers Alighting from Ferry Brighton at Manly, and it was shown at the Salon Lumière in Pitt Street from 27 October 1896. Sadly no copy is known to survive.
The company was sold to Brambles in 1972, and the State Government took over the service in December 1974. Hydrofoils ran from the mid-1960s, and JetCats replaced them around 1990–91 until they were withdrawn at the end of 2008. The Freshwater-class ferries came in during the 1980s. The trip to Circular Quay is seven nautical miles, and the ferry is now route F1.
"Seven miles from Sydney, a thousand miles from care"
The old slogan is still the best line ever written about Manly. Both the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia credit it to the steamship company that ran the ferries, though they give the company's name in different word orders. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was used "since the 1920s". I couldn't find an earlier date in any source I checked, so I'm leaving it at that. It was clearly famous enough that Pauline Curby used it as the title of her 2001 history of Manly.
The harbour side of Manly some time between 1885 and 1895. Kerry & Co., State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Corso, the Pines and the Seaside Town
The track between the cove and the ocean beach was old long before Smith. Aboriginal people had worn it over thousands of years. Smith's boardwalk went in in 1855, with a hotel at each end. The Pier Hotel faced the wharf, and the Steyne Hotel was designed by Blacket in 1858–59. By 1861 there were three hotels and a temperance hotel. St Matthew's Church went up halfway along the Corso in 1865, partly paid for by Smith. In the 1880s most families in business lived above their shops on the Corso, and there was an aquarium and "Sovereign" Smith's Gallery of Amusements.
The town grew fast once the steamers got going. Ashton gives the population as 500 in 1871, 1,327 in 1881, 3,236 in 1891 and 5,035 in 1901. For most of the 1800s, though, Manly was still mainly a place for the well-off and the people who worked for them. Residents included the politician W.B. Dalley, the timber merchant W.H. Rolfe and the shipowner William Spier. Bits of Dalley's "Castle" can still be seen in the sandstone walls on Sydney Road opposite Ivanhoe Park.
Arthur Streeton's Manly Beach, painted in 1895. Arthur Streeton, 1895, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There's another Manly story linked to my Sudan page. In March 1885, as the New South Wales Contingent was about to sail, Premier William Bede Dalley received a cheque for £25 for the Patriotic Fund, "with my best wishes from a little boy at Manly". The "Little Boy from Manly" became a symbol of patriotism to some. To the war's opponents, helped along by Livingston Hopkins' cartoons in The Bulletin, he stood for mindless chauvinism.
Trams on the Corso around 1905. Star Photo Co., State Library of NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
In the 1920s a wave of flats and red-brick bungalows washed over the old Victorian village. Ashton counts about 400 flats built in Manly in that decade, the sixth highest of any Sydney municipality, and about the same number again in the 1930s. Ashton says the Spit Bridge opened in 1924, replacing the old punt (Wikipedia's ferry history says 1928), and government buses started in 1932. The Rialto Theatre opened on the Corso on 23 July 1923. St Matthew's was pulled down in 1929 to widen the Corso, and the new St Matthew's opened on 20 September 1930. The new Manly Town Hall followed in 1937.
St Patrick's College on the Hill
On the hill towards North Head, above the town, stands one of Sydney's great Gothic buildings. The land came from a grant to the Catholic Church, partly carved out of the Quarantine Grounds. The deed wasn't issued until 1879, and the grant came with the condition that it be used for education. Archbishop Roger Vaughan and Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran were behind it. The architects were Joseph Sheerin and John Hennessy, and building started in 1885. The seminary opened on 23 January 1889. By its centenary in 1989, 1,714 men had been ordained after training there, including four cardinals and 41 bishops. The poet "John O'Brien", Father Patrick Hartigan, studied there, and so did Thomas Keneally, who later set two novels in a version of it.
St Patrick's College on the hill above Manly, from a Broadhurst postcard of the early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The seminary moved to Strathfield and closed at Manly in November 1995. Since 1996 the buildings have housed the International College of Management, Sydney. Movie fans might know it as Jay Gatsby's mansion in Baz Luhrmann's 2013 film, with the palm trees digitally removed to make it look like Long Island. It went on the State Heritage Register on 21 January 2011.
