Glebe Island – Sydney – From Gadigal and Wangal Country to Abattoirs, Swing Bridges, Silos and the Anzac Bridge – 1790s to Today

If you've ever driven over the Anzac Bridge heading for Rozelle, you've passed straight over the top of Glebe Island. Most people never give it a second thought. It's that flat stretch of port land with the big painted silos, the one with the giant billboard on top. But it was a real island once, a rocky lump of sandstone sitting out in the water between Balmain, Pyrmont and Glebe. Over 180-odd years it's been church land, a failed housing estate, the colony's main slaughterhouse, a quarry, a wheat terminal, a US Army depot, a container port, a car yard, an exhibition centre and a concert ground. Now it's about to become a suburb.

Here's the whole story, as best I can piece it together.

Glebe Island seen from the Anzac Bridge in 2011, flat port land where a sandstone island once stood. JohnsonL623, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gadigal and Wangal Country

Long before anyone called it Glebe Island, this was Aboriginal country. The Port Authority of NSW says the White Bay and Glebe Island area was home to the Gadigal and Wangal people, with Wangal country starting at Memel (Goat Island) and running across the Balmain peninsula and west along the Parramatta River. The City of Sydney likewise describes nearby Glebe Point as the land of the Wangal and Gadigal peoples. The Port Authority's own heritage form for the silos simply records the Aboriginal area as "Wangal clan".

How It Got Its Name

The "Glebe" bit comes from the church. A glebe is land set aside to support a clergyman, and the Rev. Richard Johnson, the First Fleet's chaplain, was granted glebe land west of Sydney Cove. The Port Authority's heritage form says the 1790 grant was 160 acres and took in a 23-acre island, which is Glebe Island. The City of Sydney says the grant was 400 acres in 1789. Either way, the island took its name from the parson's land across the water.

The Island Before It Joined the Mainland

For a long time you could only walk out to Glebe Island from the Balmain shore at low tide. According to Peter Reynolds in the Dictionary of Sydney, a causeway was laid in the 1840s that fixed that. In 1841 the surveyor William Wells drew up a subdivision for the Balmain end of the island, with four streets and six sections making 86 lots. It never happened. Wells also drew a plan of the island property in 1844, which survives in the State Library.

W. H. Wells' 1844 plan of the property at Glebe Island in Johnstone's Bay. W.H. Wells, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Glebe Island Abattoirs, 1860 to 1915

Sydney had a smelly problem in the mid-1800s: slaughtering was going on far too close to town. The answer was a big public abattoir out on Glebe Island, where the blood and offal could go into the water away from the houses. Between 1850 and 1854 the Colonial Architect Edmund Blacket designed the stone buildings. Joan Kerr, Blacket's biographer, described them as Norman in style, with round-headed openings and plain decoration, and almost certainly based on an American design.

The Port Authority's heritage form gives a good picture of the layout: two parallel ranges of sandstone buildings, each 220 feet long, one holding 12 slaughterhouses for beef and the other 12 for sheep. Double steam punts ran across to the Pyrmont shore. It says the abattoir opened in October 1860. Wharves were built alongside for the meat canning and export trade.

The Glebe Island Abattoirs photographed by Charles Pickering in 1872. Charles Pickering, NSW Government Printing Office, State Library of NSW, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Buildings adjoining the abattoirs, 1872. Charles Pickering, NSW Government Printing Office, State Library of NSW, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It was a huge operation. The 1882 Royal Commission into noxious and offensive trades was set up partly because people in Balmain and Glebe Point were sick of the stink. The commission found that in 1882 alone, 524,415 sheep, 69,991 cattle, 31,269 pigs and 8,348 calves were killed on the island. The Australian Town and Country Journal ran a series of engravings in June 1879 showing the work inside, and they don't pull any punches.

