Black Caesar – John Caesar, First Fleet Convict and Australia's First Bushranger – c.1763 to 1796

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.

Ask most people to name an Australian bushranger and you'll get Ned Kelly, Ben Hall or Captain Thunderbolt. Hardly anyone says John Caesar. Yet the man the First Fleet officers called "Black Caesar" was out in the bush around Sydney Cove robbing gardens with a stolen musket in 1789, the best part of a century before the Kelly Gang. He escaped again and again, ran a small gang of runaways, had a price put on his head, and was shot dead near what is now Strathfield in February 1796. The Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW all call him Australia's first bushranger.

A word of warning before we start. Nearly everything we know about Caesar was written by the officers who were trying to catch him, mostly the Judge-Advocate David Collins. Collins wrote about him in the openly racist language of the 1790s. I quote him where I have to, because his are the only eyewitness words we have, but remember who was holding the pen.

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson in January 1788, drawn by Lieutenant William Bradley of the Sirius. John Caesar was below decks on the Alexander. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was John Caesar?

We don't know his real name. "Caesar" was a common name given to slaves, and the account on the Enslaved.org database (from Kimberly Cheek's entry in the African American National Biography) says he probably got it after being taken to the Americas as a slave in the late 1770s. The ADB says he was "of unknown African parentage" and "may have been born on Madagascar". Lieutenant William Bradley wrote in January 1790 that Caesar was "a Native of Madagascar". The Dictionary of Sydney, on the other hand, calls him a "West Indian who fled to England to escape plantation slavery".

Madagascar on John Hamilton Moore's map of 1791. Bradley called Caesar "a Native of Madagascar". John Hamilton Moore, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From Slavery to the Streets of London

The historian Cassandra Pybus, in her 2006 book Black Founders, put Caesar into a bigger story. Jeff Sparrow's review in The Age explains it. During the American Revolution, Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, offered freedom to slaves who would fight for the King, and hundreds ran to the British lines. When Britain lost, the lucky ones got a berth on the last ships out of New York and were written down in a register called the Book of Negroes. Many ended up poor and friendless in London. Pybus summed up the point bluntly: "Australia's first bushranger was black as pitch."

Wikipedia, drawing on Pybus, says the Book of Negroes lists two young men called Caesar, aged 14 and 18, sailing to Spithead in England in 1783, and that Pybus believes the 14-year-old, a "stout fellow", was our man. The Enslaved.org account says he either fled to the British hoping for freedom, or was the property of a Loyalist owner who went back to England after the war.

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation of 7 November 1775, offering freedom to slaves who would fight for the British. Pybus traces Caesar's road to London back to promises like this one. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A page from the Book of Negroes, the 1783 register of Black Loyalists leaving New York with the British. Pybus believes Caesar is in it. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Deptford, Maidstone and the Hulk

By 1786 Caesar was a servant living in the parish of St Paul, Deptford, on the Thames. On 13 March that year, at Maidstone in Kent, he was convicted of stealing about £12 from a house and sentenced to seven years' transportation. He was sent to the hulk Ceres to wait for a ship. When his age was taken in May 1787 it was put at 23, which is where the "born about 1763" comes from.

Deptford Dockyard on the Thames, painted by Joseph Farington in the 1700s. This was Caesar's neighbourhood in the 1780s. Joseph Farington, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St Paul's Church, Deptford. Caesar was a servant living in this parish in 1786. Anosmia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A convict hulk at Woolwich, from the New Newgate Calendar. Caesar waited on the hulk Ceres before he was put aboard the Alexander. Page, after Dodd, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Alexander and the First Fleet

On 6 January 1787 Caesar was put aboard the Alexander at Woolwich. The Dictionary of Sydney calls her "the largest and most notorious convict transport in the First Fleet", a 452-ton barque carrying 195 of "ye worst of land-lubbers". Its entry describes Caesar as "a well-built Malagasy". Wikipedia says he was one of at least twelve black convicts on the ship. Carolyn Webb, writing about Santilla Chingaipe's research in 2021, said there were at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.

The Alexander reached Botany Bay with the rest of the fleet on 19 January 1788.

The First Fleet at Cape Town in November 1787, the last port of call before Botany Bay, by William Bradley. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Fleet arriving at Botany Bay in January 1788, engraved by T. Medland after R. Cleveley, with Aboriginal people watching from their canoes. R. Cleveley and T. Medland, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Strength and Appetite

What everyone noticed about Caesar was his size and his hunger. Collins wrote that he "was always reputed the hardest working convict in the country; his frame was muscular and well calculated for hard labour". Then came the problem: "his appetite was ravenous, for he could in any one day devour the full ration for two days. To gratify this appetite he was compelled to steal from others, and all his thefts were directed to that purpose."

