The East Sydney Hotel - Cathedral Street - Woolloomooloo - East Sydney

 

The East Sydney Hotel - 1856 - Cathedral Street - Woolloomooloo - East Sydney

If you walk up Cathedral Street from the bay, the East Sydney Hotel sits on the Crown Street corner like it has always belonged there — which, for Woolloomooloo, is about as long as a working pub can manage. The house dates itself to 1856, and locals still sell it as Sydney’s last proper “country pub: wooden bar, copper-nailed boards underfoot, racing memorabilia on the walls, and blessedly — no pokies.

Call the suburb what it is. This is Woolloomooloo, not a vague “East Sydney” lifestyle brand. The hotel sits inside the wider East Sydney / Woolloomooloo heritage story: corner pubs that fed dock workers, boarding-house lodgers and anyone walking between the Domain and the bay. The fabric you see now is a Victorian / Federation-era corner hotel that has been patched, painted and loved rather than scraped clean for brunch Instagram.

What makes it worth a history stop is how little it pretends. Upstairs rooms still let travellers sleep over the bar; downstairs the front room still feels like a room people drink in, not a concept. Keep the copper nails and the wooden bar in the story if you like — theyre part of the lived fabric — but lead with the year, the address (111–113 Cathedral Street) and the suburb that actually owns it.

Historical Sydney Hotels

First Fleet House – Cathedral Street – East Sydney

Duck down Cathedral Street off the Domain / Crown Street edge of Woolloomooloo and you hit a modest two-storey building that punches above its weight in commemorative meaning. First Fleet House at 105 Cathedral Street is the headquarters of the Fellowship of First Fleeters — the volunteer organisation of descendants of people who arrived at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet in January 1788. The Fellowship formed in 1968; it bought the house in May 1988 and opened it that July with then Governor Sir James Rowland as Patron.

The Fellowship likes to note that the ground sits on land once tied to First Fleeter Commissary John Palmer’s Woolloomooloo Hill grant — landscape memory, not a claim that this brick building dates from 1788. Inside are the library and research rooms members use when chasing family lines. It is volunteer-run, so opening hours and temporary closures change; check fellowshipfirstfleeters.org before you turn up expecting a walk-in museum.

Keep the distinction clear: this post is about the Fellowship’s house and its commemorative purpose, not a First Fleet–era cottage on Cathedral Street.

First Fleet House - Cathedral Street, East Sydney 

The house stands in East Sydney, an area shaped by the growth of the colonial town beyond the original settlement. Cathedral Street forms part of the historic street network around central Sydney.

Palmers Creek - East Sydney

Palmer's Creek, East Sydney
Though there are no records to indicate the existence of a creek by that name, it is not only likely but almost certain that the creek which once existed to the east of what is now The Domain on the western extremity of the city of Sydney was called Palmers Creek. The reason for this presumption is that it flowed into Palmers Cove, now Woolloomooloo Bay.

It was common practice among early colonial governors to give a creek the same name as the bay it flowed into. The name honours John Palmer, purser of HMS Sirius, one of a number of first fleeters who were buried in and have a marked grave in St. Johns Cemetery, Parramatta. Palmer, the colony's first Commissary, was granted the land through which the creek flowed. It has also been called Yurong Creek, perhaps its Aboriginal name and the reason why the street which followed its the western bank was called Yurong Street.

The creek rose in the vicinity of the intersection of present day Forbes and Bourke Streets. From this point it flowed north westerly down the hillside crossing Crown Street near Liverpool Lane. It then continued north towards the corner of Boomerang Place and William Street where it then followed the line of present day Sir John Young Crescent to enter Palmers Cove at its head.

In addition to the un-named squiggly line on contemporary maps, the existence of the creek is recalled in Stream Street (above), a curved laneway in East Sydney between Yurong and Stanley Lanes. Its shape and name are evidence that it follows the course of a small section of the creek as it passed through the area. The western section of Busby Lane also follows the line of the creek. A short tributary of the creek which rose in the vicinity of the site of Sydney Grammar School in College Street flowed along what now is the eastern edge of the fragrance garden of Phillip Park, entering the main creek at the northern corner of Busby Lane.
UBD Map 3 Ref K 15