Will Coles – Sydney's Concrete Street Sculptor – Cast TVs, Balaclavas, Skulls and Cans from Newtown to Paddington

If you've spent any time walking around Newtown, Enmore, Redfern or Paddington, there's a fair chance you've stepped right past a Will Coles and never known it. A grey TV remote glued to a wall with the word HATE cut into it. A squashed soft drink can on a kerb that says ETERNITY. A pair of gloves left on a ledge near Erskineville Oval with GONE on them. They look like rubbish until you get close, and then you realise somebody cast the thing in cement, carved a word into it and stuck it there on purpose, usually in the middle of the night.

This page is my go at pulling together what's actually been written about him: where he came from, how he makes them, what the words are about, where they turn up around Sydney, the gallery shows, and why so many of them don't last. He's a living artist, so I've stuck to what he and others have said in print and left his private life alone.

A cast skull plaque with LOL carved into it, Greens Road side of the old COFA art school, Paddington, 2026. Skull plaques and the word LOL are both listed among Will Coles's works, and this corner is a known spot for his pieces, though the photographer didn't name the artist. Xyxyzyz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Is Will Coles?

On his own website Will Coles calls himself a "Sculptor, street artist and freelance European". He's English by birth. The German public-art register Kunst@SH says he was born in 1972 in Warwickshire and grew up in Suffolk, and that he spent several years at the Ravensbourne, Wimbledon and Glasgow schools of art before moving to Sydney in the early 1990s.

In a 2013 interview with the Sydney street art blog 2095 he described growing up "in a countryside outside a small village in England: very green & very quiet". He hated sport, liked reading, and said he spent a lot of his time in books. He's said he has "always sculpted", and the biggest influence on him was his grandfather, who he called "a sculptor of incredible skill".

That grandfather comes up again in a 2019 comment Will left on the Differentville blog. A reader asked if he was the grandson of the sculptor Norman Sillman, who'd made a bust of her mother in London in 1951. He wrote back that yes, he was, that his grandfather had died a few years earlier, and that he was "very good at bronze-look plaster".

He wasn't always a sculptor on the street. He told UP Magazine in 2025 that he did graffiti between 1989 and 1991, but admitted, "I was pretty basic, I'm colorblind, and I've always had a more three-dimensional mind." It was in Sydney that he worked out the style he's known for now. He also told UP Magazine he has never used a fake name: "I never hide from anyone or anything, so I'm not going to hide behind a fake name… yet."

Sydney Years and the Move to Europe

Sydney was his base for about twenty years. Honi Soit, the University of Sydney student paper, said in 2024 that he came to Sydney "sometime in the 1990s" and lived here until 2015. Helen Foster at Differentville also says he moved to Europe in 2015 and has since been gluing his work around Valencia, Barcelona, London and towns in Germany. Kunst@SH says he now lives and works in Valencia, Spain, and he told a reader in 2019 that he was "based in Spain these days".

How he's described depends on who's writing. The Sydney Morning Herald called him "an Australian-British artist" in 2023, and the Hamburg galleries that showed him in October 2026 called him an Australian sculptor and street artist.

How He Makes Them

The process is simpler than you'd think, and he's happy to explain it. He told the 2095 blog in 2013:

"I find the right object by: stumbling upon it, searching for it or occasionally I seem to will it in to existence (ie. it turns up in the road outside my studio and it's just what I was looking for). I then make a rubber mould then a plaster cast, carve in letters, then make a second rubber mould from that, then cast it in cement. Those are the small ones which I've done thousands of by now."

So the word isn't carved into each piece one at a time. It's carved once into the plaster, and the second mould carries it into every cement copy. That's how one design can show up all over the place. He told UP Magazine that each design is made in small editions, so "the same sculpture can turn up in ten different countries".

Why Cement?

He explained the choice of material in a 2012 interview with the Melbourne blog The Fitzroy Flasher. His grandfather taught him to cast in cement, which he called "a 'poor man's bronze'":

"It seems to be the natural choice for an urban setting. Resins & plastics seem too slick, too corporate, bronze reeks of officialdom & council-inflicted art. Cement is the same as the buildings, roads & pavements. It ages, discolours & grows old with its surroundings, if you let it."

He said he uses a harder French cement, ciment fondu, and that it's still "cheap & fast" enough to turn out fifty or more small pieces at a time. He also had a tip for anyone trying it: don't use quick-set cement, because "it's fragile salt-ridden junk".

The pieces are glued down, and the glue matters. The Herald said in 2023 that good glue is vital, because people keep trying to prise his work off. His website line about himself, quoted by both the Herald and Differentville, is that he "loves his wife, carbohydrates and strong adhesives".

Not everything is small concrete. His website lists a piece called Freedom made of glass-reinforced plastic with a gold leaf finish, and ArtsHub showed a resin sculpture, property (old), from his 2013 Brenda May Gallery show.

A cast TV remote with HATE carved into it, Newtown, March 2011. Wikipedia's article on Newtown street art names Will Coles as the maker of the remotes inscribed "fear" and "hate" around Newtown. Dunks58, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Objects and the Words

He gave UP Magazine his own list: "TVs, remote controls, armchairs, cell phones, suitcases, washing machines, boomboxes, gloves, guns, dolls, teddy bears, shoes, handbags, jackets…". Honi Soit added balaclavas, guns with bent barrels, AK-47s, skull plaques and dead birds. The Herald says the best known are the "grimacing squashed balaclava-clad faces", along with skulls, mobile phones and sleeping birds. Differentville's list also has bent-barrelled guns, squashed cans, goon bags, the odd teddy bear or baby, and plaques reading WILL COLES WAS 'ERE.

The word is the point. He told The Fitzroy Flasher:

"My ideas grow out of messages, or are really messages condensed down to a word on an object. I try to create a metaphor by turning a common easily recognised item into a meaning by adding a word, hopefully the right word. Sometimes I find the object & it'll sit there bugging me for a year or more, other times it just clicks."

