The Tank Stream – Sydney – From Gadigal Water to Stormwater Drain

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page talks about Aboriginal people who have died, including a burial found beside the Tank Stream, and that some of the old pictures may show people who have died.

If you walk down Pitt Street from Martin Place towards the Quay, you're walking along a creek. You can't see it, you can't hear it, and most of the office workers stepping over it every morning have no idea it's there. But the Tank Stream is the reason Sydney sits where it does. It's the little run of fresh water that made Arthur Phillip pick Sydney Cove in January 1788, it gave the colony its first water supply, it got fouled within a generation, and it ended up as a stone and brick drain under the CBD. It still flows into the harbour at Circular Quay today.

I've written about it a few times over the years, so I've pulled all my Tank Stream posts together into this one page, with my old photos and words, and added a lot more history and pictures.

The Tank Stream in 1842, painted by John Skinner Prout. By then the stream was already more drain than drinking water. John Skinner Prout, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Before the Tanks: Gadigal Country and Warrane

Long before the First Fleet turned up, this little valley was Gadigal country. The Gadigal (also written Cadigal) are the people most commonly accepted as living around Sydney Cove, and the Tank Stream catchment gave them a bit of everything within a short walk: harbour, estuary, rock platform, creek, open forest and wetland. Sydney Water calls the area by its Aboriginal name, Warrane, and describes the Tank Stream as the main source of fresh water in the Warrane (Circular Quay) area. Nobody knows the stream's own Aboriginal name. The City of Sydney's Barani history site says plainly that it isn't known, but that the stream mattered as drinking water and for everything that grew along it.

Some of that history has survived two hundred years of building. In the late 1990s, archaeologists digging ahead of the Angel Place redevelopment, just north of Martin Place between Pitt and George Streets, found a small patch of soil that dated from before 1788. In it were 54 stone artefacts, most of them less than 2 cm long, the chips left over from making stone tools. As the Barani writers put it, Aboriginal people sat just metres from the Tank Stream and made their tools there. A few more artefacts turned up later further down the stream, along George Street, when the Ivy nightclub site was redeveloped.

People were buried along the stream too. More than a century before the Angel Place dig, workmen building additions to the General Post Office in Martin Place found an Aboriginal skull in the buried banks of the Tank Stream. The papers of the day called a hole in it a spear wound, but Barani notes it could have had a number of causes. What became of the skull isn't known. Back then it was common for Aboriginal remains to be collected or sold to museums and private collectors.

The Stream's Course: From the Swamp to the Cove

The Tank Stream rose in marshy ground roughly bounded by today's Elizabeth, Market, Pitt and Park Streets, just to the west of Hyde Park. According to W. V. Aird's 1961 history of Sydney's water supply, it soaked through the soil between Pitt and George Streets before forming a proper channel near King Street, then ran north to the cove. At high tide it met the harbour at what's now the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets. Its whole catchment was about 65 hectares, roughly the size of the CBD itself.

You can still feel it in your legs. Barani points out that if you walk west from Macquarie Street down any of the cross streets, the road dips down to where the Tank Stream ran and then climbs again towards George Street. That dip is the valley the whole city is built in.

The stream also split the town in two. The eastern side was kept for the governor, government and administration, and the convicts lived on the western side, out towards the Rocks. That's why Bridge Street, where the crossing was, became the main link between east and west Sydney.

Circular Quay and the mouth of the Tank Stream, Sydney Cove, painted by Frederick Garling Jr. in 1839. Frederick Garling Jr., public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A View of Tank Stream, an unknown artist's watercolour from about 1842. Unknown artist, State Library of New South Wales, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

1788: "Near the Run of Fresh Water"

The colony was meant to go to Botany Bay, on the say-so of Sir Joseph Banks, who'd been there with Cook in 1770. When the fleet got there, Phillip found no decent fresh water, so he took boats north looking for something better and found Port Jackson. Cook had sailed past it and named it in 1770 but never gone in.

David Collins, the colony's judge-advocate, wrote the line everyone quotes. The governor's party anchored off the cove on the evening of the 25th of January 1788, and the spot chosen for the camp "was at the head of the cove, near the run of fresh water, which stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which had then, for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe".

Collins also gives us the first bridge. In October 1788 "a gang of convicts were employed in rolling timber together, to form a bridge over the stream at the head of the cove". That crossing is where Bridge Street got its name, which Governor Macquarie made official in 1810.

From My 2020 Post: The Tank Stream – Sydney

When Arthur Phillip First Saw What Is Now Circular Quay & The Freshwater Estuary That Ran Into The Quay, He Must’ve Sighed One Of The Biggest Sighs Of Relief, After Being Let Down With What He’d Been Told About Botany Bay, & That The Land Was Fertile. 
Once the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, Arthur Phillip was left with no choice but to get in a smaller boat & search the coast to the north, & that’s how they came upon Port Jackson, which had been marked on Captain Cook’s chart from 1770.
 