Killing cattle at the Glebe Island abattoir, Australian Town and Country Journal, 7 June 1879. Unknown engraver, Australian Town and Country Journal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Killing and dressing sheep, from the same 1879 series. Unknown engraver, Australian Town and Country Journal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Clubbing pigs at the pig-killing pens, 1879. Unknown engraver, Australian Town and Country Journal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The end came in the 1910s. The Dictionary of Sydney says the Metropolitan Meat Industry Board resolved to shut the abattoirs and build new ones at Homebush; the Wikipedia version of the same text says that decision came in 1912, while the Dictionary itself says 1915. The Port Authority's form says the abattoir stopped work in 1916. The new Homebush abattoirs took over, and Glebe Island's 50-odd years as Sydney's slaughterhouse were done.

An advertisement for the Glebe Island Abattoirs from around 1908, in the last years of the works. Aussie~mobs, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Glebe Island Bridges

Blackbutt Bridge, the First Crossing

Once you've got a slaughterhouse on an island, you need a way to get the meat to town. Until a bridge was built, the punts did the job. On 7 September 1860 Balmain Council resolved to ask the owners of the leftover Balmain Estate land for a road to the island. The Pyrmont Bridge Company then built a low timber bridge across Johnstons Bay to Pyrmont.

It was made of Tasmanian blackbutt, which is why everyone called it the Blackbutt Bridge. According to the Wikipedia article on the bridge, the first pile went in during October 1860. It was a timber beam bridge about 318 metres long and 8.5 metres wide, with a small hand-cranked swing section on the Pyrmont side. When it actually opened depends on who you read (more on that below).

The timber Glebe Island Bridge at Johnstons Bay around 1878. National Library of Australia, "My Tour 1878-79" album, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Glebe Island Bridge photographed by Charles Pickering in 1871. Charles Pickering, NSW Government Printing Office, State Library of NSW, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Another of Pickering's 1871 views of the timber bridge. Charles Pickering, NSW Government Printing Office, State Library of NSW, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After about 30 years the old bridge was worn out, and the government bought it and started planning a replacement. It nearly fell down by itself first. In August 1899 a big load of ballast being dumped for the new causeway slid sideways and crushed the piles of the old bridge. The Australian National Maritime Museum's notes on its photo say the Sydney Morning Herald reported the collapse at 3am on Saturday 5 August 1899, and traffic to Balmain was stopped. For a fortnight the bridge was only good for people on foot.

Crowds look over the collapsed timber Glebe Island Bridge in August 1899. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Percy Allan's 1903 Swing Bridge

The replacement was designed by Percy Allan of the Public Works Department, the same man who did the new Pyrmont Bridge over Darling Harbour. His team included a young John Bradfield, who later built the Harbour Bridge and here had charge of the foundations, abutments and retaining walls. Parliament found the money in 1898 and tenders went out in March 1899. The builders were H. McKenzie and Sons.

Both of Allan's bridges were electric swing bridges, the first time electricity had been used to swing a bridge in Australia, and they could open in 44 seconds. The Glebe Island one has a swing span turning on a big pivot pier that sits on timber piles capped with concrete. It's 108 metres long overall, with a 12.2-metre roadway and footpaths each side. A 600-volt motor swings it, and for years it ran off the tramway's DC power. When the trams finished in 1961 it was switched to the ordinary mains, and the rare mercury-arc rectifier put in then is still there.

The Wikipedia article on the bridge says it was opened on 1 July 1903 by Miss Lily See, daughter of the Premier John See. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 28 June 1903.

A steamer passes through the open swing span heading for Blackwattle Bay. Sam Hood photograph. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The German four-masted barque Gustav comes through the bridge in December 1926. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

For over 90 years it carried the main road from the city to Balmain, Rozelle and beyond. It was part of the old "five bridges" route out to the northern and western suburbs, along with Pyrmont, Iron Cove, Gladesville and Fig Tree. The trouble was that every time a ship needed to get into Blackwattle Bay, the whole road stopped. That delay is what eventually led to the Anzac Bridge.

