The Sydney Common - Moore Parklands

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The Sydney Common 

The largest urban park in the southern hemisphere, developed as a parkland since the early days of European settlement. It also gives its name to the small residential suburb on its western fringe, whose most famous resident was Nobel Prize winning novelist Patrick White.

Common land proclaimed by Governor Macquarie in 1811 for Sydney's inhabitants to graze animals. The original 1000 acres was reduced in 1866 as land was sold to fund levelling and tree planting.

Go Ahead Over 200 Years And It Is Becoming A Mayer Of The People V's the State

Since The Time Governor Macquarie Put Aside The Land To Make a Common There Have Been Many Threats To The Land And Open Space by Various Subdivisions At The Beginning Of Centennial Parks Existence To Pay For The Park Itself, To Successive Governments Wanting Turn It Into Something Else. 

The Kippax Lake Area Of Moore Park Has Been Proposed To Be A Sports Precinct, And Now There Is the stubby Cotter Bridge Which Blew Out All Government Budgets, For What A Footbridge Should Be Worth. 

THEN THERE IS THE MATTER OF THE CENTENNIAL PARK TRUST MEMBERS BREAKING THE TRUST DEED AND SELLING THE LAND FROM LACHLAN SWAMP AND THE ORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE WATERLOO AND LORD PAPER MILL FROM 1803. 

Charles Moore, the Head Of The Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens 

It's Really Enough To Break Your Heart When You Happen To Come Across Plans Like The DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOORE PARK PRECINCT. 

Just Who The Hell Do These People

Think They Are

This Land Was Given To The People Of New South Wales By Governor Macquarie In 1811. Thank God He Had A Vision. 

In 1983 By Act Of Parliament The New South Wales Centennial And Moore Park Trust And Board Waa Created To Manage Centennial Park, Moore Park And Queens Park. 

All Things Measured The Trust Has Been Very Successful In That Time. 

Where The Board And Trustees Have Really Fallen Over Was The Sale of A Tract Of Land On Alison Road Across From The Randwick Racecourse. 

In Late 2015...... In The Dead Of Night.... The Trust Voted To Sell This Land For $7 Million Dollars To The Light Rail Corporation. 

This act Was And Still Is Illegal. It Is Set Out Clearly In The Deed. under

Section 5 - Sub section 19 - Part 2

Clause 3 

ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THE ORIGINAL SYDNEY COMMON LAND GRANTED TO THE PEOPLE OF NEW SOUTH WALES IN SEPTEMBER 1811 SHALL EVER BE RESUMED OR APPROPRIATED BY EITHER PRIVATE ENTERPRISE OR BY THE NEW

SOUTH WALES GOVERNMENT UNLESS BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT

Sydney’s First Cemetery – Beyond Sydney Cove, at the Head of a Small Bay

Sydney's First Cemetery -   Beyond Sydney Cove Terminal At The Head Of A Small Bay

Hereabouts Was Situated Sydney's First Burial Ground 1788 -1792. Some Headstones Were Still In Position I 1874

Captain Collins Records - "Every Person Belonging To The Settlement Being Landed, The Numbers Amounted To 1030 Persons. The Scurvy Now Broke Out, Which Aide  By Dysentry, Began ToFill  The Hospital And Several Died. 

Sergeant James Scott Of The Marines Recorded The First Death, Writing In His Journal

"Sunday 24th February, Thos Harmsworth, Son To. This Harmsworth A stone Died Of A Feaver:" A Few Weekks Later On 30th April, The Same Journal Noted. "This Harmsworth, Marine Died."

In June 1788 Surgeon general John White  Stated That 28. Convict Men And. Women Had Died, Also Three Marines & Ten Children.  No Doubt They Were Interred In This Burial Ground, The First Cemetery In Sydney. 

Later, Collins Wrote Of The Proposed Barracks - "Their Situation Being Directly In The Neighbourhood Of The Ground Appropriated To The Burial Of The Dead, It Became Necessary To Choose Another Spot.... The Gorvernor, In The Company With Rev Mr Johnson, Set Apart The Ground Foremerly Cultivated By The Late Captain Shea Of The Marines. "

A Letter From A Female Convict Written On 14th November 1788 (Historical Records Of New South Wales Volume 2) Describes The West Side Of Sydney Cove, The Area Known As The Rocks, And Goes On to Say:  - 

At The Extremity Of The Lines, Where Since Our Arrival The Dead Are Buried, There Is A Place Called The Church Yard, but We Hear, As Soon As A Sufficient Quantity Of Bricks That Can Be Made, A Chiurch Is To Be Built, And Named St Phillip, After The Governor."

