The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails – 1788 to Today

The Sydney Opera House - From Cattle Point & Bennelong Point To Fort Macquarie To The Opera House. 

In short: Before there was an Opera House, before there was a fort, and long before there was a tram shed, the eastern point of Sydney Cove was Tubowgule, a rocky tidal island that the Gadigal people knew well for its oysters and fish. The First Fleet put its few cattle there in 1788 and called it Cattle Point. The convicts burned its old shell middens for lime, so it became Limeburners' Point. In 1790 Governor Phillip built a little brick hut there for Woollarawarre Bennelong, and the name Bennelong Point has stuck ever since. A gun battery went up at the tip in 1798. Governor Macquarie had Francis Greenway build Fort Macquarie there between 1817 and 1821, and the fort stood for eighty years until it was knocked down in 1901 for a tram depot that copied its battlements. The trams left in 1955, the depot came down in 1958, and on that same ground Jørn Utzon's Opera House rose between 1959 and 1973. The Queen opened it on 20 October 1973, and in 2007 it was World Heritage listed. This is the story of that one little point of land, from Cattle Point to the Opera House.

I've walked around Bennelong Point more times than I can count, and like most Sydneysiders I've stopped seeing it. It's just there, the white sails, the tourists, the steps. But when you start digging, the point turns out to be one of the most layered bits of ground in the country. Nearly every chapter of Sydney's story has left a mark on it, and most of those marks are now under the concrete. So here it is, layer by layer.

Sydney Cove in 1792, a few years into the settlement. The rocky eastern point, later Bennelong Point, closed off the cove from the harbour. Port Jackson Painter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Tubowgule – The Point Before 1788

The Sydney Opera House's own history pages describe Tubowgule as a point at the end of a long, wide ridge, ringed by rocky shoals that mostly went under at high tide. With the harbour on one side, the cove on the other, a freshwater creek and mud flats nearby, it was a rich place to live. There were oysters, mussels, fish, possums, wallabies, kangaroos and plenty of plants to eat. The shells and bones left behind built up over generations into middens around the harbour, and the point had its share of them.

The name comes down to us in a few spellings. The Opera House uses Tubowgule, the Dictionary of Sydney has Tubowgulle and Tubowghule, and other writers give Dubbagullee, Inbughalee or Djubuguli. That's normal for words first written down by English officers trying to catch Aboriginal sounds by ear, and I've used Tubowgule here because it's the one the Opera House itself uses. The local people were the Gadigal, one of the clans of the Eora around the harbour.

The important thing to get your head around is that the very tip was an island. When the First Fleet came in, the end of the point was a small rocky tidal island, cut off from the mainland at high water, with a little beach on its western side. That gap was filled in later, and the island was largely forgotten until the Opera House excavations found it again in the late 1950s.

Cattle Point – 1788

When Phillip's fleet sailed into Sydney Cove in January 1788, it brought a small herd of livestock picked up at the Cape of Good Hope. The rocky eastern point was handy, as it was separated from the bush and easy to keep animals on, so for a short time in 1788 the British put their cattle and horses out there and called it Cattle Point. The Dictionary of Sydney quotes an early account of the animals being landed there until "they had cropped the little pasturage it afforded", and then being moved on to the next cove, Farm Cove, which was being cleared for the government farm.

It didn't do them much good in the end. The colony's first cattle strayed off in 1788, and it wasn't until November 1795 that Governor Hunter's party crossed the Nepean and found a herd of more than forty of their descendants, in the country Hunter named the Cowpastures. But for a few months the little point was the colony's paddock, and that's how it got its first English name.

Limeburners' Point

A settlement needs mortar, and mortar needs lime. There's no limestone around Sydney, but there were the middens, thousands of years of oyster shells left by Gadigal women gathering shellfish. The Opera House history says the colonists crushed the middens around the harbour, including those at Tubowgule, and mixed them with water to make a lime slurry. Wikipedia's Bennelong Point article says convict women did the regathering and the shells were burnt for lime. So the point picked up another name, Limeburners' Point.

Wikipedia also says the shells from the point only gave enough lime for one building, the two-storey Government House. That's a nice detail, but it's one I've only found in that one place, so take it as a story rather than a proven fact. What isn't in doubt is that burning those middens destroyed a record of thousands of years of Aboriginal life on the harbour, in the space of a few years.

Bennelong and His Hut – 1790

Woollarawarre Bennelong, engraved in 1798. The point carries his name because of the brick hut built for him there in 1790. James Neagle, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The name we use today belongs to Woollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal man whose country was on the south side of the Parramatta River. His story is a big one and I've only got room for the part that touches the point.

On 25 November 1789 Phillip had Bennelong and Colebee seized at Manly Cove and brought to Government House. Phillip wanted someone to learn English and explain the colony to the Eora, and the Eora to the colony. Bennelong got away in May 1790, but later that year, after Phillip was speared at the whale feast at Manly, he started coming back to the settlement of his own accord. He and Colebee began to dine with the Governor regularly.

According to the Dictionary of Sydney, it was at Bennelong's own request that Phillip built him a brick hut "on a point of land fixed upon by himself", on the headland at Tubowgule. It was 12 feet (about 3.5 metres) square, with a tiled roof and the fireplace outside. Keith Vincent Smith's work, published in Aboriginal History, dates the hut to November 1790. Phillip also had a tin shield made for him, to ward off the spears of his enemies.

Bennelong lived there with Barangaroo, his second wife, a Cammeraygal woman and skilled fisherwoman from the north shore. She gave birth to a baby girl, Dilboong, who lived only a few months. When Barangaroo died around the end of August 1791, Bennelong cremated her remains in Governor Phillip's garden, beside Sydney Cove.

In December 1792 Bennelong sailed for England with Phillip, along with the younger Wangal man Yemmerrawanne. He saw London's museums, the theatre at Covent Garden and Parliament, and came home in 1795. Yemmerrawanne never did. He died of a lung infection at Eltham in Kent on 18 May 1794, aged about nineteen, and was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist there. Bennelong didn't go back to the point. He lived later at Kissing Point with his third wife, Boorong. Smith writes that the hut was pulled down in November 1795, two months after he got back, and the Opera House says the bricks were reused elsewhere. The hut was gone, but the name stayed. Today the Opera House sits on Bennelong Point, and its restaurant is called Bennelong.

The First Guns – 1788 to 1798

The point was always going to be a spot for guns, as it guards the entrance to Sydney Cove. Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article says that in July 1788 Lieutenant William Dawes was told to build a small redoubt on this side, which held two brass six-pounders by November. It says the earthworks were given up in 1791 and the guns moved to the west side of the cove, where the Dawes Point battery grew up. I've kept that short because I haven't been able to check it against a second source.

On firmer ground is the half-moon battery of December 1798. Both Wikipedia articles say it was built at the far northern tip of the point and armed with guns from HMS Supply, the little armed tender of the First Fleet. A Mr Pern, writing in 1802, described the battery on the northern point of Sydney Cove as built on a rock of difficult access, carrying six pieces of cannon behind a trench of turf. In truth these early defences were pretty basic, and nobody seriously expected them to hold off a proper warship.