Some of the words that have been written down by people who found them:

• FINITE – the full-size washing machine outside Newtown police station (Honi Soit; Jonathan Shaw's blog).
• ETERNITY – on squashed soft drink cans. Jonathan Shaw noted it was done in Arthur Stace's script.
• HATE and FEAR – on TV remotes and mobile phones in Newtown (Wikipedia; Jonathan Shaw).
• FORGOTTEN – on cast shoes, including one on a pedestrian island in Enmore (Jonathan Shaw; Honi Soit).
• GONE – on gloves near Erskineville Oval (Honi Soit).
• FAKE – on a Louis Vuitton-style handbag at Oxford Street and Greens Road, Paddington (Differentville; Honi Soit).
• NOTHINGNESS – on a dead bird near Redfern station (Differentville).
• LIFE IS FLEETING and OBSOLESCENCE – on two full-size concrete TVs sitting on concrete VCRs, one on King Street and one on Gladstone Street, Enmore (Wikipedia).
• DRINK TO GET DRUNK – on a cast wine cask bladder at Edinburgh and Victoria roads (a reader's comment on Jonathan Shaw's blog).
• Titled pieces Jonathan Shaw found around Enmore and Marrickville: Man-Made, Sweet Tooth (a donut baring its teeth), Work, Laissez Faire and Tag.

I like the ETERNITY cans. They're a nod to Arthur Stace, who chalked that one word on Sydney's footpaths for decades, so a throwaway can ends up carrying the city's most famous bit of street writing. I've done a page on Stace too, linked at the bottom.

What He's Getting At

Consumerism and waste come up again and again. In 2012 he told The Fitzroy Flasher that capitalism "requires each product to have a shorter shelf life than the last, either by built in obsolescence… or by peer pressure (iPhone, say no more!)", and that "any logical reading of this makes you realise this is impossible on a finite planet with finite resources." Seen that way, FINITE on a washing machine and OBSOLESCENCE on a TV make sense.

In 2025 he gave UP Magazine the short version: "To make people think." He went on: "We're bombarded with thousands of ads, signs, and symbols telling us what to do, what to buy. I just want people to think more."

War and guns are the other big theme. ArtsHub said his 2013 Brenda May Gallery show "interrogates consumerism and war with a good dose of wit". His website has pieces called Police Special, ANZAC II (RSL), MAD AK and Hand gun, each with a short and pointed note.

He's named his influences as his grandfather, Rodin, the book Subway Art and the Scottish poet-sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay, who also carved words into stone. In 2025 he added Francis Bacon, Hannah Höch, Lushsux, Futura and Martha Rosler.

Cast faces fixed to a timber pole in May Street, St Peters, 2011. Wikipedia calls these concrete graffiti faces "based on medieval gargoyles" but doesn't say who made them, so I can't say for sure they're Coles's. Dunks58, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Where to Find Them in Sydney

Most people who write about him leave the exact spots out, and the Herald said in 2023 that the locations are "best kept secret". He told the 2095 blog that he does it both ways: some go in really obvious places where loads of people see them, and some are hidden in the hope they'll last longer. The Inner West and the inner east are his heartland, and these are the areas named in print:

• Newtown – the FINITE washing machine outside the police station, which the Herald calls "now-removed". Honi Soit's writer found a yellow cube on its platform two years later. There's also a wall of skulls and balaclavas on Gladstone Street by the railway, an oil can and gloves at the crossing outside Newtown station, and the LIFE IS FLEETING TV on King Street.
• Enmore – Enmore Road bus stops, the OBSOLESCENCE TV on Gladstone Street, a balaclava on a graffiti wall in Trafalgar Street, and Laissez Faire on the mural wall at Phillip and Gladstone streets.
• Paddington – around the old COFA art school (now UNSW Art & Design) at Oxford Street and Greens Road: the FAKE handbag, a balaclava, a skull, and a washing machine on Selwyn Street that has since gone.
• Redfern – Little Eveleigh Street beside the railway. Helen Foster once counted six pieces in about 100 feet there.
• Erskineville – gloves around Erskineville Oval and the small park at Ashmore Street and Mitchell Road.
• Waterloo – a few on Danks Street, the old gallery strip, including a teddy bear.
• The CBD – a balaclava and gloves at Liverpool and Castlereagh streets, a plaque, gun and remote in Dungate Lane, and a balaclava on a transformer box opposite a Commonwealth Bank branch. A Differentville reader also mentioned one on Macquarie Street near the Cahill Walk stairs.
• Marrickville, St Peters, Alexandria and Surry Hills – scattered pieces, including a street plaque near the Brett Whiteley Studio and squashed cans by bus stops in St Peters.
• Further out – one balaclava on Cockatoo Island, gloves left outside the Art Gallery of NSW, a balaclava and two phones in Cessnock in the Hunter, and a balaclava found in Gadigal Reserve, Summer Hill, in September 2026, all reported by Differentville and its readers.

The same LOL skull plaque, Paddington, March 2026. Xyxyzyz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking along the sandstone wall outside the old COFA campus, Paddington, at night. The skull plaque sits on the wall's top course. Xyxyzyz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Beyond Sydney

Melbourne got him early. The Fitzroy Flasher wrote in 2012 about waking up to a Fitzroy that had been "bombed" with his pieces. On that trip he said he glued "about five milk crates of new & old works mostly over Brunswick, Fitzroy & the CBD". He liked it there, saying Melbourne's old bluestone lanes suited his work better: "Melbourne seems more natural for my work, like European cities it's older." In 2017 he said there were still a fair few left in Melbourne, and even in Canberra.

Since 2015 he's been working mostly in Europe. He's put pieces from London's South Bank Centre up through Brick Lane, and Differentville reports Valencia, Barcelona and German towns. Hamburg has taken to him in a big way. Kunst@SH says he did a long artist residency there in 2018, and the Urbanshit Gallery says he has been leaving his mark on the city since 2016. One of his best-known Hamburg pieces is Besinnungslosigkeit (roughly "senselessness" or "unconsciousness") on the Moorweide parkland. It's a cast of a discarded liqueur bottle with a stag's head on the label, and the words "produced & bottled to keep you numb".

Besinnungslosigkeit by Will Coles on the Moorweide, Hamburg-Rotherbaum, photographed in June 2024. The Commons description dates the piece to 2018. Minderbinder, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Close view of Besinnungslosigkeit, Hamburg, 2024. Minderbinder, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The same Hamburg piece in March 2019. The Commons description gives white cement on a grey concrete base, about 100 cm long. Felistoria, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Galleries, Shows and Prizes

Even though he's made his name on the street, he has shown in galleries. In Sydney his gallery was Brenda May Gallery at 2 Danks Street, Waterloo.

