Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail – A History of Sydney Transport

If you grew up in Sydney before 1961, or if your parents or grandparents did, you've probably heard the stories. The rattle of the old toast-rack trams down George Street, the conductor swinging along the footboard collecting fares, packed trams heading out to the Showground, the races at Randwick or the beach at Bondi and Coogee. For about eighty years trams were simply how Sydney got around. Then, almost overnight it seemed, they were gone, and for a long time all we had left were a few rusty rails poking through the bitumen and the old saying "shoot through like a Bondi tram". Now trams are back in George Street, so I thought it was time to tell the whole story, from the first horse tram in Pitt Street to the new light rail, with a look at the buses, trains and ferries along the way.

The Pitt Street Horse Tram, 1861–1866

Sydney's first tram ran along Pitt Street, between Circular Quay and the railway terminus out at the Cleveland Paddocks, roughly where Prince Alfred Park and the southern end of Central are today. The idea was as much about freight as passengers. The government wanted to haul railway goods wagons through the town to the wharves, and the passenger traffic came along with it.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald of 24 December 1861, the line "was permanently opened for traffic yesterday", so that's 23 December 1861. The first car, pulled by four horses, left Circular Quay at 6.25 in the morning to meet the 6.45 train at Redfern, and covered the mile and three-quarters in less than ten minutes.

It was never a happy line. The rails imported from England turned out to be unsuitable and were laid upside down, so the flanges stuck up above the road surface. Carts and carriages came to grief on them, and the Pitt Street shopkeepers complained almost from the start. Then on 15 January 1864 the composer Isaac Nathan, often called the father of Australian music, was crushed by a tram after getting off at the corner of Pitt and Goulburn Streets, near his home. He is thought to have been the first person killed by a tram in Australia. A parliamentary committee recommended the line be removed when its lease ran out, and it closed at the end of 1866. Horse-drawn omnibuses took over straight away.

Steam Trams and the Garden Palace, 1879

For nearly thirteen years after that, Sydney had no trams at all. What brought them back was the great Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, held in the Garden Palace, the huge timber exhibition building in the Domain that burnt down in 1882. The government needed a way to get crowds from the railway terminus to the exhibition, and a line was hurriedly laid from the station along Elizabeth Street to Hunter Street. Steam tram motors were ordered from the Baldwin works in Philadelphia.

The line opened on 16 September 1879, the day before the exhibition, and the plan was to pull it up again afterwards. People still remembered the Pitt Street fiasco, and nobody expected much. Instead it was a runaway success. The Commissioner for Railways reported that it had carried more than 400,000 passengers by the end of 1879, or about 4,000 a day, and returned a handsome profit on the money spent. The temporary line stayed, and in April 1880 Parliament passed an Act allowing tramways to be built through the city and suburbs.

King and Elizabeth Streets on the first night the first tram ran, 1879, drawn by J. Flynn.
Credit: State Library of New South Wales (call no. SSV / 23), no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.

From there it grew fast. The first suburban extension went out to Randwick Racecourse in 1880, the line up Crown Street to Surry Hills opened in 1881, Botany followed in 1882, Coogee in 1883 and Bondi in 1884, and more lines kept coming. The Dictionary of Sydney says the network grew from 2.5 kilometres in 1879 to almost 50 kilometres by 1884. A steam tram was a small engine, or "motor", pulling one or more trailers, some of them double-deckers, with the passengers sitting crosswise and the conductor collecting fares from the footboard. Tramwaymen called a motor with two trailers "two rooms and a kitchen". They were quick and reliable, but noisy, smoky and dusty, and they struggled on steep hills. The Herald remembered in 1961 that drivers on the Surry Hills line liked to race the five-horse omnibus up Crown Street from Oxford Street to the Cleveland Street terminus, whips cracking and throttle wide open, and the tram didn't always win.

A steam tram motor and its trailer at the corner of Market and Elizabeth Streets, about 1885.
Credit: NSW State Archives and Records (Digital ID 17420_a014_a0140001142), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Cable Trams for the Steep Bits

Steam motors didn't like hills, and Sydney has plenty of them. Two lines were built as cable tramways instead. A steam winding engine kept an endless steel cable moving in a slot under the road, and the gripman on the open "dummy" car clamped onto it to move off, pulling an enclosed trailer behind.

The first ran up the steep climb from the ferry wharf at Milsons Point to Ridge Street, North Sydney, opening in May 1886, and was later extended to Crows Nest. The second opened on 19 September 1894 and ran from King Street, near the wharves on Darling Harbour, up through Darlinghurst to Ocean Street, Woollahra (Edgecliff), worked from a winding house at Rushcutters Bay. The Herald later recalled that the cable ran at a steady 12 miles an hour, and if a gripman misjudged a curve and stalled, the passengers got out and pushed. The cable trams didn't last long. The North Sydney line went electric in 1900, and cable working in King Street ended in January 1905.

A cable tram climbing King Street towards Queens Square in early 1895, with a crowd gathered outside the Daily Telegraph office to read the latest news.
Credit: Photo H. King; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.

Horses Again

Horse trams made a short comeback in the 1890s and 1900s, as a cheap stopgap on lines that didn't have the passengers to pay for steam. From December 1894 to July 1898, two little one-horse cars, numbers 198 and 199, ran a shuttle between Newtown and St Peters stations. Over at Manly, the new line to Curl Curl (North Manly) opened with steam in February 1903, but when passenger numbers dropped off it switched to horses that July, and steam didn't come back until October 1907. Car 199 survives in the Powerhouse collection.

Horse car 199 outside Newtown Station, waiting to run the shuttle to St Peters, about 1894.
Credit: NSW State Archives and Records, public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.

Going Electric

Electric trams were what really made Sydney a tram town. There were experiments first: a battery tram at Botany in 1888, and an overhead-wire line on the Waverley to Randwick extension in 1890. The first permanent electric line opened on the North Shore in 1893, running from Ridge Street along Military Road towards Spit Junction and Mosman. The early cars had bamboo trolley poles, and because there weren't enough of them, they sometimes towed a cable trailer behind. An electric line from Rose Bay to Ocean Street, Woollahra, followed in 1898.

The real turning point came on 8 December 1899, when the first electric trams in the city proper began running along George Street, from Circular Quay to the Railway and on to Pyrmont via Harris Street. Power came from the new government power station at Ultimo. The public loved the quiet, clean new cars. According to the Sydney Tramway Museum's journal Trolley Wire, the trams carried 76.4 million passengers in the year to June 1899 and 176.2 million ten years later. By 1909, between 5 and 6.30 on a weekday evening, a tram crossed the corner of George and King Streets every eight seconds.

Most of the steam lines were converted by about 1910, and the steam motors were sent out to the edges of the network. A few lasted much longer on isolated lines. The Kogarah to Sans Souci steam tram ran until 1937, when trolleybuses replaced it, and the privately owned line from Parramatta Park down to the ferry at Redbank Wharf kept going until 1943.

An electric tram for Dulwich Hill passing David Jones on the corner of George and Barrack Streets, about 1909–1910.
Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (PXE 711/369), public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.

The Network at Its Peak

By the early 1920s the network had reached its full size. The Dictionary of Sydney puts the peak at 1922, and the figure usually quoted is about 291 kilometres of street track in 1923. It was the biggest tramway in Australia, and it is often described as the second largest in the British Commonwealth after London. When the trams finished in 1961, the Herald went further and called it the second largest in the world after London. Around 1,600 tramcars were in service at the peak, and the busiest year of all came in 1945, with about 405 million passenger journeys.

Circular Quay was the hub. Lines fanned out to the eastern suburbs and beaches, to Watsons Bay, Bondi, Bronte, Coogee, Clovelly, Maroubra and La Perouse; south to Botany; south-west through Newtown to Cooks River, Dulwich Hill, Canterbury and Earlwood; and west to Glebe, Balmain, Leichhardt, Five Dock, Abbotsford and right out to Ryde. The tramwaymen grouped the western lines as the "red lines", after the colour of their destination symbols, and the south-western lines as the "green lines". Every tram carried a coloured symbol on the front so the signalmen at the big junctions could tell where it was going, and the Herald remembered that every small boy knew them by heart: red and green for Woollahra, two red circles on white for Glebe, a red St George's cross on white for Leichhardt.