Macquarie, Greenway and Fort Macquarie – 1817 to 1821

Then came Lachlan Macquarie, the governor who wanted Sydney to look like a proper town, and his convict architect Francis Greenway, transported for forgery and made Civil Architect by Macquarie. Between them they built Hyde Park Barracks, St James' Church, the Macquarie Lighthouse and much more. In 1817 Macquarie ordered a new fort on Bennelong Point.

Macquarie laid the foundation stone on 17 December 1817. Building it took a lot of work first. Between 1818 and 1821 the tidal gap between the little island and the mainland was filled with rock cut from the point itself, and the whole area was levelled into a low platform. The Dictionary of Sydney puts the joining of the island to the mainland in 1818. While they were at it, a big slice of the rocky escarpment was cut away so a road could run around the point from Sydney Cove to Farm Cove. It was called the Tarpeian Way, after the cliff in ancient Rome, and the cut rock face is still there behind the Opera House.

The stone came from the Governor's Domain quarry close by, and convicts worked on the fort for around two years. It was finished in February 1821.

What the fort looked like

Greenway gave Macquarie a little castle. The fort was square, with three of its faces open to the water so the guns had a clear field of fire. In the middle stood a two-storey castellated tower about 27.4 metres around, with walls around one and a half metres thick at the top. The tower held a guardroom and storehouse and could house a small garrison of one officer and eighteen men. Underneath was a powder magazine big enough for 350 barrels of gunpowder. The battery had fifteen guns, ten 24-pounders and five 6-pounders. In the early years a narrow channel of salt water still separated the fort from the land and was crossed by a drawbridge, but this was later filled in to make a roadway.

Fort Macquarie and Sydney Cove, painted by Conrad Martens in 1836, fifteen years after Greenway's fort was finished. Conrad Martens, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A fort that never fired in anger

Fort Macquarie was more for show than anything. Its battlements were really decoration in the Gothic taste of the day, and it was never tested by an enemy. As Sydney's defences were rethought over the century, especially after the Crimean War scare of the 1850s that gave us Fort Denison, the real firepower shifted out to the heads and the harbour forts. Fort Macquarie was left as a saluting battery, a store, a barracks and, by the end, a naval drill site. Wikipedia says a naval drill shed stood on the site by 1901.

It made a lovely picture, though. Just about every artist and photographer who came to Sydney had a go at it, with Government House on the hill behind and the North Shore across the water. From Conrad Martens in the 1830s to the stereo photographers of the 1850s and the Kerry studio later on, the fort turns up again and again, and those pictures are how we know it today.

Fort Macquarie with Government House behind it, from a stereo view taken about 1858–59. William Hetzer, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fort Macquarie and Bennelong Point, photographed about 1859–60. Matthew Fortescue Moresby, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The castellated walls and central tower of Fort Macquarie, about 1870. Unknown photographer, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the fort's guns has travelled. Two 42-pounder muzzle-loading cannon from Fort Macquarie were taken to Newcastle in 1903 to make a memorial in Gregson Park, Hamilton, where they were refurbished in 2006 and are still standing today. Wikipedia says another sits in Hyde Park.

Fort Macquarie looking across to the North Shore, about 1885. Attributed to Joseph Bischoff, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fort Comes Down – 1901

By 1900 Sydney's trams were going electric and the government needed somewhere to keep them near Circular Quay. Bennelong Point was government land and right at the end of the line. In 1901 the New South Wales Minister for Works decided Fort Macquarie had to go. The fort and the naval drill shed were both demolished to make way for a tram depot.

It's easy to be cranky about that now. Fort Macquarie was one of Greenway's buildings and one of the oldest in the colony. But in 1901 nobody talked about heritage the way we do, and an old fort with no military use was just in the road. At least the builders of the depot had the decency to remember it.

Fort Macquarie in 1900, only a year or so before it was pulled down. Powerhouse Museum collection, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot – 1902 to 1958

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot opened on 10 August 1902. It was built like a fortress, with a battlemented front parapet and a tall turret, as a deliberate nod to the fort that had stood there. The rest was solid working brick, with false windows hiding vents and a twelve-road car shed with the roof turned to the south.

It was a big building. The Wikipedia figures give a width of 131 feet, a car shed 250 feet long, the whole building 307 feet from end to end, and the turret 80 feet high. A loop line ran around the outside, and the sidings on the western side were a handy lay-over spot for trams, taking pressure off Circular Quay at busy times. A signal box beside the tracks controlled entry to the depot and loop.

For half a century "Fort Macquarie" was a name on the front of Sydney trams. Services ran from there to Rozelle, Drummoyne, Gladesville and Ryde, to Forest Lodge, Balmain and Birchgrove, to Haberfield, Five Dock and Abbotsford, to Leichhardt, Glebe Point, Kensington and Rosebery. My grandparents' generation would have known "Fort Mac" as just another stop, not a fort at all.

The Fort Macquarie tram depot, with its battlements and turret built in memory of the old fort. NSW Government Tramways archives, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The point also saw some sad days in those years. When the ferry Greycliffe was run down by the Tahiti on 3 November 1927 with the loss of 40 lives, many of the survivors, and the bodies of those who died, were brought to the Man o' War Steps on the eastern side of the tram depot. It became a makeshift casualty station, with ambulance men, police, passers-by and depot workers helping the injured, and Sam Hood's photographs from that day show an ambulance and injured passengers at Fort Macquarie. I've written about Sydney's ferries and trams elsewhere, and the link is at the bottom.

The tram depot on Bennelong Point in the 1940s, not long before the trams moved out. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By the 1950s the trams were on the way out. The depot closed on 22 October 1955, with most of its services moved to the Dowling Street depot. By then the site already had a new job waiting for it.

Goossens and the Dream of an Opera House

Eugene Goossens, the conductor who pushed for an opera house and for Bennelong Point as the site. Bain News Service, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The man who started it all was Eugene Goossens, an English conductor who came out in 1947 to lead the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and run the NSW State Conservatorium of Music. Goossens thought the Sydney Town Hall, where the orchestra played, wasn't good enough, and he started lobbying for a proper home for opera and concerts. The National Museum of Australia says he met Premier Joseph Cahill in 1954, and the two agreed Sydney needed a major performance venue.

It was Goossens, too, who wanted Bennelong Point. Cahill's people had been thinking about a site near Wynyard railway station, but Goossens held out for the point, with the tram depot due to go and harbour all around. It's hard to imagine the building anywhere else now.

Goossens didn't get to see it built. In March 1956 he was stopped at Mascot airport by customs officers who found what was then called indecent material in his luggage. He was fined, lost his posts and left Australia under a cloud. He died in London on 13 June 1962. The Opera House he fought for opened eleven years later.

The Design Competition – 1955 to 1957

Cahill launched an international design competition on 13 September 1955, with a first prize of £5,000. The brief asked for a large hall seating 3,000 and a small hall for 1,200, for full-scale opera, orchestral and choral concerts, mass meetings, lectures, ballet and more. It drew 233 entries from 32 countries.

The four judges were Professor Henry Ingham Ashworth of the University of Sydney, Cobden Parkes, the NSW Government Architect, Professor Leslie Martin of Cambridge, who had worked on London's Royal Festival Hall, and the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen.