'

The Sydney Gazette Of The 5th February 1804 Said - 

"The Plan Of Inclosing The Burial Ground In Order To Prevent Swine And Other Stock From Grazing Upon It And Rooting Up The Earth, Has Been Proposed By The Sexton, And Approved Of. Several Gentlemen Have Already Con'tributed Liberally To Reward The Labour The Must Necessarily Attend The Execution of The Design."

Randwick Asylum For Destitute Children - Now Prince Of Wales Hospital

Before it was Prince of Wales Hospital, this High Cross / Avoca–High Street corner of Randwick was the Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children — a large government grant occupied from 1858 by the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children (incorporated 1857). The Society had first opened at Ormond House, Paddington, in 1852; gold-rush Sydney’s rising numbers of orphaned and abandoned children pushed them to build a purpose-designed sandstone “barracks” asylum on about sixty acres at Randwick, occupied from 28 March 1858, with capacity later doubled by an 1863 wing to around eight hundred children.

Most inmates were young — commonly about three to ten. A whooping-cough epidemic in 1867 killed dozens; funds associated with singer Catherine Hayes helped build a hospital on the site named after her. From the 1880s “boarding out” (early fostering) cut institutional numbers; government funding for the Asylum ceased in 1888, though it continued privately with fewer children.

In 1915 the remaining children were moved to cottage homes or boarded out, and the Commonwealth took the site as a military / repatriation hospital for wounded First World War servicemen. From 1953 the campus became the Prince of Wales Hospital. Archaeological work in the mid-1990s recovered remains of children buried in the grounds; a memorial garden and interpretive signage stand near the Barker Street entrance.

Atherfield – Landmark Gothic Mansion – Darling Point

Darling Point still has a few houses that look like they wandered out of a Victorian picture book. Atherfield is one of them — a Gothic Revival mansion built in 1870 on Eastbourne Road, looking north-east over Sydney Harbour. Originally an eight-room Victorian residence, it belongs to the generation of picturesque harbourside houses that gave the peninsula its nineteenth-century character: steep gables, decorative bargeboards and stone detailing in domestic Gothic Revival taste.

The house has been altered and conserved repeatedly. Late-twentieth-century heritage architects (notably Design 5’s late-1990s–2001 campaign) reversed poor accretions, reinstated a more coherent room plan and added a verandah in keeping with the Gothic character while opening a clearer axis to the harbour view. Later private works have further enlarged the estate (including amalgamation with an adjoining holding), but the historic core remains the 1870 Gothic Revival house. Early occupancy is associated with the Willis family; subsequent ownership changes are secondary to the architectural story.

Photographs here document Atherfield as a landmark Gothic Revival residence on Darling Point.

Ann Bushby's Dove And Olive Branch Public House

Most people know Church Hill for the churches. Mid-1840s drinkers knew it for Ann Bushby. After publican Jabez Bushby died in 1842, his widow held the licence at the Dove and Olive Branch — a public house at 203 Kent Street on the older western side of town. We still “meet” her through George Roberts’s watercolour (scene dated 1845; published context around 1850): Ann in the doorway under the signboard, looking every bit the licensee who ran the house.

She sold fermented and spirituous liquors, but she did not brew on site. Her advertising offered imported Taylor’s London Porter and local beer from Wright’s Australian Brewery in George Street — a useful reminder that plenty of colonial “brew pubs” were retailers of other people’s beer. The State Library of NSW has featured the Roberts picture in Openbook pieces on colonial drinking and women publicans.

Keep the post anchored to Ann Bushby, the Kent Street / Church Hill location, and the Roberts image — social history of women licensees and colonial beer retail, not romantic invention.

Ann Bushby's Dove And Olive Branch Public House 

Mrs Bushby's As It Shows, Did Not Brew Her own, As Her Advertising Shows; She Had On Sale Taylor's London Porter, And Local Australian Beer from Wrights Brewery In George Street 

The First Public Gallows - The Barley Mow Hotel

Castlereagh Stteey and Park Streets, North Wastern Corner 

The Barley now Hotel 

The Barley Mow Hotel Holds The Oldest Continuous License In Sydney, Dating From 1830, But The Byilding Has Been Reconstructed. Earlier (1804) This Was The Site Of The Public Galliws. 

In "Sydney 1848" Tells Us That  

"That The First Place Of Execution Wad In The Vicinity Of What Is Now Occupied By The St James Watch-House, Others That It Was On The Opposite Side of Elizabeth Street. Where Hendersons Buildings Now Stand. 

