Garden Island - Sydney Harbour - Port Jackson - New South Wales 

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 Australias 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.

Garden Island, Pinchgut, and Clarke's Island, Seen from Rose Bay

Garden Island, Pinchgut, and Clarke’s Island lie in Sydney Harbour, opposite the eastern suburbs and visible from Rose Bay. Garden Island became an important naval and maritime site, while Pinchgut—now Fort Denison—was fortified in the nineteenth century. Clarke’s Island preserves another layer of the harbour’s colonial history and changing place-names.

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

The Islands Of Sydney Harbour 

* Cockatoo Island

* Goat Island

* Shark Island 

* Clark Island

* Rodd Island

* Garden Island

* Spectacle Island

* Snapper Island

* Glebe Island

* Scotland Island 

* Bare Island 

* Wedding Cake Island 

9. Fort Denison - Was Originally Called Pinchgut Island. Wayward Convicts Would Be Put On This Island N The Middle Of The Harbpur To Starve To Death. They Could Try To Swim To TheMainland, But Would End Up Being Food For Sharks 

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.