Saarinen and entry 218

This is where the most famous story comes in, and it needs a bit of care. The National Museum of Australia says there's no record of how the judges reached their decision. The story goes that Saarinen turned up after the other three had already shortlisted their favourites, wasn't impressed, went through the rejected pile and found entry number 218 by a 38-year-old Dane, Jørn Utzon. He is said to have argued for it until the others agreed. Wikipedia puts it a bit differently, saying Saarinen picked Utzon's design from a final cut of 30. Either way, everyone agrees Saarinen was Utzon's great champion on the panel. The winner was announced on 29 January 1957.

One of Jørn Utzon's 1956 competition drawings, a view from the staircase between the two halls looking north. NSW State Archives and Records (NRS 12825), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Utzon's drawings were famously sketchy, little more than a few sheets of plans and ideas. The judges said so themselves in their January 1957 report:

"The drawings submitted for this scheme are simple to the point of being diagrammatic. Nevertheless, as we have returned again and again to the study of these drawings, we are convinced that they present a concept of an Opera House which is capable of becoming one of the great buildings of the world."

Utzon had won seven of the eighteen competitions he'd entered, but had never seen any of his designs built. He came to Sydney for the first time on 29 July 1957, and a new model was shown at a public meeting in the Town Hall on 7 August.

Paying for It – The Opera House Lottery

The government didn't want the building to come out of the general budget, so it turned to a lottery. Tickets in the first Opera House Lottery went on sale on 25 November 1957, and there was a queue down Barrack Street on the first morning. Tickets were £5 each, a lot of money then, and the first prize was £100,000, the richest lottery ever held in the state. The first draw was on 10 January 1958.

The lottery ran for almost thirty years, with the last draw in 1986. According to NSW Lotteries, it sold more than 86 million tickets over 496 draws and raised $102 million, which paid for most of the building. So in a real sense the people of New South Wales paid for the Opera House a fiver at a time.

Building It – 1959 to 1973

The tram depot was demolished in 1958 and work started on 2 March 1959. Cahill wanted it under way quickly, before public opinion or a change of government could kill it, even though Utzon hadn't finished the design and the big structural questions were still open. That early start caused trouble for years.

The job was done in stages. The usual way of describing them is the podium, then the roof shells, then the glass walls and interiors, but different sources give slightly different dates for each.

Stage I – the podium

The builders Civil & Civic started on the podium in March 1959, with the engineers Ove Arup & Partners overseeing the work. By January 1961 it was 47 weeks behind. There had been bad weather and trouble diverting the stormwater, and construction had started before proper drawings were ready. The podium was finished in February 1963. It later turned out that its columns weren't strong enough for the roof that was going to sit on top of them, and they had to be rebuilt.

It was also during the podium work that the diggers found the old island and the convict rubble fill from Macquarie's day, so for a moment the Cattle Point layer saw daylight again.

There's a lovely story from those early years. In 1960 the American singer Paul Robeson climbed up on the site and sang "Ol' Man River" to the construction workers at lunch, so he became the first artist ever to perform at the Opera House.

Stage II – the shells and the spherical solution

Utzon's competition sketches showed sweeping shells with no fixed geometry, and nobody knew how to build them. From 1957 to 1963 the architects and Arup's engineers went through at least twelve versions, trying parabolas, ellipses and circular ribs, without finding a shape that could be built at a sensible cost. Every shell was different, which meant custom formwork or custom precast pieces for every one.

The answer came in mid-1961: make every shell a piece cut from the same sphere. With one constant curve, the ribs could be cast from standard moulds in pieces of common length and fitted together. It's why the shells look the way they do. The sphere has a radius of 75.2 metres, and you can still see a model of the idea at the Opera House showing how all the shells fit back into one ball.

Who thought of it first is still argued about. Utzon has long been given the credit, and Ove Arup himself wrote that Utzon came up with the idea of making all the shells of uniform curvature. But Arup's biographer Peter Jones says the engineers remembered talking about spheres themselves, while Yuzo Mikami, who worked on the design team, takes Utzon's side in his book Utzon's Sphere. Most writers settle on the view that Utzon, Arup and Arup's partner Ronald Jenkins all played a big part.

The builders Hornibrook took on the shells, setting up a factory on site to cast about 2,400 precast ribs and 4,000 roof panels. Hornibrook's engineer Joe Bertony designed an adjustable steel erection arch to hold the sections in place. It was one of the first big building jobs to use computers for the structural analysis, and the arches were surveyed at the end of every day so the next could be placed correctly. The tiles came from Höganäs in Sweden, more than a million of them in glossy white and matte cream, and it took three years to get the "Sydney tile" right.

The shells going up, photographed from the Botanic Gardens in late 1965, only months before Utzon resigned. Peter Hall, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The politics, and Utzon's resignation – 1965 to 1966

Cahill died on 22 October 1959, but Labor stayed in government and the project went on. Then at the May 1965 election Robert Askin's Liberals won, and Askin had been a loud critic of the Opera House. His new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, was even less friendly.

Hughes wanted the architect, engineers and contractors each reporting directly to the government, and wanted contracts put out to tender. Utzon wanted everything to go through his office and to pick suppliers he trusted, such as Ralph Symonds for the plywood interiors. Costs were climbing and the interiors weren't resolved. By February 1966 Utzon was owed more than $100,000 in fees, and Hughes held the money back. The National Museum of Australia gives the figure as $103,000.

On 28 February 1966 Utzon met Hughes. The government minutes record him saying, "If you don't do it, I resign," and Hughes answering, "I accept your resignation. Thank you very much. Goodbye." Over the next days architects, artists and unionists marched on Bennelong Point and called for him to be brought back. Hughes offered him a lesser job as "design architect" under a panel, without any control over construction, but Utzon said no. He and his family left Sydney on 28 April 1966. He never came back.

The Sydney Morning Herald wasn't sure who to blame at first. One editorial said: "No architect in the world has enjoyed greater freedom than Mr Utzon. Few clients have been more patient or more generous than the people and the Government of NSW." By 17 March 1966 it was saying it "was not his fault that a succession of Governments and the Opera House Trust should so signally have failed to impose any control or order on the project".

Stage III – Hall, Todd and Littlemore

To finish the job, Hughes and the Government Architect Ted Farmer brought in three Australian architects. David Littlemore handled construction supervision, Lionel Todd handled the contract documents, and the design work fell to Peter Hall, a young architect who had won the Sulman Medal in 1964. At least two well-known Sydney architects had already turned the job down, and Hall had himself signed the petition calling for Utzon to be reinstated. He took it on in April 1966 and found far more unresolved than he'd expected. The seating numbers, acoustics, glass walls and the brief itself all still had to be settled.

The biggest change was inside. Hall's team decided opera and concerts couldn't share the one hall. The major hall became a concert hall only, the Concert Hall, and the minor hall took the opera and ballet, as the Opera Theatre, renamed the Joan Sutherland Theatre in 2012. The stage machinery already built for the big hall was pulled out. Utzon's plywood interiors and his acoustic designs for both halls were dropped. Ever since, people have argued about whether the halls would have been better his way, and the cramped orchestra pit in the Joan Sutherland Theatre has been a sore point for decades.

