The Amazing Islands of Sydney Harbour - Sydney - New South Wales

Call it nine if you like — the harbour does not care. Port Jackson began as a drowned valley with something like fourteen sandstone knobs still showing when the water stopped rising. Five of those knobs have since been stapled to the shore (Garden, Bennelong, Darling, Glebe, Berry). Two more were joined to make Spectacle. What you can still row around, depending who is counting, is about eight: Shark, Clark, Fort Denison (Pinchgut), Goat, Cockatoo, Snapper, Rodd, and Spectacle as the joined pair. Three islands that often turn up on Sydney Harbour lists actually belong to other water.

Start with the ones that are actually in the harbour. Shark and Clark are picnic islands in Sydney Harbour National Park. Pinchgut is Fort Denison — a Martello on a cut-down rock, finished 1857, not a starvation cage you swim from. Goat sits in the western harbour as a powder-magazine and water-police island; Cockatoo is the big convict-and-dockyard island, now Harbour Trust. Snapper and Spectacle are the navy pair off Drummoyne. Rodd is the little Iron Cove reserve that once hosted Pasteur's rabbit laboratory. Garden Island was an island until the Captain Cook Graving Dock joined it to Potts Point; Glebe Island has been a causeway-and-abattoir peninsula since the mid-nineteenth century.

Then the three that do not belong on a Sydney Harbour list. Scotland Island is in Pittwater. Bare Island is the 1880s fort off La Perouse, Botany Bay. Wedding Cake Island is the ocean rock off Coogee. The Pinchgut line about convicts starving and becoming shark food is folklore. The islands follow one by one below.

Islands still in Sydney Harbour

• Shark Island (Boambilly)
• Clark Island (Billong-olola)
• Fort Denison, formerly Pinchgut
• Goat Island (Me-mel)
• Cockatoo Island (Wareamah)
• Snapper Island
• Rodd Island
• Spectacle Island, the joined pair

Former islands joined to the shore

Garden Island, Bennelong Point, Darling Island, Glebe Island and Berry Island are former islands now connected to the mainland or nearby shore.

Not Port Jackson

• Scotland Island - Pittwater
• Bare Island - Botany Bay, at La Perouse
• Wedding Cake Island - off Coogee

The Islands One by One

Wedding Cake Island

Wedding Cake Island is a small rocky island located in the eastern part of Sydney Harbour, off the coast of Coogee Beach in New South Wales, Australia. Here's some information about Wedding Cake Island:

1. Name: Wedding Cake Island gets its name due to its distinctive shape, which is said to resemble a tiered wedding cake. The name is derived from its appearance when viewed from a distance, particularly from Coogee Beach or other vantage points along the coast.

2. Geological Formation: The island is a rocky outcrop that emerged due to geological processes over millions of years. It is composed of sandstone, which is a common rock type in the Sydney region.

3. Marine Life and Surrounding Area: The island is part of a marine reserve and is known for its diverse marine ecosystem. The surrounding waters are popular for snorkeling and diving due to the presence of coral reefs and a variety of fish and other marine creatures.

4. Access and Conservation: Wedding Cake Island is located offshore and can be seen from various coastal viewpoints. Access to the island itself is restricted to protect the local environment and wildlife. Visitors are not permitted to land on the island.

5. Importance to the Local Community: Wedding Cake Island is a significant landmark for the local community, particularly for residents and visitors of Coogee Beach. It adds to the natural beauty of the area and is often featured in photographs and artwork depicting the Sydney coastline.

6. Music Connection: Wedding Cake Island gained additional recognition through its association with the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. The band released a song titled "Wedding Cake Island" in 1979, which contributed to the island's cultural significance.

Wedding Cake Island is a distinctive geological feature and a notable landmark in Sydney Harbour. Its unique shape, marine biodiversity, and connection to the local community make it a memorable part of the coastal landscape.

Glebe Island

Glebe Island sits between White Bay, Johnstons Bay and Rozelle Bay — the inner western harbour’s working knuckle that most people now clock under the Anzac Bridge cables. The name “glebe” recalls an early church land grant to First Fleet chaplain Richard Johnson; the rocky outcrop was later swapped and the name travelled with colonial church-land patterns. Aboriginal people of the western foreshores used these bays long before reclamation glued the former island to the Rozelle shoreline.

From the 1850s the place went industrial hard. Colonial Architect Edmund Blacket designed stone buildings for a public abattoir (opened around 1860), and a timber bridge soon linked the island to Pyrmont so meat could reach the city. The smells and effluent made it a notorious noxious trade; slaughtering later moved to Homebush. In the early twentieth century the Sydney Harbour Trust levelled and wharfed the rock. From 1921 tall concrete grain elevators and silos dominated the skyline as a bulk wheat terminal; later decades brought dry bulk cargoes and vehicle imports beside neighbouring White Bay.

