If you walk the Royal Botanic Garden toward Farm Cove, the castellated sandstone pile above the water is Government House, Sydney — still the official Sydney residence and office of the Governor of New South Wales. It sits in the historic Governor’s Domain: the “People’s Domain” of the blog title is that public parkland inheritance, not a claim that the house itself is a free-for-all picnic hall.
It replaced the first Government House at Bridge and Phillip Streets (Museum of Sydney site), worn out by the 1830s after serving as the colony’s political and social centre since 1788–89. British royal architect Edward Blore designed the new house in a castellated Gothic / Tudor-Gothic style. Construction began in 1837 under Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis and Colonel George Barney of the Royal Engineers, using colonial sandstone, cedar and marble. A Queen’s Birthday ball was held in the unfinished house in 1843; Governor Sir George Gipps and Lady Gipps took up residence in 1845. Later works include a porte-cochère / front portico associated with James Barnet (1870s) and further alterations under Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon around 1900–01.
The gardens and harbour setting tie the house to the Conservatorium (the former Macquarie-era Governor’s Stables) and the wider Domain / Botanic Gardens landscape. Do not confuse it with Old Government House at Parramatta — different building, different post, different century of everyday vice-regal life.
More of the Story – The Government Domain from 1788 to Today
I've always thought of the Domain as Sydney's backyard. It's the big stretch of grass and fig trees between Macquarie Street and Woolloomooloo, the place where city workers kick a footy at lunchtime and where thousands of us have sat on a blanket for Carols or Symphony under the Stars. But there's a lot more to it than that. This patch of ground has been a governor's private paddock, a cricket ground, a soapbox for every cause under the sun, a refuge for the homeless in hard times, and a battleground for anyone trying to carve a bit off it. Here's the story as best I can piece it together from the records.
Before the Fleet – Gadigal Country
Long before anyone drew a boundary here, this was Gadigal land. The point where Mrs Macquarie's Chair sits was known to the Gadigal as Yurong Point, and the precinct out there is still called the Yurong Precinct today. Farm Cove itself is recorded with the name Woccanmagully. I wrote about the little creek that ran down into the cove in my post on Wuganmagulyav Creek – Farm Cove.
Phillip's Farm and the Governor's Demesne (1788–1809)
By July 1788, only six months after the First Fleet came into Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip had a farm of nine acres of corn going beside the stream that still runs through the palm grove into Farm Cove. That's where the cove got its name. The first plants and seeds Phillip had picked up at Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope went into that ground, and by September 1788 about 20 acres had been cleared for crops.
Phillip set the land aside for the Crown, east of the Tank Stream and running across to the head of Woolloomooloo Bay, and kept part of it for the Governor's own use. The Dictionary of Sydney calls it a 'Governor's demesne'. The soil wasn't much good though, and by 1789 most of the farming had moved out to Rose Hill at Parramatta where the crops did far better. For the next twenty years or so the Farm Cove land was leased out for private farming, and between 1800 and 1807 grants were made to farmers on the eastern side of the cove.
A ditch was dug in 1792 to mark the boundary, but people kept creeping in on it. In 1807 Governor Bligh decided it should be the Governor's Domain again. He took back 19 acres, cancelled the private grants on the east side of Farm Cove, pulled down buildings near where Government House now stands and put in carriage roads around Bennelong Point and the cove. According to Wikipedia, his attempt to reclaim the Domain was one of the many grievances behind the Rum Rebellion of 26 January 1808, though that line is flagged there as needing a citation. My post on the Rum Rebellion tells that side of things.
Macquarie Builds His Walls (1810–1821)
When Lachlan Macquarie arrived in 1810 he got stuck into it straight away. He built stone walls around the Government House garden and the Government Domain, which cut it off from Hyde Park. He also put a protecting wall along the harbour side and laid out a road that wound right around the Domain, well back from the shore, with a bridge over the Farm Cove creek and out to the point. Swamp mahogany trees were planted along that road, and Wikipedia reckons they may have been the earliest street trees planted in the colony. A black booyong planted between 1813 and 1816, west of the palm grove, is still there.
The road was named for Elizabeth Macquarie, and the inscription carved in the rock above her famous seat says it all:
Be it thus Recorded that the Road
Round the inside of the Government Domain Called
Mrs. Macquarie's road
So named by the Governor on account of her having Originally
Planned it Measuring 3 Miles, and 377 Yards
Was finally Completed on the 13th Day ofJune [sic] 1816
That date, 13 June 1816, is taken as the traditional founding day of the Botanic Garden. By 1817 the whole Domain was enclosed, with the roads finished and gates to control the horse traffic. In 1821 Francis Greenway's grand stables for Government House were finished in the north of the Domain near Macquarie and Bridge Streets. Those stables are now the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
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Everyone knows the story of the chair. It's a seat cut out of a sandstone ledge at Anson's Point, where the Governor's wife could sit, take the sun and watch the ships on the harbour. Folklore has it she watched for ships coming from Britain. Even today it's one of the best spots in Sydney to get the Opera House and the Bridge in the one photo.