The trams left their mark on the map too. Bondi Junction, Maroubra Junction, Spit Junction and Cremorne Junction all take their names from tramway junctions.

Toast Racks and Corridor Cars

From 1905 the trams were sorted into classes by letter. A and B were the steam stock, and the electric cars ran from C to R, roughly in order of size. The early C-class cars were small enclosed saloons, but Sydney soon found that the old steam-tram layout, with crosswise bench seats and the conductor working from the footboard, was the best way to shift big crowds.

The tram everyone remembers is the O class, the "toast rack", named for its rows of cross-bench wooden seats. The first ones came out in the years just before the First World War, and 626 were built. Each car seated 80, part open and part enclosed, and they were often coupled in pairs for the Easter Show crowds and race days at Randwick. They started out in buff and chocolate and were repainted green from 1920. The P class, with concertina doors on its compartments, followed in 1921. Racegoers could even travel first class, with cushions and red carpet, for the Saturday run to the course.

The toast racks were wonderful crowd-swallowers, but they were dangerous for the conductors, who had to edge along the outside of a moving tram to collect fares as the motor traffic grew heavier. By one count there were 282 accidents to conductors on the NSW tramways in 1923, 289 in 1924 and 233 in 1925. The answer was the corridor tram. The first R-class car, number 1738, went into service in September 1933, enclosed, with padded seats and an aisle down the middle. The R1 class followed. A big order for 250 more was placed in the late 1940s, but post-war steel shortages held it up and the order was cut back. The last new R1 car was delivered to North Sydney depot in September 1953, only eight years before the trams finished.

Depots and Workshops

The trams were looked after at depots all over Sydney. The best known was probably Fort Macquarie depot on Bennelong Point. It opened on 10 August 1902 on the site of the old Fort Macquarie and was built to look like a fortress, with castellated walls in honour of the fort it replaced. It had a 12-road car shed with a loop line running right around it, so trams could turn without changing ends. The depot closed in October 1955, and on 18 August 1958 work started on knocking it down "to make way for an Opera House", as Trolley Wire put it at the time. If you walk around the Opera House today you can still spot old rosettes for the overhead wires on the rock wall nearby.

Fort Macquarie Tram Depot on Bennelong Point, with its castellated front and the loop line around it. The Sydney Opera House stands on this spot today. Date unknown.
Credit: NSW Government Railways archives, public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.

Rozelle depot opened on 17 April 1904 and grew to hold 200 trams. It closed on 22 November 1958, went through a long, sad spell of neglect, and reopened in 2016 as the Tramsheds. Dowling Street depot, opened in 1909 near Moore Park, was the largest tram depot in Australia, with 27 tracks. It served Coogee, La Perouse, Maroubra and the southern lines, and it was the last depot to close, on 25 February 1961. Its site is now a shopping centre. The big engineering works were the tramway workshops at King Street, Randwick, set up in 1881 (I wrote about the Randwick Tramway Workshops a while back). Trams were built and overhauled there for eighty years, and it was also where most of them met their end.

Across the Harbour: The North Shore Lines

The North Shore had its own tram system, cut off from the rest until the Bridge was built. Everything started from the ferry wharf at Milsons Point, where passengers stepped off the ferry and onto a tram. From there the lines spread out to Crows Nest, Chatswood, Lane Cove, Neutral Bay, Mosman, The Spit, Balmoral and Taronga Zoo. A second ferry connection from McMahons Point opened in 1909. The hills over there were fierce. At Athol Wharf, near the zoo, runaway trams went down the hill and into the harbour in 1942, 1952 and 1958.

The tram and ferry terminus at Milsons Point in 1906, where North Shore people changed between tram and ferry in the days before the Harbour Bridge.
Credit: Photo by Key, North Sydney; State Library of New South Wales, public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge changed all that. Bradfield built it with two tracks on its eastern side, meant one day for a railway to the northern beaches, and in the meantime they carried trams. When the Bridge opened on 19 March 1932, the North Shore trams ran straight across and down into their own underground platforms at Wynyard, the only underground tram terminus in Australia. The NSW State Archives has a photo of the first tram across, dated 9 March 1932. The trams stopped crossing the Bridge when the North Sydney system closed on 28 June 1958. Their tracks became the two eastern road lanes that now lead onto the Cahill Expressway, and the old tram platforms at Wynyard became a car park. That's why Wynyard's railway platforms are still numbered 3 to 6. Platforms 1 and 2 belonged to the trams.

The first tram across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 9 March 1932, ten days before the official opening. It's an O-class "toast rack", with men riding on the footboard.
Credit: NSW State Archives and Records, public domain (PD-Australia), via Wikimedia Commons.

Manly also had its own separate system, with lines to The Spit, Harbord and Narrabeen. It closed on 1 October 1939, and the Herald recalled that 26 of its trams were floated across The Spit on a punt to go and work at North Sydney.

The Decline, and the Last Tram in 1961

In a way, the trams were victims of their own success. Overcrowded trams running every few minutes down narrow streets got the blame for traffic jams that private cars and buses were making worse. The first closures came in the 1930s. Hurlstone Park to Summer Hill went in 1933, the Woolloomooloo line in 1935 and Manly in 1939. The war held things up, but by the end of it the system was run down after years of short supplies and patchy maintenance.

In 1948 Premier McGirr brought out three transport experts from London, and their 1949 report recommended phasing the trams out by 1960 and replacing them with double-decker buses. The government accepted the idea, and in the early 1950s closure became official policy. People didn't give their trams up quietly. When the Watsons Bay line beyond Rose Bay was closed in 1949, public protest got it reopened in 1950. After that, the government made sure the tracks and wires came out quickly after the last tram on each line, so there would be no going back. Meanwhile the Dictionary of Sydney notes that car trips went from 13 per cent of all trips in Sydney in 1946–47 to 50 per cent by 1960.

The big closures came one after another. The Pitt and Castlereagh Street lines and the south-western lines finished on 27 September 1957. The North Shore went on 28 June 1958, and the George Street lines to Glebe, Balmain, Leichhardt and the west on 22 November 1958. The Bondi and Bronte trams stopped in February 1960. The last of all were the Maroubra and La Perouse lines, on Saturday 25 February 1961. That day the Herald wrote that "the city's most characteristic, most criticised and most loved form of transport will have disappeared for ever", and pointed out that Sydney's trams had died "at the age of exactly 100 years", counting from Pitt Street in 1861. Crowds packed the last trams out to La Perouse. Late that afternoon R1-class car 1995 came back from La Perouse and rolled through the gates of Randwick Workshops, the last tram to run on Sydney's streets.

Crowds on the street on 25 February 1961, the day Sydney's last trams ran.
Credit: NSW State Archives and Records (Digital ID 17420_a014_a0140001149), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

What happened next still makes tram lovers wince. Most of the old cars were stripped of anything useful and burnt on a siding at Randwick that the tram men called "burning hill". Some of the R1 cars that went up in smoke were less than eight years old. A few were sold off as sheds, holiday shacks and workers' huts.

What Survived

Thankfully, a few people saw it coming. In 1950 four young enthusiasts, Norm Chinn, Robert Young, Ken McCarthy and Ben Parle, saved L/P-class tram 154, the first Sydney tram to be preserved. That was the start of what became the Sydney Tramway Museum. From 1957 they had a site on the edge of the Royal National Park at Loftus, and they began running trams for the public in 1965. In 1988 the museum moved to its present home beside Loftus station, and since 1993 its trams have run down the old Royal National Park branch line, which makes a lovely day out. The museum has kept at least one of nearly every Sydney electric tram class (only the G, H and M classes are missing), and it is run entirely by volunteers. It's usually open on Wednesdays, Sundays and public holidays, but check their website before you go.