• March 2012 – Nihilist Archaeology, Brenda May Gallery, part of Art Month Sydney. He gave an artist talk on Saturday 10 March, there was an Art at Night event where he ran a cocktail bar, and the show ran until 24 March.
• March 2012 – Hello Dollies, Penrith Regional Gallery, a group show with Fiona Fenech and Janet Parker-Smith.
• October 2013 – Death Wish, Brenda May Gallery, covered by ArtsHub and the Street Fashion Sydney blog. Asked how he got a car into the gallery, he told ArtsHub: "On its side."
• 2 to 18 October 2026 – WAIT | YOUR TURN, a joint show by the Oberfett and Urbanshit galleries at Urbanshit Gallery, Hamburg-Ottensen. Oberfett has worked with him for about ten years. The galleries say he calls his current approach "Degenerated Art".

On prizes, he was blunt in 2012: "I've been shortlisted for loads of art prizes but have never won once." I couldn't find a fetched source naming the shortlists, so I've left them out. He told the same interviewer that one art magazine refused to review his shows, even though it had bought a large sculpture of his for its foyer.

The galleries say his work is in many private and public collections.

Stolen, Defaced and Removed

These pieces are put up without permission. Honi Soit calls him "a guerilla artist, leaving his unsolicited works to be found by anyone and everyone". In his advice to young street artists in 2025, he listed the "unwritten rules", ending with "above all, don't get caught."

I couldn't find any source saying a Sydney council has taken a stand on his pieces in particular. What's on record is the City of Sydney's general line on graffiti: a council spokesperson quoted on Wikipedia said its approach is "to remove graffiti quickly and consistently". In the Hamburg caption for Besinnungslosigkeit he said: "Sometimes a council will embrace a sculpture of mine because they think it's official but will then remove it when they realise it isn't. On rare occasions like this they'll keep it even when they find out its unofficial."

He has his own gripes with councils too. He told The Fitzroy Flasher in 2012 that the City of Sydney's laneway art used "council-commissioned graphic designers & gallery rep'd artists in search of some cred" rather than real street artists. In 2025 he described most new murals as "bland, pretty, meaningless legal wallpaper commissioned by city councils".

More often, the people who take his pieces away are collectors. Jonathan Shaw, an Enmore blogger, wrote in 2013 that "the main damage to his work seems to come from would-be collectors and other street artists". He found Man-Made at an Enmore Road bus stop where "a would-be collector was defeated by the glue and left us with a relic". The FINITE washing machine had been tagged and painted over by another street artist. In 2015 Shaw wrote about a FORGOTTEN shoe on the pedestrian island outside his house. All that was left was a shoeprint, and he wrote that the sculpture "is now a prized – and prised – possession of a private art collector". Differentville says Coles tags himself on Instagram as the "most stolen artist".

He takes it in his stride. He told the 2095 blog his works are "like little children but also orphans, once they are done and then glued down or sold". Shaw notes that Coles, in a video interview, calls the damage part of the game.

Hunting and Collecting

For a lot of Sydneysiders, finding one is half the fun. He told the 2095 blog that people turn it into a treasure hunt: "If people know there are 10 remote control sculptures and they've seen 9, they will keep looking and others will give them clues." Honi Soit's writer called it "a kind of little treasure hunt to inject more colour into my university life". Helen Foster wrote that once you've seen one, every kerb looks different.

If you'd like to find some, the clues are out there. Differentville keeps a list and a map, and readers still add sightings in the comments. His Instagram, @mrwillcoles, gives hints about new spots. Please don't try to lever one off. They're meant to stay where he put them for everyone walking past, and they're glued down hard enough that people usually just break them.

If you want one of your own, buy it from him or a gallery that sells his work. Brenda May in Waterloo showed him in Sydney, and Oberfett and Urbanshit in Hamburg show him now.

Where He Fits in Sydney Street Art

Sydney's street art is mostly paint: the big Newtown murals like the 1991 Martin Luther King mural on King Street, stencils, paste-ups and tags. Wikipedia's article on Newtown street art lists "concrete graffiti" as its own style, "objects cast in concrete or a similar material, which are often glued into place on a footpath or against a wall", and says many of them around Newtown "appear to have been created by the same artist, Will Coles".

He calls himself a sculptor first. He told the 2095 blog: "I'm a sculptor, just to sum up that I am an artist that works in 3D. Everything else is labels." He put his work in a line of "art for the people" that "goes back beyond graff, beyond Social Realism, beyond Hogarth". Jonathan Shaw thought his works were "probably seen and enjoyed by more people on a daily basis than those of any other sculptor". The Herald put him first on its 2023 list of Sydney's best everyday street art, ahead of Thierry Noir, Fintan Magee and Tracey Emin's little birds in the CBD.