The Watercourse Named The Tank Stream Was An Important Source Of Fresh Water For Aboriginal People Before European Settlement. As The 19th Century Progressed & The Population Of Sydney Grew, The Tank Stream  Was First Polluted & Then Channeled & Diverted Underground Into A Series Of  Drains & Pipes.
Fifty Four Worked Stone Artefacts Were Discovered In The Late 1990s During Excavations For The Construction Of The City Recital Hall At Angel Place Which Was Built Above A Section Of The Tank Stream.
This Discovery Shows That Aboriginal People Sat Just Metres From The Stream Making Stone Tools.

From My 2016 Post: Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove

Bridge Street, Northern Side, Between George And Pitt Streets

In October 1788 A Timber bridge was built to span the tank stream at this spot, which was then The Head Of Sydney Cove. In 1803–1804 the structure was replaced by a stone bridge. 

When Governor Phillip inspected Port Jackson in January 1788 he was induced to start a settlement there because Of A Rivulet At The Head Of Sydney Cove Where Wild celery parsley & spinach flourished - healthy vegetables for scurvy patients. A Swampy Spring near the western edge of Today's Hyde Park, Was The Birthplace Of This Rivulet, which fell 100 feet as it wandered Eastward Over sandstone Rocks To King Street.  Then nourished by two springs, one at  King Street and another at Spring Street It Flowed to Bridge Street The Head Of The tidal estuary.

To save the life stream, Governor Phillip in March 1788 wisely decreed that 

"the run of water which supplies the settlement was observed to be only a drain from the swamp. To protect it from the sun, the governor forbids the cutting down of any tree within 50 feet of the run, than which there has not been a finer found in any one of the coves of the harbour."

In February 1791 surveyor Alt deepened the stream Near Bridge Street and in April 1792 the governor had ditches dug flanking the rivulet. A paling fence was erected to keep out stock and cherish the shrubs growing on its Bank.

The Rivulet was christened the tank stream in May 1792 after his Excellency had convicts Hew a tank from sandstone which held 8000 gallons of water.

Bridge Street where the Tank Stream turned into the tidal waters Of Sydney Cove became the main link between East and West Sydney. Collins in October 1788 stated that a gang of convicts were employed in rolling timber together to form a bridge over the stream at the head of the Cove. Soon footbridges spanned the rushing waters, followed later by a circular [arched?] bridge. Alas, an overloaded bullock wagon broke through the decking and put the bridge out of action.

The Tanks That Gave the Stream Its Name

The Tank Stream was never much of a river. In dry weather it couldn't keep up, and the early 1790s were dry. So the governor had tanks cut into the sandstone beside the stream to hold water in reserve, and that's where the name comes from.

Collins tells the story as it happened. In late 1791, with the dry weather hurting the water supply, the governor "employed the stone-mason's gang to cut tanks out of the rock, which would be reservoirs for the water large enough to supply the settlement for some time". Then in May 1792 he records that "a tank that would contain about seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-six gallons of water, with a well in the centre fifteen feet deep, was finished, and the water let into it". That's the "8000 gallons" in my older posts.

The State Heritage Register puts the cutting of the tanks in 1790, says there were three or four of them, and gives each one about 20,000 litres and 5 metres deep. The City of Sydney's old water history says three tanks were built during a drought in 1790. Aird places one at what's now the corner of Pitt and Spring Streets, and the other two in Bond Street on the other side of the stream. None of them is thought to have survived. The stretch between Hunter and Bond Streets, where they were, is now a stone arch and a 1962 concrete box under Australia Square.

Keeping the water clean was a battle from day one. Phillip had the stream fenced against stock as early as 1791, and later trenches were cut alongside it to catch the dirty runoff before it got in. The heritage listing says that in 1795 orders were made against grazing stock or cutting trees within about 15 metres of the stream. Collins records that early in 1796 the governor had to repeat in public orders that "when an order was given by him, it was given to be obeyed", because people kept opening the paling fence and dipping dirty vessels in the water above the tanks, "thereby disturbing and polluting the whole stream below".

From My 2015 Post: Tank Stream - Macquarie Street To Circular Quay

In October 1788, a timber bridge was built to span the Tank Stream at this spot, which was then the head of Sydney Cove. In 1803–1804 the structure was replaced by a stone bridge.

When Governor Phillip inspected Port Jackson in January 1788 he was induced to start a settlement there because of the rivulet at The Head Of Sydney Cove, where wild celery, parsley and spinach flourished – healthy vegetables for scurvy patients. A swampy spring, near the western edge of today's Hyde Park, was  the birthplace of this rivulet which fell 100 feet As it wandered Eastward over sandstone rocks to King Street. Then, nourished by two springs, one at King Street and another at Spring Street, it flowed to Bridge Street, the head of the tidal estuary.

To save the life stream, Governor Phillip in March 1788 wisely decreed that "the run of water which supplies the settlement was observed to be only a drain from the swamp. To protect it from the sun, the governor forbids the cutting down of any tree within 50 feet of the run, than which there has not been a finer found in any one of the coves of the harbour."