Daylight Bathing, William Gocher and the Surf Clubs
Up until the early 1900s you couldn't legally swim in the sea at Manly in the middle of the day. Local regulations banned sea bathing in daylight hours, mainly over decency, because there were no change sheds and proper costumes were rare. The man usually given credit for ending the ban is William Henry Gocher. He was an English-born painter and a former writer for John Norton's Truth, and he moved to Manly in 1900 and started a small paper, the Manly and North Sydney News.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography tells the story like this. In October 1902, after announcing it in his paper, Gocher swam at midday in a neck-to-knee costume. The authorities ignored him twice, so he complained about their lack of zeal. The third time he was escorted from the water and interviewed by police, who didn't charge him. In November 1903 Manly Council resolved to allow all-day bathing as long as a neck-to-knee costume was worn. Gocher claimed the win, and in 1907 friends gave him a gold watch and a purse of fifty sovereigns. A 2024 newspaper piece puts the swim on 2 October 1902. The ADB only says October 1902, so I've stuck with that.
Now for the other side, and it's a good one. In 2015 Manly's own historian, Pauline Curby, wrote that Gocher's role is "little more than an urban myth". She found no contemporary record of the stunt at all. The story first appeared in the Daily Telegraph in January 1907, five or six years later, and in an article Gocher wrote himself in 1910. According to Curby, daylight bathing really became legal after an incident at Bondi on 13 November 1902. Two police turned up taking names, and the Inspector-General of Police, Edmund Fosbery, then said publicly that nobody decently dressed would be stopped. Randwick was the first council to allow daylight bathing, in December 1902. Curby says Manly followed in November 1903 for three reasons. One was decency, another was surf safety with a council surf boat, and the third was the renewal of the lease on the harbour baths, which ran out on 1 October 1903. My page gives you both versions. You can make up your own mind.
Surf bathing at Manly around 1905, only a couple of years after the council allowed all-day bathing. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
Once everyone could swim, people started drowning. Wikipedia says 17 people drowned at Manly in the first official bathing season of 1903. Somebody had to watch the water, but the sources don't agree on when Manly's surf club started. Manly Council's history says a surf club formed "a year later", which would be about 1904. Curby says the Manly Surf Club was formed in August 1907. The Manly Life Saving Club's own Wikipedia page says it was founded in 1911, with Mayor James Bonner as first president. Manly, Bondi and Bronte all claim to be the first, and I'm not going to settle that one here. The Dictionary of Sydney adds that freer bathing laws in 1903 and surfboard riding from 1915 helped make Manly a beach town after the Great War.
Duke Kahanamoku at Freshwater, 1914
Just north of Manly Beach, past Queenscliff, is Freshwater. Wikipedia says the Hawaiian Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku gave his famous surfboard demonstration there on 24 December 1914, and it's widely seen as a turning point for surfing in Australia. He shaped the board himself from a piece of pine bought at a local hardware store, and the Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club still has it. A statue of him by Barry Donohoo has stood on the headland at Freshwater since 1994. Strictly speaking, Freshwater is its own beach and suburb rather than Manly itself. Since 2012, though, the four kilometres from Freshwater to Shelly Beach have been the Manly–Freshwater World Surfing Reserve, so the two are tied together. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1915 for the start of board riding, while Wikipedia dates Duke's ride to Christmas Eve 1914.
The board Duke Kahanamoku shaped and rode at Freshwater in 1914, kept today by the Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club. Photo by Manon1998, 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Manly Wharf and the Fun Pier
The wharf you step off today is mostly a 1940s building. After years of local pressure, the Maritime Services Board decided in 1938 to build an "imposing" new wharf, and a fire there in 1939 hurried things along. The young modernist architect Arthur Baldwinson designed it, with curved and square shapes, a bay front facing the water and a clock tower with fins. The entrance was first meant as a tram terminus and turning area. It was finished in 1941.
Before the Spit Bridge opened, old passenger ferries carried cargo to Manly. When the cargo service closed, the east wharf was turned into an amusement park, the Manly Fun Pier. It shut in 1989, and both wharf buildings were redone in 1990. The wharf went on the State Heritage Register on 18 April 2000.
The Manly Art Gallery and the Manly Daily
Manly has had its own gallery longer than almost anywhere. A committee was formed in 1924, including the painter Antonio Dattilo Rubbo and Percy Nolan, and at first the pictures hung in the Town Hall. In 1930 the collection moved into the old outdoor concert pavilion on West Esplanade, opened in 1922. Its stage arch was closed in, and the Chief Justice of New South Wales opened it. It's described as the oldest metropolitan purpose-built regional gallery in New South Wales. Since 1982 it has also been a museum of beach culture and local history, and its collection now runs to more than 6,000 items, including 130 works by Rubbo.
Inside the Manly Art Gallery and Museum on West Esplanade, opened in 1930 in the old concert pavilion. Photo by Dicklyon, 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The local paper started small too. Edward Lincoln put out the first two-page Manly Daily on 28 July 1906. It missed only one issue in its history, on 24 February 1966, when humidity got into the switchboard and knocked out the power, so a double edition came out the next day. It stopped printing in April 2020 and has been online only since May 2020.
