Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong – c.1750 to 1791

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

Barangaroo was a Cammeraygal woman from the north side of Sydney Harbour, a fisherwoman of real standing, and the wife of Woollarawarre Bennelong. The First Fleet officers met her in the spring of 1790 and never quite knew what to make of her. She wouldn't wear their clothes, wouldn't drink their wine, broke Bennelong's fishing spear when he went off to visit the Governor, and grabbed at the flogger's arm when she was made to watch a convict whipped. She gave birth to her daughter Dilboong alone in the bush rather than at Government House, and she died not long after, in 1791. Bennelong cremated her with her fishing gear beside her and laid her ashes to rest in the Governor's garden. More than two centuries later the old East Darling Harbour wharves were renamed in her honour. This is her story, told from what the people who met her wrote down and what historians have made of it since.

'First interview with the Native Women at Port Jackson New South Wales', drawn by Lieutenant William Bradley. Grace Karskens thinks Barangaroo was very likely there. William Bradley, c.1802, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Barangaroo?

The Dictionary of Sydney describes Barangaroo simply: an Eora woman of the Cameragal people, the second wife of Bennelong, "a skilled fisherwoman with presence and authority in her community and the early colony". Her people, the Cammeraygal (you'll also see it spelt Cameragal or Kamaraygal), lived on the north side of the harbour. Historian Grace Karskens places her country "around North Harbour and Manly" and calls the Cameragal "the largest and most influential group in the Sydney coastal region".

Watkin Tench, the marine officer whose books are our best window into these years, explained how those clan names worked. "Cemeeragal, means the men who reside in the bay of Cameera," he wrote, and the women of a group were named by adding "eean" to the end. So Barangaroo was a Cameragaleon, a woman of Cameera.

Nobody wrote down when she was born. Wikipedia gives c.1750. The officers who met her in 1790 guessed she was about forty, and Karskens makes the point that this matters. Barangaroo was older and more experienced than the young women the officers already knew, and she carried "wisdom, status and influence" to match.

Before Bennelong

By the time the British met her, Barangaroo's world had already been torn apart. Smallpox swept through the Eora in 1789, and Karskens notes that it killed a disproportionate number of women and old people. Barangaroo survived it, but it cost her dearly. She had lost a husband and two children. Karskens says it was smallpox that took them; Wikipedia says the husband "allegedly" died of it. After that she married a new and younger husband, the ambitious Bennelong, and in Karskens' words she was now "one of a reduced number of women who had the knowledge of laws, teaching and women's rituals", with authority over the younger women around her.

Sydney Cove in 1788, painted by William Bradley, as the colony that would change Barangaroo's world was being set up. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fisherwomen of the Harbour

To understand Barangaroo you have to understand fishing, because that's where her power came from. In the coastal Eora world, women were the main food providers and fish was the staple. The men stood still in the shallows and speared fish with multi-pronged fish-gigs. The women went out on the water in bark canoes, called nowie, and fished with hook and line.

Karskens' essay "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen" for the Dictionary of Sydney paints the picture. The women twisted their lines, carr-e-jun, from the fibre of kurrajong, cabbage tree or flax, and sometimes from animal fur or grass "nearly as fine as raw silk". The crescent-shaped hooks, burra, were ground from the broadest part of a turban shell. Surgeon George Worgan reckoned these showed "the greatest ingenuity" of anything the Eora made. A small fire burned on a clay pad in the canoe for warmth and for cooking the catch, and the women sang and kept time with their paddles, often with a baby at the breast, in surf that the officers thought would frighten their toughest sailors.

Aiesha Saunders, writing for Museums of History NSW, adds the custom the Eora called malgun, in which the top joints of a girl's little finger were taken off in infancy. John Turnbull recorded that the joint was thrown into the sea "that the child may be hereafter fortunate in fishing". Not everyone agreed on the meaning. Governor Phillip thought that explanation "too trivial to be the real cause", and historian Keith Vincent Smith suggests it may have marked a girl promised in marriage.

Karskens argues that control of food meant status and power for these women. Fishing gear wasn't trinkets. Once the officers worked that out, they collected the hooks alongside spears, and convicts caught stealing fishing tackle were punished severely.

A French engraving of Port Jackson people from Louis de Freycinet's voyage. It was made a generation after Barangaroo's time, but it's one of the few early pictures of Sydney Aboriginal family life. Freycinet voyage, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Meeting the Officers – Spring 1790

Barangaroo first appears in the records because of Bennelong. He and Colbee had been kidnapped at Manly in November 1789. Colbee escaped within weeks, and Bennelong got away in 1790. Then on 7 September 1790 Governor Phillip was speared at Manly Cove (my Manly post covers that day). In the weeks that followed the British were desperate to keep talking to Bennelong.

Tench describes a meeting on the north shore on 15 September 1790. Bennelong had been teasing the officers that his "old favourite, Barangaroo", had become "the wife of Colbee", and that he'd got "two large women" to make up for losing her. Now he admitted that the woman standing nearby was Barangaroo, and his wife. The girl Abaroo (Boorong), who was living in the settlement, was sent over to bring her in. Abaroo put a petticoat on her first. In Tench's words, "this was the prudery of the wilderness, which her husband joined us to ridicule, and we soon laughed her out of it", and the petticoat was dropped. At Bennelong's request the officers combed and cut her hair, which she seemed to enjoy. Wine she would not touch. She "turned from it with disgust", even with Bennelong urging her on.

Then came a moment that says a lot about her. The officers asked Abaroo to take Barangaroo aside and talk her into coming to Sydney. Tench admits it went the other way: "Barangaroo's arguments to induce Abaroo to rejoin their society, were more powerful than those of the latter". Abaroo came back to the boat reluctantly and sat "in sullen silence".

A few days later Tench found Bennelong and Barangaroo "shivering over a few lighted sticks", cooking small fish beside their canoe. The officers had brought back things that convicts had stolen from the Eora. Among them was a net full of fishing lines and tackle, which Barangaroo said was hers, and she slung it straight round her neck.

Karskens puts the first proper meeting a bit later, "on the north shore at Kirribilli in November 1790", and ties it to a huge haul by the British of about 4,000 Australian salmon, of which forty big fish were sent across to Bennelong's group as a present. Her theory is that Barangaroo was insulted. A fisherwoman winning her fish one at a time could see what it meant when white men handed food to Eora men by the netful: women would lose their hold on the food supply.

The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove, 7 September 1790, by the artist known as the Port Jackson Painter. Barangaroo enters the written record in the weeks after this. Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Broken Fish-Gig

On 8 October 1790 a signal fire was lit and parties went over to meet Bennelong, Barangaroo and others. Soon afterwards Bennelong decided to cross to Sydney Cove and visit the Governor. Barangaroo was dead against it. Tench asked where she was and was told she had "violently opposed Baneelon's departure. When she found persuasion vain, she had recourse to tears, scolding, and threats, stamping the ground, and tearing her hair." Then "she snatched up in her rage one of his fish-gigs, and dashed it with such fury on the rocks, that it broke."