That rations problem was real. Wikipedia says Caesar was six feet tall, and that the weekly ration in 1790 was about a kilo of pork, 1.2 kilos of flour and a kilo of rice. For a big man doing hard labour, that was hunger.

The trouble started early. Extracts from the Sydney Cove records, put together by the University of Wollongong's First Fleet project, show that on 30 April 1788, barely three months after landing, Caesar was accused of stealing 4 pounds of bread from Richard Partridge's tent. Caesar said the bread in his bag had been given to him by a Mr Shairp.

Sydney Cove in 1788, by William Bradley. This tiny camp was the settlement Caesar kept running away from. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Into the Bush, Again and Again

The First Escape, May 1789

On 29 April 1789 Caesar was tried for theft again and sentenced to transportation for life. Scott recorded in his diary that "two Black men (Convicts) one by the name of Ceasar and the other called Black Jemmy" were tried that day. Caesar got life and Black Jemmy got 500 lashes.

On 13 May Caesar ran. Scott wrote that he "Elloped from Camp taking with him Arms and Ammunition belonging to Abraham Hand, Marine". Collins said he took "some provisions, an iron pot, and a soldier's musket". On 26 May he robbed the brickmakers of their rations and got away from the party sent after him. On the night of 6 June another convict, William Saltmarsh, caught him close to the house of Zachariah Clark, the assistant commissary.

Caesar wasn't sorry. Collins wrote that he was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing off some trick upon the executioner." Governor Phillip decided not to hang him. Instead he was sent to Garden Island to work in fetters, and he was given vegetables from the garden on top of his ration.

Garden Island today, now part of the naval base. Caesar worked here in chains in 1789. Dcoetzee, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Canoe, December 1789

Caesar behaved himself on Garden Island well enough to have his irons taken off. Then on 22 December 1789 he took the canoe kept there for the workers, along with a week of their food, and went. A few nights later he came back in the canoe and helped himself to an iron pot, a musket and some ammunition.

This time he tried to live off the land. The ADB says he robbed settlers' gardens and threatened Aboriginal people camped nearby, taking their food. He couldn't make it work. On 30 January 1790 Collins recorded that Caesar had turned up at Rose Hill "very much wounded by some natives whom he had met with in the woods", with "several spear wounds about him in different parts of his body". Caesar tried to talk his way out of a flogging with a story that he had found the colony's lost cattle being minded by Aboriginal men, and had been speared trying to drive them home. Nobody believed him. He went to the hospital instead of the triangle.

The naval depot on Garden Island about 1900, from the Tyrrell collection. Powerhouse Museum, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Norfolk Island

Phillip then did something surprising. He pardoned Caesar and shipped him off to Norfolk Island in the Supply, in March 1790. Collins wrote that among the convicts sent there was "the troublesome and incorrigible Caesar, on whom he had bestowed a pardon".

On the island Caesar did better than he ever had in Sydney. By 1 July 1791 he was supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough and had been given a hog. In January 1792 he was given an acre of land and only had to work three days a week for the government. He also had a partner, Ann Power, a convict who had come out on the Lady Juliana in 1790. Their daughter was born on 4 March 1792.

The Justinian and Surprize standing into Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, on 23 August 1790, drawn by William Bradley. Caesar had arrived on the island a few months earlier. William Bradley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Part of the reef in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, where the Sirius was wrecked, by William Bradley. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kingston, Norfolk Island, from Flagstaff Hill in 2018. Inas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It didn't last. About twelve months after his daughter was born, Caesar went back to Port Jackson in the Kitty, leaving Ann and the baby behind. Ann died on Norfolk Island in 1796. Their daughter was taken in by a woman named Hannah Fisher, was baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power in 1806, and later went to Van Diemen's Land.

Back in Sydney, and Pemulwuy

Caesar was barely back before he was off again. In July 1794 Collins reported that he "took up again his former practice of subsisting in the woods by plundering the farms and huts at the outskirts of the towns". He was soon caught and flogged hard, and he answered, Collins wrote, "with exultation and contempt, that 'all that would not make him better.'"

Late in 1795 Caesar was with a convict work party at Botany Bay when it was attacked by warriors led by the Bidjigal resistance leader Pemulwuy. The ADB says Caesar wounded Pemulwuy. Wikipedia says he cracked his skull. For a while the colony thought Caesar had killed him. In December Collins wrote that Caesar was "reported" to have "done one meritorious action, killing Pe-mul-wy". The Dictionary of Sydney's Pemulwuy entry says the report "turned out to be false". Pemulwuy kept fighting for another six years, until he was shot dead on 2 June 1802.