Andrew Aiken and Juilee Pryor's Martin Luther King mural on King Street, Newtown, 2014. It's the best-known piece of the painted street art that Coles's concrete work sits alongside. MediaServicesAP, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Great Wave mural by the Big City Freaks collective, Newtown, 2014. MediaServicesAP, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Free Speech stencil, Enmore. Enmore's walls are where Coles's Laissez Faire and Tag sit among painted work. Hpeterswald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Natural History Museum mural, Enmore, 2014. Hpeterswald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Yarn bombing on Enmore Road, August 2009. It's another kind of street art that adds objects rather than paint. Dunks58, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The street artist SMC3 painting a wall in St Peters, 2016. Hpeterswald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Phibs painting at Redfern, 2015. Redfern's back streets near the railway are also prime Coles territory. JAM Project, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Art on the walls at Newtown station, 2015. Gloves and an oil can by Coles were reported at the crossing outside. N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Street art in Brougham Lane, Potts Point, 2023. Shkuru Afshar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 1972 – Born in Warwickshire, England, and raised in Suffolk (Kunst@SH).
• 1989–1991 – Does graffiti, by his own account (UP Magazine).
• Before the early 1990s – Studies at the Ravensbourne, Wimbledon and Glasgow schools of art (Kunst@SH).
• Early 1990s – Moves to Sydney. Honi Soit just says "sometime in the 1990s".
• July 2007 – The Nosey in Newtown blog runs a post headed "Fear, hate, dumb and will", which Wikipedia cites for his Newtown pieces.
• 2011 – Cast remote HATE photographed in Newtown (Wikimedia Commons).
• March 2012 – Nihilist Archaeology at Brenda May Gallery, Waterloo, for Art Month Sydney, and the group show Hello Dollies at Penrith Regional Gallery.
• 2012 – Big gluing trip to Fitzroy, Brunswick and the Melbourne CBD. Interviewed by The Fitzroy Flasher in October.
• May 2013 – Interviewed by the 2095 street art blog.
• October 2013 – Death Wish at Brenda May Gallery, covered by ArtsHub.
• December 2013 – Jonathan Shaw photographs damaged pieces around Enmore, Newtown, Marrickville and Surry Hills.
• 2015 – Moves to Europe (Honi Soit and Differentville). In March, a FORGOTTEN shoe is taken from a pedestrian island in Enmore.
• 2016 – Starts working in Hamburg, according to the Urbanshit Gallery.
• 2018 – Artist residency in Hamburg. Besinnungslosigkeit is installed on the Moorweide.
• 2023 – The Sydney Morning Herald puts him first on its list of Sydney's best everyday street art.
• August 2024 – Honi Soit runs "Sculptures by the Streets". The Newtown washing machine has gone.
• December 2025 – Interviewed by UP Magazine.
• 2–18 October 2026 – WAIT | YOUR TURN at Urbanshit Gallery, Hamburg, with Oberfett.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When he came to Sydney. Kunst@SH says the early 1990s. Honi Soit only says "sometime in the 1990s".
• When he left. Honi Soit and Differentville both say 2015. The Sydney Morning Herald said in June 2023 that he lived in Sydney "until about a decade ago", which would put it a bit earlier.
• Australian, British or European? The Herald says Australian-British, the Hamburg galleries say Australian, Kunst@SH says born in England, and his own website says "freelance European".
• Hamburg dates. The Urbanshit Gallery says he's been working in Hamburg since 2016. Kunst@SH puts his residency in 2018, and Commons dates Besinnungslosigkeit to 2018.
• Was the Hamburg bottle official? A Commons photo description says the piece was funded by Hamburg's culture authority (Kulturbehörde) through a "streetart" project. In Coles's own words, quoted on Street Art Cities, it's one he installed "with a great accomplice" that the council kept "even when they find out its unofficial".
• Plaster or concrete? Commons photographers called the Newtown pieces "plaster graffiti objects". He says the finished pieces are cast in cement, using plaster only for the master copy.

My Earlier Posts

• Arthur Stace – Mr Eternity – The Man Who Chalked One Word Across Sydney – 1885 to 1967

Sources

• Will Coles, official website (willcoles.com). https://www.willcoles.com/
• Adrian Naracita, "Sculptures by the Streets: the art of Will Coles", Honi Soit, 7 August 2024. https://honisoit.com/2024/08/sculptures-by-the-streets-the-art-of-will-coles/
• Diego López, "Will Coles: Street Art as an Act of Thinking", UP Magazine, 2 December 2025. https://upmag.com/will-coles/
• janie2095, "5 Questions with... Will Coles", 2095 Street Art blog, 31 May 2013. http://2095-streetart.blogspot.com/2013/05/5-questions-withwill-coles.html
• "'Ciment Fondu' and faggy delicacies" (interview with Will Coles), The Fitzroy Flasher blog, 6 October 2012. http://thefitzroyflasher.blogspot.com/2012_10_06_archive.html
• Gina Fairley, "This is not a death wish: Will Coles", ArtsHub, 29 October 2013. https://www.artshub.com.au/news/news/this-is-not-a-death-wish-will-coles-197154-2311867/
• Lenny Ann Low, "Where to find Sydney's best everyday street art", Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2023. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/where-to-find-sydney-s-best-everyday-street-art-20230623-p5dix0.html
• Helen Foster, "Where to Find Will Coles' Cool Concrete Street Art in Sydney", Differentville (2017, updated 2026, with comments). https://differentville.com/will-coles-sydney-street-art/
• Jonathan Shaw, "Will Coles", Me fail? I fly!, 4 December 2013. https://shawjonathan.com/2013/12/04/will-coles/
• Jonathan Shaw, "Art theft in Enmore", Me fail? I fly!, 10 March 2015. https://shawjonathan.com/2015/03/10/art-theft-in-enmore/
• "Newtown area graffiti and street art", Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_area_graffiti_and_street_art
• Brenda May Gallery blog, March 2012. http://brendamaygallery.blogspot.com/
• Sydney Art Galleries and Art Community, Art Month Sydney 2012 listings. https://sydneyartgalleriesandartcommunity.wordpress.com/tag/sydney-galleries/page/15/
• Kent Johnson, "Will Coles 'casts' Death Wish 2013 at Brenda May Gallery", Street Fashion Sydney, 24 October 2013. https://streetfashionsydney.blogspot.com/2013/10/will-coles-casts-death-wish-2013-at.html
• Jan Petersen, "Will Coles: Besinnungslosigkeit", Kunst@SH. https://sh-kunst.de/will-coles-besinnungslosigkeit/
• "Besinnungslosigkeit (Unconsciousness) by Will Coles", Street Art Cities. https://streetartcities.com/markers/8ae49756-4775-4581-bb34-af2c4b252c6c
• "WILL COLES – WAIT | YOUR TURN", Urbanshit Gallery, Hamburg. https://www.urbanshit-gallery.com/de/will-coles-wait-your-turn/
• "WAIT | YOUR TURN – Skulpturen aus Beton von Will Coles", Hamburg Tourismus. https://www.hamburg-tourism.de/sehen-erleben/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungskalender/wait-your-turn-skulpturen-aus-beton-von-will-coles/
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture.