In February 1791 surveyor Alt deepened the stream near Bridge Street, and in April 1792 the governor had ditches dug flanking The Rivulet. A Paling fence was erected to keep out stock and cherish the shrubs growing on its banks. The rivulet was christened the tank stream in May 1792 after his Excellency had convicts hew a tank from sandstone which held 8000 gallons of water. Bridge St where the tank stream debouched into the tidal waters of Sydney Cove, became the main link between eastern and western Sydney. Collins in October 1788 Stated that a gang Of convicts were employed in rolling timber together to form a bridge over the stream at the head of the Cove. Soon footbridges spanned the [unfinished – John to complete]

From Drinking Water to Open Sewer

As the town grew, so did the mess. More houses, more animals, more cleared land and fewer trees meant more runoff, and it carried human and animal waste and household rubbish straight into the stream. Aird says it was little more than an open sewer for about ten years before it was finally abandoned as a water supply in 1826. The heritage listing says Governor Brisbane disallowed it for drinking that year, and that Governor Darling had seven wells dug around the town and people put to work fixing the drains.

The answer to the water problem was Busby's Bore, John Busby's tunnel carrying water from the Lachlan Swamps (now Centennial Park) to Hyde Park. Convicts started digging it in September 1827. It began supplying drinkable water in 1830 but wasn't finished until 1837.

The standpipe for Busby's Bore near the corner of Elizabeth and Market Streets, Hyde Park, in 1857. The Bore took over from the Tank Stream as the town's water supply. Attributed to Charles Woolcott, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A section of wooden pipe from Busby's Bore, on display at the Powerhouse Museum. Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

With the drinking water gone elsewhere, the Tank Stream became the town's drain. The heritage listing says it was an unofficial sewer by 1826 and an official one by 1857, emptying straight into the harbour at the Quay. Around 1850, when Semi-Circular Quay was built, the stream had to be extended north of Bridge Street to reach the new waterline. The swamp that fed it was drained around 1850, according to a 1953 Sunday Herald article cited by Wikipedia, and the new Bennelong sewer works of 1857 drained it further. With less clean water flushing it, the Tank Stream got even filthier. Until 1888 it also carried salt water, which the council stored in reservoirs for cleaning the streets and keeping down the dust.

"The Old Tank Stream, Sydney", an engraving published in 1873, looking back to the days before it was covered over. Booth (1873), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The 1860s Drain and the Stormwater Channel

The smell is what finally got the stream covered. In the late 1850s work started on roofing the Bridge Street to Hunter Street section, and the sandstone arch over it was built in 1860. The heritage listing describes the channel as part stone and part brick in its lower half, with a sandstone arch roof. In 1866 the section from just south of Hunter Street to Martin Place was built as an open stone channel, and it was roofed over in the 1870s. Through the late 1870s the City Council kept going. A brick egg-shaped ("oviform") sewer went in from Pitt Street to Bridge Street in 1878, through what had been private land, and in 1879 the Bridge to Hunter Street floor was relaid in mortar with a terracotta scouring channel down the middle. By 1880 brick had reached the full width of King Street.

What's down there now is a patchwork of almost two hundred years of plumbing. According to the heritage listing, the old fabric survives from King Street, between Pitt and George, all the way to Circular Quay. There are 1866 brick drains enclosed in 1876 near King Street and between Martin Place and Angel Place. A historic oviform sewer runs towards the old GPO. Under Australia Square there's a semicircular stone arch with a shallow V-shaped floor, then a concrete box put in when the Square was built in 1962. Between Abercrombie Lane and Bridge Street there's a stone arch from about 1860. From Bridge Street the stream turns to run under Pitt Street for the last 185 metres to the Quay. A lot of the channel was replaced with modern pipe after the Second World War, when little thought went into its history, under the GPO in 1940, behind Pitt Street in 1958 and 1962, at Australia Square in 1965, at the old GPO site in 2001 and at Angel Place in 2002.

Today the Tank Stream is a stormwater channel looked after by Sydney Water, and it's on the NSW State Heritage Register, listed on 2 April 1999. Between 2024 and 2027 Sydney Water is restoring the old culvert under First Fleet Park at Circular Quay, and for a while you could actually see a bit of it from the street.

A brick-lined section of the Tank Stream, photographed on a tour in November 2008. Shermozle, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Inside the Tank Stream on a November 2008 tour. Shermozle, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sydney Water's restoration works at First Fleet Park, Circular Quay, in June 2026, when a rare stretch of the Tank Stream culvert was opened to view. Aebion, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Tank Stream Way

Up above, the stream has left its name on a little laneway off Bridge Street. The heritage listing says the 40-metre stretch of channel between Abercrombie Lane and Bridge Street is a stone arch from about 1860, and that "on the ground here, Tank Stream Way preserves the name of the stream". Here's what I wrote about it in my laneways series.

From My 2020 Post: Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - NSW

Tank Stream Way Was Once Part Of Hamilton Street Which Ran Between Bridge And Hunter Streets, Named After Hamilton's Biscuit Factory. Most Of It Disappeared Underneath The Australia Square Development, Leaving Two Remnant Laneways, And This Section Was Renamed In 1981. In Bridge Lane, Once The Site Of The Town’s First Lumber Yards, Look For The Old Warehouse Doorway, Now The Entrance To The Establishment Hotel. As Late As The 1860s There Was Still Vacant Land Sliced Between The Cottages In This Area, But By The End Of The 19th Century It Had Become A Favoured Location for Warehouses, Including Several Tea Merchants Stores. 