Decline and Comeback
After the Second World War Manly lost some of its shine. Ashton writes that old, worn facilities and a changing tourist market meant far fewer people stayed overnight, and things were bad by the early 1960s. Cars and backyard pools didn't help. Warringah Mall opened at Brookvale in 1963 and drained the shops on the Corso, and big names like Woolworths, Campbell's and H.G. Palmer's closed one after another. In 1973 residents on Eastern Hill asked the Builders Labourers Federation to put a green ban on two big tower blocks planned by L.J. Hooker, and the union agreed. From the mid-1970s a burst of local activity, including a successful fight to save the ferry services, turned Manly around.
Manly Today
Manly now sits about 17 kilometres north-east of the city and is one of the centres of Northern Beaches Council. At the 2021 census it had 16,296 residents. The Corso was partly turned back into a pedestrian street in the 1970s and had an $8 million facelift from 2007. The ferries still pour day-trippers onto the wharf, and the Norfolk pines still line the beach. The Manly International Jazz Festival takes over the October long weekend, and the beach from Queenscliff to Shelly Beach is protected as a World Surfing Reserve. Across the water on North Head, you can now stay the night at Q Station, where the immigrants once waited out their fevers. Down at the cove, the plaque for Willemering's spear reminds anyone who stops to read it that the whole story started on that beach.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Kai'ymay is home to saltwater people (named variously as Kai'ymaygal/Gayamaygal, Cameragal, Cannalgal and Kayimai, or Guringai).
- 21–23 January 1788 – Phillip explores Port Jackson, and about twenty men wade out to his boats in the north arm.
- 29 January 1788 – First meeting with Aboriginal women at the cove, briefly called "Eve's Cove".
- 15 May 1788 – Phillip's despatch to Lord Sydney explains the name "Manly Cove".
- Late December 1788 – Arabanoo kidnapped at Manly Cove. He dies of smallpox on 18 May 1789.
- November 1789 – Phillip's voyage published, and the name "Manly Cove" catches on.
- 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colebee seized at Manly Cove. Colebee escapes on 12 December.
- 7 September 1790 – Phillip speared by Willemering at the whale feast.
- 1 January 1810 – First Manly land grants to Richard Cheers and Gilbert Baker.
- 1828 – Bussorah Merchant quarantined at Spring Cove.
- 14 August 1832 – Quarantine Act sets aside North Head.
- 1837 – Lady Macnaghten detention. The sick start being landed, and the first cemetery is in use.
- 1853 – Henry Gilbert Smith buys land and charters the Brothers. The Beejapore is quarantined.
- 1855–56 – Smith's wharf and the Corso boardwalk.
- 1856 – The stone kangaroo is put up.
- 1859 – Phantom, the first double-ended Manly ferry.
- May 1860 – Fairlight House finished.
- 6 January 1877 – Municipal District of Manly incorporated.
- 1881–1894 – Smallpox hospital ship Faraway off North Head.
- 1883 – Paddle steamer Brighton enters service.
- March 1885 – The "Little Boy from Manly" letter.
- 23 January 1889 – St Patrick's College opens.
- 27 October 1896 – Sestier's ferry film shown, the first film made in Australia.
- October 1902 – Gocher's midday swim, as told by the ADB.
- November 1903 – Manly Council allows all-day bathing in neck-to-knee costumes.
- 28 July 1906 – First Manly Daily.
- 1907 / 1911 – Manly surf club founding dates (sources differ).
- 24 December 1914 – Duke Kahanamoku surfs at Freshwater.
- 11 February 1919 – 900 soldiers march out of North Head quarantine.
- 1924 – Spit Bridge opens.
- 1928 – Phillip monument erected at Manly Cove.
- 1930 – Manly Art Gallery opens on West Esplanade.
- 1941 – New Manly Wharf completed.
- 1974 – Government takes over the Manly ferries.
- 29 February 1984 – Quarantine Station closes.
- 1989 – Manly Fun Pier closes.
- November 1995 – Seminary leaves Manly.
- 12 May 2006 – North Head added to the National Heritage List.
- 10 March 2012 – Manly–Freshwater World Surfing Reserve declared.
- 12 May 2016 – Manly Council merged into Northern Beaches Council.
Where the Sources Disagree
- The people's name. Karskens (Dictionary of Sydney, 2015) says the clan name isn't known for certain. It may have been Kai'ymaygal or Gayamaygal, or the people may have been Cameragal. Ashton (Dictionary of Sydney, 2008) and the old Manly Council name the Cannalgal and Kayimai. The council also used Guringai, and Wikipedia uses "Kay-ye-my clan" of the "Gayemaygal".