Robert Wardell and Petersham – The Murder of Dr Wardell and the Estate That Became a Suburb

On a Sunday afternoon in September 1834, one of the best-known men in Sydney rode out across his own paddocks at Petersham and never came home. Dr Robert Wardell was a barrister, a newspaper man and a thorn in the side of Governor Darling. With William Charles Wentworth he started The Australian, the colony's first independent newspaper. He also owned a huge sweep of bush that ran from Parramatta Road all the way down to the Cooks River. Down near the river he came across three runaway convicts camped on his land, and one of them shot him dead. This page tells his story and the story of the suburb that grew up on his estate. The murder gets the most room, because it's one of the great Sydney crime stories of the 1830s.

First, a quick word on the name. The Petersham Wardell was Robert Wardell (1793–1834). People sometimes mix him up with William Wardell, the architect of St Mary's Cathedral, and there's a short note on him further down.

Robert Wardell's marble memorial tablet in St James' Church, King Street, his profile modelled from his death mask. Unknown sculptor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Petersham Before Wardell

Gadigal and Wangal country

Long before any land grants, this was Aboriginal country. Inner West Council says the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora Nation are the Traditional Custodians of the inner west. Nobody can draw the exact boundaries, but the council's description puts Petersham right on the line between them. Gadigal country is believed to have run along the south side of Port Jackson "from South Head to about Petersham", and the Wangal lived along the southern shore of the Parramatta River "from about Petersham to about Rosehill". Wikipedia's Petersham article just calls the area Gadigal territory.

The Dictionary of Sydney's history of the Cooks River people points out that spear points found along the river show people hunted land animals as well as fishing. It also says that the area north of the river around Petersham "came to be known to early European settlers as the kangaroo ground". The Dictionary still lists "Kangaroo Ground" as an old name for Petersham.

The Cooks River at Dulwich Hill. Wardell's estate ran down to this river, and he was shot not far from its banks. J Bar, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Grose, the food crisis and the name

In the hungry early years of the colony, Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose began handing out farms to get more food grown. Garry Wotherspoon writes in the Dictionary of Sydney that in 1793 Grose started granting land to military men. The first grants went west of town at Kangaroo Ground, now Petersham. By late 1793 a stockade stood halfway to Parramatta for the convict work gangs, and in October that year Grose sent men out to set up a timber yard.

Grose named the district after Petersham, his home village in Surrey, England. That's the old village beside the Thames near Richmond, which is now part of London. Wikipedia says 520 acres were granted to several people, including the chaplain Richard Johnson, the surgeon John White and the bricklayer James Bloodsworth. For years afterwards Petersham was farming land, and good farming land at that.

Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose, who gave Petersham its name. Unidentified engraver, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St Peter's Church in the original Petersham, the old Surrey village beside the Thames. N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Robert Wardell?

John Edwards's Dictionary of Sydney entry says Wardell was born on 11 May 1793 at Healaugh in Yorkshire. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) says he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took an LL.B. in 1817 and an LL.D. in 1823. He was a barrister of the Middle Temple. In London he edited the Statesman, an evening paper, and it was there in 1819 that he met young Wentworth.

In February 1823 Wardell applied for the new job of Attorney-General of New South Wales and missed out. The job went to Saxe Bannister. ADB's C.H. Currey makes a dry little remark about this: if Wardell had got the job, Governor Darling "may have been spared much vexation".

In 1824 Wardell sailed for Sydney on the Alfred with his mother. Wentworth and Dr and Mrs William Redfern were on the same ship. Wardell being Wardell, he sued the ship's owner over "a wet and comfortless cabin" and won £200. He and Wentworth were admitted to practise on 10 September 1824.

The Australian, 1824

The pair had brought printing gear out with them. On 14 October 1824 the first issue of The Australian went on sale. It was a weekly and cost a shilling. They never asked Governor Brisbane's permission. As he complained, "These gentlemen never solicited my permission to publish their Paper." The first editorial set the tone:

"A free press is the most legitimate, and, at the same time, the most powerful weapon that can be employed to annihilate influence, frustrate the designs of tyranny, and restrain the arm of oppression."

Currey says that until he stepped down as editor on 27 June 1828, "Wardell was the Australian". He wasn't a fan of the writing, though. He found it long-winded and sarcastic, but sharp when it counted.

The front page of the very first issue of The Australian, Thursday 14 October 1824. The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 - 1848), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

William Charles Wentworth, Wardell's partner in The Australian and in the law. Dalton's Royal Photographic Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Clashing with Governor Darling

Things were friendly enough at first. ADB says Darling's brother-in-law, Henry Dumaresq, made a point of cultivating Wardell. That didn't last. The paper wanted an elected assembly and an end to military juries, and when Private Sudds died in 1827 The Australian joined in the uproar. Darling tried to rein in the press and prosecuted Wardell for criminal libel. Both big trials ended with the jury unable to agree.

Wardell was called out to duel twice: once by Saxe Bannister and once by Dumaresq. Nobody was hurt either time. Wikipedia says the Dumaresq duel came in 1827 after an article titled "How-e to live by plunder". Darling himself grumbled to London that "Mr Wentworth and Dr Wardell…keep the Court and the Bar, by their effrontery and their talent, equally in subjection".

The twist came later. When Darling found his own Attorney-General wasn't up to the job, he hired Wardell for the government. Currey says the fees Wardell charged startled the Secretary of State.

Governor Ralph Darling, by John Linnell. Wardell's newspaper made his life a misery. J. Linnell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Petersham Estate and Sara Dell

Wardell made good money and spent it on land. The Dictionary of Sydney says he built his Petersham estate by buying up the land grants between Petersham and the Cooks River, including Thomas Moore's old estate, until it covered more than 2,000 acres. Wikipedia says that in 1831 he bought land from Wentworth among others. ADB puts the estate at some 2,500 acres. The Sydney Gazette of 29 May 1830 reported that his timber alone had been valued at £40,000. ADB adds that 25 cultivated acres gave him 500 bushels of good wheat in 1830.

His house was Sara Dell, on Parramatta Road, where Fort Street High School stands today. John Edwards has a lovely bit of detective work on the name. Wardell was living with Sarah Rowe, the estranged wife of a Sydney solicitor, and the 1828 census lists her at the house as "Miss S Wardell". Edwards reads the name as a play on "Sarah Wardell", the wife she could never legally be, joined to "dell", a small valley.