Hall guided the project for more than five years. The Australian Heritage Database notes that he kept talking with Utzon about the design for at least eighteen months after Utzon left.

There was one more twist on site. In 1972 the builders' labourers, affiliated with the Builders Labourers Federation, were sacked after a dispute. They broke back into the site and ran it themselves for five weeks under "workers' control", and they ended the work-in only when management agreed to a 25 per cent pay rise and the right to elect their own foremen.

The Opening – 20 October 1973

Before the official opening there were a few firsts. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra gave the first public concert in the Concert Hall on 5 September 1973, an all-Wagner night under Charles Mackerras with Birgit Nilsson. The first opera in the Opera Theatre was Prokofiev's War and Peace on 28 September 1973.

Then on Saturday 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II formally opened the Sydney Opera House. A large crowd packed the forecourt and the harbour, the ceremony was on television, and there were fireworks and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Queen Elizabeth II opens the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973. Jack Hickson, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You'll often read that Utzon wasn't invited and wasn't mentioned. That isn't right. He was invited but stayed away, so the row over his leaving wouldn't overshadow the day. The Queen's speech didn't name him or any of the architects, but Premier Askin did give him credit.

The cost

The figure everybody remembers is the blow-out. The 1957 estimate was £3,500,000, or $7 million, with the building to be finished by Australia Day, 26 January 1963. It came in ten years late at $102 million. That's the same figure as the lottery's total, which is why people say the lottery paid for the lot. In October 1966, after Utzon left, the spending to date was only $22.9 million, less than a quarter of the final bill. Hornibrook's director Sam Hoare broke the total down roughly as $5.5 million for the podium, $12.5 million for the roof shells, $56.5 million for completion, $9 million for stage gear, lighting and the organ, and $16.5 million in fees and other costs.

Bringing Utzon Back – 1999 to 2008

For more than thirty years the building and its architect stayed apart. In the late 1990s the Sydney Opera House Trust got back in touch with Utzon, and in 1999 he was appointed design consultant for future work. That year he agreed to set down the Utzon Design Principles, guidelines for how the building should be cared for and changed while keeping to his original idea. His son Jan, also an architect, worked alongside him.

The first space rebuilt to his design opened in 2004 and was named the Utzon Room in his honour. It holds his tapestry Homage to C.P.E. Bach, 14 metres long. In 2006 a colonnade was added along the western side, opening nine big windows in the old solid wall. Utzon received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour, in 2003, with the citation calling the Opera House "his masterpiece".

World Heritage – 28 June 2007

On 28 June 2007, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed the Sydney Opera House on the World Heritage List under criterion (i), as a masterpiece of human creative genius. The committee's statement calls it "a masterpiece of 20th century architecture" and notes that "Ove Arup's engineering achievements helped make Utzon's vision a reality." It was one of the youngest buildings ever listed, and Utzon was still alive to see it. It had already been on the NSW State Heritage Register since 2003 and the National Heritage List since 2005.

Jørn Utzon died in Denmark on 29 November 2008, aged 90, without ever having seen the finished building. A state memorial was held in the Concert Hall on 25 March 2009, with his son Jan and daughter Lin there.

The Opera House in December 2008, the month after Utzon died in Denmark. Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Decade of Renewal – 2017 to 2022

By the 2010s the building was showing its age, and the old problems with the halls had never gone away. The Opera House ran what it calls its Decade of Renewal, almost $300 million of work largely paid for by the NSW Government. The Joan Sutherland Theatre closed in the second half of 2017 to have its stage machinery replaced. The Concert Hall closed in February 2020 and reopened in July 2022 with improved acoustics, better access and new staging, which went a long way towards fixing the sound problems that had hung around since 1973. In 2016 the Opera House also finally hung the Le Corbusier tapestry that Utzon had commissioned back in 1959 for the building, after buying it at auction.

Fifty Years – 20 October 2023

On 20 October 2023 the Opera House turned fifty. The 2023 architecture awards included a NSW Architecture Medallion and the Greenway Award for Heritage for the renewal work, which is a nice touch, as Francis Greenway's name comes back to the point two hundred years after his fort.

When you stand on the forecourt now, it's worth remembering what's underneath you. There's a tidal island where the Gadigal fished and gathered oysters, a paddock for the First Fleet's cattle, the lime kilns, the place where Bennelong's little hut stood, a 1798 battery, Greenway's castle, half a century of trams, and then Utzon's sails. Not bad for one small point of land.

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Tubowgule, a tidal island and point used by the Gadigal people; shell middens build up over generations.
• 1788 – The First Fleet arrives. The point is briefly used to hold cattle and horses and becomes Cattle Point. Shells burned for lime give the name Limeburners' Point.
• July–November 1788 – A small redoubt with two brass six-pounders is reported on this side of the cove (Wikipedia).
• 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colebee are captured at Manly.
• November 1790 – Phillip builds Bennelong a 12-foot-square brick hut on the point.
• About end of August 1791 – Barangaroo dies.
• December 1792 – Bennelong sails for England with Phillip.
• 1795 – Bennelong returns. His hut is demolished in November.
• December 1798 – A half-moon battery is built at the tip, with guns from HMS Supply.
• 17 December 1817 – Macquarie lays the foundation stone of Greenway's Fort Macquarie.
• 1818–1821 – The tidal gap is filled and the Tarpeian Way is cut.
• February 1821 – Fort Macquarie is completed.
• 1901 – The Minister for Works decides to demolish the fort, and it comes down.
• 10 August 1902 – Fort Macquarie Tram Depot opens.
• 1903 – Two of the fort's cannon go to Gregson Park, Newcastle.
• 3 November 1927 – Greycliffe disaster. Survivors and the dead are brought to the Man o' War Steps beside the depot.
• 1947 – Eugene Goossens arrives in Sydney.
• 1954 – Goossens and Premier Cahill agree Sydney needs a performance venue.
• 13 September 1955 – The design competition is launched.
• 22 October 1955 – The tram depot closes.
• March 1956 – Goossens is caught at customs and leaves Australia.
• 29 January 1957 – Utzon's entry 218 is announced as the winner.
• 25 November 1957 – Opera House Lottery tickets go on sale. The first draw is on 10 January 1958.
• 1958 – The tram depot is demolished.
• 2 March 1959 – Construction begins with Stage I, the podium.
• 1960 – Paul Robeson sings for the workers.
• Mid-1961 – The spherical solution for the shells is found.
• February 1963 – The podium is finished and Utzon moves his office to Sydney.
• May 1965 – The Askin government is elected and Davis Hughes becomes Works Minister.
• 28 February 1966 – Utzon resigns.
• April 1966 – Hall, Todd and Littlemore are appointed, and Utzon leaves Sydney on 28 April.
• 1972 – The builders' labourers' work-in takes place.
• 20 October 1973 – Queen Elizabeth II opens the Opera House. The final cost is $102 million.
• 1986 – The last Opera House Lottery draw.
• 1999 – Utzon is re-engaged and agrees to write the Design Principles.
• 2003 – Utzon wins the Pritzker Prize, and the building goes on the NSW State Heritage Register.
• 2004 – The Utzon Room opens.
• 28 June 2007 – World Heritage listing.
• 29 November 2008 – Utzon dies in Denmark.
• 2017–2022 – The main renewal works, with the Concert Hall reopening in July 2022.
• 20 October 2023 – The 50th anniversary.