She had good reason to be scared. The last time Bennelong had stayed with the British he'd been taken by force and held prisoner. To settle her nerves the chaplain, Richard Johnson, stayed behind on the north shore with Abaroo as a hostage until Bennelong came back. When the boat returned, Tench found Johnson and Barangaroo sitting at the fire. She was making fish-hooks.

When Bennelong saw his broken fish-gig, Tench says, he gave her "a look of savage fury", and the officers had to step in. Once he calmed down, the tables turned. Barangaroo, "emboldened by our presence and the finery in which we had decked her", put on "a haughty demeanour" and refused his caresses.

Karskens adds that Barangaroo refused to let Bennelong go to Rose Hill (Parramatta) whenever he tried, and that he wasn't allowed on the April 1791 expedition to the Nepean. "When he hit her, she hit him back," she writes. The officers were puzzled, because the couple were also obviously fond of each other.

Bennelong, drawn in 1798, some years after Barangaroo's death. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hard Side of the Record

We should be honest about the violence in these sources. Tench wrote that Eora men struck their wives on the head with whatever was in their hand, and that "Baneelon did the same to Barangaroo, but she was a scold and a vixen, and nobody pitied her". It's an ugly line from a man of his time, and it tells us as much about Tench as about her. David Collins also left a note in his papers that Bennelong had "severely beaten" her on the morning she gave birth.

Barangaroo could be fierce herself. In late 1790 Bennelong took part in an attack on a young woman, and Tench describes him visiting her afterwards in the hospital and promising her protection. Barangaroo, who had come with him, "began to revile them both with great bitterness, threw stones at the girl and attempted to beat her with a club."

The Flogging – May 1791

One of the best-known stories about Barangaroo comes from May 1791. A convict was caught stealing fishing tackle from Daringa, the wife of Colbee, and Governor Phillip had him flogged in front of a group of Eora men and women. It didn't go down the way he hoped. Tench wrote that there was "not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment and equal sympathy with the sufferer". Then: "Daringa shed tears, and Barangaroo, kindling into anger, snatched a stick and menaced the executioner." Tench summed the two women up as "the former was ever meek and feminine, the latter fierce and unsubmissive."

Karskens tells the same story slightly differently. She has the officers inviting Barangaroo to watch, and has her becoming "disgusted and furious" and trying "to grab the whip out of the flogger's hands".

Daringa and Barangaroo were close. Keith Vincent Smith writes that Daringa had exchanged names with Barangaroo and was styled "Daringa Barangaroo", and Collins calls Barangaroo "Ba-rang-a-roo Da-ring-ha" when he records her death. In Eora custom an exchanged name was a serious bond.

Sydney Cove in 1794, by convict artist Thomas Watling, three years after Barangaroo's ashes were laid in the Governor's garden. Thomas Watling, 1794, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dilboong

In 1791 Barangaroo had a baby girl. Karskens writes that Bennelong pushed for the birth to happen at Government House, so the child would belong to the new country, Sydney. Barangaroo said no. She gave birth on her own somewhere in the bush on the edge of the town.

Collins went quietly to see her a few hours later and was astonished. "To my great surprise she was walking about alone, and picking up sticks to mend her fire." The baby, "whose skin appeared to have a reddish cast", lay on a piece of soft bark on the ground. He watched her deal with the umbilical cord using a little kangaroo leg-bone that Bennelong had wrapped in punk and heated at the fire, and finally cut it with a shell.

The girl was called Dilboong. Collins says the name came from "a small bird, which we often heard in low wet grounds and in copses".

Death and Cremation

Barangaroo didn't live long after the birth. Karskens points out that "the officers were silent on why she died." Keith Vincent Smith dates her death to late 1791.

Collins was one of the few Europeans asked to be there at the end. Bennelong "determined at once to burn her", and asked Governor Phillip, Surgeon John White and Collins to attend. Bennelong's sister Carangarang came, along with several men and one or two other women. Collins describes the whole thing carefully. The ground was scraped back a few inches with a stick. A pyre about three feet high was built up from brushwood and twigs, with heavier wood on the sides, and covered with grass. Barangaroo's body, wrapped in an old blanket, was laid on it with her head to the north. Then "a basket with the fishing apparatus and other small furniture of the deceased was placed by her side". Bennelong laid logs over her, and the pyre was lit.

The next day Bennelong asked the officers back to watch him gather her ashes. He walked ahead "in a sort of solemn silence". With the end of a spear he raked "the calcined bones and ashes together in a heap", then shaped a mound over them with a piece of bark, smoothing every little bump, and set a log on each side. He asked them "if it was good". Collins, who often wrote harshly about the Eora, was moved. He said Bennelong's grief "seemed the result of an heartfelt affection for the object of it", and that he stood afterwards with his hands folded over his chest, deep in thought.

The spear in Bennelong's hand had a purpose. He blamed the carradhy (clever man or healer) Willemering, the same man who had speared Phillip, for not coming quickly enough to treat Barangaroo when she was ill. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, Bennelong later fought Willemering and wounded him in the thigh with that spear. Collins also wrote that Bennelong said "he should not be satisfied until he had sacrificed some one to her manes", meaning her spirit.

Where exactly were her ashes laid? Karskens says Bennelong "buried her ashes carefully in the garden of Government House". Collins records that baby Dilboong, who died only a few months later, was buried in the Governor's garden too, and that Bennelong slept near the spot afterwards.

Collins also noticed the way names were handled after a death. Colbee's wife, who "bore the same names as the deceased", gave them up and was called Bo-rahng-al-le-on. The same happened to a little settler girl whom Barangaroo had been so fond of that she always called her by her own name.

Sydney Cove in about 1792, by the Port Jackson Painter, the town as it was in the year after Barangaroo died. Port Jackson Painter, 1792, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

How Historians See Her Now

For a long time Barangaroo was a footnote in Bennelong's story, the "difficult" wife. Historians now read her differently. Karskens asks whether she was just a difficult woman and answers that "the answer may lie in fish and fishing". Barangaroo could see where life alongside the British led: dependence on men, black and white, and the loss of the women's control over food. Wikipedia sums up the modern view that historians have argued she was a matriarch of the Cammeraygal through her role as a fisherwoman.

Eora women kept fishing the harbour long after she was gone. Karskens says their canoes, with little plumes of smoke from the onboard fires, could still be seen until at least the late 1820s. She finishes her essay with a question: "where in Sydney Harbour, our paradise of waters, are the great Eora fisherwomen remembered?"

Barangaroo, the Place

Part of the answer now sits on the western edge of the CBD. The old East Darling Harbour wharf strip, the stretch of Hickson Road that wharfies called The Hungry Mile in the Depression, was given up as a port after container shipping moved away. In 2003 the NSW Government decided to redevelop it. After a design competition in 2005–06 and a public naming competition, Planning Minister Frank Sartor announced in October 2006 that the area would be called Barangaroo, and the Dictionary of Sydney dates the formal commemoration to 5 October 2007.