Wardell played the English squire. Chrys Meader's Dictionary of Sydney history of Marrickville says he fenced the whole property, stocked it with imported English deer under a gamekeeper and led hunting parties down to the Cooks River. Another Dictionary entry says those parties often included the governor. He guarded the place fiercely, too. When the assistant government architect Joshua Thorp tried to force a right of way through Petersham in 1829, Wardell sued him for trespass and won.

Fort Street High School on Parramatta Road stands on the site of Wardell's house, Sara Dell. Enoch Lau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Petersham and Marrickville from the air, the old Wardell estate country. Graeme Bartlett, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Murder of Dr Wardell

The day of the ride: Sunday 7 September 1834

ADB, Chrys Meader's Marrickville history and John Edwards's entry all give Sunday 7 September 1834. The one odd date out is another Dictionary of Sydney entry, "Bark huts and country estates", which says 8 September. That's most likely the day the body was found. ADB tells it simply: early in the afternoon, "astride his hack, he left his cottage at Petersham to inspect his estate."

Who was with him?

From everything I could read, nobody. None of the accounts mentions a servant or friend riding with him, and his body lay out overnight until his own people found it the next day. He was a man alone on horseback, a long way down his own paddocks from the house.

The runaways' camp on the estate

Ironically, the privacy Wardell had fought so hard for in court made his estate a perfect hiding place. The "Bark huts" entry puts it this way: three runaway convicts "found Petersham an excellent hiding place to escape capture." Near the Cooks River boundary Wardell spotted "an unauthorized little humpy", in ADB's words. Out of it came three men he rightly took for escaped convicts: John Jenkins, Thomas Tattersdale and a teenager, Emanuel (or Emmanuel) Brace.

The shooting

ADB says that "after a few inflamed exchanges, John Jenkins, the leader of them, shot him." Rachel Franks, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, says Wardell had tried to talk the three into giving themselves up. Jenkins feared Wardell would turn them in, so he shot him.

Jenkins's confession in the cells, printed in The Sydney Times on 14 November 1834, made it worse still. He knew who Wardell was when he fired. And:

"not satisfied with discharging the contents of his piece at him, he pursued him, and when the unfortunate gentleman fell exhausted from his horse, from loss of blood, he struck him with the butt end of his piece, and a short struggle took place between them. This accounts for the breast of the Doctor's coat being torn."

Finding the body

ADB says the body was found the next day. The "Bark huts" entry adds that it "was stiff and cold when discovered by his servants many hours later." John Edwards worked out that it was about three-quarters of a mile, just over a kilometre, from Sara Dell. He says many accounts exaggerate the distance, and that the spot was no further from the house than today's Marrickville Park or Newington College.

The Australian, Wardell's own old paper, sent someone out to the scene. Its report of 9 September, quoted by Rachel Franks, is raw with grief:

"imagine a human being crimsoned over with his own heart's blood; a fearful wound on the left side of the throat, immediately under the ear, and another gaping wound sufficient for the escape of a hundred lives, immediately between the left shoulder and the breast…The blood stained corpse, of which was once Robert Wardell, was here before us."

Petersham Park today. In 1834 this was all part of Wardell's fenced bush estate. OzRocky, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The inquest

A coroner's inquest was held, and ADB's reading list includes a report of it in the Sydney Monitor of 10 September 1834. I couldn't get through to Trove to read that report myself, so I can't give you the inquest's wording.

The manhunt and the arrests

The government offered a reward and a pardon for information about the killers. ADB lists the Sydney Herald of 15 September 1834 reporting it. The three men were picked up about a week after the murder. By 17 September, the Sydney Monitor was reporting that Tattersdale and Jenkins had been committed for trial (again from ADB's list). Young Brace turned approver, which meant he gave evidence for the Crown against his mates.

The accused

John Jenkins was the ringleader and the man with the gun. The Dictionary of Sydney's record shows him as a convict on the ship Asia, arriving in Sydney on 27 June 1833, barely fifteen months before the murder. Franks calls him "a man with a really dodgy past". On the scaffold he owned up to a string of robberies, at Kissing Point, on the Liverpool road and at Liverpool, where he said he'd stabbed a man.

Thomas Tattersdale came out on the same ship, the Asia, and also arrived on 27 June 1833. He was charged with aiding and abetting.

Emanuel Brace was the youngest. The Dictionary of Sydney says he was born in Hertfordshire in September 1816, which made him about 17 or 18. The Marrickville history calls him "a boy of 16". He testified for the Crown and received an absolute pardon. His later life was no fairytale either. In 1858 he was tried at Darlinghurst for murdering his wife Esther at Eden and was acquitted. He died an alcoholic in Newcastle in 1880.

The sources I could read don't say which masters or road gangs Jenkins and Tattersdale were assigned to before they bolted, so I've left that out.

The trial in the Supreme Court

Jenkins and Tattersdale were tried for murder in the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Sir Francis Forbes on the bench. Rachel Franks writes that the trial "was quite an event, and the courthouse was packed". The jury was sworn, the indictments were read, and both men pleaded not guilty. Young Brace gave evidence against his former companions.

I couldn't load the full court record, so I can't tell you for sure who prosecuted or the details of the evidence. The jury didn't take long. In the words Franks quotes from the report, the jury retired, "but the door, was hardly shut, when they came back into Court" with guilty verdicts against both men.

Sir Francis Forbes, Chief Justice of New South Wales, who tried Jenkins and Tattersdale and watched his courtroom turn into a brawl. Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The sentence and Jenkins's outburst

Forbes sentenced both men to "be hung by the neck until they were dead, and their bodies delivered over to the surgeons for dissection." Tattersdale took it quietly. He asked that Brace be made to watch the execution and asked for time to repent.

Jenkins was another story. Franks's account, drawn from The Australian, says he had "a good deal to say, and throwing himself into a threatening and unbecoming attitude". He swore at everyone, said he hadn't had a fair trial, blamed his lawyer and declared he could shoot everyone in the room. He offered to confess to other robberies, and Forbes told him "he had better apply to the clergyman of his own religion". Then Jenkins turned on Tattersdale and punched him twice in the face, knocking him down in the dock. It took about a dozen constables to get him into handcuffs, and he fought and shouted all the way back to the cells. Through all this, The Australian reported, the judge "sat in mute astonishment".

