Admiralty House - Kirabilli - Governor General's Residence

I Guess That Everyone   Knows That Adiralty House Is The Residence Of TheGovernor  General When In Sydney.

Originally The Land Was Acquired By The New South Wales Government In 1885 As A Residence For The British Officers In Command Of The Australian Naval Station. 

At That Time London Took Responsibility For Defence On The Southern Continent. A Dozen Admirals Had Resided There  Up Until 1913 When The Royal Australian Navy Was Established.

Back in 1806 When Kiribilli Was Wild And Uninhaited, Robert Campbell Bought The Property For a Few Pounds. 

It Surprises People Today That Kirribilli Point Was Referred To As "Russian Point". This Began in 1814 When The Russian Shhip SUVOROV Called In To Port Jackson. 

Colonnaded stone building, which which explains the garden dominate the Kirribilli, and has since 1916 been a resident of Australia’s governor general.

The house was bought in 1885 by the state of New South Wales as a residence for the naval commander in chief. Earlier the house of been described as having a white Veranda, spacious entrance hall, drawing and dining rooms, 10 bedrooms, and the usual rooms in the main part of the house for large courtyard, seventh rooms, kitchen stables etc with an abundant water supply which never fails in the driest weather.

To make this residence fit the British Admiral grand proportions. Did therefore came like a thunderclap to the state of Florida keys from the second last at McHughes it, for George King Cole, struck his black bear and handed the residents over to the Commonwealth.

Francis Greenway’s Public Fountain – Bent & Spring Street

Under Governor Lachlan Macquarie, Francis Greenway designed a sandstone Doric public fountain for Macquarie Place that small civic triangle that marked the administrative heart of early Sydney. Built about 1819–20 by stonemason Edward Cureton (with taste often credited also to Elizabeth Macquarie), it stood on the western side of the reserve so townspeople could draw water without entering the Governor’s Domain. The Bent and Spring Streets corner sits in the same colonial civic precinct; period descriptions put the fountain in Macquarie Place, not as a free-standing ornament mid-intersection.

It was one of Greenway’s civic works from the Macquarie years — a period Commissioner John Thomas Bigge famously called extravagant. By the 1880s the fountain was dilapidated; it was demolished around 1883–87 and replaced by the statue of merchant and pastoralist Thomas Sutcliffe Mort that still occupies the western corner. No Greenway fountain fabric survives above ground.

Photographs here relate to the Macquarie Place site and the memory of Greenway’s lost Doric fountain.

Sydney Garden Palace – Part 5

Sydney’s Garden Palace was built in the Domain for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition, which showcased industry, arts and science. The grand exhibition hall hosted displays and public performances before a fire destroyed the building in 1882. This post explores the musical life associated with the former site.

Sydney Garden Palace

Part 5 of this Sydney Garden Palace series looks at the music and performances associated with the site, including a programme featuring Beethoven and Grieg.

The Sydney Fig Trees Inspired Me To Paint Again

Well It Has Been A Few Years Since I Painted anything.

Pinchgut Island - Fort Dension - Sydney Cove

Reverend John Dunmore Lang Remembered As He Said - 

"An Island Called Pinchgut, Consisting Of One SolitAry

Governor Phillip Island at farm Cove, a conical peak on a perfect stunted bush have one function – as a dump until he had time to build a jail for convicts who committed crimes after reaching the colony. Maroon convicts who is Russian of bread and water was Road to them once a week changed its name from rock island to pinch gap.

Sometimes the hangman went out on the third boat for years the remnants of a man’s bones hung in chains on a giblet on the island Francis Morgan convicted with others of the murder of a man on the North Shore, with strung up as a warning. There’s a legend I asked if he wished to make any last remark he looked about him and said well you have yeah indeed a beautiful harbour

Early 1940 after two American warships had sneaked into the harbour at night without a pilot Governor gipps decided to rets how many gipps decided to arrange a battery on the island

He said gangs of convicts to level the rock and almost had the job done when he ran out of funds. The ruining of what had once been a lovely if sinister spot sent Dr Dunmore Lang into a rage and he denounce the official golf or Hun.

Military minds however could not resist the law of the island. When there was a Russian invasion scared during the Crimean war I thought was built on it – a Martello tower without buildings for power to magazines and quarters for a small permanent garrison foundations were quarry deep into the island rock. Stone for the 12 foot thick walls was brought from Carrabba point. The fort completed in 1957 was named after the governor so William Denison. The island is now used to the tide gauge in light and fog signal station. It’s 1 o’clock gun was discontinued in 1942

Military minds however could not resist the law of the island. When there was a Russian invasion scared during the Crimean war I thought was built on it – a Martello tower without buildings for power to magazines and quarters for a small permanent garrison foundations were quarry deep into the island rock. Stone for the 12 foot thick walls was brought from Carrabba point. The fort completed in 1957 was named after the governor so William Denison. The island is now used to the tide gauge in light and fog signal station. It’s 1 o’clock gun was discontinued in 1942

  

*+****** FRANCIS MORGAN. Was Strung Up on A Gibbet 

-  more Research Into This 

South Head – The Macquarie Lighthouse

South Head And The Macquarie Lighthouse 

Stand on Old South Head Road at Vaucluse and you are on Australia’s longest continuously used navigational-beacon site. A flagstaff and fire/beacon signalled shipping from the early 1790s; Australia’s first purpose-built lighthouse followed when Governor Lachlan Macquarie laid the foundation stone in 1816. Convict architect Francis Greenway designed the Palladian-inspired tower, lit in 1818. Macquarie famously rewarded Greenway with a conditional pardon after calling the work “noble and magnificent.”

Local sandstone proved soft; within decades the tower needed iron banding, and by the 1870s the lantern room could not take modern optics. Colonial Architect James Barnet designed a replacement that deliberately echoed Greenway’s form. The new electric light (among the earliest electrically powered lighthouses) commenced in 1883 a few metres from the old tower; the Greenway lighthouse was demolished in 1887. Hornby Light, the separate Lower Light at the tip of South Head (1858), had already been added after wrecks including the Dunbar (1857) showed the need for a clearer harbour-entrance mark.

The present Barnet tower, keepers’ quarters and archaeological remains of the Greenway lightstation are managed by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, with the working light under AMSA arrangements. Photographs here show the Macquarie Lighthouse and South Head setting.

Governor Macquarie Laid The Foundation Stone Of The Tower In July 1816, & Had Expected The Job To Be Finished  In Nine Months. 

Francis Greenway Didn’t Like Using The Samdstonw Quarried On Site As It Was Too Soft, And He Knew It Wouldn’t Last. 

Within 50 Years The Tower Had To Be Reinforced With Iron. By 1883 The Whole Elegant Structure Had Been Condemned. 

I. December 1817 Governor Macquarie Made Up A Breakfast Party To Drive Out And Inspect The Work. He was So Delighted With The “Noble & Magnificent Ediface” - That He Gave Francis Greenway His Conditional Pardon. 

When The Lamps In The Original Lighthouse Were First Lit They “Astonished A Mariner When He Beheld Them From 38 Miles Out At Sea. 

The Second Light, Can, Officially Be Seen 25 Miles Off shore. 

MY COUNTRY

The Love Of Field & Coppice, 

Of Green Shaded Lanes 

Of Ordered Woods And Gardens

Is Running Through Your Veins 

Strong Love Of Blue Grey Distance

Brown Streams & Soft Dim Skies

I Know But Cannot Share It

My Love's Otherwise 

I Love A Sunburnt Country

A Land Of Sweeping Plains

Of Ragged Mountain Ranges 

Of Droughts And Flooding Rains

I Love Her Far Horizons

I Love The Jewel Sea

Her Beauty And Her Terror

St Jude’s Cemetery – Avoca Street – Randwick

St J

St Jude’s Cemetery on Avoca Street is a historic cemetery in Randwick.

ude's Cemetery - Avoca Street - Randwick 

- Sir Frederick William Pottinger 

- Sir Alfred Stephen - LEIUTENANT GOVERNOR OF NEW SOUTH WALES 

- Sir Edward Deas Thomson

- Sir Edward Knox

- Henry Mort

- Charles Wentworth 

- Sir James Martin 

- Sir William Manning - 1st Chancellor Of Sydney University 

- William Busby - Busby's Bore

- Archibald Mosman