Sydney’s First Post Office – George Street – Isaac Nichols – Sydney – New South Wales

Before there was a grand General Post Office on Martin Place, Sydney’s first official post office was simply the George Street house of emancipist Isaac Nichols. He was appointed Postmaster of New South Wales on 25 April 1809 — during the post–Rum Rebellion interim administration and Governor Macquarie confirmed the appointment in June 1810. The point was order: ships’ mail had been scrambled for on the wharves, with theft and chaos. Nichols was authorised to board arriving vessels, take charge of letters and parcels, and issue them from his premises at fixed rates; he published recipients’ names so mail could be collected in order. On 26 June 1809 he boarded the brig Experiment for the first bag of mail from Britain — often cited as the birth of Australia’s organised postal service.

This was Nichols’s own dwelling on lower George Street in The Rocks (near the Circular Quay end of the street), not a purpose-built GPO. Nichols remained postmaster until his death in 1819. The house photographed in the later nineteenth century was demolished in 1889; later General Post Office buildings on George Street / Martin Place are successors in function, not the same fabric.

Photographs here relate to that early George Street post-office site and its memory.

George Street from the wharf, 1829: the houses of Isaac Nichols (Sydney’s first postmaster), Mary Reibey and Sarah Wills. James Wilson Carmichael, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

The First Post Office in Sydney

Lower George Street, The Rocks, near present Circular Quay West

Isaac Nichols Became Australia's First Postmaster On April 25th 1809

The Lumber Yard - Bridge Street - Southern Side - Between George & Pitt Streets

There’s nothing to see on the south side of Bridge Street now — offices, traffic, the usual CBD scramble — but this block between George and Pitt, running toward the Tank Stream, was the Government Lumber Yard. A short walk from the early bridge that gave the street its name. An earlier yard elsewhere was destroyed by fire; the Bridge Street complex became the main Sydney lumber yard from around the turn of the nineteenth century and was the colony’s central convict workshop. Sawyers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, coopers, tinsmiths, tailors, shoemakers and other gangs turned out tools, fittings, furniture, clothing and ironwork for government use.

Overseers and clerks kept the place running under military and civil supervision; convicts were marched to and from barracks. Governor Macquarie’s papers record a reward to long-serving clerk-overseer William Noah: a salary arrangement in 1818 and a pardon that year after “long and faithful services.” By about 1832 the Bridge Street yard closed and works shifted toward a smaller establishment near Hyde Park Barracks; the George–Bridge corner was subdivided and sold in the early 1830s. Nothing of the lumber-yard enclosures survives above ground. This is site-memory only, not a standing heritage building.

The Lumber Yard 

Bridge Street, Southern Side, Between George And Pitt Streets 

Convict Tradesmen Were Employed In The Lumber Yard, An Enclosure Between George Street And The Tank Stream. 
An Interesting Character That Worked At The Lumber Yard Was William  Noah, From Shropshire, Who Had Been Sentenced to Death For Burglary, Reprieved, And Banished To Botany Bay For Life
On The 28th April 1818 Governor Macquarie Wrote - "Because Of His Long And Faithful Services As Clerk Overseer Of The Lumber Yard, I Have Agreed To Pay William Noah A Salary Of Fifteen Pounds Sterling, From This Date."
And In That Year Governor Macquarie Gave Him A Full Pardon. 

Royal Exchange Of Sydney - Bridge Street - Between Pitt And Gresham Street - Sydney

The Royal Exchnage Of Sydney
Cnr Bridge St &Gresham St

An Exchnage Was Established In 1861. 

When The Estuary Of The Tank Stream Was Reclaimed At Bridge Street It Paved The   Way For Building Some Impressive Buildings 

Foremost In Archeatectyral Beauty Waa The Royal Exchange - Almost Opposite Macquarie Place   

The Sydney Exchange, also known as the Sydney Stock Exchange or the Sydney Stock and Futures Exchange, has a history closely tied to the financial and economic development of Sydney, Australia. It played a pivotal role in facilitating the trading of securities and financial instruments.

Early Beginnings:

• The Sydney Exchange traces its origins back to the mid-19th century. The first organized stock trading in Sydney occurred in the 1830s, but it was relatively informal.
• The official establishment of the Sydney Stock Exchange took place in 1871. It was created to provide a central marketplace for the trading of stocks, bonds, and other securities.

Early Location:

• The exchange was initially located in various buildings in the central business district of Sydney. It operated in rented premises as trading volumes and the number of participants grew.

Rise in Importance:

• Over the years, the Sydney Exchange gained prominence as Australia's major securities trading platform. It facilitated capital raising for companies and offered investors a venue for buying and selling financial instruments.

Formation of the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges (AASE):

• In 1937, the Sydney Exchange joined forces with other Australian stock exchanges to form the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges (AASE). This federation aimed to streamline regulations and facilitate inter-exchange trading.

Modernization and Technological Advancements:

• The latter part of the 20th century saw significant changes in trading practices due to technological advancements.
• Electronic trading platforms emerged, gradually replacing traditional open-outcry trading methods.

Merger and Transition:

• In 1987, the Sydney Stock Exchange merged with the stock exchanges of Melbourne and Adelaide to form the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
• The ASX became Australia's primary securities exchange, bringing together trading from different cities into a unified platform.

Global Influence:

• The ASX grew in importance on the global stage as it attracted foreign investors and companies seeking to list their shares on an established exchange.

Continued Evolution:

• The ASX continued to evolve, embracing electronic trading and adapting to changes in financial markets.
• The ASX's role expanded to include trading in derivatives, commodities, and other financial products.

Milestone Developments:

• In recent years, the ASX has considered adopting blockchain technology for settlement and clearing of trades, showcasing its commitment to innovation.

Present Day:

• The Sydney Exchange, now part of the ASX Group, remains a vital component of Australia's financial landscape.
• The ASX continues to operate as a comprehensive securities exchange, serving as a platform for capital raising, trading, and investment.

The history of the Sydney Exchange reflects the growth and sophistication of Australia's financial markets. From its early origins as a modest stock exchange to its integration into a national exchange group, it has played a crucial role in shaping Sydney's economic landscape and contributing to the development of the country's financial sector.

Botany Bay

Botany Bay is a place before it is a chorus. Kamay, on Dharawal country — Gweagal country on the southern shore — is the wide shallow bay Cook’s men walked onto on 29 April 1770. Banks and Solander filled the nets, the English name followed the plants, and the names already on the water stayed in the country. Eighteen years later the First Fleet stood in from the sea (18–20 January 1788), found the water thin, the soil poor and the anchorage awkward, and Phillip took boats north. Port Jackson was the better harbour. On 26 January they shifted the whole expedition to Warrane, Sydney Cove. Botany Bay was the intended penal station that lasted a week as a camp and then became the other bay — La Perouse on one head, Kurnell on the other.

The lyrics on this post are not 1788. “Farewell to old England forever / Farewell to the well-known Old Bailey” is “Botany Bay,” the number from the London burlesque Little Jack Sheppard (Gaiety Theatre, Boxing Night 1885; Melbourne 1886, Sydney Theatre Royal 1887). It shares verses with the earlier broadside Farewell to Judges and Juries, and it became an Australian folk standard a century after the Fleet, which is why schoolrooms still think convicts sang it on the Charlotte. They didn’t. Transportation to New South Wales had already ended when the Gaiety first heard the tooral-i-ay.

Keep the song if you like — it is public domain, and slightly misspelt on the live page — but put the bay under it. Cook’s landing, Phillip’s rejection, Kamay Botany Bay National Park, Bare Island off La Perouse. The chorus is Victorian theatre. The water is older.

Site Of The Public Fountain

Stand at the western corner of Macquarie Place — Bridge Street side, opposite the Lands Department pile — and you are on the footprint of one of Macquarie Sydney’s vanished ornaments. In 1819–20, stonemason Edward Cureton built a sandstone Doric public fountain here to Francis Greenway’s plan, with Elizabeth Macquarie closely involved (contemporary accounts have her rejecting an earlier attempt and insisting on Greenway’s design). Townspeople could draw water without entering the Governors Domain.

