Courthouse and Scotch Church – Parramatta

The old prints call it “Courthouse and Scotch Church, Parramatta” as if they were a pair you could still walk between. You can’t — one is mostly gone, the other left town. Those colonial views show two neighbouring civic buildings near the corner of Church and George Streets: the second Parramatta Courthouse and the Scots’ (Presbyterian) Church, later known as St Andrew’s.

The courthouse was a Greek Revival sandstone building associated with Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis and builders James Houison and Nathaniel Payten, put up in the late 1830s (opened for use in the late 1830s–1840) and extended mid-century. It served until a later courthouse generation replaced it; only fragments (notably a sandstone wall and cell block behind the George Street frontage) survive from the Lewis complex. Some of the old courthouse columns were reused in the Boer War Memorial in Parramatta Park.

The Scotch Church — St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church — was a Victorian Gothic landmark on Church Street. Construction began about 1840 (architect James Hume, with local associations to James Houison) and the church was completed in the 1840s. When a larger St Andrew’s opened elsewhere in Parramatta in the 1920s, the old “Auld Kirk” was dismantled and re-erected at McKern Street, Wentworthville, where it was dedicated in 1928. These images therefore record a nineteenth-century streetscape pairing that no longer stands together in central Parramatta.

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The Parramatta Courthouse and Scotch Church were important civic and religious buildings in the colonial town. The Scotch Church served Parramatta’s Presbyterian community, while the courthouse supported the town’s growing judicial and administrative life. Together, they reflect Parramatta’s development as a major centre in nineteenth-century New South Wales.

Garden Island, Pinchgut, and Clarke's Island, Seen from Rose Bay

Garden Island, Pinchgut, and Clarke’s Island lie in Sydney Harbour, opposite the eastern suburbs and visible from Rose Bay. Garden Island became an important naval and maritime site, while Pinchgut—now Fort Denison—was fortified in the nineteenth century. Clarke’s Island preserves another layer of the harbour’s colonial history and changing place-names.

Entrance to Sydney Harbour – North Head

Stand on North Head on a clear day and you understand why every colonial chart and postcard obsesses over “the Heads.” This is the northern side of the seaward entrance to Port Jackson — Sydney Harbour — opposite South Head, near Manly. Contemporary park interpretation uses Aboriginal names such as Car-rang-gel (and related Gayemagal spellings); use published park or council forms carefully. From early colonial times the headland was a landmark for shipping and a vantage for signal and lookout posts — historic views “from the Flagstaff” look out across the Heads toward the ocean and the harbour mouth.

In 1832 the colonial government reserved much of North Head for quarantine. The North Head Quarantine Station operated from 1832 until 1984, receiving ships and passengers whose health threatened the colony and later the nation. It is among Australia’s most intact quarantine complexes and is listed on both the National Heritage List and the NSW State Heritage Register (as part of the wider North Head / Sydney Harbour National Park landscape). After closure the station passed to NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service; the leased tourism precinct is widely known as Q Station, still inside the national park and under heritage controls.

North Head also carries layers of Aboriginal Country, twentieth-century defence works, and remnant bushland of high conservation value. Treat this post as an entrance-to-the-harbour essay: keep the Flagstaff viewpoint if your images are historic prints, and let quarantine and national-park history give the place depth without inventing ship names or outbreak tallies.

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