Tank Stream Way seen from the south-east, April 2024. Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

You can read the whole laneway post here: Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - New South Wales.

The Tank Stream Fountain

The best-known memorial to the stream is down at Herald Square, on the corner of George and Alfred Streets near Circular Quay. The Tank Stream Fountain is a cascading fountain by the sculptor Stephen Walker, with four bronze columns rising out of the pool. All over it are Australian plants and animals, frogs, snakes, goannas, echidnas, crabs, birds and tortoises, that look like they're playing in the water. The kids love it, which is the whole idea. It's also known as the Children's Fountain, dedicated to "all the children who have played around the Tank Stream".

The fountain was a present from John Fairfax & Sons, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, to mark 150 years since the first Sydney Herald came out on 18 April 1831. The City of Sydney accepted the offer on 25 June 1979. It was the biggest private gift the city had ever had at that point. The council was already planning to tidy up the streetscape, so the extra work went onto its existing contract with Melocco Bros. The extra landscaping cost $356,154.50, subsidised down to $183,495.50, and the paper matched that and paid for the sculpture as well. The Lord Mayor dedicated the fountain on 16 April 1981.

Walker's brief from Fairfax was "to create an association of water and bronze", and he tied it to the Tank Stream, the settlement's first water supply. Walker was born in Melbourne in 1927, studied painting in Melbourne and Hobart, and started making sculpture in 1952. In the 1950s and 60s he studied in England, Rome, Florence and Prague before coming home in 1964. The fountain is heritage-listed in its own right, and the City of Sydney started cleaning and conserving the bronzes in September 2026, with the work expected to take about two months.

The Tank Stream Fountain in Herald Square, by Stephen Walker, 1981. Whiteghost.ink, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Close up, the native animals look like they're playing in the pools. Whiteghost.ink, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A bronze lizard on the fountain. Tony Hisgett, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The fountain in 2012. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Herald Square, with the fountain at its centre, in 2023. -wuppertaler, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another view of the fountain and its bronze creatures, 2023. -wuppertaler, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Plaques, the Tours and Where to See It

The fountain carries its own plaques. One, on the western front, explains how Walker drew on the spot's history. Another says the fountain and the landscaping of the square were donated "for the pleasure and enjoyment of citizens and visitors" by John Fairfax & Sons. The City of Sydney's record of the inscriptions includes a little potted history that starts with 1788: "A stream flows into Sydney Cove. The European settlement of Australia begins along its sandstone banks. Soon drought strikes and storage tanks are carved from the stone, hence the name."

The fountain and one of its plaques, 2018. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The plaque near the fountain commemorating the Tank Stream, which gave the first European settlement its water. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If you want to actually get down there, Sydney Living Museums and Sydney Water have run Tank Stream tours, usually in April and November. Tickets are limited and handed out by ballot, so you need a bit of luck. The way in is through the basement of the Australia Square tower, which is also Sydney Water's inspection point, and there's an information area behind locked gates at the start of the tour. If you miss out, Barani says there's a small Tank Stream exhibition in the basement of the old General Post Office in Martin Place, with an excavated piece of the original brick oviform drain. You go in directly under the clock tower. Otherwise just follow the street names, the artwork and the pub names, and the dip in the road, from Hunter Street down Pitt Street to the Quay.