It sat on the southwest edge of the little civic triangle that Macquarie formalised with Greenways obelisk (1818) as the zero point of colonial roads. Commissioner Bigge sniffed at the extravagance of Macquarie ornament; Sydneysiders used the fountain anyway. By the 1880s the structure was tired. Dictionary of Sydney dates demolition to about 1883, to clear the western corner for Pierce Francis Connelly’s statue of merchant and pastoralist Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (erected 1883). Heritage notes sometimes say c.1887 for clearance — either way, no Greenway fountain fabric stands above ground; footings may survive as archaeology near the Mort statue.

This is not the Frazer Fountain in Hyde Park, and it is not a Bent Street fountain in its own right. An earlier post on this blog titles the same lost Doric under a Bent / Spring Street precinct label — useful for the civic neighbourhood, but the structure itself belonged to Macquarie Place. Keep the two posts cross-linked and the geography honest.

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.

Commissariat Stores - Circular Quay

Commissariat Stores, Circular Quay West — historic photograph; State Library of NSW.

If you stand outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and squint at the quay, you’re on top of a ghost. The Commissariat Stores — big sandstone government warehouses on the western shore of Sydney Cove — were the logistical heart of the convict colony. Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Foveaux commissioned building in 1809; Governor Lachlan Macquarie finished the 1810 store and ordered another in 1812. They sat in front of what later became the Maritime Services Board headquarters, tied into the naval dockyard and early quay works.

For more than a century those ranges were among Sydney’s oldest surviving public buildings. Then the 1938 Butters Plan for Circular Quay renewal marked them for demolition to clear space for a new MSB office and a modern quay. There was a proper row about it — an early heritage flashpoint — and the stores still came down in 1939. Post-war building produced the MSB block (occupied in the early 1950s); since 1991 that building has housed the MCA.

Under and around the MCA / First Fleet Park area, the Sydney Cove West Archaeological Precinct (State Heritage listed) holds what’s left: archaeological evidence of the Commissariat, the government dockyard and related early quay fabric. A foundation stone from Macquarie’s 1812 building was kept at the request of the Royal Australian Historical Society and later marked nearby. This post is about a lost Circular Quay landmark — not a building you can still walk into.

LINKS LINK LINKS - HELPFUL AND INSIGHTFUL LINKS FOR PEOPLE WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT SYDNEY & AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

Mirror Sydney - An album of Sydney encounters by Vanessa Berry. The psychogeography of the city. Places unusual, overlooked, hidden and secret. Minor landmarks and suburban oddities. Time and memory. Paying attention to the under-appreciated parts of the urban environment since 2012. Plenty Of Links To Other Sydney Sites And Resources, 

Past Lives Of The Near Future - Revealing Traces Of A Former Sydney.  Sydney’s past is still visible beneath the facade of today if you look close enough. Past/Lives seeks to uncover the secrets, reveal the hidden sides and tell the forgotten stories of Sydney using the clues that have been left behind through the years. Past/Lives chronicles those instances of poorly reconstituted Pizza Huts, lazily retooled milk bars and forgotten former points of significance we pass by or even notice every day, but never really stop to look at.

TROVE - Digital Print

First Fleet Links University Of woollongong

Dictionary Of Sydney - 

Project Gutenberg Australia -  A Truly Amazing Site with all e books and other material thats out of its copyright and is free to download. There is something there for everyone once you start looking.

Everything from The Journals From Captain Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, La Perouse, Arthur Phillip & the Firs t Fleet, to The Explorers, To The Indigenous, to Famous Australian Authors, From "The Magic Pudding", to the "Harp In The South", to "Storm Boy" To "The Wild Men of Sydney" 

I have personally downloaded so many titles from Project Gutenberg and its really helped me understand some of the stories from an earlier time in Sydney Town