- When the name was given. Manly Council says between 21 and 23 January 1788. A Fellowship of First Fleeters study argues the name wasn't given in the first three days but was settled by 15 May 1788. Karskens says it only came into common use after November 1789.
- William Gocher. The ADB credits Gocher's October 1902 swim with leading to all-day bathing at Manly. Pauline Curby (Honest History, 2015) says there's no contemporary record of the swim and calls the story "little more than an urban myth". She puts the real change down to the Bondi incident of November 1902, Randwick's by-law and Manly's baths lease. A 2024 newspaper piece gives the date as 2 October 1902, which the ADB doesn't.
- The first Manly surf club. Manly Council says "a year later" (about 1904), Curby says August 1907, and Wikipedia's Manly Life Saving Club page says 1911.
- The first wharf. Wikipedia's Manly article says it was finished in October 1855, and Lumby (2016) also says 1855. The heritage-based wharf history says 1856.
- The slogan. The Dictionary of Sydney says "Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care" was used "since the 1920s" and calls the company the "Manly and Port Jackson Steamship Company". Wikipedia credits the "Port Jackson & Manly Steamship Company" and gives no date.
- Board riding. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1915 for the introduction of surfboard riding, while Wikipedia dates Duke Kahanamoku's Freshwater demonstration to 24 December 1914.
- The Spit Bridge. Ashton (Dictionary of Sydney) says the Spit Bridge was built in 1924, and the Dictionary of Sydney's Spit entry agrees. Wikipedia's ferry and wharf pages refer to "the first Spit Bridge in 1928".
- Smith's death. The ADB and Wikipedia's text say 1 April 1886. Wikipedia's infobox gives 4 January 1886, so I've gone with the ADB.
My Earlier Posts
Sources
- Grace Karskens, "Manly Cove, Kai'ymay", Dictionary of Sydney, 2015 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/manly_cove_kaiymay
- Paul Ashton, "Manly", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/manly
- "Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care", Dictionary of Sydney (artefact) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/artefact/seven_miles_from_sydney_and_a_thousand_miles_from_care
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Smith, Henry Gilbert" (person) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/smith_henry_gilbert
- Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1 pt 2, p. 129, quoted in "Manly, Warringah and Pittwater: First Fleet Records of Events, 1788–1790", Fellowship of First Fleeters – https://fellowshipfirstfleeters.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/phillips-first-three-days-champion.pdf
- The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (London: Stockdale, 1789), p. 58 – https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Voyage_of_Governor_Phillip_to_Botany.html?id=0iAQAAAAYAAJ
- Manly Council, "Manly Heritage & History" (archived council site) – https://www.manlycouncil.info/council/about-manly/manly-heritage--history/index.html
- Bruce Mitchell, "Gocher, William Henry (1856–1921)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gocher-william-henry-6408
- "Smith, Henry Gilbert (1802–1886)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-henry-gilbert-2671
- State Library of NSW, NSW Parliamentary Papers, "Smith, Henry Gilbert, 1802–1886" – https://parlpapers.sl.nsw.gov.au/parliamentarians/smith-henry-gilbert-17400/
- Pauline Curby, "An urban myth or surfing history?", Honest History, 17 June 2015 – https://honesthistory.net.au/wp/urban-myth-or-surfing-history/
- "When daylight swimming was illegal at Manly beach", Brisbane Times / Fairfax, May 2024 – https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/when-daylight-swimming-was-illegal-at-manly-beach-20240503-p5fomp.html
- Northern Beaches Council Library, "How Fairlight got its name", 28 June 2021 – https://www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/library/your-library/news/how-fairlight-got-its-name
- Wikipedia, "Manly, New South Wales" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly,_New_South_Wales
- Wikipedia, "North Head Quarantine Station" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station
- Wikipedia, "Manly Wharf" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Wharf
- Wikipedia, "Manly ferry services" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_ferry
- Wikipedia, "The Corso, Manly" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corso,_Manly
- Wikipedia, "St Patrick's Seminary, Manly" (drawn from the NSW State Heritage Register listing and the Tanner & Associates Conservation Management Plan) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Patrick%27s_Seminary,_Manly
- Wikipedia, "Manly Council" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Council
- Wikipedia, "Henry Gilbert Smith" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gilbert_Smith
- Wikipedia, "William Gocher" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gocher
- Wikipedia, "Bennelong" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennelong
- Wikipedia, "Colebee" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebee
- Wikipedia, "Arabanoo" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabanoo
- Wikipedia, "Duke Kahanamoku" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kahanamoku
- Wikipedia, "Manly Life Saving Club" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Life_Saving_Club
- Wikipedia, "Manly Art Gallery and Museum" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Art_Gallery_and_Museum
- Wikipedia, "Manly Daily" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Daily
- Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with each picture's credit and licence given in its caption.
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