Government House – “The People’s Domain”

Government House stands on Sydney’s harbour edge beside the Royal Botanic Garden in the Domain. Completed in 1845, it has served as the Governor of New South Wales’s official residence and remains a prominent part of Sydney’s civic landscape.

George Street Looking South and the Royal Hotel

Stand mid-town and look south along George Street — Sydney’s main north–south spine — and you’re walking the Tank Stream valley that Macquarie formally named George Street in 1810 (High Street / Spring Row labels before that). Nineteenth-century looking-south plates show a tight commercial wall: hotels, arcades, shopfronts — the street that sold the colony its boots, books and theatre tickets.

On the eastern side between King and Market sat the Royal Hotel, opened 1829 for Barnett Levey, with an attached theatre that from 1832 staged Sydney’s first regular professional performances. Fire took the complex in 1840; it was rebuilt and stayed a George Street fixture until mid-1920s–early-1930s demolition for the Dymocks Building (The Block) — bookselling had already occupied part of the hotel from 1890. So those “looking south” views aren’t just street furniture: they catch a vanished hotel–theatre at the heart of colonial entertainment and retail.

Don’t confuse this Royal with every other Sydney pub of the same name. Caption by direction and building identity — never label today’s Block as the 1829 hotel.

The Charlotte Medallion

 

From Memory The Charlotte Medallion Came Yo For Auction After 220 Years Around 2014/2o15

Th Australian Government Purchased The Coin For Approx $750,000 - $800,000

The Significance Of The Charlotte Medallion Is That It Was Etched By A Convict, I Forget His Name 2 Days Agter The First Fleet Landed At Sydney Cove In 1788. 

Unfortunately He Was Also the First Convict To Be Hung For Stealjng A Pork Ration And Some Peas. About 2 Weeks After The Fleet Landed 

Arthur Phillip Had Warned Everybody On The 7th Of January 1788 When His Commission From King George III Was Read to All Convicts And Military On The Beach At What Is Now Circular. Quay 

Vaucluse from North Head

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Vaucluse, At The Northern End Of Rose Bay, Has Been Associatrd zenith l

Vaucluse sits on Sydney Harbour’s eastern shore, opposite North Head at the entrance to Port Jackson. The suburb is named after Vaucluse House, the historic estate associated with explorer and politician William Charles Wentworth.

The Gap – South Head – Old South Head Road

Stand at The Gap and the ocean is suddenly right there — no harbour, no ferry, just Tasman swell chewing sandstone. This is the seaward cliff on Sydney’s South Head, near Watsons Bay, reached from Old South Head Road. The headland has long been a coastal landmark for ships approaching Port Jackson — and a place of tragedy when vessels mistook the cliff line for the harbour entrance in bad weather.

On the night of 20 August 1857 the clipper Dunbar, inward-bound from England, was wrecked on the rocks south of the Heads near The Gap. One hundred and twenty-one passengers and crew died; the sole survivor was seaman James Johnson, found clinging to the cliff days later. The disaster stunned colonial Sydney: a huge funeral procession moved through the city, and the wreck helped spur construction of Hornby Lighthouse at the tip of South Head to mark the true harbour entrance. An anchor memorial at The Gap (established 1930 from Dunbar material recovered in 1910) and a historic rock inscription form part of the State Heritage-listed Dunbar Group, together with the underwater wreck remains.

Treat “It is Our Painful Duty” as a period quotation or image caption if that is what the photograph shows — not as unexplained body text.

The Gap - South Head - New South Wales 

It is Our Painful Duty

The Gap is a dramatic sandstone cliff on Sydney’s South Head, overlooking the Tasman Sea. It has long been a prominent landmark for vessels approaching Port Jackson and is remembered for the many lives lost along the exposed coastline. 

Sydney Harbour from Watsons Bay

The harbour view from Watsons Bay is the one on the postcards North Head opposite, Tasman out the Heads — but the place-name is a working one. Robert Watson (c.1756–1819), quartermaster of HMS Sirius in the First Fleet, later dockyard boatswain, pilot and harbour master, is the Watson in the bay. Governor Philip Gidley King granted him land at South Head in 1801; after the South Head Road opened, Governor Macquarie visited his stone house in April 1811, appointed him senior pilot (harbour master followed), and the Sydney Gazette was already calling the locality Watson’s Bay.