The Fight to Save It

When the new bridge opened on 3 December 1995, the old one was swung open and left that way. It's been sitting there ever since, getting rustier. A 2009 assessment called it "very poor", and a 2013 report found it had got worse. It was put on the Register of the National Estate in 1989 and on the NSW State Heritage Register on 29 November 2013.

The City of Sydney and local groups have been pushing since at least 2013 to fix it and reopen it for people walking and riding. Ideas have come and gone, including light rail across it in 2015 and an architect's design in 2025 with a higher walkway arching over the top. On 21 February 2026 locals gathered near the bridge to campaign for the reopening, backed by the Balmain MP Kobi Shetty. Then the NSW Government's Bays West announcement in March 2026 promised "an active transport link across the Glebe Island Bridge". After 30 years of waiting, it finally looks like it'll carry people again.

The old swing bridge left permanently open, with the Anzac Bridge towering behind, 2009. Smegs07, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking down on the old Glebe Island Bridge in 2006. Thad Roan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Blackwattle Bay ferry Me-Mel slips through the open swing span in 2023. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Levelling the Island and Joining It to the Mainland

Most of the original island isn't there any more. The new bridge needed an elevated causeway across Glebe Island, and to build it they dredged mud and cut down what was left of the island's hill for fill. Wikipedia's bridge article says this produced about 5.3 hectares of flat land for railway yards and 853 metres of deepwater frontage for wharves.

From 1912 the Sydney Harbour Trust (later the Maritime Services Board) planned wharves along the southern shore of Balmain, Glebe Island included. By 1915 the Pyrmont quarry master Robert Saunders had been hired to level the island for wharves. His firm tipped a lot of the spoil at the eastern end to build up the wharf area, but plenty of good building stone was carefully cut out and almost certainly sold for construction. There were still about 250 of Saunders' men working on the island in 1920.

Wharves went in on three sides of the flattened island. The fourth side was joined to the Rozelle shore as part of the big reclamation of Rozelle Bay and White Bay that had started in the 1890s. That's the moment Glebe Island stopped being an island in anything but name. Under the 1906 local government changes it had already been added to the Municipality of Balmain.

The Grain Silos

The "Cubist Castle"

By 1916 the wheat trade needed to stop shipping grain in bags and switch to bulk handling. The Canadian firm John S. Metcalfe and Company drew up the plans: 143 cylindrical bins, 72 round and 71 "interspace" bins between them, with cone-shaped bottoms that let the wheat run down chutes onto conveyor belts and straight into the ships. There was a working house with elevators, weighing hoppers, cleaners, dryers, dust collection and a power plant.

Work started late in 1918 under the Public Works engineer Robert Kendall. The contractor was Henry Teesdale Smith, a timber merchant, railway builder and former politician. It was finished in 1921. The Sun newspaper called it the "cubist castle" and "futurist fortress", towering up to 120 feet with a flat roof covering two acres. The Bulletin noted that 250,000 bags of Kandos cement went into it. The terminal was run from 1921 by the Grain Elevators Board of NSW.

Pouring concrete for the Glebe Island silos around 1920. A. G. Foster photograph. National Library of Australia Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Workmen on the silo construction site around 1920. National Library of Australia Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

It kept growing. Between 1921 and 1932 the facilities were greatly expanded, with 63 more silos by 1925, along with rail and road links and handling gear. The 1958 Australian Encyclopaedia put the bulk wheat terminal's capacity at 7,500,000 bushels, or 202,500 tonnes. By the 1930s it was regarded as one of the largest and best-planned installations of its kind.

The Rio Blanco loading at the Glebe Island wheat silos, 26 April 1924. Frederick Wilkinson photograph. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

White Bay in 1950, with Balmain on the left and the Glebe Island grain terminal on the right. Graeme Andrews Working Harbour Collection, City of Sydney Archives, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The War Years

During the Second World War much of the island was taken over for the main United States Army depot in Sydney. The Port Authority's form says it was a major armament and engineers' supply depot and a troop embarkation area. Its local history page calls Glebe Island the principal staging area for thousands of American troops. Australian troops going to join the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan after the war also left from Glebe Island and White Bay.

The 1974 Silos You See Today

The silos you see from the Anzac Bridge aren't the originals. On 9 December 1974 the Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, opened 30 new concrete silos, each 38.4 metres high and holding 2,400 tonnes, in two rows of fifteen. They lifted the island's wheat storage from 163,000 to 245,000 tonnes and cost about $4 million.

Grain didn't last much longer. Port Kembla took over as the state's main grain export terminal, and from 1991 Australian Cement (now Cement Australia) used 16 of the silos as a bulk cement terminal, with part of the complex changed for cement storage in 1994. The worn-out original block from 1918 to 1925 was knocked down in 1999 and 2000 by Metropolitan Demolitions and Recycling under a $7 million contract. More than half of the 110,000 tonnes of concrete was crushed and reused as road base around the port.

Looking from the top of the Glebe Island grain silos towards White Bay Power Station. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Olympic Mural and the Giant Billboard

This is the bit most Sydneysiders know. On 21 May 1992 the Planning Minister approved an Olympic Games 2000 mural on the silos, plus sponsor advertising and lighting, as part of the "Olympic Look" for Sydney's bid. A reported 2,000 litres of paint went on. In 1993 a new mural was painted on the side facing the bridge, turning the silos into Greek columns with a different sports figure on each one, and a big entablature was fitted across the top to carry advertising.

The Dictionary of Sydney notes, a bit drily, that it's often called "the largest billboard in the southern hemisphere", a claim made "with the lack of research characteristic of such claims". The current operator, oOh!media, still calls it exactly that. Its site covers more than 1,000 square metres across the tops of the silos. The mural itself was assessed in 2011 by GML Heritage as having historic and social value in its own right, but it isn't part of the silos' heritage listing.

When people talk about art projected onto the silos, the best-documented case I could find is an odd one. Rave-goers remember the illegal "Ov Thee Earth Tribe" party inside the Glebe wheat silos on 21 November 1992, where a giant projection of Sonic the Hedgehog filled one wall.

The sporting figures painted on the silos, part of the Olympic mural, in 2011. JohnsonL623, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The silos with their Greek-column mural and rooftop billboard, 2021. MDRX, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Containers and Cars

As shipping went over to containers, Glebe Island changed with it. Premier Robert Askin officially opened the Glebe Island Container Terminal on 22 February 1973. The Maritime Services Board built it on just under 24 acres next to the grain terminal, at a cost of $13 million, from plans drawn up in 1970. It quickly copped criticism for inefficiency and harbour congestion. Along with the White Bay terminal, opened in March 1969, it was the centre of container shipping in the Port of Sydney until the early 1980s.

Later the island became Sydney's car import yard. Until November 2008 it was the Australian Amalgamated Terminals facility for imported vehicles. That year car imports were moved to Port Kembla, and the NSW Government says the island has been underused ever since. Since the early 1990s the port has also handled cement and gypsum for Sydney's building industry.

Events on the Island

A big flat empty space with harbour views was always going to attract events. On New Year's Eve 2011–12 it hosted a major televised concert with Jamiroquai, Culture Club and the Pet Shop Boys, with a clear view of the Harbour Bridge fireworks.

When the old Darling Harbour convention centre was pulled down for rebuilding, the temporary Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island filled the gap. Construction began in August 2013 and it opened on 15 February 2014, with 20,000 square metres of space for trade and consumer shows. The site was cleared in 2017. The government's 2026 plan sets aside a staging area in White Bay so the New Year's Eve fireworks and Vivid can keep using the bays.

Hall 1 of the temporary Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island in March 2014, looking back to the Anzac Bridge. SECGIebeIsland, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Anzac Bridge, 1995

The new high-level bridge was designed by a Roads and Traffic Authority team led by chief bridge engineer Ray Wedgwood and built by Baulderstone. It's a cable-stayed concrete bridge with a 345-metre main span between two 120-metre pylons, and it sits right above Allan's old swing bridge. It opened on 3 December 1995 and was called the Glebe Island Bridge too, which must have confused a few people.

On Remembrance Day 1998 it was renamed the Anzac Bridge to honour the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. An Australian flag flies on one pylon and a New Zealand flag on the other. A bronze Australian digger, rifle reversed, was put up on Anzac Day 2000, and a New Zealand soldier joined him in April 2008, unveiled by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. The bridge can take 180,000 cars a day, and it hit that limit in 2002, only seven years after it opened.

The Anzac Bridge with the Harbour Bridge beyond, from Glebe Point. Richard Taylor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Anzac Bridge lit up at night from the Glebe foreshore, 2020. Mattiadolera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The bronze Australian digger statue on the Anzac Bridge, 2014. Saberwyn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bays West: What Comes Next

Glebe Island is part of the government's Bays Precinct renewal, now called Bays West. It takes in White Bay, Glebe Island, Rozelle Bay, White Bay Power Station and the Rozelle Rail Yards, plus 76 hectares of water. The Stage 1 master plan and rezoning around the power station and metro station were approved in December 2022.

On 3 March 2026 the Minns Government announced up to 8,500 homes there, at least 10 per cent of them affordable and essential-worker housing. Bulk port work on Glebe Island, including cement, gypsum and sugar, is to stop by 2030 at the latest, with most working-harbour jobs moved into White Bay. The release also says the "existing 1970s industrial silos" will be removed to make way for public space and housing. That means the Olympic mural's days are probably numbered.

The trigger for all this is the metro. The Bays Station on Sydney Metro West is being built between Glebe Island and White Bay Power Station, with its entrance south of White Bay. Station box work started in 2022, and the government says Metro West will open in 2032. For the first time, rail will run to this corner of the harbour.

White Bay Power Station under renovation in 2023. The Bays metro station is going in between here and Glebe Island. Dicklyon, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Gadigal and Wangal country.
• 1789 or 1790 – Glebe land granted to the Rev. Richard Johnson, including the island.
• 1840s – Causeway laid from the Balmain shore.
• 1841 – William Wells' 86-lot subdivision of the island, never built.
• 1850–54 – Edmund Blacket designs the abattoir buildings.
• 1860 – The abattoir opens (October, per the Port Authority). The first bridge pile is driven in October.
• 1861 or 1862 – The timber Blackbutt Bridge to Pyrmont opens.
• 1882 – A Royal Commission counts more than 630,000 animals killed in a year.
• 1899 – Ballast collapses part of the old bridge (5 August).
• 1903 – Percy Allan's electric swing bridge opens (28 June or 1 July).
• 1906 – The island is added to the Municipality of Balmain.
• 1912 – Wharf building and reclamation begin.
• 1915–16 – The abattoirs close and the move to Homebush begins. Saunders starts levelling the island.
• 1918–21 – The first grain silos are built.
• 1939–45 – The island is taken over as a US Army depot.
• 1973 – The Glebe Island Container Terminal opens (22 February).
• 1974 – The 30 silos still standing open (9 December).
• 1984 or 1990 – Grain handling ends.
• 1991 – Cement storage begins in 16 silos.
• 1992–93 – The Olympic mural and billboard go up.
• 1995 – The new cable-stayed bridge opens (3 December) and the old swing bridge is left open.
• 1998 – It is renamed the Anzac Bridge on Remembrance Day.
• 1999–2000 – The original silos are demolished.
• 2008 – Car imports move to Port Kembla (November).
• 2011–12 – New Year's Eve concert.
• 2013 – The old bridge goes on the State Heritage Register (29 November).
• 2014–2017 – The Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island operates.
• 2022 – Bays West Stage 1 rezoning; metro station works begin.
• 2026 – Bays West suburb announced (3 March) with a commitment to reopen the old bridge.
• By 2030 – Port operations on Glebe Island are to end.
• 2032 – Sydney Metro West, with the Bays Station, is due to open.

Where the Sources Disagree

• Johnson's glebe grant: the Port Authority's silos heritage form says 160 acres in 1790, including a 23-acre island. The City of Sydney says 400 acres in 1789.
• The first bridge's opening: the Dictionary of Sydney says the Pyrmont Bridge Company's bridge opened in 1861. Wikipedia's Glebe Island article and Anzac Bridge article say 1862. The Glebe Island Bridge article says it opened for traffic in 1861 but calls it "completed in 1862". The Port Authority's timeline puts the first bridge at 1857, and the Maritime Museum's photo notes say the road had used the bridge "since 1860".
• The 1903 bridge opening: the Dictionary of Sydney says 28 June 1903. Wikipedia's bridge article says 1 July 1903, opened by Lily See.
• When the abattoirs were doomed: the Dictionary of Sydney says the Meat Industry Board resolved to close them in 1915. Wikipedia's version of the same passage says 1912. The Port Authority says they stopped work in 1916.
• When grain handling ended: the Dictionary of Sydney says bulk grain handling continued until 1990. The Port Authority's heritage form says Glebe Island stopped being a grain terminal in 1984.
• Size of the island: the Dictionary of Sydney says 34 acres (13.7 hectares) when it joined Balmain in 1906. The Port Authority says the original island in Johnson's grant was 23 acres.
• Number of lanes on the new bridge: the Dictionary of Sydney describes a six-lane bridge, while Wikipedia calls the Anzac Bridge eight-lane.

My Earlier Posts

• The 9 Islands of Sydney Harbour
• Robert 'Bobby' Hancock – Hancock's Tower and the Lady of the Lake Hotel, Glebe
• Lyndhurst – 61 Darghan Street – Glebe
• Ultimo House – Ultimo
• Darling Harbour May 2024
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail

Sources

• Peter Reynolds, "Glebe Island", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/glebe_island
• Port Authority of NSW, s170 Heritage Inventory form, Glebe Island Silos – https://www.portauthoritynsw.com.au/sites/default/files/media/migrated/files/s170_shi-form_glebe-island-silos.pdf
• Port Authority of NSW, "Discover the Bays Port local history" – https://www.portauthoritynsw.com.au/around-ports/sydney-harbour/projects/bays-port/discover-bays-port-local-history
• City of Sydney, "History of Glebe foreshore parks" – https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/histories-local-parks-playgrounds/history-glebe-foreshore-parks
• Wikipedia, "Glebe Island" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe_Island
• Wikipedia, "Glebe Island Bridge" (incorporating NSW State Heritage Register entry 1914, CC BY 4.0) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe_Island_Bridge
• Wikipedia, "Anzac Bridge" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Bridge
• NSW Government, "Minns Government to deliver thousands of homes near the Bays Metro Station", 3 March 2026 – https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/minns-government-to-deliver-thousands-of-homes-near-bays-metro-station-while-retaining-our-working-harbour
• NSW Government, "Suburban transformation: first glimpse of Metro West stations", 9 April 2026 – https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/suburban-transformation-first-glimpse-of-metro-west-stations
• NSW Planning, "Bays West" – https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/plans-in-nsw/state-significant-precincts/the-bays/bays-west
• Sydney Metro, "The Bays Station" – https://www.sydneymetro.info/station/bays-station
• oOh!media, "Specsavers launch new OOH on the largest Out of Home billboard in the Southern Hemisphere" – https://oohmedia.com.au/specsavers-launch-new-ooh-on-the-largest-out-of-home-billboard-in-the-southern-hemisphere/
• Sydney Rave History, "Ov Thee Earth Tribe", 21 November 1992 – https://sydneyravehistory.com/timeline/1992/19921121ovtheeearthtribe
• Australian National Maritime Museum, Samuel J. Hood and Frederick Wilkinson photograph notes, via Wikimedia Commons
• Image descriptions and credits from Wikimedia Commons (pages linked 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.