Darling Harbour Creek

Darling Harbour Creek

A water course which passed through a tiny settlement of brickmakers late in 1788 began in the vicinity of the intersection of Riley and Foveaux Streets and flowed along the line of Sophia Street, then north in front of the Albion Brewery (Centennial Plaza is built on the brewery site) and through what today is Belmore Park. The section of Hay Street to the east of George Street, which was added after the creek was turned into an underground drain, follows the path taken by the creek to the marshes which encircled the head of the Cockle Bay (Darling Harbour) where the Entertainment Centre is today.

In the 1880s, Quay Street extended north as Lackey Street to the Darling Harbour railway goods yard built around a semicircular wharf at the head of Cockle Bay. A tributary of the main creek began as a spring near present day Hills Reserve in Surry Hills. Little Albion Street follows the path of the creek which cascaded down the hillside on the western side of Crown Street in what became known as Frog Hollow. This small valley was a notorious hideout for criminals in Victorian Sydney. UBD Map 3 Ref K 15

Wuganmagulyav Creek - Farm Cove

Wuganmagulya Creek

After The Tank Stream, the creek which flowed into Farm Cove (Wuganmagulya) was the most important waterway to the early colonists of Sydney as it provided the water for the colony's farm located within the grounds of what is today the Royal Botanical Gardens. The root vegetables grown there thrived, but such was not the case with cereal crops about which Gov. Phillip, in his report of 28th September, 1788, said, "very little of the English wheat had vegetated and a very considerable quantity of the barley and many seeds had rotten in the ground ... all the barley and wheat likewise destroyed by the weevil."

The first fleeters weren't the first humans to utilise the land surrounding the small creek, however. The Aborigines appear to have used it as a meeting place for the various groups up and down Port Jackson long before the arrival of the white man, as they held a corroborree there during the first years of the colony. Corroborees were only held at set meeting places.

Farm Cove Creek is today the only watercourse in the inner city area which not only still flows but follows its original course as it wends its way through the Botanical Gardens.