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Gadigal people use the stream for water and resources; stone tools are made on its banks (Angel Place site).
• January 1788 – The First Fleet moves from Botany Bay to Sydney Cove; the camp is set up "near the run of fresh water".
• October 1788 – Convicts roll timber together to form the first bridge over the stream at the head of the cove.
• 1790 – The heritage listing and the City of Sydney date the cutting of the tanks to a 1790 drought.
• 1791 – The stream is fenced against stock; Collins says the stonemasons were cutting tanks in late 1791.
• May 1792 – Collins records a tank of about 7,996 gallons, with a well 15 feet deep, finished and filled.
• 1795–96 – Orders against grazing and tree-cutting near the stream; people still fouling the water above the tanks.
• 1803–04 – A stone bridge replaces the timber one at Bridge Street (according to my older posts).
• 1810 – Macquarie names Bridge Street.
• 1826 – The stream is abandoned as drinking water; Darling has seven wells dug.
• 1827–1837 – Busby's Bore is built; it supplies water from 1830.
• c.1850 – Semi-Circular Quay is built and the stream is extended north of Bridge Street; the source swamp is drained.
• 1857 – The Tank Stream becomes an official sewer.
• 1860 – The sandstone arch between Bridge and Hunter Streets is built.
• 1866–1880 – Open stone and brick channels are built and roofed over; brick oviform sewers go in.
• 1888 – Salt water stops being carried in the stream for street cleaning.
• 1962–1965 – Concrete box replaces the channel under Australia Square; tour access is built there.
• 16 April 1981 – The Tank Stream Fountain is dedicated in Herald Square; Hamilton Street's remnant becomes Tank Stream Way the same year.
• Late 1990s – The Angel Place dig finds 54 Aboriginal stone artefacts beside the stream.
• 2 April 1999 – The Tank Stream is added to the NSW State Heritage Register.
• 2024–2027 – Sydney Water restores the culvert under First Fleet Park.
• September 2026 – Conservation work starts on the fountain's bronzes.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When the tanks were cut: the State Heritage Register and the City of Sydney say 1790. Collins has the stonemasons cutting tanks in late 1791 and the first one finished in May 1792. My older posts say the stream was "christened" in May 1792.
• How big the tanks were: Collins gives about 7,996 gallons for the May 1792 tank, which is roughly 36,000 litres. The heritage listing gives about 20,000 litres for each of three or four tanks. These may not be measuring the same thing.
• How many tanks there were: the City of Sydney and Aird say three, and the heritage listing says three or four.
• The stone bridge: my older posts date the stone bridge at Bridge Street to 1803–04. The heritage listing (as quoted on Wikipedia) says a stone arch bridge replaced the wooden ones in 1792, and its own timeline lists the "first bridge crossing" in 1792, even though Collins describes a timber bridge in October 1788.
• When it stopped being drinking water: Aird says it was abandoned in 1826 after about ten years as an open sewer, and the heritage listing has Brisbane disallowing it in 1826 but says it was the main source of fresh water until Busby's Bore was finished in 1837.
• Busby's Bore: Aird (as cited on Wikipedia) dates the next supply to 1830, when the Bore started giving water, and the heritage listing says the Tank Stream was the main supply until the Bore was finished in 1837.
• Tree-cutting order: my older posts quote an order of March 1788 against cutting trees within 50 feet of the stream. The heritage listing has the order in 1795, at about 15 metres. I couldn't find the 1788 wording in a source I could open.
• The Angel Place dig: my 2020 post says 1996. Barani says the late 1990s, and the University of Sydney catalogues the reports as the "Angel Place Project 1997".

My Earlier Posts

• Tank Stream - Macquarie Street To Circular Quay (2015)
• Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove (2015)
• Tank Stream Bridge & Head of Sydney Cove (2016)
• Tank Stream Way - Laneways - Sydney - New South Wales
• Abercrombie Lane - Laneways - Sydney
• Dalley Street - Queen's Place - Charlotte Place - Laneways
• Australia Square - 264 George Street - Sydney
• The Government Wharf - Circular Quay
• Bridge Street - Named 10 October 1810
• Sydney Cove 1788

Sources

• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
• NSW State Heritage Register, Tank Stream (SHR 00636), as reproduced in Wikipedia, "Tank Stream" (CC BY): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Stream
• W. V. Aird, The Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage of Sydney (MWS&DB, 1961), as cited in Wikipedia, "Tank Stream"
• City of Sydney, "Tank Stream Fountain": https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/fountains-and-water-features/tank-stream-fountain
• Paul Irish and Tamika Goward, "The Tank Stream", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney): https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/the-tank-stream/
• Sydney Water, "Circular Quay Tank Stream work": https://www.sydneywater.com.au/water-the-environment/what-we-are-doing/projects-in-your-area/circular-quay-pump-station-and-tank-stream-work.html
• Wikipedia, "Busby's Bore": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby%27s_Bore
• Wikipedia, "Bridge Street, Sydney": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Street,_Sydney
• Wikipedia, "Port Jackson": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Jackson
• University of Sydney Library, Godden Mackay, Angel Place Project 1997 Archaeological Excavation Final Report, Vol. 1 (1998): https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/nodes/view/9364
• Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, Category:Tank Stream and Category:Busby's Bore (credits under each picture)

Sydney Laneways

I wrote up the city laneways one at a time in March 2020. They’re all together on this one page now, starting with Abercrombie Lane.

Abercrombie Lane

Abercrombie Lane is one of the George Street slits that still feels like it might tip you into the old creek line. On the corner stands George Patterson House — the 1880s warehouse later famous as an advertising castle — gutted by fire in January 1996 and rebuilt into the Establishment hotel complex with enough blackened fabric left that the bar still reads as a ruin with good lighting.

Walk the lane and the Tank Stream imaginary kicks in: Collins’s 1802 description of the fresh-water run through the wood fits it well, but the open creek is long gone into a drain under the towers.

Abercrombie Lane - Laneways - Sydney - NSW

On The Corner Of Abercrombie Lane Is The George Patterson Building, Refurbished As An Upmarket Bar After A Fire That Gutted The Building In 1996. This Building Retains Many Original Features, Including Some Atmospheric Fire Damaged Walls. Walking Down Abercrombie Lane It Is Easy To Imagine That You Are Heading For The Tank Stream. 


"The Spot Chosen For The Settlement Was At The Head Of A Cove, Near The Run Of Fresh Water Which Stole Silently Along Through A Very Nice Thick Wood, The Stillness Of Which Had Then, For The First Time Since Creation, Been Interrupted.."