Other pieces survive around town. The Powerhouse owns steam tram motor 1A (lately on loan to the museum at Loftus), C-class car 11 from 1898, horse car 199 and a trailer from the King Street cable line, which was found in use as a holiday house at Cronulla. Steam motor 103A runs at the Valley Heights Rail Museum in the Blue Mountains. Car 1995, the last tram of 1961, sits on display at the Tramsheds in Rozelle. If you keep your eyes open, you'll also spot old rosettes for the overhead wires on city buildings, rounded street corners cut back so trams could turn, a short stretch of track left exposed in Glebe Point Road, and the very wide median strip down Anzac Parade where the La Perouse trams once ran.

The Trams Come Back: Light Rail

Trams came back to Sydney on 11 August 1997, when the first stretch of light rail opened from Central to Wentworth Park, mostly along the old Darling Harbour goods line. At Central it uses the old tram loop around the Grand Concourse, which the Circular Quay trams once used. It reached Lilyfield in August 2000 and Dulwich Hill on 27 March 2014, and it's now the L1 Dulwich Hill Line. (I also wrote a while ago about the Sydney Light Rail Project from Circular Quay to Randwick.)

The big moment came on 14 December 2019, when the L2 Randwick Line opened from Circular Quay, down George Street and out through Moore Park. As Trolley Wire pointed out, that was 120 years and one week after the first electric trams ran down George Street, and 61 years after the last old tram left it. When the builders dug up the streets, they kept finding the original tram tracks buried under the road, and rail that could be saved went to the tramway museum. The L3 Kingsford Line opened on 3 April 2020, very quietly, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out west, the Parramatta Light Rail opened on 20 December 2024, running from Westmead through Parramatta to Carlingford, partly along the old Carlingford railway line, and work on a second stage, towards Wentworth Point and Sydney Olympic Park, is under way. Somewhere, I like to think, the old toast-rack conductors are having a quiet laugh.

The Rest of the Family: Omnibuses, Trains, Ferries and Buses

Horse omnibuses. Before the trams, and for a long time alongside them, there was the horse bus. One of the earliest, called The Australian, was started in 1843 by Charles Underwood and ran from the city to Newtown and the Cooks River dam. After the Pitt Street tram closed in 1866, horse buses were Sydney's main public transport. The Dictionary of Sydney says they peaked in 1889 with some 64 services, and the Powerhouse counts 290 omnibuses on Sydney's roads by 1894. The biggest operator, the Sydney Tramway and Omnibus Company, painted "S T & O Co" on its buses, and regular passengers said it stood for "sugar, tea and oats". The electric trams finished off the horse bus, and by about 1910 it was gone.

Railways. The trains came well before the trams. The Sydney Railway Company was formed in 1849 to build a line to Parramatta, and the first sod was turned at the Cleveland Paddocks on 20 May 1850. Money, men and materials all ran short, partly because of the gold rush, and the government took the company over in September 1855. The first railway in New South Wales opened a few weeks later, on 26 September 1855, from the Sydney terminus at the Cleveland Paddocks, commonly called Redfern Station, to Parramatta Junction near today's Granville. There were stations at Newtown, Ashfield, Burwood and Homebush along the way, and the line was carried on into Parramatta itself in 1860. The first terminus was little more than a wooden platform in a corrugated iron shed. Central Station replaced it in 1906, built on the site of the old Devonshire Street Cemetery. The suburban trains and the trams were both run by the government railways for years, and the trams did a roaring trade carrying train passengers between Central and the city, especially before the underground railway opened in 1926.

Sydney's first railway terminus at the Cleveland Paddocks, usually called Redfern Station, photographed in 1871.
Credit: NSW State Archives and Records, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Harbour ferries. Ferries are as old as the colony. In 1789 a convict-built boat, the Rose Hill Packet, was sailing and rowing between Sydney Cove and Parramatta, and a return trip could take a week. By 1830 Billy Blue was rowing passengers across from Dawes Point to Blues Point. The first Australian-built steamship, the Surprise, began a Parramatta service in June 1831, and cross-harbour steam ferries were running by 1842. In 1900 the North Shore company became Sydney Ferries Limited, which took over most of the harbour services. Manly had its own famous line of big ferries. The first direct service came in 1855, when Henry Gilbert Smith chartered the paddle steamer Huntress to bring people over to his land near The Corso, and the double-ended Manly ferries became a Sydney institution. For a ride to the zoo, Mosman, Neutral Bay or Cremorne, you caught a ferry to the wharf and a tram up the hill, and the two worked hand in hand for decades. The Harbour Bridge hit the ferries hard. Sydney Ferries' passenger numbers fell from 44 million to 20 million a year almost overnight, and in 1951 the government took over the fleet.

The Harbour Bridge and the City Circle. The Bridge opened on 19 March 1932, carrying road, rail and trams together, and it went hand in hand with Bradfield's underground city railway. Museum and St James stations opened in 1926, Town Hall and Wynyard followed with the Bridge in 1932, and Circular Quay finally joined the two ends together in 1956. Despite its name, the City Circle is really more of a horseshoe.

Motor buses. The railways tried a steam bus between Potts Point and Darlinghurst in 1905, but it lasted less than a year. A private motor bus company started running between Manly and Newport in 1906, but it was wound up in 1908. After the First World War, with plenty of returned men who knew how to handle heavy vehicles, private buses boomed, from about 15 in 1915 to more than 600 by 1929. To protect the trams, Jack Lang's government passed the Transport Act in 1930, and in 1932 the trams were handed to a new Department of Road Transport and Tramways. It ran its first government bus, from St Leonards to Manly, on Christmas Day 1932. In the end, of course, it was the buses that replaced the trams, and if you catch a bus to Coogee, Maroubra or Balmain today, you're still following the old tram routes.

So next time you're rattling down George Street on the light rail, spare a thought for the horse cars, the smoky steam motors, the cable gripmen and the brave conductors on the footboards of the old toast racks. Sydney's trams have come a long way, and in a sense they've come full circle.

Sources

• Garry Wotherspoon, "Trams", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – dictionaryofsydney.org
• "Buses", Dictionary of Sydney – dictionaryofsydney.org
• "Opening of the Pitt-Street Tram-way", Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1861, reprinted in "From the Archives, 1861: Sydney's first tram line opens" – smh.com.au
• Report of the Commissioner for Railways for 1879, "Report on the Tramways of New South Wales" (1880), Mitchell Library – State Library of NSW (PDF)
• "From the Archives: Sydney takes a final tram ride", Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 1961, reprinted 2019 – smh.com.au
• Sydney Tramway Museum, "About us" – sydneytramwaymuseum.com.au; "George St 120 Years" – sydneytramwaymuseum.com.au
• Trolley Wire (Sydney Tramway Museum): August 1958, November 1999, August 2007, February 2020 – sydneytramwaymuseum.com.au
• Powerhouse Collection: horse tram car 199; King Street cable tram trailer; C-class tram 11; horse-drawn omnibus – 207034, 207898, 207883, 207261
• Wikipedia: Trams in Sydney, Fort Macquarie Tram Depot, Rozelle Tram Depot, Dowling Street Tram Depot, R1-class Sydney tram, Sydney Tramway Museum, Isaac Nathan
• Wikipedia: Inner West Light Rail, CBD and South East Light Rail, Parramatta Light Rail
• Wikipedia: Main Suburban railway line, Sydney Ferries, Buses in Sydney, Sydney Harbour Bridge, City Circle
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, from the State Library of NSW, NSW State Archives and Records and the NSW Government Railways archives – Category: Trams in Sydney

Bare Island - La Perouse - Botany Bay - New South Wales

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

Bare Island is that little rock at La Perouse with a fort on it and a long timber bridge running out to it, sitting at the mouth of Botany Bay. If you grew up in the Eastern Suburbs you probably went there on a Sunday: a look at the snake man, a walk out over the bridge. But there's a lot packed onto that headland. It's Aboriginal country with one of the oldest continuing communities in Sydney. It's where La Pérouse's French ships sat for six weeks in 1788, just as the First Fleet was leaving. It has an 1820s watchtower, a French monument, an old cable station that's now a museum, and a fort whose building ended in a Royal Commission. Later it was a home for old soldiers, and even later a film set for Tom Cruise. Below my original notes I've added the full story, a timeline and the sources.

