If you walk down Pitt Street from Martin Place towards the Quay, you're walking along a creek. You can't see it, you can't hear it, and most of the office workers stepping over it every morning have no idea it's there. But the Tank Stream is the reason Sydney sits where it does. It's the little run of fresh water that made Arthur Phillip pick Sydney Cove in January 1788, it gave the colony its first water supply, it got fouled within a generation, and it ended up as a stone and brick drain under the CBD. It still flows into the harbour at Circular Quay today.
I've written about it a few times over the years, so I've pulled all my Tank Stream posts together into this one page, with my old photos and words, and added a lot more history and pictures.
Before the Tanks: Gadigal Country and Warrane
Long before the First Fleet turned up, this little valley was Gadigal country. The Gadigal (also written Cadigal) are the people most commonly accepted as living around Sydney Cove, and the Tank Stream catchment gave them a bit of everything within a short walk: harbour, estuary, rock platform, creek, open forest and wetland. Sydney Water calls the area by its Aboriginal name, Warrane, and describes the Tank Stream as the main source of fresh water in the Warrane (Circular Quay) area. Nobody knows the stream's own Aboriginal name. The City of Sydney's Barani history site says plainly that it isn't known, but that the stream mattered as drinking water and for everything that grew along it.
Some of that history has survived two hundred years of building. In the late 1990s, archaeologists digging ahead of the Angel Place redevelopment, just north of Martin Place between Pitt and George Streets, found a small patch of soil that dated from before 1788. In it were 54 stone artefacts, most of them less than 2 cm long, the chips left over from making stone tools. As the Barani writers put it, Aboriginal people sat just metres from the Tank Stream and made their tools there. A few more artefacts turned up later further down the stream, along George Street, when the Ivy nightclub site was redeveloped.
People were buried along the stream too. More than a century before the Angel Place dig, workmen building additions to the General Post Office in Martin Place found an Aboriginal skull in the buried banks of the Tank Stream. The papers of the day called a hole in it a spear wound, but Barani notes it could have had a number of causes. What became of the skull isn't known. Back then it was common for Aboriginal remains to be collected or sold to museums and private collectors.
The Stream's Course: From the Swamp to the Cove
The Tank Stream rose in marshy ground roughly bounded by today's Elizabeth, Market, Pitt and Park Streets, just to the west of Hyde Park. According to W. V. Aird's 1961 history of Sydney's water supply, it soaked through the soil between Pitt and George Streets before forming a proper channel near King Street, then ran north to the cove. At high tide it met the harbour at what's now the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets. Its whole catchment was about 65 hectares, roughly the size of the CBD itself.
You can still feel it in your legs. Barani points out that if you walk west from Macquarie Street down any of the cross streets, the road dips down to where the Tank Stream ran and then climbs again towards George Street. That dip is the valley the whole city is built in.
The stream also split the town in two. The eastern side was kept for the governor, government and administration, and the convicts lived on the western side, out towards the Rocks. That's why Bridge Street, where the crossing was, became the main link between east and west Sydney.
1788: "Near the Run of Fresh Water"
The colony was meant to go to Botany Bay, on the say-so of Sir Joseph Banks, who'd been there with Cook in 1770. When the fleet got there, Phillip found no decent fresh water, so he took boats north looking for something better and found Port Jackson. Cook had sailed past it and named it in 1770 but never gone in.
David Collins, the colony's judge-advocate, wrote the line everyone quotes. The governor's party anchored off the cove on the evening of the 25th of January 1788, and the spot chosen for the camp "was at the head of the cove, near the run of fresh water, which stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which had then, for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe".
Collins also gives us the first bridge. In October 1788 "a gang of convicts were employed in rolling timber together, to form a bridge over the stream at the head of the cove". That crossing is where Bridge Street got its name, which Governor Macquarie made official in 1810.
From My 2020 Post: The Tank Stream – Sydney
When Arthur Phillip First Saw What Is Now Circular Quay & The Freshwater Estuary That Ran Into The Quay, He Must’ve Sighed One Of The Biggest Sighs Of Relief, After Being Let Down With What He’d Been Told About Botany Bay, & That The Land Was Fertile.
Once the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, Arthur Phillip was left with no choice but to get in a smaller boat & search the coast to the north, & that’s how they came upon Port Jackson, which had been marked on Captain Cook’s chart from 1770.
The Watercourse Named The Tank Stream Was An Important Source Of Fresh Water For Aboriginal People Before European Settlement. As The 19th Century Progressed & The Population Of Sydney Grew, The Tank Stream Was First Polluted & Then Channeled & Diverted Underground Into A Series Of Drains & Pipes.