- David Collins - Account Of An English Colony Of New South Wales 1802


When The Water Supply Became Inadequate, Convicts Were Set To Work Digging Holding Tanks Into The Watercourse, And So It Became Known As The Tank Stream. Today The Stream Runs Silently Through A City Drain Below The Pavements. 

Rowe Street

Rowe Street is the laneway Sydney still argues about after most of it vanished. It ran between Pitt and Castlereagh — first Brougham Place, renamed in 1875 for architect Thomas Rowe — and by the mid-twentieth century it was the city’s pocket of galleries, studios, hat shops, record bins and espresso bars. If Sydney ever had a European-chic slit street, this was the one people meant.

Nearly all of it came down in 1973 for Harry Seidler’s MLC Centre (1973–76). A stub off Pitt Street is what you can still walk. Hotel Australia and the old Theatre Royal died in the same redevelopment storm.

No Street In Sydney Has Had More Words Written About It Than Rowe Street. By The Early 20th Century Its Fine Run Of Terrace Houses Was Being Converted Into Small Shops & Galleries, & Rowe Street Was The Closest Thing Sydney Had To European Chic.

Upstairs Rooms Were Used As Artists Studios, & The Commercial Notanda Gallery Was A Gathering Place For The Artistic Community. In Adjoining Shops You Could Borrow A Book Or Buy An Elegant Hat.

Many People Remember Window Shopping For The Latest In Interior Design And Parisian Frocks, Buying Some Music At Rowe Street Records Or Enjoying A Bohemian Espresso At Horton's Gallery.

The Street Remains, But The Buildings Were Demolished To Make Way For The Construction Of The MLC Centre In The 1970's. Many People Still Mourn Its Passing, & It Continues To Be Cited As A Cautionary Tale Against Overdevelopment & Wholesale Destruction Of The Fine Grain Fabric Of The City.

Penfold Place and Hosking Place

Penfold Place and Hosking Place are the printworks laneways behind Pitt Street — short cuts that still smell faintly of stationery even when the fit-out is glass. W.C. Penfold & Co., one of Sydney’s longest-running printing and stationery houses, bought into a Pitt Street printing site here in 1866 (a press tradition on the block from the 1830s) and in 1912 took the multi-storey Hosking House behind for an expanded plant. The lanes were the firm’s private circulation and everyone else’s rat-run between the bigger streets.

Hosking Place commemorates John Hosking, Sydney’s first elected mayor (1842–43). The mayoralty did not end gently: the 1840s commercial crash wrecked his finances and he had to step aside — a useful reminder that civic honour and solvency were not the same thing in early municipal Sydney. A Hosking mansion stood at Pitt Street and Martin Place. It was lost to fire around 1890 and the Metropolitan Hotel took its place.

W C Penfold & Co Is One Of Sydney's Oldest Firms. In 1866 Penfold Bought Out A Printing Business That Had Been On This Pitt Street Site Since 1830, & In 1912 The Firm Bought The Eight Storey Hosking House In Hosking Lane Behind, For An Extended Printworks.

These Private Laneways Have Served The Firm, & Acted As A Short Cut For Locals For All This Time.

John Hosking Was Sydney's First Elected Mayor. He Had To Step Down From This Position When He Was Declared Bankrupt In The 1840's Depression. If Only He Could See His Piece Of Real Estate Now.

Hosking’s Mansion Was Built On the Corner Of Pitt Street And Martin Place On The North Eastern

corner.

It Was Destroyed By Fire In 1890

The Mansion Became The Site For The Metropolitan Hotel.

Palings Lane and Ash Street

Slip off George Street into Palings Lane and the CBD drops its voice. The restaurants and bars feel new; the name is not. The lane led through to the Palings music warehouse on Ash Street the 1880s building associated with W.H. Paling & Co., the firm that sold Sydney its pianos and sheet music when a colonial drawing-room was incomplete without both.

William Henry Paling (1825–1895) arrived from the Netherlands in 1853, taught, concertised, and built a retail empire that hopped from Wynyard Square timber sheds to Barrack Street, a George Street showroom, an Ash Street premises in 1880, and finally the long-running George Street flagship. Upper rooms of the music warehouses traditionally housed teachers of music and dance, and artists’ studios — a vertical village of practice rooms above the shop floor. The lane still points at that story even when the fit-out is all polished concrete and natural wine.

Ash Street itself is one of those short CBD spines that collected clubs, parties and back-of-house addresses (including, for a stretch, Liberal Party headquarters). Walk Palings Lane as a music-history shortcut between George and Ash.

The Elegant Complex Of Up Market Restaurants, Pools, Bars And Spas On George Street Is Entered Through Narrow Palings Lane, Which Despite Its Very Contemporary Feeling, Has Been on Or Close To Here For A Long Time. It Was Named Because It Led Through To The Large 1880's Palings Building In Ash Street. W H Paling Was A Musical entrepreneur Who Imported & Eventually Manufactured Pianos And Sheet Music. Upper Floor Rooms Were Rented Out To Teachers Of Music And Dance, & As Artist's Studios. Ash Street Also Housed The Headquarters Of The Liberal Party Of Australia For Many Years

York Lane

York Lane runs as a long north–south service cut behind York Street’s commercial wall — one of Sydney’s longest laneways. Just before Barrack Street the story gets interesting: on one side, remnants of the old warehouse backs that once served the western CBD’s maritime trading strip; on the other, early residential conversions from the 1980s, when a few Sydneysiders started sleeping in the city again instead of only commuting into it.

