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.
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 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?"
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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