Where the Sources Disagree

• The Aboriginal name. It's spelled Tubowgule (Sydney Opera House), Tubowgulle and Tubowghule (Dictionary of Sydney), and Dubbagullee, Inbughalee or Djubuguli (Wikipedia).
• When Bennelong's hut was built. The Opera House says 1790, and Keith Vincent Smith gives November 1790. One Dictionary of Sydney picture caption says 1789, but he was only captured in November 1789 and didn't come back to the settlement of his own accord until later in 1790, so 1790 is the safer date.
• "Built in 1798". Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article opens by saying the fort was built in 1798. That's the date of the earlier half-moon battery. Greenway's Fort Macquarie was begun in 1817 and finished in 1821.
• Lime for one building only. Wikipedia says the point's shells only made enough lime for Government House. I haven't found that in a second source.
• The 1788 redoubt. Only Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article places Dawes' 1788 redoubt on this side of the cove, so I've reported it as that article's claim.
• When the trams left. The depot closed on 22 October 1955, but it wasn't demolished until 1958. You'll see both years given as "the end of the depot".
• How Saarinen found Utzon's design. The National Museum of Australia says there's no record of how the judging went and calls the rejected-pile story a rumour. Wikipedia says Saarinen chose it from 30 finalists.
• Planned completion date. Wikipedia gives Australia Day, 26 January 1963. The National Museum of Australia says December 1963.
• Stage dates. Wikipedia gives Stage I as 1959–1963 (podium), Stage II as the roof and Stage III as the interiors from 1963. The Australian Heritage Database gives the podium as 1958–1961, the shells as 1962–1967, and the glass walls and interiors as 1967–1973.
• Who found the spherical solution. It's credited to Utzon by Utzon's side and by Mikami. Arup's biographer Peter Jones says the engineers were also canvassing spheres. Nobody can settle it now.
• Utzon's unpaid fees. Wikipedia says "more than $100,000", and the National Museum of Australia says $103,000.
• Was Utzon snubbed at the opening? He's often said not to have been invited. Wikipedia, citing the record, says he was invited but declined, and Askin credited him in his speech.

My Earlier Posts

• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East – Australia's First Stock
• Fort Macquarie – Eastern Point of Sydney Cove / Western Point of Farm Cove – Bennelong Point
• Woolaware Bennelong
• Wuganmagulyav Creek – Farm Cove
• Farm Cove – Next to the Royal Botanic Gardens
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Semi-Circular Quay – Port Jackson – Sydney Harbour
• Dawes Point – Tar-ra – The Rocks
• Government House – Royal Botanic Gardens – Macquarie Street
• Francis Greenway's Residence – George Street, Cnr Argyle Street – The Rocks
• South Head – The Macquarie Lighthouse
• Hyde Park Barracks – Macquarie Street
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour – From 1788 to Today
• Captain Arthur Phillip & The First Fleet Arriving At Botany Bay – January 1788

Sources

• Sydney Opera House, "Tubowgule" – https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/tubowgule
• Sydney Opera House, "Conserving and celebrating our heritage" – https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/conserving-and-celebrating-our-heritage
• Sydney Opera House, "Renewing an icon" – https://stories.sydneyoperahouse.com/renewing-an-icon/
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Bennelong Point" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/natural_feature/bennelong_point
• Dictionary of Sydney, "East Circular Quay" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/east_circular_quay
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Woollarawarre Bennelong" (Keith Vincent Smith) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woollarawarre_bennelong
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Bennelong among his people", Aboriginal History vol. 33, ANU Press – https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p74631/pdf/ch0156.pdf
• National Museum of Australia, "Defining Moments: Sydney Opera House" – https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/sydney-opera-house
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, news, 28 June 2007 – https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/360/
• UNESCO World Heritage Committee, Decision 31 COM 8B.31 – https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1329/
• Australian Heritage Database, Sydney Opera House (place 105914) – https://environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl?mode=place_detail;place_id=105914
• Museums of History NSW, "10 Jan 1958 – first Sydney Opera House lottery" – https://mhnsw.au/stories/on-this-day/10-january-1958/
• The Lott media release, Opera House 50th anniversary partnership, 2023 – https://mediacentre.thelott.com/media-releases/the-lott-to-join-the-opera-houses-50th-anniversary-celebrations-with-new-partnership/
• ArtsHub, "Kiss and sell: The story of the Sydney Opera House" – https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/kiss-and-sell-the-story-of-the-sydney-opera-house-256285-2360482/
• Wikipedia, "Sydney Opera House" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Opera_House (incorporates NSW State Heritage Register text, CC BY 3.0 AU)
• Wikipedia, "Bennelong Point" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennelong_Point
• Wikipedia, "Fort Macquarie" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Macquarie
• Wikipedia, "Fort Macquarie Tram Depot" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Macquarie_Tram_Depot
• NSW State Heritage Register, Sydney Opera House (listed 2003) – https://www.hms.heritage.nsw.gov.au/
• Peter Jones, Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2006), as cited by Wikipedia
• Yuzo Mikami, Utzon's Sphere (Shokokusha, 2001), as cited by Wikipedia
• Peter Murray, The Saga of the Sydney Opera House (Spon, 2004), as cited by Wikipedia
• Peter Webber, Peter Hall: The Phantom of the Opera House (2012), as cited by Wikipedia
• NSW State Archives and Records, NRS 12825, Utzon competition drawings
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Yemmerrawanne" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yemmerrawanne
• First Fleet Fellowship, "First Fleet Cattle" – https://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/library/first-fleet-cattle/
• Monument Australia, "Cowpastures Memorial" – https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/landscape/settlement/display/102538-cowpastures-memorial-
• David Salter, "Goossens, Sir Eugene Aynsley (1893–1962)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goossens-sir-eugene-aynsley-10329
• David Clune, "Cahill, John Joseph (Joe) (1891–1959)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cahill-john-joseph-joe-9659
• World Socialist Web Site, "Sydney Opera House architect, Jørn Utzon dies", December 2008 – https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/12/utzo-d10.html
• Australian Police, "The 1927 Tahiti-Greycliffe Disaster" (Steve Brew) – https://australianpolice.com.au/nsw-police-history-index/water-police/the-1927-tahiti-greycliffe-disaster/
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Greycliffe shipwreck 1927" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/event/greycliffe_shipwreck_1927
• State Library of New South Wales, photographs and paintings of Fort Macquarie (Martens, Hetzer, Moresby, Kerry & Co., Bischoff) and Jack Hickson's opening photographs, via Wikimedia Commons

Ultimo House – Ultimo – New South Wales

"Ultimo House", from an old album page captioned "Residence of Mrs. Geo. Harris". You can see the towers, the little dome and the balcony which, according to the family, were added after a fire in the 1870s.