The artist John Gardiner Austin was sketching in court. The Sydney Times said his lithograph of Jenkins caught him "at the moment Jenkins was putting a question to one of the witnesses called on his behalf". The Dictionary of Sydney holds a copy, credited to the National Library of Australia.

The hangings

Jenkins and Tattersdale were hanged on Monday 10 November 1834. That's the date in the Dictionary of Sydney's record for Tattersdale and in Rachel Franks's account, and the Sydney Herald of 13 November spoke of "Monday morning last". (The Marrickville history says 7 November, which looks to be a slip.) A third condemned man, McCormack, went to the gallows with them. Brace, who had turned approver, was not hanged.

The Sydney Herald said the crowd around the gaol was "crowded to a degree never before observed on any similar occasion". Tattersdale came in first with the Rev. W. Cowper, "the most sincere repentance and devotion". Jenkins followed "staring wildly around". He ran up the ladder, struck one of the ropes "in a playful manner", and spoke to the prisoners in the yard:

"Well, good bye my lads, I have not time to say much to you; I acknowledge I shot the Doctor, but it was not for gain, it was for the sake of my fellow prisoners because he was a tyrant… if any of you take the bush, shoot every tyrant you come across…"

When the others shook hands, Jenkins turned away from Tattersdale and said something like "let every villain shake hands with himself." At the urging of the Rev. Mr McEncroe, he relented, and shook Tattersdale's hand with: "come, come my lad, none of that crying, it's no use crying now; we'll be all right in ten minutes time." Then the platform fell. The Herald used the story to argue for "an unrelaxing system of restraint on the Convict population".

Public reaction and the funeral

Meader writes that the murder "caused a huge outcry and calls for increased penalties and police to protect the citizenry of Sydney", coming as it did when people were already worried about convict lawlessness. She adds that there have been "several conspiracy theories about who really wanted him dead" ever since. ADB's reading list includes a poem about Wardell printed in the Sydney Gazette on 18 September 1834.

Edwards says Wardell was given a grand funeral and buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery, the old Sandhills burial ground where Central Station is now. The Sydney Gazette reported the funeral on 13 September 1834. He didn't stay there. His family insisted his remains be dug up and shipped to London to lie beside his father in the family vault.

In 1839 a marble tablet went up in St James' Church, King Street, with his profile modelled from his death mask. ADB says it is "said to be a good likeness". It's still there on the southern wall.

The Sand Hills burying ground on Devonshire Street, where Wardell was first buried. Norman Selfe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Old Cemetery, Devonshire Street, painted by Julian Ashton in 1894. Julian Ashton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St James' Church, King Street, Sydney. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Inside St James' Church, King Street, where Wardell's memorial hangs. Sardaka at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Happened to the Estate

Wardell never married. His will left everything to his mother, but she had died in 1830 and he never made another one. Wentworth was granted administration on 16 October 1834. Edwards writes that the estate was settled in London in 1840. Because Wardell's three married sisters couldn't legally own property in their own names, each of their husbands got a third: Charles Priddle, John Fisher and John Frazer. Sarah Rowe stayed on at Sara Dell. She died at Petersham in December 1837, aged only 38.

Meader says the "demise of Wardell opened the way for the first great era of subdivision in Marrickville". In the 1840s the estate was opened up to market gardeners, quarrymen and dairy farmers. A patch of it stayed bush long enough to be called "Wardell's Bush". According to another Dictionary entry, Wardell's heirs carved Petersham into garden and dairy farm blocks in the late 1840s. In 1857 the merchant Thomas Holt bought part of the estate and built his house, The Warren.

Petersham Grows Up

Wikipedia says Petersham's first inn, the Cherry Tree, was opened by Thomas Weedon on land bought from Wardell's estate. A racetrack opened in the 1840s and soon closed, and the first post office came in 1855.

The railway changed everything. Petersham station opened on 6 January 1857, at first just a halt. The big station building and the iron footbridge came in the 1880s, designed by George Cowdery. Wikipedia quotes the description of the old building as "the largest and grandest of the surviving 19th century railway stations in the Sydney area". The station went on the State Heritage Register in 1999.

Men at work on the railway bridge near Petersham at Battle Bridge Creek, an undated State Records NSW photo. State Records NSW, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The grand old Petersham railway station building. J Bar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Petersham railway station seen from a passing train. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Petersham station's northern entrance today. Abesty, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Municipality of Petersham was incorporated in 1871. Wikipedia says it had 750 people living in 153 houses at the time. The first town hall in Crystal Street, designed by Thomas Rowe, opened on 19 April 1882, and it was the scene of Australia's first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore in 1908. It was knocked down in 1937 and replaced by the Art Deco town hall by Rudder & Grout, finished in 1938. Inner West Council notes that this hall was the backdrop for the dancing scenes in Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom (1992). Petersham Council lasted until it merged into Marrickville in 1948–49.

Petersham Town Hall in Crystal Street, the Art Deco hall that went up in 1937–38. J Bar at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This gate in Petersham Park once stood at the Petersham Town Hall. OzRocky, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Petersham Reservoir on New Canterbury Road, a heritage-listed site. OzRocky, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, well-off families came out to Petersham for the parks and the train line, and their big Victorian and Edwardian houses still cluster around Petersham Park. Fort Street boys' school moved to Taverner's Hill in 1916, onto the old Sara Dell site. In 1947 the Petersham Odeon opened with crowds out the front.

Crowds at the opening of the Petersham Odeon, 15 February 1947, photographed by Sam Hood. Sam Hood (Hood Collection, State Library of NSW), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From the late 20th century, Portuguese families moved in from Paddington looking for cheaper housing, and Petersham became the heart of Sydney's Portuguese community. You can still see it in the charcoal chicken shops and the Bairro Português festival on Audley Street. Wikipedia makes an interesting point, though: only about 1.9 per cent of locals were actually born in Portugal. And Wardell Road still carries his name, running south from Petersham.