Botany Bay about 1789, a watercolour by Charles Gore. Late in 1795 Caesar's work party was attacked at Botany Bay, in Bidjigal country. Charles Gore, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Watling's "Direct North General View of Sydney Cove", 1794. This was the town Caesar came back to from Norfolk Island. Thomas Watling, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Australia's First Bushranger

In December 1795 Caesar escaped for the last time. Collins, in one of his ugliest lines, called him "a savage of a darker hue" who had "once more fled from honest labour to the woods, there to subsist by robbing the settlers". This time Caesar wasn't on his own. He had a gang of runaways around him, armed, and Collins later put their number at "six or eight".

Caesar sent word into town that "he neither would come in, nor suffer himself to be taken alive". That made him a real problem for the Governor. Collins wrote that "scarcely a morning arrived without a complaint being made to the magistrates of a loss of property supposed to have been occasioned by this man. In fact, every theft that was committed was ascribed to him." When a cask of pork went missing from the millhouse and the sentries were acquitted, the blame went on Caesar too.

Governor John Hunter, engraved in 1801. Hunter put the reward on Caesar's head in January 1796. Engraved by Ridley, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Reward: Five Gallons of Spirits

On 29 January 1796 Governor John Hunter offered a reward to whoever would "secure and bring him in with his arms": five gallons of spirits. Wikipedia calls it a generous reward, and in the rum-soaked colony of the 1790s it was. Settlers and anyone else trusted with ammunition were warned what would happen if they were caught passing it to the runaways.

David Collins, the colony's Judge-Advocate, whose Account of the English Colony in New South Wales is the main record of Caesar's life. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Shot at Liberty Plains, February 1796

The reward worked. On Monday 15 February 1796, while a criminal court was sitting in Sydney, word came in that Black Caesar had been shot that morning. Collins tells it in a few lines:

"This man and another, allured by the reward, had been for some days in quest of him. Finding his haunt, they concealed themselves all night at the edge of a brush which they perceived him enter at dusk. In the morning he came out, when, looking round him and seeing his danger, he presented his musket; but before he could pull the trigger Wimbow fired and shot him. He was taken to the hut of Rose, a settler at Liberty Plains, where he died in a few hours."

The man who shot him was John Wimbow, an ex-highwayman who had served his time. The ADB places Liberty Plains at today's Strathfield, and the hut belonged to the settler Thomas Rose. Collins didn't name the second man. A 1936 article in The World's News said he was James Ruse, the ex-convict who Museums of History NSW says was the first person in NSW to get a land grant. That rests on one newspaper story written 140 years later.

Collins gave Caesar a cruel epitaph: "Thus ended a man, who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above the brute, and who had given more trouble than any other convict in the settlement."

Sydney Cove by Thomas Watling, painted between 1794 and 1796, the years of Caesar's last escapes. Thomas Watling, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

His Legacy

For a long time Caesar was a footnote, or a figure of fun. Wikipedia lists newspaper stories from the 1890s and 1930s about him, one headed "The First Great Bushranger", and Thomas Keneally put him in his 1987 novel The Playmaker, which became the play Our Country's Good. Wikipedia notes that the novel shows him as the "mad Madagascan" in leg irons, which isn't how historians see him now.

That changed with Cassandra Pybus's Black Founders in 2006, which told the stories of the black convicts and settlers of early Sydney, including Billy Blue of Blues Point. In 2021 Santilla Chingaipe's SBS documentary Our African Roots had the actor Mohamed Osman playing Caesar. Chingaipe told Carolyn Webb she thought stories like his were forgotten because of the White Australia years. They didn't fit our "myths about who we were and who we wanted to be". In 2024 she published Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia.

The American historian Kimberly Cheek points out, as Wikipedia quotes her, that Caesar's life crossed four continents, Africa, North America, Europe and Australia, and reflects "the broad global experiences of some Africans in the eighteenth century". Museums of History NSW puts it simply. He was one of many convicts "of all ages, races and religions" on the First Fleet, and he "became Australia's first bushranger when he fled the settlement in December 1795".

What I keep coming back to is the man under Collins's sneering. He was probably carried off from Africa as a youngster, crossed the Atlantic as a slave, came to London and then across the world in chains. He worked harder than anyone, was always hungry, would not be broken by the lash, and laughed at the idea of the gallows. He was finally shot for a few gallons of rum somewhere out around today's Strathfield. Ned Kelly gets the statues, but Caesar was first.