Fifty Four Worked Stone Artefacts Were Discovered In The Late 1990s During Excavations For The Construction Of The City Recital Hall At Angel Place Which Was Built Above A Section Of The Tank Stream.
This Discovery Shows That Aboriginal People Sat Just Metres From The Stream Making Stone Tools.
From My 2016 Post: Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove
Bridge Street, Northern Side, Between George And Pitt Streets
The Tanks That Gave the Stream Its Name
The Tank Stream was never much of a river. In dry weather it couldn't keep up, and the early 1790s were dry. So the governor had tanks cut into the sandstone beside the stream to hold water in reserve, and that's where the name comes from.
Collins tells the story as it happened. In late 1791, with the dry weather hurting the water supply, the governor "employed the stone-mason's gang to cut tanks out of the rock, which would be reservoirs for the water large enough to supply the settlement for some time". Then in May 1792 he records that "a tank that would contain about seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-six gallons of water, with a well in the centre fifteen feet deep, was finished, and the water let into it". That's the "8000 gallons" in my older posts.
The State Heritage Register puts the cutting of the tanks in 1790, says there were three or four of them, and gives each one about 20,000 litres and 5 metres deep. The City of Sydney's old water history says three tanks were built during a drought in 1790. Aird places one at what's now the corner of Pitt and Spring Streets, and the other two in Bond Street on the other side of the stream. None of them is thought to have survived. The stretch between Hunter and Bond Streets, where they were, is now a stone arch and a 1962 concrete box under Australia Square.
Keeping the water clean was a battle from day one. Phillip had the stream fenced against stock as early as 1791, and later trenches were cut alongside it to catch the dirty runoff before it got in. The heritage listing says that in 1795 orders were made against grazing stock or cutting trees within about 15 metres of the stream. Collins records that early in 1796 the governor had to repeat in public orders that "when an order was given by him, it was given to be obeyed", because people kept opening the paling fence and dipping dirty vessels in the water above the tanks, "thereby disturbing and polluting the whole stream below".
From My 2015 Post: Tank Stream - Macquarie Street To Circular Quay
From Drinking Water to Open Sewer
As the town grew, so did the mess. More houses, more animals, more cleared land and fewer trees meant more runoff, and it carried human and animal waste and household rubbish straight into the stream. Aird says it was little more than an open sewer for about ten years before it was finally abandoned as a water supply in 1826. The heritage listing says Governor Brisbane disallowed it for drinking that year, and that Governor Darling had seven wells dug around the town and people put to work fixing the drains.
The answer to the water problem was Busby's Bore, John Busby's tunnel carrying water from the Lachlan Swamps (now Centennial Park) to Hyde Park. Convicts started digging it in September 1827. It began supplying drinkable water in 1830 but wasn't finished until 1837.
With the drinking water gone elsewhere, the Tank Stream became the town's drain. The heritage listing says it was an unofficial sewer by 1826 and an official one by 1857, emptying straight into the harbour at the Quay. Around 1850, when Semi-Circular Quay was built, the stream had to be extended north of Bridge Street to reach the new waterline. The swamp that fed it was drained around 1850, according to a 1953 Sunday Herald article cited by Wikipedia, and the new Bennelong sewer works of 1857 drained it further. With less clean water flushing it, the Tank Stream got even filthier. Until 1888 it also carried salt water, which the council stored in reservoirs for cleaning the streets and keeping down the dust.
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The 1860s Drain and the Stormwater Channel
The smell is what finally got the stream covered. In the late 1850s work started on roofing the Bridge Street to Hunter Street section, and the sandstone arch over it was built in 1860. The heritage listing describes the channel as part stone and part brick in its lower half, with a sandstone arch roof. In 1866 the section from just south of Hunter Street to Martin Place was built as an open stone channel, and it was roofed over in the 1870s. Through the late 1870s the City Council kept going. A brick egg-shaped ("oviform") sewer went in from Pitt Street to Bridge Street in 1878, through what had been private land, and in 1879 the Bridge to Hunter Street floor was relaid in mortar with a terracotta scouring channel down the middle. By 1880 brick had reached the full width of King Street.
What's down there now is a patchwork of almost two hundred years of plumbing. According to the heritage listing, the old fabric survives from King Street, between Pitt and George, all the way to Circular Quay. There are 1866 brick drains enclosed in 1876 near King Street and between Martin Place and Angel Place. A historic oviform sewer runs towards the old GPO. Under Australia Square there's a semicircular stone arch with a shallow V-shaped floor, then a concrete box put in when the Square was built in 1962. Between Abercrombie Lane and Bridge Street there's a stone arch from about 1860. From Bridge Street the stream turns to run under Pitt Street for the last 185 metres to the Quay. A lot of the channel was replaced with modern pipe after the Second World War, when little thought went into its history, under the GPO in 1940, behind Pitt Street in 1958 and 1962, at Australia Square in 1965, at the old GPO site in 2001 and at Angel Place in 2002.
Today the Tank Stream is a stormwater channel looked after by Sydney Water, and it's on the NSW State Heritage Register, listed on 2 April 1999. Between 2024 and 2027 Sydney Water is restoring the old culvert under First Fleet Park at Circular Quay, and for a while you could actually see a bit of it from the street.
Tank Stream Way
Up above, the stream has left its name on a little laneway off Bridge Street. The heritage listing says the 40-metre stretch of channel between Abercrombie Lane and Bridge Street is a stone arch from about 1860, and that "on the ground here, Tank Stream Way preserves the name of the stream". Here's what I wrote about it in my laneways series.
From My 2020 Post: Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - NSW
Tank Stream Way Was Once Part Of Hamilton Street Which Ran Between Bridge And Hunter Streets, Named After Hamilton's Biscuit Factory. Most Of It Disappeared Underneath The Australia Square Development, Leaving Two Remnant Laneways, And This Section Was Renamed In 1981. In Bridge Lane, Once The Site Of The Town’s First Lumber Yards, Look For The Old Warehouse Doorway, Now The Entrance To The Establishment Hotel. As Late As The 1860s There Was Still Vacant Land Sliced Between The Cottages In This Area, But By The End Of The 19th Century It Had Become A Favoured Location for Warehouses, Including Several Tea Merchants Stores.
You can read the whole laneway post here: Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - New South Wales.
The Tank Stream Fountain
The best-known memorial to the stream is down at Herald Square, on the corner of George and Alfred Streets near Circular Quay. The Tank Stream Fountain is a cascading fountain by the sculptor Stephen Walker, with four bronze columns rising out of the pool. All over it are Australian plants and animals, frogs, snakes, goannas, echidnas, crabs, birds and tortoises, that look like they're playing in the water. The kids love it, which is the whole idea. It's also known as the Children's Fountain, dedicated to "all the children who have played around the Tank Stream".
The fountain was a present from John Fairfax & Sons, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, to mark 150 years since the first Sydney Herald came out on 18 April 1831. The City of Sydney accepted the offer on 25 June 1979. It was the biggest private gift the city had ever had at that point. The council was already planning to tidy up the streetscape, so the extra work went onto its existing contract with Melocco Bros. The extra landscaping cost $356,154.50, subsidised down to $183,495.50, and the paper matched that and paid for the sculpture as well. The Lord Mayor dedicated the fountain on 16 April 1981.
Walker's brief from Fairfax was "to create an association of water and bronze", and he tied it to the Tank Stream, the settlement's first water supply. Walker was born in Melbourne in 1927, studied painting in Melbourne and Hobart, and started making sculpture in 1952. In the 1950s and 60s he studied in England, Rome, Florence and Prague before coming home in 1964. The fountain is heritage-listed in its own right, and the City of Sydney started cleaning and conserving the bronzes in September 2026, with the work expected to take about two months.
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Tank_Stream_Fountain_at_Circular_Quay.jpg)
The Plaques, the Tours and Where to See It
The fountain carries its own plaques. One, on the western front, explains how Walker drew on the spot's history. Another says the fountain and the landscaping of the square were donated "for the pleasure and enjoyment of citizens and visitors" by John Fairfax & Sons. The City of Sydney's record of the inscriptions includes a little potted history that starts with 1788: "A stream flows into Sydney Cove. The European settlement of Australia begins along its sandstone banks. Soon drought strikes and storage tanks are carved from the stone, hence the name."
If you want to actually get down there, Sydney Living Museums and Sydney Water have run Tank Stream tours, usually in April and November. Tickets are limited and handed out by ballot, so you need a bit of luck. The way in is through the basement of the Australia Square tower, which is also Sydney Water's inspection point, and there's an information area behind locked gates at the start of the tour. If you miss out, Barani says there's a small Tank Stream exhibition in the basement of the old General Post Office in Martin Place, with an excavated piece of the original brick oviform drain. You go in directly under the clock tower. Otherwise just follow the street names, the artwork and the pub names, and the dip in the road, from Hunter Street down Pitt Street to the Quay.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Gadigal people use the stream for water and resources; stone tools are made on its banks (Angel Place site).
- January 1788 – The First Fleet moves from Botany Bay to Sydney Cove; the camp is set up "near the run of fresh water".
- October 1788 – Convicts roll timber together to form the first bridge over the stream at the head of the cove.
- 1790 – The heritage listing and the City of Sydney date the cutting of the tanks to a 1790 drought.
- 1791 – The stream is fenced against stock; Collins says the stonemasons were cutting tanks in late 1791.