A Federation cottage on Wardell Road, Dulwich Hill. The road carries his name south from Petersham. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Note on the Other Wardell: William, the Architect

It's an easy mix-up. William Wilkinson Wardell (1823–1899) was born in Poplar, London, a generation after Robert. He was a Gothic Revival architect and a friend of Augustus Pugin. He came to Victoria in 1858, became chief architect of the Victorian Public Works Department, and designed St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney and St John's College at Sydney University. He died at North Sydney in 1899 and was buried at Gore Hill. None of the sources I read link him to Petersham or to Robert.

William Wilkinson Wardell (1823–1899), the architect of St Mary's Cathedral, no relation of Robert's that I could find. Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Gadigal and Wangal country; settlers later call it the Kangaroo Ground.
• 1793 – Lieutenant-Governor Grose begins land grants at Kangaroo Ground; a timber yard is set up in October.
• 1793/1794 – Grose names the district Petersham, after his home village in Surrey.
• 11 May 1793 – Robert Wardell born at Healaugh, Yorkshire.
• 1819 – Wardell, editor of the London Statesman, meets W.C. Wentworth.
• 1824 – Wardell and Wentworth reach Sydney on the Alfred; admitted to practise on 10 September.
• 14 October 1824 – First issue of The Australian.
• 1826–27 – Duels with Saxe Bannister and Henry Dumaresq; libel prosecutions under Darling.
• 27 June 1828 – Wardell gives up the editor's chair.
• 1829 – Wins the trespass case against Joshua Thorp.
• 1830 – His timber is valued at £40,000; his mother dies.
• 27 June 1833 – Jenkins and Tattersdale arrive in Sydney as convicts on the Asia.
• Sunday 7 September 1834 – Wardell is shot near the Cooks River end of his estate.
• 8 September 1834 – His body is found by his servants.
• Mid-September 1834 – Reward offered; Jenkins, Tattersdale and Brace arrested about a week after the murder.
• Late September–October 1834 – Trial before Chief Justice Forbes; both men found guilty; Jenkins attacks Tattersdale in the dock.
• 16 October 1834 – Wentworth granted administration of the estate.
• Monday 10 November 1834 – Jenkins and Tattersdale hanged, along with McCormack; Brace pardoned.
• December 1837 – Sarah Rowe dies at Petersham.
• 1839 – Memorial tablet installed in St James' Church.
• 1840 – Estate divided among his sisters' husbands; subdivision follows in the 1840s.
• 6 January 1857 – Petersham railway station opens.
• 1871 – Municipality of Petersham incorporated.
• 1882 – First Petersham Town Hall opens.
• 1916 – Fort Street boys move to the old Sara Dell site.
• 1938 – Art Deco town hall completed.
• 1948–49 – Petersham merges into Marrickville.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When Petersham was named: the Dictionary of Sydney says Grose named it in 1794. Wikipedia ties the naming to the 1793 settlement.
• Size of the estate: the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say about 2,000 acres or more. ADB says some 2,500 acres. The 1830 Sydney Gazette said "two or three thousand acres".
• How he built it: the Dictionary says he bought up grants including Thomas Moore's estate and dates his ownership from 1824. Wikipedia says he bought land from Wentworth and others in 1831.
• Date of the murder: ADB, Edwards and Meader say 7 September 1834. One Dictionary of Sydney entry says 8 September, which is the day the body was found.
• Distance from the house: John Edwards says about three-quarters of a mile and warns that many accounts stretch it.
• Brace's age: "a boy of 16" according to the Marrickville history. A Hertfordshire birth in September 1816, so about 17 or 18, according to the Dictionary's record.
• Date of the hangings: 10 November 1834 in the Dictionary's Tattersdale record, in Franks and in the Sydney Herald's "Monday morning last". Chrys Meader's Marrickville history says 7 November, and the Dictionary's record for Jenkins also gives 7 November.
• When the estate was carved up: Wikipedia says "subdivided in 1834 upon Wardell's murder". The Dictionary entries put the settlement in 1840 and the subdivision in the late 1840s.
• Jenkins's last words: the Sydney Herald and The Australian gave slightly different versions of his gallows speech.

My Earlier Posts

• The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse – Vaucluse House, the Wentworth Mausoleum and a Full Family Tree
• Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
• The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery
• Tresillian – 2–4 Shaw Street Petersham
• St Mary's Cathedral – College Street & Art Gallery Road (William Wardell's cathedral)
• Names Of Railway Stations In New South Wales – Including Aboriginal Names & Meanings

Sources

• C.H. Currey, "Wardell, Robert (1793–1834)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 2, 1967 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wardell-robert-2773
• John Edwards, "Wardell, Robert", Dictionary of Sydney, 2013 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/wardell_robert
• Rachel Franks, "Order in the Court! The Trial of Two Murderers", Dictionary of Sydney blog – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/blog/order_in_the_court_the_trial_of_two_murderers (quoting The Australian, 9 Sept and 11 Nov 1834)
• Chrys Meader, "Marrickville", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/marrickville
• "Bark huts and country estates", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/bark_huts_and_country_estates
• "The first people of the Cooks River", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/first_people_of_the_cooks_river
• "Urban growth in the Cooks River valley", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/urban_growth_in_the_cooks_river_valley
• Garry Wotherspoon, "The road west", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_road_west
• Dictionary of Sydney records: Petersham, Petersham estate, Sara Dell, John Jenkins, Thomas Tattersdale, Emmanuel Brace – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/place/petersham (and linked records)
• Marrickville Heritage Society, "The Hanging of the Bushrangers who Murdered Dr Wardell" (2012), reproducing the Sydney Herald, 13 November 1834 – https://marrickvilleheritage.org.au/2012/09/26/the-hanging-of-the-bushrangers-who-murdered-dr-wardell/
• The Sydney Times, 14 November 1834, p.2, transcribed by Australian Prints + Printmaking – https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/references/9790/
• Inner West Council, "Traditional custodians and how to acknowledge" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/aboriginal-community/traditional-custodians-and-how-acknowledge
• Inner West Council, "Land and suburbs" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/our-community-history/land-and-suburbs
• Inner West Council, "Petersham Town Hall" – https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/town-halls-100-people/petersham-town-hall
• Wikipedia: "Robert Wardell", "Petersham, New South Wales", "Petersham Town Hall", "Petersham railway station", "Fort Street High School", "William Wardell"
• Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture