Reiby Place - Macquarie Place - Sydney - New South Wales

Reiby Place — spelling as on the street sign — is a short cut near Macquarie Place whose glass canyon still carries a convict businesswoman’s name. Mary Reibey (1777–1855), transported as a teenager for horse theft, built one of early Sydney’s great trading fortunes after she was widowed: ships, farms, city leases, church and charity work, and a face now familiar from the Australian $20 note.

Before this foreshore was drained and rebuilt, Thomas and Mary Reibey’s waterfront house and stores stood on Macquarie Place (Entally in the family telling). In 1817 the newly founded Bank of New South Wales — Australia’s first bank — opened in premises leased from her there. That is the load-bearing civic fact: the colony’s first banking chamber behind a Reibey door, not a claim that she personally floated the bank as its sole founder.

Humanise the live note, keep $20-note and 1817 bank premises, and soften Argyle Stores / “founding member” wording unless you are quoting a title deed or share list. The lane is a nameplate; Macquarie Place is where the house was.

Reiby Place - Near Macquarie Place - Sydney - NSW 

Today Reiby Place Is Lined With Slick Glass & Concrete, But It's Name Commemorates One Of The City's Earliest Entrepeneurs. 

Before This Area Was Drained, Thomas & Mary Reiby Had A House On the Waterfront Macquarie Place. Mary Reiby, Convicted For Horse Stealing, Became A Wealthy & Respected Widow, & In 1817 Her House Became The First Premises Of Australia's First Bank, The Bank Of New South Wales.

Mary Reiby's Face Is On The $20 Note.





Mary Reiby 1777 to 1855 was a convict who became a highly successful business woman was interested in hotels, trading, shipping, farming in city buildings.

She briefly owns the land around Argyle stores in 1828. Mary Reiby was a governor of the free Grammar School and a founding member of the bank of New South Wales, as well as an active in church and charity work

Macquarie Place - Sydney - New South Wales

Macquarie Place - Bridge Street - Sydney - NSW

Macquarie Place is that small triangular park at Bridge and Loftus Streets — Tank Stream side of early Sydney Cove — and it still feels like the colony’s front lawn. Governor Lachlan Macquarie regularised it as a civic square; in 1818 Francis Greenway’s sandstone Obelisk of Distances went up as the official zero point for public roads. The inscriptions still give mileages to Parramatta, Windsor, Liverpool, Bathurst, Macquarie Tower at South Head and the north head of Botany Bay. Circular Quay reclamation and street extensions later nibbled the reserve; the old Macquarie Place roadway was folded into the park in the later twentieth century.

The State Heritage precinct also holds the anchor and a cannon associated with HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet (anchor salvaged from the 1790 Norfolk Island wreck and placed here in the early 1900s; the cannon had earlier signal use at South Head). A bronze of merchant and industrialist Thomas Sutcliffe Mort by Pierce Francis Connelly (1883) stands where Greenway’s Doric public fountain (c.1819–20) once stood — the fountain was demolished to make way for the monument. Other fabric includes 1869 Renny mayoral gate posts, an 1857 cast-iron drinking fountain, traces of a former underground convenience, and plane trees planted in 1954 at the start of the Remembrance Driveway to Canberra.

Images here survey the obelisk, Sirius relics, Mort statue and everyday park use in the CBD.

Originally swampy mangrove land

Originally swampy mangrove land on the banks of the Tank stream, this triangular morsel of land is awash with historic relics.
The obelisk records distance in miles by road to important places in the colony 7 beyond.
The sandstone monument was designed by Francis Greenway, who was sent to the colony for forgery & became Sydney's first Colonial Architect.
Along one side of the park with the Canon & the weather anchor of HMAS serious, flagship of the first fleet which arrived in Sydney in 1788.
The imposing statue of the 19 century industrialist Thomas Sutcliffe mort looks over Bridge Street