- May 1792 – Collins records a tank of about 7,996 gallons, with a well 15 feet deep, finished and filled.
- 1795–96 – Orders against grazing and tree-cutting near the stream; people still fouling the water above the tanks.
- 1803–04 – A stone bridge replaces the timber one at Bridge Street (according to my older posts).
- 1810 – Macquarie names Bridge Street.
- 1826 – The stream is abandoned as drinking water; Darling has seven wells dug.
- 1827–1837 – Busby's Bore is built; it supplies water from 1830.
- c.1850 – Semi-Circular Quay is built and the stream is extended north of Bridge Street; the source swamp is drained.
- 1857 – The Tank Stream becomes an official sewer.
- 1860 – The sandstone arch between Bridge and Hunter Streets is built.
- 1866–1880 – Open stone and brick channels are built and roofed over; brick oviform sewers go in.
- 1888 – Salt water stops being carried in the stream for street cleaning.
- 1962–1965 – Concrete box replaces the channel under Australia Square; tour access is built there.
- 16 April 1981 – The Tank Stream Fountain is dedicated in Herald Square; Hamilton Street's remnant becomes Tank Stream Way the same year.
- Late 1990s – The Angel Place dig finds 54 Aboriginal stone artefacts beside the stream.
- 2 April 1999 – The Tank Stream is added to the NSW State Heritage Register.
- 2024–2027 – Sydney Water restores the culvert under First Fleet Park.
- September 2026 – Conservation work starts on the fountain's bronzes.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When the tanks were cut: the State Heritage Register and the City of Sydney say 1790. Collins has the stonemasons cutting tanks in late 1791 and the first one finished in May 1792. My older posts say the stream was "christened" in May 1792.
- How big the tanks were: Collins gives about 7,996 gallons for the May 1792 tank, which is roughly 36,000 litres. The heritage listing gives about 20,000 litres for each of three or four tanks. These may not be measuring the same thing.
- How many tanks there were: the City of Sydney and Aird say three, and the heritage listing says three or four.
- The stone bridge: my older posts date the stone bridge at Bridge Street to 1803–04. The heritage listing (as quoted on Wikipedia) says a stone arch bridge replaced the wooden ones in 1792, and its own timeline lists the "first bridge crossing" in 1792, even though Collins describes a timber bridge in October 1788.
- When it stopped being drinking water: Aird says it was abandoned in 1826 after about ten years as an open sewer, and the heritage listing has Brisbane disallowing it in 1826 but says it was the main source of fresh water until Busby's Bore was finished in 1837.
- Busby's Bore: Aird (as cited on Wikipedia) dates the next supply to 1830, when the Bore started giving water, and the heritage listing says the Tank Stream was the main supply until the Bore was finished in 1837.
- Tree-cutting order: my older posts quote an order of March 1788 against cutting trees within 50 feet of the stream. The heritage listing has the order in 1795, at about 15 metres. I couldn't find the 1788 wording in a source I could open.
- The Angel Place dig: my 2020 post says 1996. Barani says the late 1990s, and the University of Sydney catalogues the reports as the "Angel Place Project 1997".
My Earlier Posts
- Tank Stream - Macquarie Street To Circular Quay (2015)
- Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove (2015)
- Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove (2016)
- Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - New South Wales
- Abercrombie Lane - Laneways - Sydney
- Dalley Street - Queen's Place - Charlotte Place - Laneways
- Australia Square - 264 George Street - Sydney
- The Government Wharf - Circular Quay
- Bridge Street - Named 10 October 1810
- Sydney Cove 1788
Sources
- David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
- NSW State Heritage Register, Tank Stream (SHR 00636), as reproduced in Wikipedia, "Tank Stream" (CC BY): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Stream
- W. V. Aird, The Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage of Sydney (MWS&DB, 1961), as cited in Wikipedia, "Tank Stream"
- City of Sydney, "Tank Stream Fountain": https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/fountains-and-water-features/tank-stream-fountain
- Paul Irish and Tamika Goward, "The Tank Stream", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney): https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/the-tank-stream/
- Sydney Water, "Circular Quay Tank Stream work": https://www.sydneywater.com.au/water-the-environment/what-we-are-doing/projects-in-your-area/circular-quay-pump-station-and-tank-stream-work.html
- Wikipedia, "Busby's Bore": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby%27s_Bore
- Wikipedia, "Bridge Street, Sydney": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Street,_Sydney
- Wikipedia, "Port Jackson": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Jackson
- University of Sydney Library, Godden Mackay, Angel Place Project 1997 Archaeological Excavation Final Report, Vol. 1 (1998): https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/nodes/view/9364
- Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, Category:Tank Stream and Category:Busby's Bore (credits under each picture)