Bare Island is a low sandstone islet off the La Perouse headland on the northern shore of Botany Bay, linked to the mainland by a timber bridge. Captain Cook’s 1770 journal noted “a small bare island” here as a navigational marker, and the English name stuck. The wider headland is part of the Gooriwal cultural landscape, with deep continuing connections for the La Perouse Aboriginal community (including Gweagal and Kameygal associations at European contact) to land and sea for food, work and recreation.

In the 1880s, colonial nerves about foreign naval attack fortified the rock. The fort was designed under imperial defence advice from Sir Peter Scratchley (with Gustave Morell) for the NSW Department of Public Works; Colonial Architect James Barnet is also associated with the works. Construction ran through the 1880s (commonly summarised 1881–1889). Decommissioned in 1911, from 1912 the fort served for decades as a war veterans’ home, except during the Second World War, when the army took it back in 1942.

Bare Island Fort is State Heritage listed and managed inside Kamay Botany Bay National Park / the La Perouse headland precinct by NPWS. It matters both as a near-intact late-nineteenth-century coastal defence work and as part of the living Aboriginal cultural landscape of La Perouse. Guided tours and headland walks are the usual way in.

Bare Island fort, La Perouse, Botany Bay.

The Story of Bare Island and La Perouse

The First Fleet arriving in Botany Bay in January 1788, with Aboriginal people in canoes watching. Bare Island is in the background, according to the Commons description. Engraving by T. Medland after R. Cleveley. Original drawing by R. Cleveley, engraving by T. Medland., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Country first

Long before anyone gave it a French name, the La Perouse headland was known as Gooriwal, according to the Wikipedia history of the suburb. The Dictionary of Sydney says the original owners of the land were the Kameygal, who had plenty of fish and fresh water and moved with the seasons. The State Heritage listing material quoted on Wikipedia says the Gweagal and Kameygal were associated with Bare Island itself at the time of European contact. The Kamay Botany Bay National Park listing puts it a bit differently: Gweagal people on the Kurnell side, speaking Dharawal, and probably Cadigal people on the northern headland. I've set out those versions further down.

What isn't in doubt is how long people have been here. The Dictionary of Sydney calls La Perouse the one area of Sydney with which Aboriginal people have had an unbroken connection for over 7,500 years, and says members of the Timbery family living there today can trace their ancestors back to before contact. There are middens and rock engravings on the headland, including a whale and calf and a shark, though they're slowly wearing away.

Cook's "small bare island"

The island's English name is about as plain as it gets. When Cook's Endeavour came into the bay in 1770, Cook noted "a small bare island" as a handy navigation mark, and Joseph Banks collected shells there. The name simply stuck, which makes it one of the first European names on the east coast.

Bare Island around 1873, before the fort was built. You can see the natural low rock that Cook described. American & Australasian Photographic Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

La Pérouse and the French in 1788

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, in a lithograph by Delpech. Delpech, François-Séraphin (1778-1825). Lithographe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, had left Brest on 1 August 1785 with two ships, the Boussole and the Astrolabe, on a scientific voyage around the Pacific for King Louis XVI. He reached Botany Bay on 24 January 1788, only days after Phillip had arrived. Bad weather kept the British fleet in the bay until the 26th, so the French were sailing in just as Hunter was taking the First Fleet round to Port Jackson.

It was all very polite. The British offered help and so did the French, and neither side took up the offer. The French had arrived in a sorry state. In Samoa, 12 of their men, including Captain de Langle of the Astrolabe, had been killed. So the six weeks at Botany Bay were spent building a stockade, an observatory and a garden, and putting together a new longboat. The astronomer Dagelet made observations that the Kamay listing calls among the first European scientific work in Australia. Lapérouse sent his journals and letters home on a British ship. Wikipedia's suburb page says it was the Sirius, while its Lapérouse biography says it was the merchant ship Alexander.

The Astrolabe and Boussole at anchor, probably in Alaska, in 1786. The drawing was made during the expedition. Unknown artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The expedition's chaplain and naturalist, Father Louis Receveur, had been hurt in the Samoan fight and died at Botany Bay on 17 February 1788. He was buried on the headland above Frenchmans Bay. The Kamay listing calls him the first French person buried on the Australian mainland.

The French sailed in March 1788 and were never seen again. Both ships were wrecked on the reefs of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. Peter Dillon found the first real evidence in 1826, wreckage was found in 1964, and in 2005 the wreck was formally identified as the Boussole. That's part of why the headland matters so much to the French. Botany Bay was the last place anyone saw them.

The Headland Monuments

Macquarie Watchtower

The oldest building on the headland is the octagonal stone tower. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built in 1822 on the highest point, with a view over the entrance to the bay, so troops could keep watch for smugglers. From 1833 to 1903 it was a customs house, and in the 1860s it was a school as well. The Dictionary calls it the oldest structure in Botany Bay and the oldest customs house in New South Wales. The Kamay listing adds that from 1829 a caretaker for the French monuments lived there. It also says the Customs Department took the tower over in 1831 for a tide waiter and two boatmen, which doesn't quite match the Dictionary's 1833. I couldn't find a freely licensed photo of the tower on Wikimedia Commons, so it'll have to be one for my own camera.

The Lapérouse Monument and Father Receveur's tomb

"Monument to La Perouse", an illustration from John Lort Stokes' Discoveries in Australia, 1846. John Lort Stokes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1825 the French naval officer Hyacinthe de Bougainville visited and arranged for a monument to Lapérouse and a memorial over Receveur's grave. The tall obelisk near the museum is the Lapérouse Monument. The French still gather there every year for Bastille Day and Lapérouse Day. The sources don't agree on the dates. Some give 1825 for the monument and the tomb, and the Kamay listing says 1829. The details are in the section further down.

The La Perouse Monument, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst some time between about 1900 and 1927. Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Laperouse Monument today. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A group at the La Perouse monument in 1944, photographed by Sam Hood for M. Soudan of the Courier australien. Sam Hood, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Cable Station, now the La Perouse Museum

In 1876 the first telegraph cable between Australia and New Zealand came ashore at La Perouse, running to Nelson. The first station was just tents and huts. In 1881 a brick cable station went up on the western side of the headland, overlooking Frenchmans Beach, designed by the Colonial Architect's office. The cable came ashore at Frenchmans Bay, and that's why the building faces that way.

Men hauling the New Zealand to Sydney telegraph cable ashore at La Perouse in 1876. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

After the telegraph company left, the building had a busy second life. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was used as an extension of the Coast Hospital during the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1920. From 1920 to 1933 it housed nurses, and after that the Salvation Army ran a refuge for women and children there. Wikipedia mentions a Salvation Army home for orphans in the early 1950s. Today it's the La Perouse Museum, with French relics, maps, instruments and local Aboriginal history. Wikipedia says Randwick Council was finalising a lease of the museum precinct from National Parks.

Nurses' quarters at La Perouse, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst some time between about 1900 and 1927. Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The La Perouse Museum in the old cable station, 2019. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fort on Bare Island

Why fortify a rock?

By the late 1860s the British garrison had been pulled out of the Australian colonies. When war threatened between Britain and Russia in the 1870s, Sydney got nervous. Imperial engineers Jervois and Scratchley came out to advise. Jervois recommended a small work in Botany Bay to stop a few enemy cruisers from slipping in, raiding Sydney and holding it to ransom for its gold. A military road reached the headland in 1869, and Henry Head had a gun battery by 1871.

Design and building

Scratchley turned Jervois's idea into a detailed design with the help of the civil engineer Gustavus Morell. The Colonial Architect, James Barnet, was responsible for building it. The design was a symmetrical crescent with the biggest gun in the middle, facing where an enemy would most likely come from. The design work ran from mid-1877 to early 1880, and Scratchley kept making changes even after that.

John McLeod, who also built the forts at Georges Head and Middle Head, won the tender in 1881 and started on 7 April. The Clerk of Works, Henry Purkis, had plenty of other jobs and was often away. After Scratchley died in 1885, Major Penrose took over. The fort was built of mass concrete, which was still a fairly new and poorly understood material. That's part of why it's heritage-listed today, and part of why it went wrong.

A 1907 postcard of the fort, captioned "Bear Island". People were getting the name wrong even then. Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The guns were two 9-inch 12-ton muzzle-loaders, two 80-pounders, a 10-inch 18-ton gun in an armoured casemate, and two five-barrelled Nordenfelt machine guns. The heavy guns came across by barge. Before the bridge was built in 1887, getting onto the island meant a barge or a flying fox. About 70 soldiers manned it in its working years.

The timber bridge out to Bare Island in 2016. The first bridge went in in 1887. Tony Hugo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Cracks, a Board of Inquiry and a Royal Commission

Wikipedia says construction was finished in 1886, but by 1887 problems from poor workmanship were showing up. Barracks were built in 1888 and 1889 by the same contractor without going to tender. Lieutenant Colonel de Wolski, the new head of the military works branch, objected to the barracks design, where they were put, and the lack of a tender. A Board of Inquiry was set up and the contract was suspended.

Then on 1 July 1890 a Royal Commission was set up to look into how the contracts were let and the work that had been done. The evidence from Barnet's office was contradictory. The Commission found that the work was below standard and that the Colonial Architect hadn't supervised it properly. Barnet resigned. He thought de Wolski had swayed the Commission and called its findings unjust, petty and spiteful. McLeod never won another government contract. That's a sad end for the man who designed the GPO. The State Heritage listing says the fort changed the way public building work was done in New South Wales after that.

Bare Island on a 1910 postcard. Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bare Island, La Perouse, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst some time between about 1900 and 1927. Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Home for Old Soldiers, 1912 to 1963

The fort passed to the Commonwealth in 1901. Its garrison was cut back in 1902, and by 1908 there wasn't much military activity left. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was decommissioned in 1911. After petitions from local women's groups, the first seven war veterans moved in in 1912. The heritage listing calls it the first war veterans' home in Australia.

During the Depression in the 1930s the guns were sold for scrap. The two biggest were too heavy to get back over the bridge, so they're still there. In 1942, with Japan in the war, the army moved back in, and 24 servicemen known as the "Bare section" took the veterans' place. In 1962 the army offered to sell the island to the War Veterans' Home for one pound, and the offer was turned down. The home closed in 1963.

Museum, Heritage and National Park

From 1963 the Randwick Historical Society looked after the island and ran a museum. The Fort Artillery Society dressed in period uniform and fired the 9-inch gun, which was a big drawcard until the live firings stopped in 1974. The island was made a reserve for public recreation on 12 March 1965 and gazetted as Bare Island Historic Site on 1 October 1967, under the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Wikipedia says the fort was open to the public until 28 December 1989, the day of the Newcastle earthquake. Today you get inside only on a guided tour.

Bare Island Fort in 1974, the last year of the live gun firings. kenhodge13, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The fort went on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999, as an almost completely intact example of late nineteenth century coastal defence. The whole headland is part of Kamay Botany Bay National Park, which was gazetted in 1988. The park went on the State Heritage Register in 2013 and the National Heritage List in 2017. Around the island it's the most popular scuba diving spot in New South Wales, with weedy sea dragons, seahorses and the Bare Island anglerfish, which is named after the island.

Bare Island Fort, 2012. Innova2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bare Island seen from Henry Head, where there was another fort. Adam.J.W.C., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Henry Head, 2013. Its battery was built between 1892 and 1895. Maurice van Creij, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The La Perouse Community

After colonisation many Aboriginal people left the area. By the 1870s families connected to La Perouse and Botany Bay, along with people from the South Coast, were coming back. In 1881 there were 35 people recorded at the La Perouse camp. By 1885 seven acres had been declared a "Reserve for the Use of Aborigines", the only one in Sydney according to the Dictionary of Sydney. In 1895 it was fenced, and only the constable and the missionary had a key.

Again and again the government tried to move the people off, around 1900 to Wallaga Lake, then again in the 1920s and the 1960s, and every time they refused. In 1928, 53 residents signed a petition in the Sydney Morning Herald: "This is our heritage bestowed upon us: in these circumstances we feel justified in refusing to leave." Jack Patten of La Perouse was a leader of the Aborigines Progressive Association, and Joseph Timbery was among the La Perouse people who played a big part in the 1938 Day of Mourning. In 1984 the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council was finally given the deeds to the reserve.

People on the reserve worked the tourist trade too, selling boomerangs and shellwork to the crowds who came out on the tram. The tram line reached La Perouse in stages between 1900 and 1902, and the last tram ran in 1961.

An R1 tram at La Perouse on 25 February 1961, the last day of service, chalked all over by farewell crowds. lindsaybridge from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Royal Australian Historical Society outing at La Perouse in 1937. Royal Australian Historical Society, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Snake Men of La Perouse

No Sunday at La Perouse was complete without the snake man. The Dictionary of Sydney says snake men drew the crowds from about 1909, letting snakes crawl over them and sometimes bite them, in a pit near the tram loop. The first was "Professor" Frederick Fox, the "Snake King". He went to India in 1913 to sell his antidote and died of krait bites in Calcutta in 1914. Herbert See took over and was killed by a brown snake. Then George Cann took over, and the Cann family ran the show for about 90 years. John Cann's last show was on 18 April 2010, and the Hawkesbury Herpetological Society has kept it going since.

The snake pit at La Perouse, January 2007. User:Conollyb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A young family watching the Snake Man on a Sunday afternoon in January 2007. User:Conollyb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Snake Man and friends, 2007. User:Conollyb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lights, Camera, Bare Island

Bare Island's had a film career too. Charles Chauvel used shots of the fort as an Arab citadel in Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940). In Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) it became Biocyte's storage facility, where Ethan Hunt steals the cure from Ambrose before the chase back onto the mainland. It has also turned up in East West 101 and the finale of Netflix's reboot of The Mole.