The convict establishment at Kingston, Norfolk Island, in 1848, half a century after Caesar's time there. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson, as imagined for the centenary in 1888 by E. Le Bihan. E. Le Bihan, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• About 1763 – Born, probably in Africa and possibly on Madagascar (ADB).
• Late 1770s – Enslaved in the Americas, probably Virginia or South Carolina (Enslaved.org; Wikipedia).
• 1783 – A 14-year-old "Caesar" sails from New York to Spithead. Pybus believes this was him.
• 13 March 1786 – Convicted at Maidstone, Kent, of stealing about £12. Seven years' transportation. Sent to the hulk Ceres.
• 6 January 1787 – Embarks on the Alexander at Woolwich.
• 19 January 1788 – The Alexander reaches Botany Bay with the First Fleet.
• 30 April 1788 – Accused of stealing 4 lb of bread from Richard Partridge.
• 29 April 1789 – Tried for theft and sentenced to transportation for life.
• 13 May 1789 – First escape, with a marine's musket and ammunition.
• 6 June 1789 – Caught by William Saltmarsh near Zachariah Clark's house. Sent to Garden Island in fetters.
• 22 December 1789 – Escapes from Garden Island in a canoe.
• 30–31 January 1790 – Gives himself up at Rose Hill, badly speared.
• March 1790 – Pardoned and sent to Norfolk Island in the Supply.
• 1 July 1791 – Supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough, Norfolk Island.
• 4 March 1792 – Daughter born to Ann Power.
• 1793 – Returns to Port Jackson in the Kitty.
• July 1794 – Third escape. Caught and severely punished.
• Late 1795 – Wounds Pemulwuy during an attack on a work party at Botany Bay.
• December 1795 – Final escape. Leads a gang of six or eight runaways.
• 29 January 1796 – Governor Hunter offers five gallons of spirits for his capture.
• 15 February 1796 – Shot by John Wimbow. Dies a few hours later in Thomas Rose's hut at Liberty Plains.
• 1806 – His daughter is baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power on Norfolk Island.
• 2006 – Cassandra Pybus publishes Black Founders.
• 2021 – SBS screens Our African Roots, with Mohamed Osman as Caesar.

Where the Sources Disagree

• Where he was born. Bradley in 1790 called him "a Native of Madagascar", and the ADB and Enslaved.org lean that way. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him "West Indian", and Wikipedia says early newspaper stories had him born in the West Indies.
• How old he was. His age was put at 23 in May 1787, which gives the usual "about 1763". If Pybus is right that he was the 14-year-old Caesar in the 1783 Book of Negroes, he would have been born about 1769.
• When he went to Norfolk Island. Collins wrote of it on 3 March 1790, and the ADB gives 4 March 1790. Kimberly Cheek's account on Enslaved.org says 6 March 1791.
• When he gave himself up after the canoe escape. Collins records it on 30 January 1790, while the ADB and Bradley say 31 January.
• All night or all day? The 1798 text of Collins on Project Gutenberg says Wimbow and his mate hid "all night" at the edge of the brush. The extract from Cobley's Sydney Cove on the University of Wollongong site reads "all day".
• Who was with Wimbow. Collins only says "another". A 1936 World's News article named James Ruse, as Wikipedia notes.
• Wimbow or Winbow. Collins and the ADB spell it Wimbow. Cheek's account spells it Winbow.
• Spirits or rum. Collins and the ADB say "five gallons of spirits". Enslaved.org says five gallons of rum.
• Did he kill Pemulwuy? Collins passed on the December 1795 report that Caesar had killed him. The ADB and Wikipedia say Caesar only wounded him, and the Dictionary of Sydney says the report "turned out to be false".
• How many escapes. Museums of History NSW says "no less than four". Counting the May 1789, December 1789, July 1794 and December 1795 runs gives four.
• How many black convicts came with him. Wikipedia says at least twelve on the Alexander alone. Carolyn Webb, reporting Chingaipe's research, says at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.
• When his daughter left Norfolk Island. The ADB says she went to Van Diemen's Land in 1813, and Wikipedia says 1814.
• Was he really the first bushranger? The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW say yes. Britannica, as quoted on Wikipedia, says he "probably became the first bushranger". The ADB and Museums of History NSW date it from his last escape in December 1795, while Carolyn Webb dates it from his first escape in 1789.

My Earlier Posts

• Pemulwuy – Bidjigal Resistance Leader of Botany Bay and Parramatta
• Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly
• Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales – Norfolk Island, the Rum Trade and the Sydney Gazette
• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• The First Gaol – George Street North, The Rocks
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour
• Sydney Past & Present – Chapter 1 – The Founding Of The City
• The Rum Corps – The New South Wales Corps, Rum, Land and Power in Early Sydney – 1789 to 1818
• Billy Blue – The Old Commodore of Blues Point – Convict, Ferryman and Macquarie's Harbour Watchman – c.1767 to 1834