Ultimo House stood on a rise at Ultimo, looking down over Blackwattle Creek and Cockle Bay, for nearly 130 years. Surgeon John Harris of the New South Wales Corps had it built in 1804, on land Governor King had granted him the year before, and the whole suburb takes its name from his estate. Francis Greenway enlarged it after 1814. That was the convict architect's first private job in the colony. Over the years it hosted the officers who plotted against Governor Bligh, some of the grandest parties in early Sydney, a commercial laundry, three generations of the Harris family and, at the end, classes of the Sydney Technical College. It came down in late 1932 or early 1933, depending on which source you read, to make way for an electrical engineering building. When it went, people were calling it the oldest house in Sydney.

There is nothing left of it today. The site is somewhere inside the TAFE campus at Ultimo, between Harris, Mary Ann, Jones and Thomas Streets. I've put together the story of the house and the family below, using the Dictionary of Sydney, the Australian Dictionary of Biography and a lovely 1932 Sydney Morning Herald piece written just before the wreckers moved in. Where the sources don't agree, I've said so.

The drawing room at Ultimo House, from the same album, also captioned "Residence of Mrs. Geo. Harris".

The Land Before the House

Before any of this, the peninsula was Aboriginal country. The Dictionary of Sydney says the people around Go-mo-ra (Darling Harbour) and the top of Blackwattle Creek may have been a clan of their own, tentatively called the Gommerigal, though that name isn't officially recognised and they're usually counted among the Gadigal of the Eora. Aboriginal people were still coming and going on the estate long after Harris arrived. The Ultimo end of the sandstone ridge had good soil, with Cockle Bay on one side, Blackwattle Creek and its swamp on the other, and the Parramatta road along the bottom.

Surgeon John Harris

Surgeon John Harris (1754–1838), the man who built Ultimo House and gave Ultimo its name. This 1912 copy was made from a miniature. Herbert Beecroft after a miniature, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

John Harris was born in 1754 at Moneymore in County Londonderry, Ireland. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he trained in medicine at Edinburgh and spent ten years as a navy surgeon in Indian waters before joining the New South Wales Corps as surgeon's mate in 1789. He reached Port Jackson in the Second Fleet ship Surprize in June 1790 and was stationed at Parramatta, where in 1793 he took a 100-acre grant and bought James Ruse's Experiment Farm.

Governor Philip Gidley King made him a magistrate, head of the police and, in 1801, Naval Officer, the man in charge of the port and its duties. King described him as having "the most respectable character as a gentleman, joined to an unwearied activity and intelligence".

His fellow officers were less keen, especially as he backed King's crackdown on the rum trade. In October 1802 he was court-martialled for "ungentlemanlike conduct", and six months later he faced a second court martial for supposedly letting slip how two officers had voted on an earlier case. He was acquitted both times.

Governor Philip Gidley King, about 1798. King gave Harris the first Ultimo grant in December 1803 and, according to the 1932 Herald, had the house built for him with government labour. Unknown artist, oil painting, State Library of New South Wales (ML 546), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why "Ultimo"?

This is the bit everyone remembers. "Ultimo" is the old Latin term clerks used in letters and legal papers to mean "of last month", while "instant" meant "of this month". The story goes that the charge papers against Harris got the date of his supposed offence wrong, writing "ultimo" when they should have written "instant", and he got off on that technicality. Harris was so pleased that he named his new grant after the slip.

The details change with the teller. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was "acquitted in a court case on a technicality"; the Pyrmont History Group says he named the estate "to relish the technicality on which he escaped conviction in a court martial"; Wikipedia and a 2005 Herald piece say the slip stopped the case going ahead. The Australian Dictionary of Biography records his two acquittals but doesn't mention the ultimo slip at all, so I'd treat the details as a good old Sydney story rather than proven fact.

Building the House – 1803 to 1804

Governor King granted Harris 34 acres in December 1803. The Dictionary of Sydney describes the grant as lying "between the church land" (the Glebe) and the brickfield at the head of Cockle Bay. More grants followed up to 1806, and with purchases Harris owned about 233 acres by 1818, taking in Ultimo, most of Pyrmont apart from John Macarthur's northern tip, and part of the Haymarket.

The house went up in 1804 on the ridge, where it would get the water views. It was a two-storey brick house, and convicts built it. In 1932 T. S. Champion dug out the official records for the Herald. A statement of "public labour done from July, 1803, to June 30, 1804" lists, under "Buildings":

"Building a brick dwelling-house for Mr. Harris in remuneration for his public services"

Six months later, Champion found, Surgeon Harris was supplied from the Government stores with "100 sheets of crown glass and 15,500 nails, for which he paid £22/15/". In other words, the house was a reward. (The City of Sydney's history walk dates it "c1805".)

A Country Seat with Indian Deer

Harris didn't want a working farm. He wanted a gentleman's country seat. He cleared and shaped the bush into English-style parkland and stocked it with deer brought in from India. Champion painted the scene for 1932 readers:

"It was a fine homestead (then considered a mansion), set in parklike lands, hedged in by a dense forest of goodly trees, with cattle, sheep, and horses browsing in the meadows, and, what the owner prized most, a herd of spotted deer from India."

The carriage drive started on George Street where Ultimo Road now meets it, and Harris Street was "but a track". The estate ran right across the peninsula from Darling Harbour to Blackwattle Bay.

It wasn't easy to keep up. The Dictionary of Sydney says the poultry, sheep and especially the deer were "an irresistible temptation" to the convicts and soldiers camped around the nearby brickworks.

The Dinner Before the Rum Rebellion – January 1808

Under Governor Bligh, Harris's luck turned. In May 1807 Bligh sacked him as Naval Officer and magistrate, and Harris became one of his bitterest critics, painting him, in the ADB's words, as "avaricious, dishonest and tyrannical". In January 1808 he hosted a dinner at Ultimo House for officers who were against the governor. According to the Dictionary of Sydney and the Pyrmont History Group, the plotters went straight from that dinner into Sydney to call out the troops and arrest Bligh on 26 January 1808, the Rum Rebellion. Major George Johnston made Harris a magistrate again the next day, 27 January, but Harris soon fell out with John Macarthur and was sacked again on 5 April 1808.

"The arrest of Governor Bligh", a mocking watercolour from 1808. The plotters came to town from dinner at Ultimo House. Unknown artist, 1808, State Library of New South Wales (Safe 4/5), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ordered to London to put the rebels' case, Harris pleaded sickness, but he finally sailed in 1809 (about April per the ADB, March per the 1932 Herald) and gave evidence at Johnston's court martial in 1811.

Harris Comes Home and Greenway Gets to Work – 1814

Harris resigned his commission and came back to Sydney as a private settler on the General Hewitt, with his new wife Eliza. The ADB gives the arrival date as 7 February 1814, while Champion's 1932 article says April 1814. On the same ship was a convict named Francis Greenway, transported for forgery.

Francis Greenway, the convict architect. He came out on the same ship as Harris in 1814. Unknown artist, pencil, between 1814 and 1837, State Library of New South Wales (ML 482), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Soon after getting home, Harris hired Greenway to extend Ultimo House. The Dictionary of Sydney, citing Broadbent and Hughes's book on Greenway, says it was Greenway's first private commission in the colony. His great Macquarie buildings came later. The City of Sydney's history walk says Greenway "remodelled" the house in the 1810s. I haven't found a source that says exactly what he added, so I'll leave it at that.