Bare Island in 2013, tagged by its photographer as a Mission: Impossible location. Hee Yong Lee, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bare Island at sunset, 2015. Lenny K Photography from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From the air: La Perouse and Kurnell on either side of the entrance to Botany Bay. Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Botany Heads from La Perouse, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst some time between about 1900 and 1927. Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• Thousands of years: Aboriginal people live on the headland, with an unbroken connection of over 7,500 years according to the Dictionary of Sydney.
• 1770: Cook notes "a small bare island". Banks collects shells there.
• 24 January 1788: Lapérouse arrives off Botany Bay.
• 26 January 1788: The First Fleet leaves for Port Jackson as the French sail in.
• 17 February 1788: Father Receveur dies and is buried on the headland.
• March 1788: The French sail away and are lost at Vanikoro.
• 1822: Macquarie Watchtower built (troops there by 1822 according to the Kamay listing).
• 1825: Bougainville arranges the monument and Receveur memorial (1829 in the Kamay listing).
• 1833 to 1903: The watchtower serves as a customs house (from 1831 according to the Kamay listing).
• 1869: Military road reaches La Perouse.
• 1876: Telegraph cable to New Zealand lands at La Perouse.
• 1877 to 1880: Bare Island fort designed.
• 7 April 1881: McLeod starts work. The brick cable station is also built this year.
• 1885: Scratchley dies. The La Perouse Aboriginal reserve is declared.
• 1886: Construction finished, according to Wikipedia. Other dates are given, see below.
• 1887: The bridge is built.
• 1888 to 1889: Barracks built without a tender.
• 1 July 1890: Royal Commission into the Bare Island works. Barnet resigns.
• 1901: The fort passes to the Commonwealth.
• 1900 to 1902: The tram reaches La Perouse.
• c. 1909: Snake men start drawing crowds.
• 1911: Fort decommissioned, according to the Dictionary of Sydney.
• 1912: The first seven war veterans move in.
• 1918 to 1920: The cable station is used as a Coast Hospital annexe during the Spanish flu.
• 1928: Reserve residents petition against removal.
• 1930s: Guns sold for scrap, except the two biggest.
• 1942: The army takes the island back for the war.
• 25 February 1961: Last tram to La Perouse.
• 1963: Veterans' home closes. Randwick Historical Society takes over.
• 1 October 1967: Bare Island Historic Site gazetted.
• 1974: Live gun firings end.
• 1984: La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council given the reserve deeds.
• 1988: Botany Bay National Park gazetted.
• 28 December 1989: Fort closed to general public entry.
• 2 April 1999: Bare Island Fort added to the State Heritage Register.
• 2000: Mission: Impossible 2 released, with scenes shot on Bare Island.
• 2005: Vanikoro wreck identified as the Boussole.
• 18 April 2010: John Cann's last snake show.
• 2013 and 2017: Kamay Botany Bay listed on the State and then National Heritage registers.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When the fort was finished. Wikipedia's Bare Island article says it was completed in 1885 at a cost of £34,000, with work inside starting in 1889. A few lines later the same article says construction was completed in 1886. It also gives the build as 1881 to 1889. The Kamay listing says it was operational by 1890. The La Perouse suburb article says it was fortified in 1885.
• Who designed it. The Bare Island article and the heritage listing credit Scratchley, with Morell and Barnet, working to Jervois's specification. The La Perouse suburb article says it was built to a design by Barnet.
• When the fort stopped being a fort. Wikipedia says the garrison was cut back in 1902, with little military activity by 1908 and decommissioning in the early 1900s. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1911.
• Who the traditional owners were. The Dictionary of Sydney names the Kameygal. The Bare Island heritage material says Gweagal and Kameygal. The Kamay listing says Gweagal at Kurnell and probably Cadigal on the northern headland. The suburb article says Gooriwal was the name used by the Muruora-dial people, with the Kameygal clan of the Dharug probably living there.
• The monument and tomb. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say 1825, through Bougainville. Wikipedia's suburb article says the tombstone was paid for "the following year" after 1824. The Kamay listing says the monuments were erected in 1829.
• The watchtower. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built in 1822 and was a customs house from 1833. The Kamay listing says it was used for customs from 1831. Wikipedia says it was built in 1820 to 1822.
• Which ship took Lapérouse's letters. The suburb article says the Sirius. The Lapérouse biography says the Alexander.
• The snake men. The Dictionary of Sydney says they started about 1909. Wikipedia's suburb article says Professor Fox began the shows in the late 19th century, and dates George Cann's start to 1918. The Snake Man article says 1919.
• The fort's own heritage text as copied on Wikipedia also includes a sharp opinion that the fort "served no real purpose at all". That's one writer's view, not a settled fact.

My Earlier Posts

• Botany Bay
• Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet Arriving at Botany Bay, January 1788
• Frenchman's Road
• The Wreck of the Malabar, Long Bay, 1931
• Mundarrah Towers, the Lost Castle of Clovelly
• The Shark Arm Case, Coogee Aquarium, 1935
• Randwick Tramway Workshops
• Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Bare Island (New South Wales)", including material from the NSW State Heritage Register entry 00978 (CC BY 4.0)
• Wikipedia, "La Perouse, New South Wales"
• Julia Kensy, "La Perouse", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008
• Wikipedia, "Kamay Botany Bay National Park", including NSW State Heritage Register material
• Wikipedia, "Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse"
• Wikipedia, "James Barnet"
• Wikipedia, "Snake Man of La Perouse"
• Wikipedia, "Mission: Impossible 2"
• Wikimedia Commons, for all the images and their descriptions (State Library of NSW, Powerhouse Museum, Australian National Maritime Museum, RAHS and individual photographers)

Frenchmans Road – Randwick – The Road Named for La Pérouse’s French Expedition

Frenchmans Road is the eastern suburbs reminder that Botany Bay had a French fortnight before Sydney had a street grid. Randwick Council names it for Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, and the crews of Boussole and Astrolabe, who sat at Frenchmans Beach for six weeks from late January 1788 and sailed on 10 March into silence. The council also calls this one of the oldest European roads in Australia, “dating to 1788.” Treat that as a track claim, not a kerbed 1788 highway. The country under the bitumen is older than any of those names.

The old Frenchmans Road once included today’s Avoca Street — renamed in 1859 after Judge Callaghan’s house Avoca. Perouse Road is the southern continuation. Don’t flatten the title’s trailing “Bond” into a Bondi story; this is Randwick looking south toward La Perouse, not a beach-suburb detour.

If you walk it, youre on a name that remembers a six-week camp and a vanished expedition. That is already enough road history.

In short: Frenchmans Road runs through Randwick, and its name goes back to the French explorer La Pérouse. His two ships, Boussole and Astrolabe, sat in Botany Bay for six weeks in 1788, just as the First Fleet was moving to Sydney Cove. Randwick City Council calls it one of the oldest European roads in Australia. The old road once took in what is now Avoca Street, the spine of Randwick village with St Jude's, the Coach and Horses and the Captain Cook statue. Later came Victorian houses like Venice at number 66, the corner pub known as the DOG, and a steam tram that puffed down Frenchmans Road from 1887 until the line closed in 1954. Here is my original short piece, followed by the longer story.

My Original Post

Frenchmans Road is the eastern suburbs reminder that Botany Bay had six French weeks before Sydney had a street grid. Randwick Council names it for Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, and the crews of Boussole and Astrolabe, who sat at Frenchmans Beach for six weeks from late January 1788 and sailed on 10 March into silence. The council also calls this one of the oldest European roads in Australia, “dating to 1788.” The country under the bitumen is older than any of those names.

The old Frenchmans Road once included today’s Avoca Street — renamed in 1859 after Judge Callaghan’s house Avoca. Perouse Road is the southern continuation.

If you walk it, you’re on a name that remembers a six-week camp and a vanished expedition. That is already enough road history.

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1741–1788), the man the road and the suburb at Botany Bay are named after. Lithograph by Delpech. François-Séraphin Delpech (lithographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The French at Botany Bay, 1788

La Pérouse left Brest in France on 1 August 1785 with two ships, Astrolabe and Boussole, on a scientific voyage around the Pacific that King Louis XVI had ordered. By the time he turned up off Botany Bay on 24 January 1788 he had been to Chile, Easter Island, Hawaii and Alaska, and had lost Fleuriot de Langle, captain of Astrolabe, and others in a clash in Samoa.

His timing was remarkable. Arthur Phillip had anchored in Botany Bay in HMS Supply only six days earlier. Phillip had already decided the bay was no good and gone to look at Port Jackson. On 26 January, while John Hunter was moving the rest of the First Fleet around to Sydney Cove, the French ships were sailing into Botany Bay. Wikipedia's La Perouse article says the meeting was polite on both sides. Each side offered the other help, and neither took it up.

The Astrolabe and Boussole at anchor, probably in Alaska in 1786, drawn during the expedition. Two years later the same ships were sitting in Botany Bay. Unknown artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The French stayed six weeks. On the peninsula that now carries La Pérouse's name they built a stockade, an observatory and a garden, built a new longboat to replace the one lost in Samoa, and took on wood and water. The expedition's chaplain and naturalist, Father Louis Receveur, had been hurt in the Samoan fight and died at Botany Bay on 17 February. He was buried on shore at Frenchmans Cove. He is counted as the second European buried on the east coast, after Forby Sutherland from Cook's ship in 1770.