Sources

• Chris Cunneen and Mollie Gillen, "Caesar, John Black (c. 1763–1796)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2005 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/caesar-john-black-12829
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg eBook 12565 – https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12565/pg12565.txt
• University of Wollongong First Fleet project, "John Caesar as the documents tell it" (extracts from Cobley, Sydney Cove) – http://firstfleet.uow.edu.au/s_caesar.html
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Caesar, John" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/caesar_john
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Alexander" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/alexander
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Pemulwuy" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/pemulwuy
• Museums of History NSW, "John 'Black Caesar'", 24 July 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-fleet-ships/john-black-caesar/
• Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, "John Caesar" (after Kimberly Cheek, African American National Biography) – https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-106179/
• Wikipedia, "John Caesar" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caesar
• Jeff Sparrow, review of Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders, The Age, 17 June 2006 – https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/black-founders-the-unknown-story-of-australias-first-black-settlers-20060617-ge2jae.html
• Carolyn Webb, "Australia's first bushranger – he may not be who you think", Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, 24 September 2021 – https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/australia-s-first-bushranger-he-may-not-be-who-you-think-20210922-p58tzj.html
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.

The Amazing Islands of Sydney Harbour - Sydney - New South Wales

Call it nine if you like — the harbour does not care. Port Jackson began as a drowned valley with something like fourteen sandstone knobs still showing when the water stopped rising. Five of those knobs have since been stapled to the shore (Garden, Bennelong, Darling, Glebe, Berry). Two more were joined to make Spectacle. What you can still row around, depending who is counting, is about eight: Shark, Clark, Fort Denison (Pinchgut), Goat, Cockatoo, Snapper, Rodd, and Spectacle as the joined pair. Three islands that often turn up on Sydney Harbour lists actually belong to other water.

Start with the ones that are actually in the harbour. Shark and Clark are picnic islands in Sydney Harbour National Park. Pinchgut is Fort Denison — a Martello on a cut-down rock, finished 1857, not a starvation cage you swim from. Goat sits in the western harbour as a powder-magazine and water-police island; Cockatoo is the big convict-and-dockyard island, now Harbour Trust. Snapper and Spectacle are the navy pair off Drummoyne. Rodd is the little Iron Cove reserve that once hosted Pasteur's rabbit laboratory. Garden Island was an island until the Captain Cook Graving Dock joined it to Potts Point; Glebe Island has been a causeway-and-abattoir peninsula since the mid-nineteenth century.

Then the three that do not belong on a Sydney Harbour list. Scotland Island is in Pittwater. Bare Island is the 1880s fort off La Perouse, Botany Bay. Wedding Cake Island is the ocean rock off Coogee. The Pinchgut line about convicts starving and becoming shark food is folklore. The islands follow one by one below.

Islands still in Sydney Harbour

• Shark Island (Boambilly)
• Clark Island (Billong-olola)
• Fort Denison, formerly Pinchgut
• Goat Island (Me-mel)
• Cockatoo Island (Wareamah)
• Snapper Island
• Rodd Island
• Spectacle Island, the joined pair

Former islands joined to the shore

Garden Island, Bennelong Point, Darling Island, Glebe Island and Berry Island are former islands now connected to the mainland or nearby shore.

Not Port Jackson

• Scotland Island - Pittwater
• Bare Island - Botany Bay, at La Perouse
• Wedding Cake Island - off Coogee

The Islands One by One

Wedding Cake Island

Wedding Cake Island is a small rocky island located in the eastern part of Sydney Harbour, off the coast of Coogee Beach in New South Wales, Australia. Here's some information about Wedding Cake Island:

1. Name: Wedding Cake Island gets its name due to its distinctive shape, which is said to resemble a tiered wedding cake. The name is derived from its appearance when viewed from a distance, particularly from Coogee Beach or other vantage points along the coast.

2. Geological Formation: The island is a rocky outcrop that emerged due to geological processes over millions of years. It is composed of sandstone, which is a common rock type in the Sydney region.

3. Marine Life and Surrounding Area: The island is part of a marine reserve and is known for its diverse marine ecosystem. The surrounding waters are popular for snorkeling and diving due to the presence of coral reefs and a variety of fish and other marine creatures.

4. Access and Conservation: Wedding Cake Island is located offshore and can be seen from various coastal viewpoints. Access to the island itself is restricted to protect the local environment and wildlife. Visitors are not permitted to land on the island.

5. Importance to the Local Community: Wedding Cake Island is a significant landmark for the local community, particularly for residents and visitors of Coogee Beach. It adds to the natural beauty of the area and is often featured in photographs and artwork depicting the Sydney coastline.

6. Music Connection: Wedding Cake Island gained additional recognition through its association with the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. The band released a song titled "Wedding Cake Island" in 1979, which contributed to the island's cultural significance.

Wedding Cake Island is a distinctive geological feature and a notable landmark in Sydney Harbour. Its unique shape, marine biodiversity, and connection to the local community make it a memorable part of the coastal landscape.

Glebe Island

Glebe Island sits between White Bay, Johnstons Bay and Rozelle Bay — the inner western harbour’s working knuckle that most people now clock under the Anzac Bridge cables. The name “glebe” recalls an early church land grant to First Fleet chaplain Richard Johnson; the rocky outcrop was later swapped and the name travelled with colonial church-land patterns. Aboriginal people of the western foreshores used these bays long before reclamation glued the former island to the Rozelle shoreline.

From the 1850s the place went industrial hard. Colonial Architect Edmund Blacket designed stone buildings for a public abattoir (opened around 1860), and a timber bridge soon linked the island to Pyrmont so meat could reach the city. The smells and effluent made it a notorious noxious trade; slaughtering later moved to Homebush. In the early twentieth century the Sydney Harbour Trust levelled and wharfed the rock. From 1921 tall concrete grain elevators and silos dominated the skyline as a bulk wheat terminal; later decades brought dry bulk cargoes and vehicle imports beside neighbouring White Bay.

Percy Allan’s 1903 Glebe Island swing bridge remains a landmark beside the later Anzac Bridge (opened 1995, renamed 1998). Though still called an “island,” the site has long been continuous with the mainland. It is a rare inner-harbour working-port landscape whose silos and wharves sit at the centre of Bays West / Bays Precinct fights over heritage, housing and public waterfront.

Glebe Island abattoirs, Sydney Harbour — historic photograph; State Library of NSW.

Snapper Island

Snapper is the smallest island in Sydney Harbour — a ship-shaped scrap off Drummoyne and Birkenhead Point, sitting with Cockatoo and Spectacle in the western harbour. Early colonial wordlists record an Aboriginal name Ar-ra-re-agon. For most of the nineteenth century the rocky islet saw little permanent building; it was declared a public recreation reserve in the late 1870s and then barely visited.

World War I leased it for storage tied to Cockatoo Island Dockyard. The silhouette everyone notices today dates from 1931–32, when Leonard (Len) Forsythe of the Navy League had the rock blasted, levelled and expanded by reclamation into Training Depot “Sydney” (TS Sydney) for naval cadets. TS Sydney opened in November 1932. Seawalls were cut to suggest a ship’s bow and stern; buildings followed a deck-like plan a land-locked training ship pointed at Drummoyne. Parts salvaged from HMAS Sydney I when she was stripped at Cockatoo helped furnish the memorial idea.

TS Sydney ran as headquarters for Sydney Navy League units for decades. The island is on the Commonwealth Heritage List for Forsythe, the cadets, and that odd harbour skyline contribution. Structures have weathered; the museum collection moved (including to Spectacle and Garden Island) around 2006. Unlike Spectacle’s explosives complex, Snapper’s significance is cadet training, not magazines; access stays tightly managed.

Navy League / Sea Cadets at Snapper Island, Sydney (historical photograph).

Spectacle Island

Off Drummoyne, tucked with Cockatoo and Snapper in the old “Hen and Chickens” group, Spectacle Island is the harbour’s quiet explosives cousin — the one most Sydneysiders only clock from a ferry or the Anzac Bridge approach. An Aboriginal name recorded in early colonial wordlists is Gong-ul. The European story is almost entirely powder and armament: Australia’s oldest naval explosives manufacturing and storage complex, with fabric from the 1860s still sitting on the rock.

From the early 1860s the colonial government put a gunpowder magazine here. Victorian Georgian buildings associated with Colonial Architect James Barnet — magazine, laboratory, cooperage, guard and residential structures — form the nineteenth-century core. In 1884 the island went to the Royal Navy as an ordnance depot for the Australia Squadron; in 1913 it passed to the new Royal Australian Navy and kept feeding ammunition lighters through both world wars and into the late twentieth century.

Spectacle Island is a Commonwealth Heritage place. It is no longer an operational ammunition pipeline and remains largely closed to the general public. A Naval Repository of RAN relics sits among the buildings. Together with Cockatoo and Snapper it reads as a tight brick-and-sandstone industrial pocket that never became a picnic lawn — and that is the point.

Garden Island

Stand on the Potts Point side of Woolloomooloo Bay and Garden Island still reads as a low green hump under the navy’s cranes — except it stopped being a true island generations ago. Aboriginal names recorded in early sources include Ba-ing-hoe / Booroowang (Navy histories also cite Bayingawuwa). Within weeks of the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 the rock was cleared as a vegetable garden for HMS Sirius — standard Royal Navy anti-scurvy practice. The ship’s log for 11 February 1788 already calls it “the garden island,” and the English name stuck. Sandstone initials dated 1788 survive as rare physical scraps of that first year.

After decades of ships’ gardens and intermittent official use, the mid-1850s turned the place into a serious Royal Navy depot on the Australia Station. In 1913, when the first Royal Australian Navy fleet unit arrived, Admiralty control passed to the Commonwealth. Two world wars thickened the yards into Australia’s principal fleet base and ship-refitting centre. The Captain Cook Graving Dock, built in the Second World War, joined the former island permanently to the Potts Point mainland — the land bridge you still see when a ferry rounds Garden Island ferry wharf.

Today the precinct is Fleet Base East / HMAS Kuttabul: a working naval establishment with nationally significant heritage fabric, not a picnic island. Public access is restricted; heritage interpretation runs through Navy and related historical societies rather than a casual landing.

Clark Island

Clark Island is the tiny bush knuckle off Darling Point — less than a hectare, close enough to Double Bay that you feel you could almost swim the gap on a calm day. Early colonial sources record Aboriginal names including Billong-olola / Be-lang-le-wool; modern visitor material also uses Billong-Olo-Lah. It sits on Gadigal Country and was used for hunting and gathering shellfish along the eastern harbour foreshores.

In 1789 First Fleet officer Lieutenant Ralph Clark tried growing vegetables here. In a hungry colony, theft of the crop became a running joke — and a headache — but the name “Clark Island” stuck. Later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, like neighbouring Shark Island, it was pulled into public recreation planning: trusts and harbour authorities laid paths and picnic amenity without sanding off the rocky bush character.

Today NPWS runs it as a day-use picnic and event site with a ridiculous view west to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. There’s no public ferry timetable. You arrive by water taxi, private boat or cultural tour — Tribal Warrior Aboriginal cultural cruises are among the groups that land here. Landing fees and group caps apply; sunrise to sunset is the usual window. Pair it with Shark and Goat (Me-mel) if you’re doing the harbour islands as a set.

A day’s picnic on Clark Island, 1870 — Montagu Scott; State Library of NSW (ML 3).

Shark Island

Shark Island is the long, low green strip you notice when the ferry swings into Rose Bay — about a kilometre from the bay’s mouth, and small enough that a picnic rug can feel like half the island. NPWS spells the Aboriginal name Boowambillee (older records also use Boambilly). It sits on Gadigal Country as part of the harbour’s fishing and foreshore cultural landscape.

The English name is usually tied to the island’s shark-like outline. Yarns about sharks drawn to slaughtering waste still circulate — colourful, but treat them as popular lore, not gospel. Colonial and Federation governments bounced the place between quarantine and public recreation until public pressure helped lock it in as a reserve around 1900. Under the Clark Island Trust and later the Sydney Harbour Trust, Edwardian picnic kit arrived: paths, seats, shelters, and those sandstone foreshore grottos that still look like someone planned a holiday for the tide.

Shark Island joined Sydney Harbour National Park in 1975. It’s still one of the best 360-degree lunch spots on the harbour, and a favourite perch for watching the Sydney to Hobart fleet leave (the 1945 first race is linked with a start off this stretch of water). No scheduled ferry — private boat, water taxi or selected cruises, and a landing fee applies, same regime as Clark and Rodd.

Goat Island

Most harbour ferries slide past Me-mel — Goat Island — without stopping. That’s half the point of the place. It sits almost in the middle of Port Jackson, a sandstone knuckle of magazines, barracks, wharves and quiet bush that never became a picnic lawn like Shark or Clark.

Aboriginal people have known it as Me-mel (also written Milmil and similar forms in early records). Colonial writers linked it with the family of Woollawarre Bennelong; today’s NPWS material keeps Me-mel front and centre. From the 1830s the colonial government took over in earnest: water police, convict labour along the shoreline, then magazines and workshops that kept the island a working harbour machine well into the twentieth century. The State Heritage Register listing covers that whole layered mess — Aboriginal, historic and natural — not just a pretty outline on the water.

What’s left is denser than most visitors expect: buildings and structures from the 1830s through to the 1960s, including a Harbour Master’s residence from 1902. NPWS manages the island inside Sydney Harbour National Park while a government-backed process works toward Aboriginal ownership and governance of Me-mel. Remediation and conservation are underway; public access has always been tighter here than on the picnic islands. Check NPWS before you assume you can land.

Pinchgut Island – Fort Denison

That stubby Martello tower off the Botanic Garden isn’t a postcard prop — it’s Fort Denison, still better known to many Sydneysiders as Pinchgut. Colonial sources record Aboriginal names Mat-te-wan-ye / Muttewai and related spellings; NPWS today also uses Muddawahnyuh. Governor Phillip called the rock Rock Island soon after 1788, but “Pinchgut” won: usually tied to convicts left out here on bread and water, and sometimes to the harbour’s narrow pinch itself.

American warships sailed into the harbour unchallenged in 1839, which concentrated minds. Levelling for a fort began in 1841, then stalled. Crimean War jitters about a Russian attack restarted the work in the mid-1850s. Colonial engineer George Barney oversaw the battery and Australia’s only Martello tower, finished in 1857 with stone from Neutral Bay and named for Governor Sir William Denison. It never fired in anger. The design was already half out of date when the paint was still wet.

From the late nineteenth century the island earned its keep as a light and tide station. A time gun — moved from Dawes Point in 1906 — fired daily at 1 pm so ships could set chronometers; tide measurement has run from here for well over a century. In World War II a shell from USS Chicago, firing during the Japanese midget-submarine attack, damaged the tower. Since 1995 the fort has sat in Sydney Harbour National Park. Check NPWS alerts before you plan lunch on the bastion — conservation closures are not rare.

Fort Denison (Pinchgut) from the water, c.1885 Martello tower and battery already a harbour landmark.

Pinchgut – From John Dunmore Lang

Reverend John Dunmore Lang Remembered As He Said -

"An Island Called Pinchgut, Consisting Of One SolitAry

Governor Phillip Island at farm Cove, a conical peak on a perfect stunted bush have one function – as a dump until he had time to build a jail for convicts who committed crimes after reaching the colony. Maroon convicts who is Russian of bread and water was Road to them once a week changed its name from rock island to pinch gap.

Sometimes the hangman went out on the third boat for years the remnants of a man’s bones hung in chains on a giblet on the island Francis Morgan convicted with others of the murder of a man on the North Shore, with strung up as a warning. There’s a legend I asked if he wished to make any last remark he looked about him and said well you have yeah indeed a beautiful harbour

Early 1940 after two American warships had sneaked into the harbour at night without a pilot Governor gipps decided to rets how many gipps decided to arrange a battery on the island

He said gangs of convicts to level the rock and almost had the job done when he ran out of funds. The ruining of what had once been a lovely if sinister spot sent Dr Dunmore Lang into a rage and he denounce the official golf or Hun.

Military minds however could not resist the law of the island. When there was a Russian invasion scared during the Crimean war I thought was built on it – a Martello tower without buildings for power to magazines and quarters for a small permanent garrison foundations were quarry deep into the island rock. Stone for the 12 foot thick walls was brought from Carrabba point. The fort completed in 1957 was named after the governor so William Denison. The island is now used to the tide gauge in light and fog signal station. It’s 1 o’clock gun was discontinued in 1942

FRANCIS MORGAN. Was Strung Up on A Gibbet

Garden Island, Pinchgut and Clark Island from Rose Bay

From Rose Bay the harbour still reads as a set of rocks in a drowned valley, even though one of them has been stapled to the mainland. Garden Island was the First Fleet’s kitchen garden for HMS Sirius in 1788, which is the whole of the English name. The navy never really left. By the 1850s it was a Royal Navy yard; the RAN took it in 1913; in the 1940s the Captain Cook Graving Dock filled the channel to Potts Point, and the island became a peninsula. What you photograph from Rose Bay is a working dockyard pretending to be a headland.

The little fortified stack closer in is Pinchgut, officially Fort Denison. Governor Phillip’s Rock Island became a convict isolation rock — the “pinchgut” ration story is folklore with a nautical rival, a pinch in the harbour. George Barney had the old pyramid cut down and raised a Martello tower, finished in 1857. John Dunmore Lang called the levelling vandalism against a work of God. He had a point; the silhouette is now all gun and garrison.

Clark Island sits off Darling Point, named for Lieutenant Ralph Clark of the First Fleet, who ran a convict-tended vegetable garden there. It is a pocket of Sydney Harbour National Park: picnic tables, no ferry, bookings for weddings. Three different fates in one view — dockyard, fort, picnic — which is the harbour in miniature.

First Fleet Initials on Garden Island Earliest White Man And Only Remaining Relic Of Sydney 1788

On the northern hill of Garden Island, three sets of initials — FM, IR and WB — with the date 1788 are cut into sandstone. They’re widely accepted as among the earliest surviving European markings in the Sydney area, made when HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet, used the island for a ship’s garden (Governor Phillip authorised the garden in February 1788; parties were landed to clear and plant, which is how the island got its English name).

Traditional attributions link WB to First Lieutenant William Bradley of Sirius, FM to Frederic (Frederick) Meredith, and IR to a marine usually identified as Private Joseph Radford (older popular accounts wander on spellings). Documentary proof tying each letter to a named carver is incomplete — Naval Historical Society researchers stress conjecture based on Sirius muster and survey parties — but the 1788 date and First Fleet association are long established in naval heritage writing. Glass covers have been used at times to cut weathering.

Garden Island remains a working naval base (Fleet Base East); public access to the carving site is restricted. The initials are a rare in-situ trace of the harbour’s first months of British occupation, not a claim that no other 1788 archaeological evidence exists elsewhere in Sydney. Images here show the rock cuttings and Garden Island context.