Some people have pointed out the irony. The Wikipedia article on Barangaroo notes that the precinct is "not located in her traditional lands". She was a north shore woman, and this is the south side of the harbour. The Barangaroo article also mentions that for a while the northern point was called Barangaroo Point, until the Geographical Names Board ruled that was wrong and brought back the historic name Millers Point.

The old wharf strip along Hickson Road, The Hungry Mile, before the redevelopment. Jane Bennett, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wharves and warehouses on Hickson Road around 1920, when this was one of the busiest working waterfronts in Sydney. Unknown photographer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The empty concrete apron in 2009, before building started. Michael Woodhead, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Barangaroo Reserve

The best tribute is probably the headland park at the northern end. Barangaroo Reserve opened on 22 August 2015. It's a rebuilt headland, about six hectares, shaped on the pre-1836 shoreline that was cut away for wharves. It was designed by Johnson Pilton Walker with PWP Landscape Architecture. The foreshore is built from sandstone blocks quarried and cut on the site itself, and the park is planted with some 75,000 native trees, shrubs and plants. There's a cultural space called The Cutaway underneath it. The walk along the water is Wulugul Walk, and the big grassed area is the Walumil Lawns.

It's a lovely place to stand on a winter afternoon and watch the ferries. If you look across the water towards Balmain and Goat Island, you can just about picture a bark canoe with a little fire burning in it and a woman with a shell hook, singing as she fishes.

Barangaroo Reserve, the rebuilt sandstone headland at the northern end of the precinct. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking out from the reserve across the harbour. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wulugul Walk, the foreshore path around the headland. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Walumil Lawns at Barangaroo Reserve. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Cutaway, the cultural space built inside the headland. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The headland seen from the water. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Barangaroo towers from Pyrmont at sunset, 2023. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Barangaroo ferry wharf, which replaced the old Darling Harbour wharf in 2017. MDRX, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• c.1750 – Barangaroo born, according to Wikipedia (no record exists; the officers guessed her age at about 40 in 1790).
• February 1788 – British officers meet Cameragal women at Manly. Karskens thinks Barangaroo was "very likely present".
• 1789 – Smallpox epidemic among the Eora. Barangaroo loses her first husband and two children.
• 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colbee kidnapped at Manly Cove (the Dictionary of Sydney gives 23 November).
• 7 September 1790 – Governor Phillip speared at Manly Cove.
• 15 September 1790 – Tench meets Barangaroo on the north shore: the petticoat, the haircut, the refused wine.
• October 1790 – Barangaroo breaks Bennelong's fish-gig when he crosses to visit the Governor.
• November 1790 – Karskens' date for the Kirribilli meeting and the gift of salmon.
• May 1791 – The flogging of a convict for stealing Daringa's fishing tackle. Barangaroo threatens the flogger with a stick.
• 1791 – Dilboong born in the bush. Barangaroo dies later in 1791, is cremated with her fishing gear, and her ashes are buried by Bennelong.
• After Barangaroo's death – Dilboong dies as a baby, only a few months old (Wikipedia), and is buried in the Governor's garden (Collins).
• 2003 – NSW Government decides to redevelop East Darling Harbour.
• 18 October 2006 – Frank Sartor announces the name Barangaroo.
• 5 October 2007 – Date the Dictionary of Sydney gives for the commemoration of the name.
• 22 August 2015 – Barangaroo Reserve opens.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When the officers first met her. Tench describes meeting her on the north shore on 15 September 1790. Wikipedia says October 1790. Karskens says "late 1790" and puts the key meeting at Kirribilli in November 1790.
• The flogging. Tench says she "snatched a stick and menaced the executioner". Karskens says she tried "to grab the whip out of the flogger's hands".
• What happened to her ashes. Collins describes Bennelong raking them into a carefully built mound. Karskens says he "buried her ashes carefully in the garden of Government House". Wikipedia says the ashes were "scattered" around Phillip's garden.
• Her first husband's death. Karskens says smallpox killed her husband and two children. Wikipedia says the husband "allegedly" died of smallpox.
• When the precinct was named. Wikipedia's article on Barangaroo the woman says the area was officially named in October 2006, the date of Sartor's announcement. The precinct article says it was "renamed in October 2007", and the Dictionary of Sydney gives 5 October 2007.
• Whose wife was she in 1790? Bennelong told Tench she had become "the wife of Colbee", and then later presented her as his own wife. Tench didn't know whether to believe him either time.
• Dilboong's dates. Wikipedia says Dilboong lived only a few months. Collins describes her being at the breast when her mother died and buried later in the Governor's garden, but I haven't found a firm date for her death in the sources I read.

My Earlier Posts

• Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly
• Woolaware Bennelong
• Barangaroo – Maritime – Coastal – Inner Sydney
• The Rocks And Barangaroo
• Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788 to the Ferries, the Quarantine Station and the Surf
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
• First Government House – Corner of Bridge Street & Phillip Street
• Museum Of Sydney – Site Of Original Government House
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Bungaree – The Broken Bay Man Who Sailed Around Australia with Flinders
• Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales

Sources

• Grace Karskens, "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen", Dictionary of Sydney, 2014 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_eora_fisherwomen
• "Barangaroo" (person), Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/barangaroo
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Daringa", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/daringa
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Willemering", Dictionary of Sydney, 2016 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/willemering
• Aiesha Saunders, "A fisher woman of Warrane", Museums of History NSW, 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-nations/a-fisher-woman-of-warrane/
• Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3534
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
• F. D. McCarthy, "Colebee", Australian Dictionary of Biography (rev. 2025) – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/colebee-1909
• "Barangaroo", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barangaroo
• "Barangaroo, New South Wales", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barangaroo,_New_South_Wales
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture.

The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails – 1788 to Today

The Sydney Opera House - From Cattle Point & Bennelong Point To Fort Macquarie To The Opera House. 

In short: Before there was an Opera House, before there was a fort, and long before there was a tram shed, the eastern point of Sydney Cove was Tubowgule, a rocky tidal island that the Gadigal people knew well for its oysters and fish. The First Fleet put its few cattle there in 1788 and called it Cattle Point. The convicts burned its old shell middens for lime, so it became Limeburners' Point. In 1790 Governor Phillip built a little brick hut there for Woollarawarre Bennelong, and the name Bennelong Point has stuck ever since. A gun battery went up at the tip in 1798. Governor Macquarie had Francis Greenway build Fort Macquarie there between 1817 and 1821, and the fort stood for eighty years until it was knocked down in 1901 for a tram depot that copied its battlements. The trams left in 1955, the depot came down in 1958, and on that same ground Jørn Utzon's Opera House rose between 1959 and 1973. The Queen opened it on 20 October 1973, and in 2007 it was World Heritage listed. This is the story of that one little point of land, from Cattle Point to the Opera House.