On 10 March 1788 the French sailed out of Botany Bay. British lookouts at South Head watched them go, and that was the last time anyone from Europe saw them. Both ships were wrecked on the reefs of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands, probably in April or May 1788. Nobody knew what had happened for decades. It wasn't until 1826 that the Irish sea captain Peter Dillon tracked down swords and other relics that led him to the wrecks. Louis XVI is said to have asked on the morning of his execution in January 1793, "Any news of La Pérouse?"

Sunset over Botany Bay from Frenchman's Beach at La Perouse, near where the French camped in 1788. Zroota, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The French Memorials at La Perouse

The British looked after Receveur's grave. A tin plate first marked the spot, but local Aboriginal people soon took it away, and the British put up a replacement. In 1824 an officer from the French ship Coquille, Victor-Charles Lottin, carved an inscription on the tree. The next year Hyacinthe de Bougainville paid for the tombstone that is still there, designed by George Cookney. The tall Lapérouse Monument, an obelisk the French put up in 1825, stands close by. These days a crowd gathers there every Bastille Day.

The Lapérouse Monument at Botany Bay around 1900. Glass plate negative from the Tyrrell Collection, Powerhouse Museum. Powerhouse Museum Collection, No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Bastille Day at the Lapérouse Monument in 2013, hosted by the French Consul General and the Friends of the Laperouse Museum. Botanybay1788, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The La Perouse Museum. The building began life as the cable station for the telegraph line to New Zealand. JustineJ4C4U, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How the Road Got Its Name

Randwick City Council's list of street names says Frenchmans Road was "named for French explorer, Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Perouse, and his crew". The same list says the road "originally included what is now known as Avoca Street" and calls it "one of the oldest European roads in Australia, dating to 1788."

That is the council's claim, and I'd take it as a tradition rather than a proven fact. None of the sources I could get hold of explain how a track through the Randwick sandhills came to be tied to the French in 1788. Nor do they show anyone in 1788 walking along this exact line. What we can say is that the French were camped at Botany Bay and the British were at Sydney Cove. Randwick sits on the high ground between the two.

People were walking this country long before 1788. The Dictionary of Sydney records that in 1995 an Aboriginal hearth, or campsite, was found off Avoca Street on the high ridge between Sydney and the coast. It was dated to about 8,000 years ago, which made it the oldest such site in coastal Sydney at the time. The Kameygal people are recorded as the traditional owners around Botany Bay and La Perouse.

The Route, Then and Now

The old Frenchmans Road was a good deal longer than today's. According to the council, Avoca Street "changed from Frenchmans Road in 1859" and took its new name from Judge Callaghan's home, Avoca, which was named after Avoca in Ireland. Perouse Road, named for the same Frenchman, is described by the council as the southern extension of Frenchmans Road.

The local history site Lochista gives a more detailed list of former names. It says Avoca Street, from present-day Frenchmans Road to Perouse Road, was called Frenchmans Road until the 1860s. Chapel Street and the northern third of Dutruc Street also carried the name until the 1850s. And the stretch of Clovelly Road from Fraser Street to Frenchmans Road was once Thomas Street.

So if you walk the line of the old road today, you start on Frenchmans Road at the Clovelly Road corner, follow Avoca Street through the old village past St Jude's, and then head south on Perouse Road towards The Spot. It is still the high ground, with glimpses down to Coogee on one side.

A Federation-style bus shelter on Frenchmans Road, Randwick. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Simeon Pearce and the Village of Randwick

For the first half of the 1800s hardly anyone lived out here. The Dictionary of Sydney credits the village to one man, Simeon Henry Pearce, an English bounty migrant who bought land and named it Randwick after his home village in Gloucestershire. Wikipedia's St Jude's article says Simeon bought four acres from George Hooper on 21 September 1847 and built Blenheim House there. The council's street list dates the house to 1848. Simeon and his brother James then bought and sold land all over the district, with a good eye for a profit.

The Pearce family outside Blenheim House, Randwick, about 1885, photographed by J. Roarty. State Library of New South Wales. J. Roarty, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Blenheim House as it stands today. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Pearce wanted Randwick to feel like an English village. The open ground near the crossroads opposite the destitute children's asylum came to be called the High Cross, just as in the English Randwick. Getting there was hard work. The village was cut off from Sydney by swamp and sandhills. John Grice ran the first horse omnibus to town from 8 March 1859, and passengers sometimes had to get out and push when the bus bogged in the sand.

The Dictionary of Sydney says the municipality was incorporated in 1859, mostly to pay for the upkeep of the road joining Randwick and Coogee, with Simeon Pearce as the first mayor. That is the same year the council gives for Frenchmans Road's main stretch becoming Avoca Street.

Landmarks Along the Old Road

St Jude's Church and Cemetery

Pearce was a devoted churchman, and the government granted him a block in Avoca Street in 1854 for a church, school and parsonage. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first temporary St Jude's Church of England and schoolhouse opened on 23 May 1858. Wikipedia instead dates the first St Jude's to 1857, on the corner of what are now Alison Road and Avoca Street.

The church you see today was a long time coming. Its foundation stone was laid on 25 May 1861, and then two court cases over where it should go held things up. Randwick and Coogee people fell out badly over it. It was finally finished on 29 June 1865. The architect is disputed: Simeon Pearce and Edmund Blacket have both been put forward, and the tower is said to be based on St John's in the English Randwick. The bells were hung in 1872, and the tower was raised in 1877 to take a chiming clock. Henry M. Robinson added the transepts in the late 1880s.

St Jude's Church on Avoca Street, the old Frenchmans Road. It was finished in 1865. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The cemetery is older than the church. It opened in 1853 as part of a larger burial ground for all denominations. The other sections closed in the 1860s over fears about Sydney's water supply, but St Jude's carried on until the last burial in 1975. Simeon Pearce is buried there, along with Archibald Mosman, Ann Hordern of the Anthony Hordern family, and Chief Justice Sir Alfred Stephen.

St Jude's cemetery, Randwick. Simeon Pearce, Archibald Mosman and Sir Alfred Stephen are among those buried here. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Coach and Horses

John Grice's business, first a general store with pleasure gardens called Vauxhall Gardens, became the Coach and Horses Hotel on the corner of Avoca and Albion Streets. Grice was also the village postmaster, ran the first mail service from 1859 to 1864, and ran the first omnibus to Sydney. The pub is still trading.

The Coach and Horses Hotel in Avoca Street, one of Randwick's first hotels. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Star and Garter and the Captain Cook Statue

Further down, at the corner of Avoca Street and Belmore Road, alderman William Ellis put up a sandstone building, in 1859 according to Wikipedia. It ran briefly as the Star and Garter Inn. Then a harbour pilot, Captain Thomas Watson, bought it, added the castellated tower for views to Botany Bay, and called it Cook's Lodge. After Watson died it became a girls' school. From 1897 to 1985 the Hannan family ran a butcher's shop there, and it is a pub again today.

The former Star and Garter Inn at sunset. Captain Thomas Watson added the tower so he could see Botany Bay. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Watson also paid sculptor Walter McGill £700 to carve a statue of Captain Cook from Pyrmont sandstone. It was unveiled on 27 October 1874 in front of his house, facing Botany Bay, and the Dictionary of Sydney says it is probably the first statue of Cook put up in Australia.

Walter McGill's statue of Captain Cook, unveiled on 27 October 1874 at the corner of Avoca Street and Belmore Road. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ventnor and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart

Ventnor is a two-storey sandstone house in Avoca Street with views to Coogee. Mayor George Kiss lived there in the 1870s. It now belongs to the Catholic church next door. Cardinal Moran opened Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church on 6 May 1888. Sheerin and Hennessy designed it, and Eaton Brothers from the North Shore built it.

Ventnor in Avoca Street, once the home of Randwick mayor George Kiss. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, opened by Cardinal Moran on 6 May 1888. Jason7825 (modified by Sardaka 3.7.12), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Randwick Town Hall

The first council chambers were in the little Gothic building beside St Jude's, designed by Thomas Rowe in 1862. It is now the verger's residence. The Italianate town hall further north in Avoca Street was designed by Blackman and Parkes. Wikipedia says it was built in 1881, and the Dictionary of Sydney says it opened in 1882.