But By A Chart In A French Work, Published By The Authority Of Napoleon 1803, It Appears To Have Been Near The Site Of The Old Court House; On One Point; There Is No Difference Of Opinion; That The Exact Spot Later Formed Part Of A Garden That Extended Up King Street, Embracing Part Of The Site Of the New South Wales Supreme Court

Back To Joseph Fowles  From "Sydney 1848" 

- " About The Year 1804 The Gallows Was Removed To The Corner Of Park And Cartlereagh Streets, Where The Barley Mow Public House Now Stands. 

THE SYDNEY GAZETTE OF NOVEMBER. 25TH 1804 Describes A Trip To The Gallows When John Green, A Black Man Charged a With Rape, Was Sentanced  To Death. After Being Consoled By The Reverand Samuel Marsden "He Kneeled And Received With Some Visible Emotions The Last Offerings Of Piety. Yielding To His Fate He Expressed Concern At His Condition And Lamented That He Could No More Indulge A Hope Of Ever Beholding His Ancient Parents; He Declared The Province Of Pennsylvania To Be That Of His Nativity. 

While The Work Of Death WasUnder  Preparation He Took Leave Of The Populace In A Short Harangue, Warning Against A life Of Dissopation - And Then Departed For An Unknown a Region." 

"The Gallows Was aagain Erected Near Te Site Of Barkers Mills, In Sussex Street, It Was Afterwsrds Removed To The East Corner Of a What Is now The Protestant Burial Ground, Near Strawberry Hill; Again Over The Sand Hills To The Back Of The New Military Barracks (In York Street)"

Fowles Neglected To State That The Gallows Was Also Erected Outside The Jail At Essex And George Streets, Until It Was Removed To Darlinghurst Jail I. 1841. The Most Important Public Hanging Here was Of The Murderer John Knatchbull, executed On 13th Feb 1844

Cleveland House – Part 4 – Two Years Later

CLEVELAND HOUSE 2 YEARS ON 

FEBRUARY 26th 2016 

Cleveland House is a historic sandstone residence in Surry Hills, Sydney. The building is associated with early nineteenth-century development around the city’s southern outskirts.

Governors Of New South Wales From 1788 To 2016

GOVERNORS OF NEW SOUTH WALES SINCE 1788

1. Captain Arthur Phillip RN

7th Feb 1788 - 10 Dec 1792

2. Captain. John Hunter RN

11 Sept 1795 - 27 Sept 1800

3. Captain Phillip Gidley King

28 Sept 1800 - 12 Aug 1806 

4. Captain William Bligh RN

13 Aug 1806 - 26 Jan 1808

5. Major General Lachlan Macquarie

1st. Jan 1810 - 1st Dec 1821

GOVERNORS UNDER KING GEORGE IV (1820 - 1830)

6. Major General Sir Thomas Brisbane BT, GCH, GCB

1st Dec 1821 - 1st Dec 1825

7. Luietenant General Sir Ralph Darling - GCH

19th Dec 1825 - 21st Oct 1831

GOVERNORS UNDER KING WILLIAM IV (1830 - 1837)

8. Major General. Sir. Richard Bourke - KCB

3rd Dec 1831 - 5th Deec 1837

GOVERNORS UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA (1837 - 1901)

9. Major Sir George Gipps 

24th Feb 1838 - 11 July 1846

10. Lieutenant Colonel Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy - KCB, KCB 

3rd Aug 1846 - 28 Jan 1855

11. Sir William Denison - KCB

20 Jan 1855 - 22nd Jan 1861

12. The RT Hon. Sir John Young - BT, GCMG, KCB

16th May 1861 - 24 Dec 1867

13. The. RT Hon. The Earl Belmore - GCMG, PC 

8th Jan 1868 - 2st Feb 1872

14. The RT Hon Sir Hercules Robinson - GCMG 

3rd June 1872 - 19 March 1879

15. The RT Hon. Lord Augustus Loftus - GCB

4th Aug 1879 - 9th Nov 1885

16. The RT Hon. The Lord Carrington - GCMG, PC 

12 Dec 1885- 3 Nov 1890

17. The RT Hon. EarlOf Jersey - GCB, GCMG, PC

15 Jan 1891 - 2 March 1893

18. The RT Hon Sir Robert Duff - GCMG

29thMay 1893 - 155th March 1895

19.The RT Hon The Viscount Hampden - GCMG 

21 Nov 1895 - 5 March 1899

20. The RT Hon. The Earl Beauchamp - KG, KCMG, PC

18th May 18899 - 30th April 1901

GOVERNORS UNDER KING EDWARD VII (1901-1910)

21.  Admiral Sir Harry Rawson - GCB, GCMG, RN

27 May 1902 - 27 May 1909

22. The RT Hon The Lord Chelmsford - GCMG

28 May 1909 - 11 March 1913

GOVERNORS UNDER KING GEORGE V (1910 - 1936)