There was some bad news waiting for Harris, too. According to Champion, his "much-prized herd of about 400 deer had been dispersed during his absence". Still, the Harrises entertained a great deal and Ultimo House became "one of the best-known places of Sydney". They never had children. Around 1820 a nephew, also called John Harris (later John Harris of Shane's Park), arrived in Sydney.

Harris was one of the first directors of the Bank of New South Wales in 1817 and went as surgeon on Oxley's 1819 expedition to Bathurst.

The Colony's Best Address – the Tenants

Harris moved out in 1821, and again the sources give different reasons. Champion says he decided the house was too big for just the two of them and moved to Crown Cottage nearby, and later to his 890-acre estate at Shane's Park. The Dictionary of Sydney points to industry creeping in across Parramatta Street, with abattoirs along the Blackwattle Swamp. The Pyrmont History Group blames the smell from a nearby brewery and distillery.

His tenants kept it, in the Dictionary of Sydney's words, "one of the colony's premier addresses":

• Edward Riley, the merchant, from 1821 to 1824. Ultimo House became one of the town's great party houses. At one party, held to farewell HMS Tees and her crew and reported in the Sydney Gazette on 19 August 1824, 240 people dined in three sittings while Captain Piper's band played dances until morning.
• Judge John Stephen, the first solicitor-general, later a judge.
• John Edye Manning, registrar of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

John Harris died on 27 April 1838. The ADB says he left property "said to be worth £150,000". He left everything to his brothers' families (Champion), and the heirs wrangled for years. The Dictionary of Sydney's Ultimo entry jokes that "litigation seems to have been in the Harris family blood".

Experiment Farm Cottage at Harris Park, on the Parramatta land Harris bought from James Ruse. Its building date is still argued over. Photo by Sardaka, 2013, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Laundry, a Wool Broker and the Harrises Again – 1850s to 1890s

In the 1850s Ultimo House had an unlikely spell as a laundry. The Australian Washing Association advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald (3 May 1853) that the place had hot and cold water laid on, with washing taken in from Monday to Wednesday and sent back from Thursday to Saturday.

By 1855 it was a home again, leased to the wool broker James Wallach. By 1858 the Harris family had moved back in, first Mary Ann Harris and then George Harris, who lived there until he died in 1897. The Dictionary of Sydney calls George the surgeon's nephew in one entry and counts him among the third generation in another, so I'll leave the family tree alone. His relatives built houses nearby too, among them Bulwara in Jones Street and Warrane on Crown Road (now Bulwara Road), and Matthew Harris became Mayor of Sydney in 1898.

Meanwhile the estate was being whittled away. Frontages on George Street went in 1830 and 1832 (at about 30 shillings a foot, says Champion) and the Sydney Railway Company took seven acres in 1853. The big subdivision had to wait until the family squabbles were partly settled in 1859 (some accounts say the 1860s). After that the Harrises built rows of terraces and pubs, quarries opened along the western side of the peninsula, and by the late 1890s the old house was left with only about three acres.

Looking west over Darling Harbour and the old Pyrmont Bridge from the Sydney Town Hall tower in the 1870s. The peninsula beyond was nearly all Harris land once. Unknown photographer, 1870s, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fire and the Towers

Sometime in the 1870s the house caught fire. Champion quotes Mr George Harris, "the oldest representative of the younger generation of the family", who remembered:

"coming home from the Rev. Dr. Fullerton's Church in Pitt-street one Sunday morning and seeing the shingled roof of the house all ablaze."

After the fire, he said, his uncle George, who owned the house then, "made various additions and alterations, including the central wooden staircase, the dome, and the balcony". The Dictionary of Sydney says George Harris added three turreted towers to the front, probably after the fire. You can see them in the album photograph at the top. Around then, Champion says, a dividing wall went up between George's half with the house and the rest, owned by John Harris of Shane's Park.

The Technical College Moves In

The Sydney Technical College on the corner of Harris and Mary Ann Streets in 1899, built on land bought from the Harris family. Ultimo House was still standing on the same block. Star Photo Co., 1899, State Library of New South Wales (PXE 711 / 252), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The house's last chapter began in 1883, when the new Board of Technical Education held its first public meeting and someone suggested buying 3.5 acres of the Harris estate for a new Sydney Technical College. The Minister, Joseph Carruthers, thought students wouldn't travel to such a remote spot. So the engineer Norman Selfe and the architect James Barnet took him up to the top of Hordern's tall building at the Haymarket, where, Selfe recalled, "Ultimo House apparently lay right under foot". Once Carruthers had walked to the site, he agreed it was central after all.

The sources give different dates for the sale. Champion, who was a clerk in the Board's office at the time, says the Government bought the strip of over three acres from John Harris in 1888. He remembered Harris as "a burly old gentleman, who was somewhat deaf". The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1891 as the purchase year, and the City of Sydney's history walk gives 1890. The first classes started at Ultimo in March 1891, and the Government Architect W. E. Kemp's buildings, the College, the Technological Museum and two high schools, went up along Harris and Mary Ann Streets between 1891 and 1893.

In 1900 Mrs George (Matilda) Harris of Ultimo House gave the University of Sydney £1,700 to set up a law scholarship of £50 a year in memory of her husband. The George and Matilda Harris Scholarship is still going.

Classrooms in the Old House – 1910 to 1932

The Technical College buildings at Ultimo around 1900. In 1910 the College took over Ultimo House too. Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, about 1900, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1910 the College doubled in size, taking in the whole block of Harris, Mary Ann, Jones and Thomas Streets, including Ultimo House and its two acres of garden. At first the gardens were used as a lunch and recreation area, one of the only green, shady spots in the neighbourhood. James Nangle, head of the architecture department, oversaw turning the house into classrooms for women's dressmaking, millinery and flower-making, for veterinary science and agriculture, and for general lectures. The tumbledown stables and coach house at the back were used for bricklaying, plastering, masonry, drawing and design. Sydney Technical High School also held classes in Ultimo House from 1911 to 1924. The College was so crowded that students ate their meals by candlelight down in the cellars.

"Old Landmark Passing" – the End of Ultimo House

On 29 October 1932 the Sydney Morning Herald ran T. S. Champion's article "Ultimo House. Old Landmark Passing", which opened:

"In the course of a few weeks Ultimo House, in Harris-street, which figured so prominently in pre-Macquarie and later days, is to be pulled down to make room for further class-rooms required at the Technical College."

Nangle, by then Superintendent of Technical Education, gave Champion a description of what was left inside. The house was brick, with many of its inside walls "of the old colonial wattle and daub". The front doorway had a fanlight with "some delicate sash bars in circular form", and the windows still had their old inside shutters that folded back into the window linings like panels. The best thing in the house was the original stone staircase in a semicircular hall:

"The original stair is a fine example of what is known as a geometrical stair. It is in a semi-circular hall; the treads are of stone supported at one end only in the wall, so that the stair depends largely for its stability on the arch principle."

Some of the cedar mantelpieces were still there too, "very fine examples of mantelpieces of the Georgian period".

Champion's own visit was a bit sad. He climbed up to the dome, but the view was "entirely restricted to glimpses of workshops and tall buildings". The rooms were "all dark and dreary", and he had to strike match after match to see them. "Evidently the family ghost, if one existed, was absent," he wrote, "but in one room (used formerly for Veterinary Science teaching) there still remained the skeleton of a horse's head suspended from a bracket."

He called it, "so far as I am aware", the oldest dwelling house in Australia built by Government labour, but admitted it had "long outlived its usefulness". Nangle meant to keep some mantelpieces, and Champion suggested a student make a model of the house in Oamaru stone for the Mitchell Library. I don't know whether either happened.

The Dictionary of Sydney's Ultimo House entry says the house was demolished in November 1932, and that more Herald articles mourning the old landmark followed, including one on 24 November 1932. Its Sydney Technical College entry, citing Norm Neill's 1991 history of the College, says it was "finally demolished in 1933", and the City of Sydney says it was gone "by 1933". It may simply be that the work began in late 1932 and ran into 1933, but I haven't been able to confirm that. Its replacement was a new Electrical Engineering building designed by Edward Rembert, a former student of the College.

What's There Today

The old Technical College building as part of the TAFE campus at Ultimo in 2007. The grounds of Ultimo House lie under the campus. Photo by J Bar, 2007, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The block is still a college campus. The Technical College became TAFE, and the old Kemp buildings on Mary Ann Street are still in use at TAFE NSW's Ultimo campus. The City of Sydney walk notes that as you go along Jones Street, which cuts through the campus, "you are walking in what were once the grounds of Surgeon John Harris' Ultimo House", and calls the place the "sacred site" of technical education in New South Wales. UTS and UNSW both began as parts of the College.

The Harris name is still everywhere. Harris Street runs right down the peninsula, Harris Park at Parramatta is named after the family, and the suburb carries the name of a court case Harris is said to have won more than 220 years ago. It still seems a shame to me that the house where the Rum Rebellion was hatched was knocked down for a classroom block, but it did outlast nearly every other colonial house in Sydney.

Timeline

• 1754 – John Harris born at Moneymore, Ireland.
• 1790 – Arrives in the Surprize (Second Fleet), NSW Corps surgeon's mate.
• 1802–1803 – Two courts martial, two acquittals; the "ultimo" story belongs here.
• December 1803 – Governor King grants him 34 acres.
• 1804 – Brick house built by government labour (c.1805 per City of Sydney).
• January 1808 – Anti-Bligh dinner at Ultimo House; Bligh arrested 26 January.
• 1809–1814 – Harris in England; returns on the General Hewitt with his wife Eliza and convict Francis Greenway.
• c.1814 – Greenway extends the house, his first private commission.
• 1818 – Estate reaches about 233 acres.
• From 1821 – Leased to Edward Riley (1821–24), Judge John Stephen and John Edye Manning.
• 1838 – Harris dies on 27 April.
• 1850s – Briefly a laundry (Australian Washing Association); 1855 leased to James Wallach.
• 1858–1897 – Harris family back in residence; George Harris lives there until his death in 1897.
• 1859 – Estate divided; subdivision begins.
• 1870s – Fire; towers, dome and balcony added.
• 1888–1891 – Government buys Harris land for the Technical College (dates differ).
• 1910 – College takes over the house and gardens.
• 1911–1924 – Sydney Technical High School classes in the house.
• 29 October 1932 – Herald runs "Ultimo House. Old Landmark Passing".
• November 1932 / 1933 – House demolished for the Electrical Engineering building.

Pictures Worth Looking Up

There are no free-licence pictures of Ultimo House itself on Wikimedia Commons, so these are links only:

• Edward Mason, "Ultimo Place with Cockle Bay", c.1821–1823, State Library of New South Wales (a1080067 / PXC 459, image 28), shown on the Dictionary of Sydney: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/image/18880
• "The Ultimo Estate and Darling Harbour about 1865", Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales (a7446060 / DL PX 148), shown on the Dictionary of Sydney's Ultimo entry: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ultimo
• The Dictionary of Sydney's Ultimo House entry and its picture gallery: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ultimo_house

My Earlier Posts

• The Lord Wolseley Hotel – 1881 – Ultimo – Pyrmont – Sydney – NSW
• Arrest of Governor Bligh – The Rum Rebellion – 26 January 1808
• The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808 – Governor William Bligh Is Overthrown At Government House – Sydney
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta – NSW
• Old Government House – Parramatta – New South Wales
• Francis Greenway's Residence – George Street, Cnr Argyle Street – The Rocks – Sydney
• St Matthew's Church, Windsor – Francis Greenway
• Hyde Park Barracks – Macquarie Street
• South Head – The Macquarie Lighthouse
• Simeon Lord's Mansion – Macquarie Place – Sydney – NSW
• Spencer Lodge – Millers Point
• Lyndhurst – 61 Darghan Street – Glebe – NSW
• Brickfield Creek
• The Old Toll Gate – Cnr George And Pitt Sts Railway Square
• Darling Harbour May 2024
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail – A History of Sydney Transport
• Old Sydney Demolished – The Truth – Saturday 20th April 1912 – Page 10
• Disappearing Relics Of Old Sydney – Sydney Mail – Wednesday 1st September 1926 – Page 10

Sources

Reference works and histories

• Mark Dunn, "Ultimo House", Dictionary of Sydney, 2010. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ultimo_house
• Shirley Fitzgerald, "Ultimo", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ultimo
• "Sydney Technical College", Dictionary of Sydney (citing Norm Neill, Technically & Further: Sydney Technical College 1891–1991, Hale & Iremonger, 1991). https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydney_technical_college
• "Ultimo House" (building record), Dictionary of Sydney. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/ultimo_house
• B. H. Fletcher, "Harris, John (1754–1838)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1, 1966. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/harris-john-2164
• Pyrmont History Group, "Surgeon John Harris". https://pyrmonthistory.net.au/harris-surgeon-john
• City of Sydney, Renewal: Ultimo History Walk (2024 edition). https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/-/media/corporate/files/publications/history/history-walks/renewal-ultimo-history-walk-accessible-20240821.pdf
• Shirley Fitzgerald and Hilary Golder, Pyrmont & Ultimo: Under Siege, Hale & Iremonger, 1994 (2nd ed. Halstead Press, 2009), as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.
• J. Broadbent and J. Hughes, Francis Greenway: Architect, Historic Houses Trust, 1997, p. 83, as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.
• Wikipedia, "John Harris (Australian settler)". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harris_(Australian_settler)
• Wikipedia, "Ultimo, New South Wales". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimo,_New_South_Wales
• Wikipedia, "Francis Greenway". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Greenway
• "From heaven to hell in one easy walk", Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 2005. https://www.smh.com.au/national/from-heaven-to-hell-in-one-easy-walk-20050307-gdkvfa.html

Newspapers (Trove)

• T. S. Champion, "Ultimo House. Old Landmark Passing", Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 1932, p. 9. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16926435
• Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 19 August 1824, p. 4 (party for HMS Tees), as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.
• Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 1853, p. 1 (Australian Washing Association advertisement), as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.
• Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1911, p. 4 (Ultimo House converted to classrooms), as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.
• Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November 1932 (Ultimo House demolition), as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney.

Pictures

• Apart from the two album photographs of Ultimo House at the top, all pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, with the original holders, licences and links given under each picture.