Randwick Town Hall in Avoca Street, photographed in 1985. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Venice, 66 Frenchmans Road

The best-known house on today's Frenchmans Road is Venice, at number 66. It stands on land the Church of England began subdividing in 1882 as St Marks Glebe. Leases ran for 99 years, at a rent of £13 a year. The heritage history quoted on Wikipedia says solicitor Thomas Dickson took the lease. In 1884 he sold it to Stephen Gee, a Sydney builder, for £20. Gee built the house in 1884–85 and sold it in 1889 to Joseph Dakin, a Randwick builder, for £120. The jump in price is the main clue that Gee built it.

Venice at 66 Frenchmans Road, built by Stephen Gee in 1884–85. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Sands Directory shows a run of residents. A G.H. Holmes lived there from 1897 to 1906. By 1920 it was listed as "Venice Flats", split into four units. Dr H.M. Kalmath and his wife bought it in 1979 and set about restoring it. A Permanent Conservation Order followed in 1982, and it went onto the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The listing calls it "a comparatively rare and distinctive example of late Victorian Gothic architecture", one that makes a notable contribution to the Frenchmans Road streetscape.

Venice, with its Tudor and Gothic touches and stained glass. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another view of Venice, Frenchmans Road. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The DOG and the Clovelly Road Corner

Where Frenchmans Road meets Clovelly Road is the Duke of Gloucester Hotel, known to everyone as the DOG. Opposite are the corner shops at 49–55C Frenchmans Road. Randwick City Library describes them as two-storey Inter-war shops with flats above, built together around 1928, with a curved corner to Clovelly Road.

The Duke of Gloucester Hotel, the DOG, on Frenchmans Road. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Trams on Frenchmans Road

Between 1860 and 1910 the northern part of Randwick went from countryside to almost unbroken suburb, thanks to horse buses and then a big tram network built between 1880 and 1921. Frenchmans Road got its own line. The cross-country tram from Bondi Junction to Coogee branched off Bronte Road at Waverley, ran down Albion Street and Frenchmans Road, then went through Frances and Cook Streets to meet the Coogee line at Belmore Road, then called Randwick Junction.

The line was single track, with a passing loop on Frenchmans Road. Between Cowper and Frances Streets it ran through what is now the grounds of Randwick Public School. It opened as a steam tramway in 1887 and was electrified in 1902. At first it ran only from Waverley to Randwick. It was extended to Coogee in 1907, and from 1910 trams ran right through from Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach. The line closed in 1954 and was replaced by bus route 314.

Crowds crossing the overhead bridge to the trams at Randwick, about 1914. State Library of New South Wales. State Library of New South Wales from Australia, No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Randwick Public School. The cross-country tram once ran through what are now its grounds, between Cowper and Frances Streets. Johnorchard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The trams were looked after at the Randwick Tramway Workshops. When the last trams ran in 1961, the workshops became the last resting place for many old trams.

The electrical fitting shop at the Randwick Tramway Workshops in 1923. State Records NSW. State Records NSW, No known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Perouse Road and The Spot

At the southern end, Perouse Road carried the Coogee tram. The line came down from Randwick, then ran along Perouse Road, St Pauls Street, Carr Street and Arden Street to a loop at Coogee Beach. It opened to Coogee in 1883, went electric in 1902 and closed in 1960. Around the junction of St Pauls Street and Perouse Road was the poor fringe known as Irishtown. That area is now The Spot, home of the art deco Ritz Cinema.

A Federation cottage on Perouse Road, the southern extension of the old Frenchmans Road. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Ritz Cinema at The Spot, near where Perouse Road meets St Pauls Street. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• About 8,000 years ago: Aboriginal campsite on the ridge off present-day Avoca Street (found in 1995)
• 1 August 1785: La Pérouse leaves Brest with Astrolabe and Boussole
• 18 January 1788: Phillip anchors in Botany Bay in HMS Supply
• 24 January 1788: The French arrive off Botany Bay
• 26 January 1788: The First Fleet moves to Sydney Cove as the French sail into Botany Bay
• 17 February 1788: Father Louis Receveur dies and is buried at Frenchmans Cove
• 10 March 1788: The French sail from Botany Bay and are never seen again by Europeans
• 1824–1825: Lottin inscribes the tree, then Receveur's tombstone and the Lapérouse Monument go up
• 1826: Peter Dillon finds the evidence pointing to Vanikoro
• 1847–1848: Simeon Pearce buys land and builds Blenheim House
• 1853: St Jude's cemetery opens
• 1857 or 1858: First temporary St Jude's (the sources differ)
• 8 March 1859: Grice's first omnibus from Randwick to Sydney
• 1859: Municipality of Randwick formed, with Pearce as mayor. Frenchmans Road through the village becomes Avoca Street
• 25 May 1861: Foundation stone of the present St Jude's
• 29 June 1865: St Jude's completed
• 27 October 1874: Captain Cook statue unveiled
• 1881 or 1882: Randwick Town Hall built or opened (the sources differ)
• 1882: St Marks Glebe subdivided
• 1883: Tram reaches Coogee via Perouse Road
• 1884–1885: Venice built at 66 Frenchmans Road
• 1887: Steam tram opens along Frenchmans Road
• 6 May 1888: Our Lady of the Sacred Heart opens
• 1902: Frenchmans Road tram electrified
• 1907: Tram extended to Coogee
• 1920: Venice listed as Venice Flats
• About 1928: Corner shops at 49–55C Frenchmans Road built
• 1954: Frenchmans Road tram closes, replaced by bus 314
• 1982: Permanent Conservation Order on Venice
• 2 April 1999: Venice and St Jude's added to the State Heritage Register

Where the Sources Disagree

• Is it really from 1788? Randwick City Council says the road dates to 1788 and is named for La Pérouse and his crew. None of the sources I read explain how the name became attached, so the 1788 date is best treated as a local tradition.
• When did Frenchmans Road become Avoca Street? The council gives 1859. Lochista says the Avoca Street stretch carried the name until the 1860s, and that Chapel Street and part of Dutruc Street were also once Frenchmans Road.
• The first St Jude's: Wikipedia says 1857. The Dictionary of Sydney says the temporary church and schoolhouse opened on 23 May 1858.
• Who designed St Jude's? Both Simeon Pearce and Edmund Blacket have been credited.
• Venice's first lease: Wikipedia's Randwick article says the land was leased in 1880 to S. Holmes and J. Parsons. The heritage history on the Venice article says the glebe was subdivided in 1882, leased to Thomas Dickson and sold on to Stephen Gee in 1884.
• Ventnor: Wikipedia's Randwick article says alderman Edward Dawson built it in 1859. The Dictionary of Sydney says mayor George Kiss built it in the 1870s.
• Randwick Town Hall: built in 1881 according to Wikipedia, opened in 1882 according to the Dictionary of Sydney.
• When the French arrived: they were off Botany Bay on 24 January 1788 and anchored on 26 January. Some accounts use one date, some the other.

My Earlier Posts

• Bare Island – La Perouse – Botany Bay
• Botany Bay
• St Jude's Cemetery – Avoca Street – Randwick
• Randwick Tramway Workshops – King St – Randwick
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• Montepellier – Randwick
• Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began
• Mundarrah Towers – The Lost Castle of Clovelly

Sources

• Randwick City Council – Streets of the Randwick LGA (Our Story)
• Randwick City Library – 49-55C Frenchmans and Clovelly Roads, Randwick
• Lochista – Former Street and Place Names of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney
• Dictionary of Sydney – Randwick
• Wikipedia – Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse
• Wikipedia – La Perouse, New South Wales
• Wikipedia – Randwick, New South Wales
• Wikipedia – St Jude's Church, Randwick
• Wikipedia – Venice, Randwick
• Wikipedia – Trams in Sydney
• Wikipedia – Coogee, New South Wales
• Wikimedia Commons – the pictures, as credited under each one