I've walked around Bennelong Point more times than I can count, and like most Sydneysiders I've stopped seeing it. It's just there, the white sails, the tourists, the steps. But when you start digging, the point turns out to be one of the most layered bits of ground in the country. Nearly every chapter of Sydney's story has left a mark on it, and most of those marks are now under the concrete. So here it is, layer by layer.

Sydney Cove in 1792, a few years into the settlement. The rocky eastern point, later Bennelong Point, closed off the cove from the harbour. Port Jackson Painter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Tubowgule – The Point Before 1788

The Sydney Opera House's own history pages describe Tubowgule as a point at the end of a long, wide ridge, ringed by rocky shoals that mostly went under at high tide. With the harbour on one side, the cove on the other, a freshwater creek and mud flats nearby, it was a rich place to live. There were oysters, mussels, fish, possums, wallabies, kangaroos and plenty of plants to eat. The shells and bones left behind built up over generations into middens around the harbour, and the point had its share of them.

The name comes down to us in a few spellings. The Opera House uses Tubowgule, the Dictionary of Sydney has Tubowgulle and Tubowghule, and other writers give Dubbagullee, Inbughalee or Djubuguli. That's normal for words first written down by English officers trying to catch Aboriginal sounds by ear, and I've used Tubowgule here because it's the one the Opera House itself uses. The local people were the Gadigal, one of the clans of the Eora around the harbour.

The important thing to get your head around is that the very tip was an island. When the First Fleet came in, the end of the point was a small rocky tidal island, cut off from the mainland at high water, with a little beach on its western side. That gap was filled in later, and the island was largely forgotten until the Opera House excavations found it again in the late 1950s.

Cattle Point – 1788

When Phillip's fleet sailed into Sydney Cove in January 1788, it brought a small herd of livestock picked up at the Cape of Good Hope. The rocky eastern point was handy, as it was separated from the bush and easy to keep animals on, so for a short time in 1788 the British put their cattle and horses out there and called it Cattle Point. The Dictionary of Sydney quotes an early account of the animals being landed there until "they had cropped the little pasturage it afforded", and then being moved on to the next cove, Farm Cove, which was being cleared for the government farm.

It didn't do them much good in the end. The colony's first cattle strayed off in 1788, and it wasn't until November 1795 that Governor Hunter's party crossed the Nepean and found a herd of more than forty of their descendants, in the country Hunter named the Cowpastures. But for a few months the little point was the colony's paddock, and that's how it got its first English name.

Limeburners' Point

A settlement needs mortar, and mortar needs lime. There's no limestone around Sydney, but there were the middens, thousands of years of oyster shells left by Gadigal women gathering shellfish. The Opera House history says the colonists crushed the middens around the harbour, including those at Tubowgule, and mixed them with water to make a lime slurry. Wikipedia's Bennelong Point article says convict women did the regathering and the shells were burnt for lime. So the point picked up another name, Limeburners' Point.

Wikipedia also says the shells from the point only gave enough lime for one building, the two-storey Government House. That's a nice detail, but it's one I've only found in that one place, so take it as a story rather than a proven fact. What isn't in doubt is that burning those middens destroyed a record of thousands of years of Aboriginal life on the harbour, in the space of a few years.

Bennelong and His Hut – 1790

Woollarawarre Bennelong, engraved in 1798. The point carries his name because of the brick hut built for him there in 1790. James Neagle, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The name we use today belongs to Woollarawarre Bennelong, a Wangal man whose country was on the south side of the Parramatta River. His story is a big one and I've only got room for the part that touches the point.

On 25 November 1789 Phillip had Bennelong and Colebee seized at Manly Cove and brought to Government House. Phillip wanted someone to learn English and explain the colony to the Eora, and the Eora to the colony. Bennelong got away in May 1790, but later that year, after Phillip was speared at the whale feast at Manly, he started coming back to the settlement of his own accord. He and Colebee began to dine with the Governor regularly.

According to the Dictionary of Sydney, it was at Bennelong's own request that Phillip built him a brick hut "on a point of land fixed upon by himself", on the headland at Tubowgule. It was 12 feet (about 3.5 metres) square, with a tiled roof and the fireplace outside. Keith Vincent Smith's work, published in Aboriginal History, dates the hut to November 1790. Phillip also had a tin shield made for him, to ward off the spears of his enemies.

Bennelong lived there with Barangaroo, his second wife, a Cammeraygal woman and skilled fisherwoman from the north shore. She gave birth to a baby girl, Dilboong, who lived only a few months. When Barangaroo died around the end of August 1791, Bennelong cremated her remains in Governor Phillip's garden, beside Sydney Cove.

In December 1792 Bennelong sailed for England with Phillip, along with the younger Wangal man Yemmerrawanne. He saw London's museums, the theatre at Covent Garden and Parliament, and came home in 1795. Yemmerrawanne never did. He died of a lung infection at Eltham in Kent on 18 May 1794, aged about nineteen, and was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist there. Bennelong didn't go back to the point. He lived later at Kissing Point with his third wife, Boorong. Smith writes that the hut was pulled down in November 1795, two months after he got back, and the Opera House says the bricks were reused elsewhere. The hut was gone, but the name stayed. Today the Opera House sits on Bennelong Point, and its restaurant is called Bennelong.

The First Guns – 1788 to 1798

The point was always going to be a spot for guns, as it guards the entrance to Sydney Cove. Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article says that in July 1788 Lieutenant William Dawes was told to build a small redoubt on this side, which held two brass six-pounders by November. It says the earthworks were given up in 1791 and the guns moved to the west side of the cove, where the Dawes Point battery grew up. I've kept that short because I haven't been able to check it against a second source.

On firmer ground is the half-moon battery of December 1798. Both Wikipedia articles say it was built at the far northern tip of the point and armed with guns from HMS Supply, the little armed tender of the First Fleet. A Mr Pern, writing in 1802, described the battery on the northern point of Sydney Cove as built on a rock of difficult access, carrying six pieces of cannon behind a trench of turf. In truth these early defences were pretty basic, and nobody seriously expected them to hold off a proper warship.

Macquarie, Greenway and Fort Macquarie – 1817 to 1821

Then came Lachlan Macquarie, the governor who wanted Sydney to look like a proper town, and his convict architect Francis Greenway, transported for forgery and made Civil Architect by Macquarie. Between them they built Hyde Park Barracks, St James' Church, the Macquarie Lighthouse and much more. In 1817 Macquarie ordered a new fort on Bennelong Point.

Macquarie laid the foundation stone on 17 December 1817. Building it took a lot of work first. Between 1818 and 1821 the tidal gap between the little island and the mainland was filled with rock cut from the point itself, and the whole area was levelled into a low platform. The Dictionary of Sydney puts the joining of the island to the mainland in 1818. While they were at it, a big slice of the rocky escarpment was cut away so a road could run around the point from Sydney Cove to Farm Cove. It was called the Tarpeian Way, after the cliff in ancient Rome, and the cut rock face is still there behind the Opera House.