Inner Domain and Outer Domain
Over time the land split in two. The Inner Domain, closest to Government House, was gradually swallowed up by the Government Gardens, which became the Botanic Gardens. The rest became the Outer Domain, which is the part we just call 'the Domain' today. The Dictionary of Sydney puts it plainly: the Gardens grew at the expense of the Domain. Once it covered everything from Woolloomooloo Bay to Circular Quay and south to Hyde Park.
In 1831 Governor Darling formally invited the public in, and public use became accepted policy. The State Heritage Register listing calls this an early designated landscape for public use, dating from 1831. During the 1830s the trees were cleared and people came to stroll and picnic. Then from 1860 the Domain was opened to walkers at night, so folks could enjoy it on summer evenings, and it became known as 'the Park where the Gates Never Close'. Carriages were still kept out after dark for many years. Around 1865 the Domain gate lodge went up at the corner of Hospital Road and Prince Albert Road, with Victoria Lodge near Mrs Macquarie's Point.
Meanwhile the land west of Macquarie Street was sold to pay for the new Government House and Circular Quay. Built between 1837 and 1845, that's the house up the top of this post. Through the 1800s the south-western part of the Domain was nibbled away for public buildings: Hyde Park Barracks, the Mint, Sydney Hospital, Parliament House, the State Library and the Land Registry Office.
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Cricket in the Outer Domain
Cricket had been played in Hyde Park since the early 1800s, and in the 1850s it moved to the Domain. New South Wales had beaten Victoria by three wickets in the first intercolonial match in Melbourne in 1856. The return match was played in the Domain from 14 to 16 January 1857, and New South Wales won again, this time by 65 runs. That's the match in Joseph Fowles' picture above.
It wasn't much of a ground, mind you. Wikipedia describes it as a rough, uneven, open paddock, still used to graze cattle, so the cow pats had to be cleared before play. It couldn't be fenced either, so nobody could be charged to get in. The New South Wales Cricket Association was formed at a public meeting in the Domain on 13 December 1859. Six first-class matches were played there between the 1856–57 and 1868–69 seasons before the game moved on, first to the Albert Ground at Redfern.
The Garden Palace (1879–1882)
The biggest grab of Domain land in the 1800s was the Garden Palace, built for the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879. James Barnet designed it and John Young built it, for £191,800, in only eight months. Electric lights brought out from England meant the men could work around the clock. It was laid out like a huge cathedral, with a long nave and transept meeting under a dome 100 feet across and 210 feet high. It took 4.5 million feet of timber and 2.5 million bricks, and Sydney's first hydraulic lift ran up the north tower. At the time it stood in the Domain, outside the Gardens.
After the exhibition, government departments used the building. That turned out to be a disaster when the whole timber building went up in flames in the early hours of 22 September 1882. Records went with it, notably the records of squatting in New South Wales, and Wikipedia says between 500 and 1,000 Aboriginal artefacts from Sydney were lost as well, though that figure is flagged there as needing a citation. All that's left today are the sandstone gateposts and iron gates on Macquarie Street. A sunken garden with a statue of Cupid, laid out in the 1940s, marks where the dome stood. I've done a whole series on it, starting with Sydney Garden Palace In Pictures.
The Garden Palace site was later taken into the Botanic Garden. In 1883 five acres of the Outer Domain were added to the Lower Garden, which completed the ring of waterfront along Farm Cove. Around the same time the Tarpeian Rock was cut for the extension of Macquarie Street. It's the sandstone cliff above the Opera House forecourt, named after the rock in Rome where prisoners were thrown to their deaths.
Art Gallery and Library at the Edges
Early governors thought important cultural buildings could go up in the Domain, and they did. The Dictionary of Sydney lists the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the State Library, Government House, the Opera House and the Conservatorium as all carved out of the Domain to add to the 'cultural enclave'. The Art Gallery sits on the eastern side, with its big neo-classical front on Art Gallery Road and a new building down the eastern slope finished in 2022. I've covered it in my Art Gallery of New South Wales – Government Domain post. The State Library and the other Macquarie Street buildings back straight onto the Phillip Precinct.
The People's Park
From the 1850s big crowds came to the Domain for balloon ascents, parades and military reviews, family picnics, weddings and official ceremonies. In 1832 one Daniel Delaney was had up for 'making love to a Shelah' there at the 'unseasonable hour of 11 pm', according to Hill's Life in New South Wales of 17 August 1832, as quoted by the Dictionary of Sydney. Sir John Robertson, five times Premier, is supposed to have told a deputation complaining about goings-on in the Domain at night that 'clean grass is better than dirty sheets'.
In hard times the Domain was also a refuge. In the 1890s hundreds of homeless men slept in the niches and crevices of the rocks, drawing out their 'bed-clothes, consisting of old newspapers and wrappers', as Harry Furniss wrote in his 1899 Australian Sketches. In the 1920s the Salvation Army handed out more than 17,000 meals to homeless men there in just ten weeks. In the 1930s Depression, villages of hessian and frame 'tents' went up, and the unemployed sat around camp fires at night waiting for the billy to boil. Christina Stead wrote about it in her novel For Love Alone.
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Speakers' Corner – Sydney's Soapbox
On a Sunday afternoon the Domain was the place to go to hear someone get up on a box and have a go. Like London's Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, anyone could turn up and talk on anything, and the hecklers would give it back to them. The Dictionary of Sydney traces 'Soapbox Sunday' back to at least 1878, when a Baptist pastor named Allen is reported to have gone there to speak on Irish Home Rule after a riot in Hyde Park. Wikipedia says the corner was 'officially established in 1878'. It sits in the north-east of the Phillip Precinct near the Art Gallery. These days there's a steel platform with the names of notable speakers engraved on it, and its role is written into legislation, although not many people get up there any more.
The Domain has seen some huge political crowds. There were anti-conscription rallies there in 1916, during the First World War. Over the years the regulars included William Chidley, who was arrested for using the word 'coition' in public, along with Bea Miles, Ada Green with her hell-fire and brimstone, and the radical John Webster. In the 1920s and 30s communists and the New Guard had pitched battles there. Over the decades it hosted Palm Sunday rallies, May Day demonstrations and anti-war protests. Dissent probably peaked in the 1960s with the Vietnam moratorium marches, followed by Palm Sunday peace marches in the 1980s.
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One of the best remembered was the Czech journalist Egon Kisch, who warned a Domain crowd about the dangers of Hitler's Nazi regime. Wikipedia gives the date as 17 February 1935 and the crowd as 18,000. His visit was organised by the Movement Against War and Fascism and bitterly opposed by the Lyons Government. Then on 24 November 1975, during the campaign after the Dismissal, Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party held their policy launch in the Domain. Wikipedia says 30,000 turned up, spilling out past the edges of the park.
Losing Ground – Fuel Tanks, Car Parks and the Cahill Expressway
The 1900s brought more bites out of the Domain. Between 1908 and 1916 Greenway's stables were turned into the Conservatorium. In the 1920s the cut-and-cover tunnelling for the City Circle railway went through the western Domain. In 1942 Domain land was taken for naval fuel tanks. Between 1956 and 1959 the Sydney City Council took Outer Domain land for the Domain Parking Station, losing 47 fairly rare trees. Its moving walkway up to the top of Hyde Park, built in 1961, is 207 metres long.
The big one was the Cahill Expressway. Resumptions and construction started in 1958 and ran into the 1960s. It cut right through the Domain and Gardens, partly destroyed Fig Tree Avenue (planted in 1847 as the first entrance) and took 24 palms and a dozen other trees. Wikipedia says the Domain and the Botanic Gardens were split apart for the first time since 1792. Then in the 1970s the Eastern Suburbs railway tunnel went in under the southern Domain, and in 1992 the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was built under the north-western part.
After that there was a bit of a backlash. When planners wanted Domain land for a Harbour Tunnel access ramp, the public outcry led to 'new land' being built over the top of the ramp to make up for it. A land bridge over the Cahill Expressway and Eastern Distributor was finished in 2005, linking the Art Gallery and Mrs Macquarie's Road back to the rest of the Domain.
Concerts on the Grass
For a lot of Sydneysiders the Domain means summer nights on a picnic rug. Every November a covered stage goes up in the Phillip Precinct for the festival season. Carols in the Domain was started in 1983 by Robyn Anne Hobbs, a former Qantas employee, with the Salvation Army as its charity, and 15,000 people turned up to the first one. The Sydney Festival brings Symphony in the Domain with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Jazz in the Domain and Opera in the Domain with Opera Australia. Tropfest, the short film festival, ran there every February from 1999 until 2013, when it outgrew the place and moved to Centennial Park.
The Domain Today
The Domain covers 34 hectares now and is looked after by the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. Together with the Gardens it went on the NSW State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The listing calls them one of the earliest surviving colonial botanic gardens in the world and one of the oldest early public cultural landscapes in Australia. It's split into precincts: Phillip (the big lawn), Crescent (the Art Gallery side), Yurong (out to Mrs Macquarie's Point) and Tarpeian (the strip above the Opera House). On any weekday lunchtime you'll see joggers on the roads and office teams playing touch on the grass, the same paddock where cows once wandered across the cricket pitch.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Gadigal Country; Yurong Point and Woccanmagully (Farm Cove)
- July 1788 – Phillip's nine-acre corn farm at Farm Cove
- 1789 – Farming moves to Rose Hill; Farm Cove leased out
- 1792 – Ditch dug to mark the Domain boundary
- 1807 – Bligh resumes 19 acres as the Governor's Domain
- 1810 – Macquarie arrives and starts walling the Domain
- 13 June 1816 – Mrs Macquarie's Road completed; traditional founding of the Botanic Garden
- 1817 – Domain fully enclosed
- 1821 – Greenway's Government House stables finished
- 1831 – Governor Darling formally opens the Domain to the public
- 1837–1845 – New Government House built
- 14–16 January 1857 – NSW v Victoria cricket match in the Domain
- 13 December 1859 – NSW Cricket Association formed at a meeting in the Domain
- 1860 – Domain opened at night to walkers
- c. 1865 – Domain gate lodge and Victoria Lodge built
- 1878 – Speakers' Corner established, per Wikipedia; pastor Allen speaks on Irish Home Rule
- 1879 – Garden Palace built for the International Exhibition
- 22 September 1882 – Garden Palace destroyed by fire
- 1883 – Five acres of Outer Domain added to the Lower Garden
- 1908–1916 – Stables converted to the Conservatorium
- 1916 – Anti-conscription rallies
- 1920s – City Circle tunnelling under the western Domain
- 1935 – Egon Kisch addresses a Domain crowd
- 1942 – Domain land taken for naval fuel tanks
- 1956–1959 – Domain Parking Station built
- 1958–1960s – Cahill Expressway cuts through the Domain
- 24 November 1975 – Labor policy launch in the Domain
- 1983 – First Carols in the Domain
- 1992 – Sydney Harbour Tunnel built under the north-west Domain
- 2 April 1999 – Domain and Gardens listed on the State Heritage Register
- 2005 – Land bridge over the Cahill Expressway completed
- 2022 – Art Gallery's new building completed
Where the Sources Disagree
- When the chair was carved. Wikipedia's Mrs Macquarie's Chair article says convicts hand-carved it in 1810. The Wikipedia article on the Domain says it was created in 1816, which is the year the road was finished.
- When the road was built. The inscription says Mrs Macquarie's Road was 'finally Completed' on 13 June 1816. Wikipedia's Chair article says it was built between 1813 and 1818.
- When Speakers' Corner began. Wikipedia says it was 'officially established in 1878'. The Dictionary of Sydney is more careful, saying 'Soapbox Sunday' 'may well go back' to the late 1800s and pointing to pastor Allen's Home Rule speech in 1878.
- The Cahill Expressway. The Domain article on Wikipedia mentions the expressway being built 'in 1952' in one place, but says resumption and construction ran from 1958 into the 1960s in another. I've gone with 1958.
- Kisch's big Domain speech. Wikipedia gives 17 February 1935 and a crowd of 18,000. The Commons record for Sam Hood's photo of Kisch speaking in the Domain dates it 18 November 1934, published in the Labor Daily the next day. He may well have spoken there more than once.
My Earlier Posts
- Government House – “The People’s Domain” (2016)
- Government House – Royal Botanic Gardens – Macquarie Street – Sydney
- Art Gallery of New South Wales – Government Domain – Sydney
- Sydney Conservatorium of Music – The Old Government House Horse Stables – The Government Domain
- Farm Cove – Next to the Royal Botanic Gardens
- Wuganmagulyav Creek – Farm Cove
- Sydney Royal Botanic Garden
- Sydney Garden Palace In Pictures
- Sydney Garden Palace after The Fire
- The Man O'War Steps – Farm Cove
- Fort Macquarie – Bennelong Point
- The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point to Utzon's Sails
- State Library Of New South Wales – Mitchell Wing
- St Mary's Cathedral – College Street & Art Gallery Road
- Hyde Park – Sydney
- First Government House – Bridge Street & Phillip Street
- The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808
- New South Wales and the Sudan War – 3 March 1885
Sources
- Garry Wotherspoon, 'The Domain', Dictionary of Sydney, 2010 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_domain (quotes Hill's Life in New South Wales, 17 August 1832, and H. Furniss, Australian Sketches Made on Tour, 1899)
- 'The Domain, Sydney', Wikipedia, which includes the NSW State Heritage Register listing for the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain (SHR 1070, listed 2 April 1999) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domain,_Sydney
- 'Mrs Macquarie's Chair', Wikipedia, including the transcription of the inscription – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Macquarie%27s_Chair
- 'Garden Palace', Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Palace
- 'Government House, Sydney', Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_House,_Sydney
- 'Cahill Expressway', Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Expressway
- 'Carols in the Domain', Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carols_in_the_Domain
- Picture records on Wikimedia Commons, including State Library of New South Wales and Australian National Maritime Museum (Sam Hood) items – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Domain,_Sydney