Watson was dismissed from dockyard posts in 1816 after a misconduct case, then appointed first superintendent of the new Macquarie Light at South Head in November 1818. He died the next year. A commemorative seat in Robertson Park (1929) summarises the career — useful locally, though some inscription details are simplified. The suburb later became famous for cliff walks at The Gap, pilot and signal stations, HMAS Watson, and the ferry from Circular Quay. Harbour panoramas “from Watsons Bay” sit in that longer story of navigation, wreck prevention and waterside settlement at the Heads.

Watsons Bay sits inside South Head at the entrance to Port Jackson, looking across to North Head and the open Tasman. The bay takes its name from Robert Watson (c.1756–1819), quartermaster of HMS Sirius in the First Fleet, later dockyard boatswain, pilot and harbour master. Governor Philip Gidley King granted him land at South Head in 1801; after the South Head Road opened, Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited Watson’s stone house in April 1811, appointed him senior pilot (and later harbour master), and the locality was already being called Watson’s Bay in the Sydney Gazette.

Watson was dismissed from dockyard posts in 1816 after a misconduct case, then appointed first superintendent of the new Macquarie Light at South Head in November 1818; he died in 1819. A commemorative seat in Robertson Park (1929) summarises his career — useful locally, though some inscription details are simplified. The suburb later became famous for cliff walks at The Gap, pilot and signal stations, HMAS Watson, and ferry access from Circular Quay. Harbour panoramas from Watsons Bay therefore sit in a long story of navigation, wreck prevention and waterside settlement at the Heads.

Watsons Bay takes its name from Robert Watson, a pilot and harbour master associated with Sydney Harbour in the early colonial period. Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited the bay in 1811 and later appointed Watson senior pilot of the port. The suburb looks across the entrance to Sydney Harbour and its headlands.

Newcastle from the Nobbys

Drive or ferry up the coast and the silhouette that says “Newcastle” is Nobbys Head — dual-named Whibayganba for the Awabakal people — the distinctive rock at the southern entrance to the harbour. Europeans first knew it as an island (also Coal Island). Governor Lachlan Macquarie laid the foundation stone for Macquarie Pier on 5 August 1818 to tie it to the mainland and tidy the entrance; convict and later free labour worked the pier for decades. It was completed in 1846 and later rebuilt as a stone breakwater. Sand piled along the wall, made an isthmus and Nobbys Beach — so the former island now reads as continuous headland.

In the 1850s the crown was lowered for a lighthouse and signal station platform. Nobbys Head Light (under colonial Government Architect Alexander Dawson) was finished 1857–58 — among the earliest permanent lights on the NSW coast after Macquarie Light at South Head. The lighthouse sits in Newcastle’s civic imagery and coat of arms. Views “from the Nobbys” look across the working coal port that grew from a penal outpost into one of Australia’s great harbour cities.

Fitzroy Bridge Windsor

Drive out to Windsor and the concrete high-level span over South Creek looks like any modern creek crossing — until you realise this is about the fifth go at getting people from McGraths Hill into town without swimming. European settlers needed a reliable crossing here from the earliest Hawkesbury farms. Andrew Thompson built a floating bridge about 1802 and collected tolls; John Howe’s log bridge (Howe’s Bridge) followed about 1813. A wooden arch named for Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy replaced earlier structures in the mid-nineteenth century — local histories commonly date that span to 1848.

Then came iron. D. & W. Robertson supplied the ironwork and G. H. Royce is associated with construction of the 1879–1881 Fitzroy Bridge, opened to traffic in early March 1881. The present reinforced-concrete high-level bridge is mid-1970s (opened 1974/1975 in Hawkesbury accounts). Tucked beside the crossing is the 1835 Toll House — one of only two intact toll houses left in New South Wales — rebuilt after the 1864 flood and restored externally in the 1990s.

Historic photographs here likely show an earlier Fitzroy span (timber or iron), not the modern concrete bridge. Caption by era if the date is known; otherwise say “historic view.”

Fitzroy Bridge crosses South Creek at Windsor in the Hawkesbury district of New South Wales. The bridge was built in the nineteenth century for the Windsor Road Trust, improving a vital route between Windsor and surrounding settlements. Its history reflects the engineering and transport needs of the early colonial road network.