The stone came from the Governor's Domain quarry close by, and convicts worked on the fort for around two years. It was finished in February 1821.

What the fort looked like

Greenway gave Macquarie a little castle. The fort was square, with three of its faces open to the water so the guns had a clear field of fire. In the middle stood a two-storey castellated tower about 27.4 metres around, with walls around one and a half metres thick at the top. The tower held a guardroom and storehouse and could house a small garrison of one officer and eighteen men. Underneath was a powder magazine big enough for 350 barrels of gunpowder. The battery had fifteen guns, ten 24-pounders and five 6-pounders. In the early years a narrow channel of salt water still separated the fort from the land and was crossed by a drawbridge, but this was later filled in to make a roadway.

Fort Macquarie and Sydney Cove, painted by Conrad Martens in 1836, fifteen years after Greenway's fort was finished. Conrad Martens, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A fort that never fired in anger

Fort Macquarie was more for show than anything. Its battlements were really decoration in the Gothic taste of the day, and it was never tested by an enemy. As Sydney's defences were rethought over the century, especially after the Crimean War scare of the 1850s that gave us Fort Denison, the real firepower shifted out to the heads and the harbour forts. Fort Macquarie was left as a saluting battery, a store, a barracks and, by the end, a naval drill site. Wikipedia says a naval drill shed stood on the site by 1901.

It made a lovely picture, though. Just about every artist and photographer who came to Sydney had a go at it, with Government House on the hill behind and the North Shore across the water. From Conrad Martens in the 1830s to the stereo photographers of the 1850s and the Kerry studio later on, the fort turns up again and again, and those pictures are how we know it today.

Fort Macquarie with Government House behind it, from a stereo view taken about 1858–59. William Hetzer, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fort Macquarie and Bennelong Point, photographed about 1859–60. Matthew Fortescue Moresby, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The castellated walls and central tower of Fort Macquarie, about 1870. Unknown photographer, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the fort's guns has travelled. Two 42-pounder muzzle-loading cannon from Fort Macquarie were taken to Newcastle in 1903 to make a memorial in Gregson Park, Hamilton, where they were refurbished in 2006 and are still standing today. Wikipedia says another sits in Hyde Park.

Fort Macquarie looking across to the North Shore, about 1885. Attributed to Joseph Bischoff, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fort Comes Down – 1901

By 1900 Sydney's trams were going electric and the government needed somewhere to keep them near Circular Quay. Bennelong Point was government land and right at the end of the line. In 1901 the New South Wales Minister for Works decided Fort Macquarie had to go. The fort and the naval drill shed were both demolished to make way for a tram depot.

It's easy to be cranky about that now. Fort Macquarie was one of Greenway's buildings and one of the oldest in the colony. But in 1901 nobody talked about heritage the way we do, and an old fort with no military use was just in the road. At least the builders of the depot had the decency to remember it.

Fort Macquarie in 1900, only a year or so before it was pulled down. Powerhouse Museum collection, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot – 1902 to 1958

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot opened on 10 August 1902. It was built like a fortress, with a battlemented front parapet and a tall turret, as a deliberate nod to the fort that had stood there. The rest was solid working brick, with false windows hiding vents and a twelve-road car shed with the roof turned to the south.

It was a big building. The Wikipedia figures give a width of 131 feet, a car shed 250 feet long, the whole building 307 feet from end to end, and the turret 80 feet high. A loop line ran around the outside, and the sidings on the western side were a handy lay-over spot for trams, taking pressure off Circular Quay at busy times. A signal box beside the tracks controlled entry to the depot and loop.

For half a century "Fort Macquarie" was a name on the front of Sydney trams. Services ran from there to Rozelle, Drummoyne, Gladesville and Ryde, to Forest Lodge, Balmain and Birchgrove, to Haberfield, Five Dock and Abbotsford, to Leichhardt, Glebe Point, Kensington and Rosebery. My grandparents' generation would have known "Fort Mac" as just another stop, not a fort at all.

The Fort Macquarie tram depot, with its battlements and turret built in memory of the old fort. NSW Government Tramways archives, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The point also saw some sad days in those years. When the ferry Greycliffe was run down by the Tahiti on 3 November 1927 with the loss of 40 lives, many of the survivors, and the bodies of those who died, were brought to the Man o' War Steps on the eastern side of the tram depot. It became a makeshift casualty station, with ambulance men, police, passers-by and depot workers helping the injured, and Sam Hood's photographs from that day show an ambulance and injured passengers at Fort Macquarie. I've written about Sydney's ferries and trams elsewhere, and the link is at the bottom.

The tram depot on Bennelong Point in the 1940s, not long before the trams moved out. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By the 1950s the trams were on the way out. The depot closed on 22 October 1955, with most of its services moved to the Dowling Street depot. By then the site already had a new job waiting for it.

Goossens and the Dream of an Opera House

Eugene Goossens, the conductor who pushed for an opera house and for Bennelong Point as the site. Bain News Service, Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The man who started it all was Eugene Goossens, an English conductor who came out in 1947 to lead the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and run the NSW State Conservatorium of Music. Goossens thought the Sydney Town Hall, where the orchestra played, wasn't good enough, and he started lobbying for a proper home for opera and concerts. The National Museum of Australia says he met Premier Joseph Cahill in 1954, and the two agreed Sydney needed a major performance venue.

It was Goossens, too, who wanted Bennelong Point. Cahill's people had been thinking about a site near Wynyard railway station, but Goossens held out for the point, with the tram depot due to go and harbour all around. It's hard to imagine the building anywhere else now.

Goossens didn't get to see it built. In March 1956 he was stopped at Mascot airport by customs officers who found what was then called indecent material in his luggage. He was fined, lost his posts and left Australia under a cloud. He died in London on 13 June 1962. The Opera House he fought for opened eleven years later.

The Design Competition – 1955 to 1957

Cahill launched an international design competition on 13 September 1955, with a first prize of £5,000. The brief asked for a large hall seating 3,000 and a small hall for 1,200, for full-scale opera, orchestral and choral concerts, mass meetings, lectures, ballet and more. It drew 233 entries from 32 countries.

The four judges were Professor Henry Ingham Ashworth of the University of Sydney, Cobden Parkes, the NSW Government Architect, Professor Leslie Martin of Cambridge, who had worked on London's Royal Festival Hall, and the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen.

Saarinen and entry 218

This is where the most famous story comes in, and it needs a bit of care. The National Museum of Australia says there's no record of how the judges reached their decision. The story goes that Saarinen turned up after the other three had already shortlisted their favourites, wasn't impressed, went through the rejected pile and found entry number 218 by a 38-year-old Dane, Jørn Utzon. He is said to have argued for it until the others agreed. Wikipedia puts it a bit differently, saying Saarinen picked Utzon's design from a final cut of 30. Either way, everyone agrees Saarinen was Utzon's great champion on the panel. The winner was announced on 29 January 1957.

One of Jørn Utzon's 1956 competition drawings, a view from the staircase between the two halls looking north. NSW State Archives and Records (NRS 12825), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Utzon's drawings were famously sketchy, little more than a few sheets of plans and ideas. The judges said so themselves in their January 1957 report:

"The drawings submitted for this scheme are simple to the point of being diagrammatic. Nevertheless, as we have returned again and again to the study of these drawings, we are convinced that they present a concept of an Opera House which is capable of becoming one of the great buildings of the world."

Utzon had won seven of the eighteen competitions he'd entered, but had never seen any of his designs built. He came to Sydney for the first time on 29 July 1957, and a new model was shown at a public meeting in the Town Hall on 7 August.

Paying for It – The Opera House Lottery

The government didn't want the building to come out of the general budget, so it turned to a lottery. Tickets in the first Opera House Lottery went on sale on 25 November 1957, and there was a queue down Barrack Street on the first morning. Tickets were £5 each, a lot of money then, and the first prize was £100,000, the richest lottery ever held in the state. The first draw was on 10 January 1958.

The lottery ran for almost thirty years, with the last draw in 1986. According to NSW Lotteries, it sold more than 86 million tickets over 496 draws and raised $102 million, which paid for most of the building. So in a real sense the people of New South Wales paid for the Opera House a fiver at a time.

Building It – 1959 to 1973

The tram depot was demolished in 1958 and work started on 2 March 1959. Cahill wanted it under way quickly, before public opinion or a change of government could kill it, even though Utzon hadn't finished the design and the big structural questions were still open. That early start caused trouble for years.

The job was done in stages. The usual way of describing them is the podium, then the roof shells, then the glass walls and interiors, but different sources give slightly different dates for each.

Stage I – the podium

The builders Civil & Civic started on the podium in March 1959, with the engineers Ove Arup & Partners overseeing the work. By January 1961 it was 47 weeks behind. There had been bad weather and trouble diverting the stormwater, and construction had started before proper drawings were ready. The podium was finished in February 1963. It later turned out that its columns weren't strong enough for the roof that was going to sit on top of them, and they had to be rebuilt.

It was also during the podium work that the diggers found the old island and the convict rubble fill from Macquarie's day, so for a moment the Cattle Point layer saw daylight again.

There's a lovely story from those early years. In 1960 the American singer Paul Robeson climbed up on the site and sang "Ol' Man River" to the construction workers at lunch, so he became the first artist ever to perform at the Opera House.

Stage II – the shells and the spherical solution

Utzon's competition sketches showed sweeping shells with no fixed geometry, and nobody knew how to build them. From 1957 to 1963 the architects and Arup's engineers went through at least twelve versions, trying parabolas, ellipses and circular ribs, without finding a shape that could be built at a sensible cost. Every shell was different, which meant custom formwork or custom precast pieces for every one.

The answer came in mid-1961: make every shell a piece cut from the same sphere. With one constant curve, the ribs could be cast from standard moulds in pieces of common length and fitted together. It's why the shells look the way they do. The sphere has a radius of 75.2 metres, and you can still see a model of the idea at the Opera House showing how all the shells fit back into one ball.

Who thought of it first is still argued about. Utzon has long been given the credit, and Ove Arup himself wrote that Utzon came up with the idea of making all the shells of uniform curvature. But Arup's biographer Peter Jones says the engineers remembered talking about spheres themselves, while Yuzo Mikami, who worked on the design team, takes Utzon's side in his book Utzon's Sphere. Most writers settle on the view that Utzon, Arup and Arup's partner Ronald Jenkins all played a big part.

The builders Hornibrook took on the shells, setting up a factory on site to cast about 2,400 precast ribs and 4,000 roof panels. Hornibrook's engineer Joe Bertony designed an adjustable steel erection arch to hold the sections in place. It was one of the first big building jobs to use computers for the structural analysis, and the arches were surveyed at the end of every day so the next could be placed correctly. The tiles came from Höganäs in Sweden, more than a million of them in glossy white and matte cream, and it took three years to get the "Sydney tile" right.

The shells going up, photographed from the Botanic Gardens in late 1965, only months before Utzon resigned. Peter Hall, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The politics, and Utzon's resignation – 1965 to 1966

Cahill died on 22 October 1959, but Labor stayed in government and the project went on. Then at the May 1965 election Robert Askin's Liberals won, and Askin had been a loud critic of the Opera House. His new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, was even less friendly.

Hughes wanted the architect, engineers and contractors each reporting directly to the government, and wanted contracts put out to tender. Utzon wanted everything to go through his office and to pick suppliers he trusted, such as Ralph Symonds for the plywood interiors. Costs were climbing and the interiors weren't resolved. By February 1966 Utzon was owed more than $100,000 in fees, and Hughes held the money back. The National Museum of Australia gives the figure as $103,000.

On 28 February 1966 Utzon met Hughes. The government minutes record him saying, "If you don't do it, I resign," and Hughes answering, "I accept your resignation. Thank you very much. Goodbye." Over the next days architects, artists and unionists marched on Bennelong Point and called for him to be brought back. Hughes offered him a lesser job as "design architect" under a panel, without any control over construction, but Utzon said no. He and his family left Sydney on 28 April 1966. He never came back.

The Sydney Morning Herald wasn't sure who to blame at first. One editorial said: "No architect in the world has enjoyed greater freedom than Mr Utzon. Few clients have been more patient or more generous than the people and the Government of NSW." By 17 March 1966 it was saying it "was not his fault that a succession of Governments and the Opera House Trust should so signally have failed to impose any control or order on the project".

Stage III – Hall, Todd and Littlemore

To finish the job, Hughes and the Government Architect Ted Farmer brought in three Australian architects. David Littlemore handled construction supervision, Lionel Todd handled the contract documents, and the design work fell to Peter Hall, a young architect who had won the Sulman Medal in 1964. At least two well-known Sydney architects had already turned the job down, and Hall had himself signed the petition calling for Utzon to be reinstated. He took it on in April 1966 and found far more unresolved than he'd expected. The seating numbers, acoustics, glass walls and the brief itself all still had to be settled.

The biggest change was inside. Hall's team decided opera and concerts couldn't share the one hall. The major hall became a concert hall only, the Concert Hall, and the minor hall took the opera and ballet, as the Opera Theatre, renamed the Joan Sutherland Theatre in 2012. The stage machinery already built for the big hall was pulled out. Utzon's plywood interiors and his acoustic designs for both halls were dropped. Ever since, people have argued about whether the halls would have been better his way, and the cramped orchestra pit in the Joan Sutherland Theatre has been a sore point for decades.

Hall guided the project for more than five years. The Australian Heritage Database notes that he kept talking with Utzon about the design for at least eighteen months after Utzon left.

There was one more twist on site. In 1972 the builders' labourers, affiliated with the Builders Labourers Federation, were sacked after a dispute. They broke back into the site and ran it themselves for five weeks under "workers' control", and they ended the work-in only when management agreed to a 25 per cent pay rise and the right to elect their own foremen.

The Opening – 20 October 1973

Before the official opening there were a few firsts. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra gave the first public concert in the Concert Hall on 5 September 1973, an all-Wagner night under Charles Mackerras with Birgit Nilsson. The first opera in the Opera Theatre was Prokofiev's War and Peace on 28 September 1973.

Then on Saturday 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II formally opened the Sydney Opera House. A large crowd packed the forecourt and the harbour, the ceremony was on television, and there were fireworks and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Queen Elizabeth II opens the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973. Jack Hickson, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You'll often read that Utzon wasn't invited and wasn't mentioned. That isn't right. He was invited but stayed away, so the row over his leaving wouldn't overshadow the day. The Queen's speech didn't name him or any of the architects, but Premier Askin did give him credit.

The cost

The figure everybody remembers is the blow-out. The 1957 estimate was £3,500,000, or $7 million, with the building to be finished by Australia Day, 26 January 1963. It came in ten years late at $102 million. That's the same figure as the lottery's total, which is why people say the lottery paid for the lot. In October 1966, after Utzon left, the spending to date was only $22.9 million, less than a quarter of the final bill. Hornibrook's director Sam Hoare broke the total down roughly as $5.5 million for the podium, $12.5 million for the roof shells, $56.5 million for completion, $9 million for stage gear, lighting and the organ, and $16.5 million in fees and other costs.

Bringing Utzon Back – 1999 to 2008

For more than thirty years the building and its architect stayed apart. In the late 1990s the Sydney Opera House Trust got back in touch with Utzon, and in 1999 he was appointed design consultant for future work. That year he agreed to set down the Utzon Design Principles, guidelines for how the building should be cared for and changed while keeping to his original idea. His son Jan, also an architect, worked alongside him.

The first space rebuilt to his design opened in 2004 and was named the Utzon Room in his honour. It holds his tapestry Homage to C.P.E. Bach, 14 metres long. In 2006 a colonnade was added along the western side, opening nine big windows in the old solid wall. Utzon received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour, in 2003, with the citation calling the Opera House "his masterpiece".

World Heritage – 28 June 2007

On 28 June 2007, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed the Sydney Opera House on the World Heritage List under criterion (i), as a masterpiece of human creative genius. The committee's statement calls it "a masterpiece of 20th century architecture" and notes that "Ove Arup's engineering achievements helped make Utzon's vision a reality." It was one of the youngest buildings ever listed, and Utzon was still alive to see it. It had already been on the NSW State Heritage Register since 2003 and the National Heritage List since 2005.

Jørn Utzon died in Denmark on 29 November 2008, aged 90, without ever having seen the finished building. A state memorial was held in the Concert Hall on 25 March 2009, with his son Jan and daughter Lin there.

The Opera House in December 2008, the month after Utzon died in Denmark. Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Decade of Renewal – 2017 to 2022

By the 2010s the building was showing its age, and the old problems with the halls had never gone away. The Opera House ran what it calls its Decade of Renewal, almost $300 million of work largely paid for by the NSW Government. The Joan Sutherland Theatre closed in the second half of 2017 to have its stage machinery replaced. The Concert Hall closed in February 2020 and reopened in July 2022 with improved acoustics, better access and new staging, which went a long way towards fixing the sound problems that had hung around since 1973. In 2016 the Opera House also finally hung the Le Corbusier tapestry that Utzon had commissioned back in 1959 for the building, after buying it at auction.

Fifty Years – 20 October 2023

On 20 October 2023 the Opera House turned fifty. The 2023 architecture awards included a NSW Architecture Medallion and the Greenway Award for Heritage for the renewal work, which is a nice touch, as Francis Greenway's name comes back to the point two hundred years after his fort.

When you stand on the forecourt now, it's worth remembering what's underneath you. There's a tidal island where the Gadigal fished and gathered oysters, a paddock for the First Fleet's cattle, the lime kilns, the place where Bennelong's little hut stood, a 1798 battery, Greenway's castle, half a century of trams, and then Utzon's sails. Not bad for one small point of land.

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Tubowgule, a tidal island and point used by the Gadigal people; shell middens build up over generations.
• 1788 – The First Fleet arrives. The point is briefly used to hold cattle and horses and becomes Cattle Point. Shells burned for lime give the name Limeburners' Point.
• July–November 1788 – A small redoubt with two brass six-pounders is reported on this side of the cove (Wikipedia).
• 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colebee are captured at Manly.
• November 1790 – Phillip builds Bennelong a 12-foot-square brick hut on the point.
• About end of August 1791 – Barangaroo dies.
• December 1792 – Bennelong sails for England with Phillip.
• 1795 – Bennelong returns. His hut is demolished in November.
• December 1798 – A half-moon battery is built at the tip, with guns from HMS Supply.
• 17 December 1817 – Macquarie lays the foundation stone of Greenway's Fort Macquarie.
• 1818–1821 – The tidal gap is filled and the Tarpeian Way is cut.
• February 1821 – Fort Macquarie is completed.
• 1901 – The Minister for Works decides to demolish the fort, and it comes down.
• 10 August 1902 – Fort Macquarie Tram Depot opens.
• 1903 – Two of the fort's cannon go to Gregson Park, Newcastle.
• 3 November 1927 – Greycliffe disaster. Survivors and the dead are brought to the Man o' War Steps beside the depot.
• 1947 – Eugene Goossens arrives in Sydney.
• 1954 – Goossens and Premier Cahill agree Sydney needs a performance venue.
• 13 September 1955 – The design competition is launched.
• 22 October 1955 – The tram depot closes.
• March 1956 – Goossens is caught at customs and leaves Australia.
• 29 January 1957 – Utzon's entry 218 is announced as the winner.
• 25 November 1957 – Opera House Lottery tickets go on sale. The first draw is on 10 January 1958.
• 1958 – The tram depot is demolished.
• 2 March 1959 – Construction begins with Stage I, the podium.
• 1960 – Paul Robeson sings for the workers.
• Mid-1961 – The spherical solution for the shells is found.
• February 1963 – The podium is finished and Utzon moves his office to Sydney.
• May 1965 – The Askin government is elected and Davis Hughes becomes Works Minister.
• 28 February 1966 – Utzon resigns.
• April 1966 – Hall, Todd and Littlemore are appointed, and Utzon leaves Sydney on 28 April.
• 1972 – The builders' labourers' work-in takes place.
• 20 October 1973 – Queen Elizabeth II opens the Opera House. The final cost is $102 million.
• 1986 – The last Opera House Lottery draw.
• 1999 – Utzon is re-engaged and agrees to write the Design Principles.
• 2003 – Utzon wins the Pritzker Prize, and the building goes on the NSW State Heritage Register.
• 2004 – The Utzon Room opens.
• 28 June 2007 – World Heritage listing.
• 29 November 2008 – Utzon dies in Denmark.
• 2017–2022 – The main renewal works, with the Concert Hall reopening in July 2022.
• 20 October 2023 – The 50th anniversary.

Where the Sources Disagree

• The Aboriginal name. It's spelled Tubowgule (Sydney Opera House), Tubowgulle and Tubowghule (Dictionary of Sydney), and Dubbagullee, Inbughalee or Djubuguli (Wikipedia).
• When Bennelong's hut was built. The Opera House says 1790, and Keith Vincent Smith gives November 1790. One Dictionary of Sydney picture caption says 1789, but he was only captured in November 1789 and didn't come back to the settlement of his own accord until later in 1790, so 1790 is the safer date.
• "Built in 1798". Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article opens by saying the fort was built in 1798. That's the date of the earlier half-moon battery. Greenway's Fort Macquarie was begun in 1817 and finished in 1821.
• Lime for one building only. Wikipedia says the point's shells only made enough lime for Government House. I haven't found that in a second source.
• The 1788 redoubt. Only Wikipedia's Fort Macquarie article places Dawes' 1788 redoubt on this side of the cove, so I've reported it as that article's claim.
• When the trams left. The depot closed on 22 October 1955, but it wasn't demolished until 1958. You'll see both years given as "the end of the depot".
• How Saarinen found Utzon's design. The National Museum of Australia says there's no record of how the judging went and calls the rejected-pile story a rumour. Wikipedia says Saarinen chose it from 30 finalists.
• Planned completion date. Wikipedia gives Australia Day, 26 January 1963. The National Museum of Australia says December 1963.
• Stage dates. Wikipedia gives Stage I as 1959–1963 (podium), Stage II as the roof and Stage III as the interiors from 1963. The Australian Heritage Database gives the podium as 1958–1961, the shells as 1962–1967, and the glass walls and interiors as 1967–1973.
• Who found the spherical solution. It's credited to Utzon by Utzon's side and by Mikami. Arup's biographer Peter Jones says the engineers were also canvassing spheres. Nobody can settle it now.
• Utzon's unpaid fees. Wikipedia says "more than $100,000", and the National Museum of Australia says $103,000.
• Was Utzon snubbed at the opening? He's often said not to have been invited. Wikipedia, citing the record, says he was invited but declined, and Askin credited him in his speech.

My Earlier Posts

• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East – Australia's First Stock
• Fort Macquarie – Eastern Point of Sydney Cove / Western Point of Farm Cove – Bennelong Point
• Woolaware Bennelong
• Wuganmagulyav Creek – Farm Cove
• Farm Cove – Next to the Royal Botanic Gardens
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Semi-Circular Quay – Port Jackson – Sydney Harbour
• Dawes Point – Tar-ra – The Rocks
• Government House – Royal Botanic Gardens – Macquarie Street
• Francis Greenway's Residence – George Street, Cnr Argyle Street – The Rocks
• South Head – The Macquarie Lighthouse
• Hyde Park Barracks – Macquarie Street
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour – From 1788 to Today
• Captain Arthur Phillip & The First Fleet Arriving At Botany Bay – January 1788

Sources

• Sydney Opera House, "Tubowgule" – https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/tubowgule
• Sydney Opera House, "Conserving and celebrating our heritage" – https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/conserving-and-celebrating-our-heritage
• Sydney Opera House, "Renewing an icon" – https://stories.sydneyoperahouse.com/renewing-an-icon/
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Bennelong Point" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/natural_feature/bennelong_point
• Dictionary of Sydney, "East Circular Quay" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/east_circular_quay
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Woollarawarre Bennelong" (Keith Vincent Smith) – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woollarawarre_bennelong
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Bennelong among his people", Aboriginal History vol. 33, ANU Press – https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p74631/pdf/ch0156.pdf
• National Museum of Australia, "Defining Moments: Sydney Opera House" – https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/sydney-opera-house
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, news, 28 June 2007 – https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/360/
• UNESCO World Heritage Committee, Decision 31 COM 8B.31 – https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1329/
• Australian Heritage Database, Sydney Opera House (place 105914) – https://environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl?mode=place_detail;place_id=105914
• Museums of History NSW, "10 Jan 1958 – first Sydney Opera House lottery" – https://mhnsw.au/stories/on-this-day/10-january-1958/
• The Lott media release, Opera House 50th anniversary partnership, 2023 – https://mediacentre.thelott.com/media-releases/the-lott-to-join-the-opera-houses-50th-anniversary-celebrations-with-new-partnership/
• ArtsHub, "Kiss and sell: The story of the Sydney Opera House" – https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/kiss-and-sell-the-story-of-the-sydney-opera-house-256285-2360482/
• Wikipedia, "Sydney Opera House" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Opera_House (incorporates NSW State Heritage Register text, CC BY 3.0 AU)
• Wikipedia, "Bennelong Point" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennelong_Point
• Wikipedia, "Fort Macquarie" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Macquarie
• Wikipedia, "Fort Macquarie Tram Depot" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Macquarie_Tram_Depot
• NSW State Heritage Register, Sydney Opera House (listed 2003) – https://www.hms.heritage.nsw.gov.au/
• Peter Jones, Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2006), as cited by Wikipedia
• Yuzo Mikami, Utzon's Sphere (Shokokusha, 2001), as cited by Wikipedia
• Peter Murray, The Saga of the Sydney Opera House (Spon, 2004), as cited by Wikipedia
• Peter Webber, Peter Hall: The Phantom of the Opera House (2012), as cited by Wikipedia
• NSW State Archives and Records, NRS 12825, Utzon competition drawings
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Yemmerrawanne" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yemmerrawanne
• First Fleet Fellowship, "First Fleet Cattle" – https://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/library/first-fleet-cattle/
• Monument Australia, "Cowpastures Memorial" – https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/landscape/settlement/display/102538-cowpastures-memorial-
• David Salter, "Goossens, Sir Eugene Aynsley (1893–1962)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goossens-sir-eugene-aynsley-10329
• David Clune, "Cahill, John Joseph (Joe) (1891–1959)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cahill-john-joseph-joe-9659
• World Socialist Web Site, "Sydney Opera House architect, Jørn Utzon dies", December 2008 – https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/12/utzo-d10.html
• Australian Police, "The 1927 Tahiti-Greycliffe Disaster" (Steve Brew) – https://australianpolice.com.au/nsw-police-history-index/water-police/the-1927-tahiti-greycliffe-disaster/
• Dictionary of Sydney, "Greycliffe shipwreck 1927" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/event/greycliffe_shipwreck_1927
• State Library of New South Wales, photographs and paintings of Fort Macquarie (Martens, Hetzer, Moresby, Kerry & Co., Bischoff) and Jack Hickson's opening photographs, via Wikimedia Commons