Those warehouse rears belong to the same family as the York / Barrack / Clarence street stores — places like Pinnacle House (2–6 Barrack Street) originally opened cart docks onto York Lane. Walk it as working Sydney: goods in from Darling Harbour and the Quay, paper and softgoods out to George Street shops, then a late-century twist when apartments claimed the upper floors. Pair with Wynyard Lane next door in the old barracks precinct — together they are the city’s unfinished business, still carrying trucks while the towers pretend the laneways are optional.

Wynyard Lane

At first glance Wynyard Lane is pure back-of-house: loading docks, car-park entries, the rear ends of York and Carrington Street businesses. Look again with a barracks map in your head. Until the 1840s this whole precinct was military — the George Street / Wynyard Barracks and parade ground (Barrack Square), from which the New South Wales Corps once marched on Government House in 1808. When the troops shifted to Victoria Barracks, Paddington, in 1848, the old barracks land was subdivided; the open square that remained became Wynyard Square (now Wynyard Park), named for Major-General Edward Buckley Wynyard, commander of British forces in the Australian colonies from the late 1840s.

The lane inherits the same name. Small warehouses and a hotel took over parts of the former military ground from the 1840s — and even a service lane keeps ghosts of street-facing hospitality. Today’s Wynyard is a transport interchange; Wynyard Lane is the leftover seam from when the army left and the city grid moved in.

Curtin Place

Curtin Place is the southern edge of the Australia Square block — the lane you hit between Hunter and the Seidler tower when the city drops from George Street’s retail roar into service-lane quiet. It was Little George Street until the mid-1960s; City archives file the rename to Curtin Place in 1966–67, for wartime Prime Minister John Curtin (1941–45). The name is one of the better CBD commemorations: a working lane, not a boulevard, for a PM who never got the marble treatment in life.

Under the skyscraper, between this lane and Bond Street, sat the romantically named Robin Hood Place — gone with the Australia Square resumption. Off Curtin Place, Hamilton Street and Little Hunter Street still run as stubs of the older fine-grain grid. Read the whole cluster with Bond Street: printers and tiny places erased for the circular tower (opened 1967), a wartime PM’s name stuck on what remained, and the lower George Street commercial world buried under plaza levels.

It is a short walk and a long lesson in how Sydney renames the scraps after it demolishes the pattern.

Bond Street

Bond Street is still on the CBD grid — northern edge of Australia Square — but most of the buildings that made it a street were swept for Harry Seidler’s circular tower and plaza, opened 1967. What you walk now is a name and a frontage; what you have lost is a honeycomb of small shops, printers and publishers that filled the early twentieth century.

That is the Bond Street worth remembering. Sydney Ure Smith and Harry Julius ran Smith & Julius commercial art studios here (famously at 24 Bond Street); Ure Smith’s Art in Australia and later The Home made the street a node in Sydney’s print and design world. Photographer Max Dupain also worked from Bond Street studios in that same creative cluster. This was not a grand processional street — it was a working lane of presses, blocks and copy — until the Australia Square resumption flattened the fine grain.

Stand at Bond and George and read the absence. Seidler’s tower is the landmark; the missing printers are the history.

Tank Stream Way

The full history of the stream itself is here: The Tank Stream – Sydney.

Tank Stream Way Was Once Part Of Hamilton Street Which Ran Between Bridge And Hunter Streets, Named After Hamilton's Biscuit Factory. Most Of It Disappeared Underneath The Australia Square Development, Leaving Two Remnant Laneways, And This Section Was Renamed In 1981. In Bridge Lane, Once The Site Of The Town’s First Lumber Yards, Look For The Old Warehouse Doorway, Now The Entrance To The Establishment Hotel. As Late As The 1860s There Was Still Vacant Land Sliced Between The Cottages In This Area, But By The End Of The 19th Century It Had Become A Favoured Location for Warehouses, Including Several Tea Merchants Stores.

Dalley Street, Queens Place and Charlotte Place

What’s in a name? Dalley Street, down in the Tank Stream warren between George and Pitt, was Queen’s Place (and Queen’s Court) until 1905, when it was renamed for William Bede Dalley — barrister, orator, native-born politician, and briefly Acting Premier. Across George Street the aligned continuation was Charlotte Place, named for Queen Charlotte, consort of George III; that stretch is Grosvenor Street now.

This was never a grand civic axis. It was part of the tangle of tiny lanes and courtyards that grew along the Tank Stream between the “official” frontages of George and Pitt — the sort of ground where water, drains, and small dealers shared the same narrow air. Standing in Dalley Street today you are still in that logic: short, hemmed-in, and carrying three centuries of renamed loyalty — from a Georgian queen to a Catholic statesman the city actually liked.

Underwood Street

You would not guess it from the office towers, but Underwood Street is wet ground pretending to be a city lane. This was the mouth of the Tank Stream — the creek that decided where Sydney sat — and in 1798 emancipist shipwright James Underwood laid down what Dictionary of Sydney calls the colony’s first commercial shipyard here. Keels went into the estuary; the shoreline has since been filled, bridged and built over until the original waterfront feels like a rumour. That is the point of the street: the water moved, the name stayed.

Underwood’s grant ran from George Street through to the stream. Before 1807 he had already reclaimed extra yard space into the estuary, then raised a flat-roofed Regency house with a roof walk looking back to Sydney Cove, plus stores. From this pocket came the sloops Contest and Diana, the brig Governor King, and the near-200-ton King George — Kable & Underwood’s sealing and coastal fleet, launched where commuters now cut through to Pitt Street. The Royal Australian Historical Society marked the yard as Green Plaque 68 in the mid-1980s Bicentennial series; look for it rather than expecting timber slips.

The red-brick building at the bend is a later joke the street tells on itself — a 1930s–40s residential-style block dropped into a commercial canyon. It is not part of Underwood’s yard.

Bulletin Place

Bulletin Place is a short Quay-end lane between the Pitt Street / Bridge Street warren and Macquarie Place — one of the few Sydney thoroughfares named after a publication. J. F. Archibald’s weekly The Bulletin was published from here after its foundation in 1880, with stores and offices toward the Pitt Street end, until the paper moved to larger George Street premises in 1897. Writers including Henry Lawson and A. B. “Banjo” Paterson knew this pocket of the city; the mid-nineteenth-century warehouse façades that survive are the bit of “olde Sydney” the steel-and-glass Quay has not quite erased.

Jazz fans will think of The Basement — long a Circular Quay institution — but the club’s famous addresses were in the Reiby Place / Macquarie Place block next door, not a doorway halfway down Bulletin Place itself. It is the same Quay warehouse precinct, but the lane was not the club.

Australia Square - 264 George Street - Sydney

Australia Square - 264 George Street - Sydney 

Built - 1961 - 1967

Architect - Harry Seidler - Harry Seidler & Associates




Australia Square Broke New Architectural Ground When It Was Completed In 1967. At 50 Storeys High, It Was Both Sydney's Tallest Building (Until 1976) And The World Tallest Reinforced Concrete Structure, Yet It Occupies Less Than A Quarter Of The Sote, Which Is Shared With A Low Rise Retail Plaza Building.



Australia Square Was Not Only A Building Of International Standing, But A Global Collaboration As Well. Seidler Delivered His Round Tower With The Help Of World Renowned Engineer Pier Luigi Nervi. The Towers Circular Form And Street Setback Helped To Avoid What Seidler Called The "Dark Canyon Effect" Of Conventional Rectangular Towers. Its External Vertical Supports Left Large, Column Free Office Floor Plates. The Dramatic Transparent Lobby Was Designed As A Grand Circualr Promenade, With Glass Walls Open To The Street And Soaring Ceilings On Which Nervi's Interlocking Concrete Ribs Were Exposed.


The Lobby Displayed Artworks By Le Corbusier And Victor Vasarely To The Street; These Tapestries Were Replaced In 2003 (For Fear Of Fading) With A Mural By New York Artist Sol LeWitt. For The Plaza - An "Open But Contained Space" Based On the Medievil City - Seidler Commissioned A Sculpture By Alexander Calder, Crossed Blades.

You Know Its A Very Funny Thing...... 

Well It’s Quite Sad Really... 

But The Beautiful Tank Stream That Once Maintained Life Here When Our Ancestors First Landed On Our Shores

 recess sydneysiders would have no idea about how the Tank Stream made it's way through to Hyde Park from Circular Quay and it wouldn't really be able to get the dimensions of it because 5200 feet of Circular Quay with reclaimed land.

I can remember when the Waterline came to crack the start of Crown Street and you could actually row your boat and more your boat at the start of Crown Street and I have the ability in my memory so that was 150 years ago

The Government Wharf - Circular Quay

Stand on Alfred Street at Circular Quay — near Loftus, with Customs House on one side and the ferry wharves on the other — and try to picture water under your boots. In 1788, when the First Fleet anchored in Port Jackson, the head of Sydney Cove was a V bisected by the Tank Stream, which entered the cove roughly where Pitt Street meets the Quay. Surveyor James Meehan’s early plan still shows today’s Alfred Street drowned at high tide. That foreshore is where the colony’s first Government Wharf went up between 1788 and 1790 — eastern side of the cove, hard by the present Customs House frontage — so government boats and stores had somewhere dry to tie up.

Nothing of that timber jetty survives. Semi-Circular Quay reclamation from the late 1830s into the 1840s–50s filled the mudflats, covered the Tank Stream mouth as a drain, and pushed the shoreline out to the stone quay we walk today. The Paragon Hotel corner (Alfred / Loftus) is a handy landmark for the old waterline, though the hotel isn’t the wharf. Think of it as a lost first infrastructure site: Phillip’s cove, the Tank Stream delta, and the government landing that made Sydney Cove a working harbour before Circular Quay existed as a name.