Percy Allan’s 1903 Glebe Island swing bridge remains a landmark beside the later Anzac Bridge (opened 1995, renamed 1998). Though still called an “island,” the site has long been continuous with the mainland. It is a rare inner-harbour working-port landscape whose silos and wharves sit at the centre of Bays West / Bays Precinct fights over heritage, housing and public waterfront.

Glebe Island abattoirs, Sydney Harbour — historic photograph; State Library of NSW.

Snapper Island

Snapper is the smallest island in Sydney Harbour — a ship-shaped scrap off Drummoyne and Birkenhead Point, sitting with Cockatoo and Spectacle in the western harbour. Early colonial wordlists record an Aboriginal name Ar-ra-re-agon. For most of the nineteenth century the rocky islet saw little permanent building; it was declared a public recreation reserve in the late 1870s and then barely visited.

World War I leased it for storage tied to Cockatoo Island Dockyard. The silhouette everyone notices today dates from 1931–32, when Leonard (Len) Forsythe of the Navy League had the rock blasted, levelled and expanded by reclamation into Training Depot “Sydney” (TS Sydney) for naval cadets. TS Sydney opened in November 1932. Seawalls were cut to suggest a ship’s bow and stern; buildings followed a deck-like plan a land-locked training ship pointed at Drummoyne. Parts salvaged from HMAS Sydney I when she was stripped at Cockatoo helped furnish the memorial idea.

TS Sydney ran as headquarters for Sydney Navy League units for decades. The island is on the Commonwealth Heritage List for Forsythe, the cadets, and that odd harbour skyline contribution. Structures have weathered; the museum collection moved (including to Spectacle and Garden Island) around 2006. Unlike Spectacle’s explosives complex, Snapper’s significance is cadet training, not magazines; access stays tightly managed.

Navy League / Sea Cadets at Snapper Island, Sydney (historical photograph).

Spectacle Island

Off Drummoyne, tucked with Cockatoo and Snapper in the old “Hen and Chickens” group, Spectacle Island is the harbour’s quiet explosives cousin — the one most Sydneysiders only clock from a ferry or the Anzac Bridge approach. An Aboriginal name recorded in early colonial wordlists is Gong-ul. The European story is almost entirely powder and armament: Australia’s oldest naval explosives manufacturing and storage complex, with fabric from the 1860s still sitting on the rock.

From the early 1860s the colonial government put a gunpowder magazine here. Victorian Georgian buildings associated with Colonial Architect James Barnet — magazine, laboratory, cooperage, guard and residential structures — form the nineteenth-century core. In 1884 the island went to the Royal Navy as an ordnance depot for the Australia Squadron; in 1913 it passed to the new Royal Australian Navy and kept feeding ammunition lighters through both world wars and into the late twentieth century.

Spectacle Island is a Commonwealth Heritage place. It is no longer an operational ammunition pipeline and remains largely closed to the general public. A Naval Repository of RAN relics sits among the buildings. Together with Cockatoo and Snapper it reads as a tight brick-and-sandstone industrial pocket that never became a picnic lawn — and that is the point.

Garden Island

Stand on the Potts Point side of Woolloomooloo Bay and Garden Island still reads as a low green hump under the navy’s cranes — except it stopped being a true island generations ago. Aboriginal names recorded in early sources include Ba-ing-hoe / Booroowang (Navy histories also cite Bayingawuwa). Within weeks of the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 the rock was cleared as a vegetable garden for HMS Sirius — standard Royal Navy anti-scurvy practice. The ship’s log for 11 February 1788 already calls it “the garden island,” and the English name stuck. Sandstone initials dated 1788 survive as rare physical scraps of that first year.

After decades of ships’ gardens and intermittent official use, the mid-1850s turned the place into a serious Royal Navy depot on the Australia Station. In 1913, when the first Royal Australian Navy fleet unit arrived, Admiralty control passed to the Commonwealth. Two world wars thickened the yards into Australia’s principal fleet base and ship-refitting centre. The Captain Cook Graving Dock, built in the Second World War, joined the former island permanently to the Potts Point mainland — the land bridge you still see when a ferry rounds Garden Island ferry wharf.

Today the precinct is Fleet Base East / HMAS Kuttabul: a working naval establishment with nationally significant heritage fabric, not a picnic island. Public access is restricted; heritage interpretation runs through Navy and related historical societies rather than a casual landing.

Clark Island

Clark Island is the tiny bush knuckle off Darling Point — less than a hectare, close enough to Double Bay that you feel you could almost swim the gap on a calm day. Early colonial sources record Aboriginal names including Billong-olola / Be-lang-le-wool; modern visitor material also uses Billong-Olo-Lah. It sits on Gadigal Country and was used for hunting and gathering shellfish along the eastern harbour foreshores.

In 1789 First Fleet officer Lieutenant Ralph Clark tried growing vegetables here. In a hungry colony, theft of the crop became a running joke — and a headache — but the name “Clark Island” stuck. Later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, like neighbouring Shark Island, it was pulled into public recreation planning: trusts and harbour authorities laid paths and picnic amenity without sanding off the rocky bush character.

Today NPWS runs it as a day-use picnic and event site with a ridiculous view west to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. There’s no public ferry timetable. You arrive by water taxi, private boat or cultural tour — Tribal Warrior Aboriginal cultural cruises are among the groups that land here. Landing fees and group caps apply; sunrise to sunset is the usual window. Pair it with Shark and Goat (Me-mel) if you’re doing the harbour islands as a set.

A day’s picnic on Clark Island, 1870 — Montagu Scott; State Library of NSW (ML 3).

Shark Island

Shark Island is the long, low green strip you notice when the ferry swings into Rose Bay — about a kilometre from the bay’s mouth, and small enough that a picnic rug can feel like half the island. NPWS spells the Aboriginal name Boowambillee (older records also use Boambilly). It sits on Gadigal Country as part of the harbour’s fishing and foreshore cultural landscape.

The English name is usually tied to the island’s shark-like outline. Yarns about sharks drawn to slaughtering waste still circulate — colourful, but treat them as popular lore, not gospel. Colonial and Federation governments bounced the place between quarantine and public recreation until public pressure helped lock it in as a reserve around 1900. Under the Clark Island Trust and later the Sydney Harbour Trust, Edwardian picnic kit arrived: paths, seats, shelters, and those sandstone foreshore grottos that still look like someone planned a holiday for the tide.

Shark Island joined Sydney Harbour National Park in 1975. It’s still one of the best 360-degree lunch spots on the harbour, and a favourite perch for watching the Sydney to Hobart fleet leave (the 1945 first race is linked with a start off this stretch of water). No scheduled ferry — private boat, water taxi or selected cruises, and a landing fee applies, same regime as Clark and Rodd.

Goat Island

Most harbour ferries slide past Me-mel — Goat Island — without stopping. That’s half the point of the place. It sits almost in the middle of Port Jackson, a sandstone knuckle of magazines, barracks, wharves and quiet bush that never became a picnic lawn like Shark or Clark.

Aboriginal people have known it as Me-mel (also written Milmil and similar forms in early records). Colonial writers linked it with the family of Woollawarre Bennelong; today’s NPWS material keeps Me-mel front and centre. From the 1830s the colonial government took over in earnest: water police, convict labour along the shoreline, then magazines and workshops that kept the island a working harbour machine well into the twentieth century. The State Heritage Register listing covers that whole layered mess — Aboriginal, historic and natural — not just a pretty outline on the water.

What’s left is denser than most visitors expect: buildings and structures from the 1830s through to the 1960s, including a Harbour Master’s residence from 1902. NPWS manages the island inside Sydney Harbour National Park while a government-backed process works toward Aboriginal ownership and governance of Me-mel. Remediation and conservation are underway; public access has always been tighter here than on the picnic islands. Check NPWS before you assume you can land.

Pinchgut Island – Fort Denison

That stubby Martello tower off the Botanic Garden isn’t a postcard prop — it’s Fort Denison, still better known to many Sydneysiders as Pinchgut. Colonial sources record Aboriginal names Mat-te-wan-ye / Muttewai and related spellings; NPWS today also uses Muddawahnyuh. Governor Phillip called the rock Rock Island soon after 1788, but “Pinchgut” won: usually tied to convicts left out here on bread and water, and sometimes to the harbour’s narrow pinch itself.

American warships sailed into the harbour unchallenged in 1839, which concentrated minds. Levelling for a fort began in 1841, then stalled. Crimean War jitters about a Russian attack restarted the work in the mid-1850s. Colonial engineer George Barney oversaw the battery and Australia’s only Martello tower, finished in 1857 with stone from Neutral Bay and named for Governor Sir William Denison. It never fired in anger. The design was already half out of date when the paint was still wet.

From the late nineteenth century the island earned its keep as a light and tide station. A time gun — moved from Dawes Point in 1906 — fired daily at 1 pm so ships could set chronometers; tide measurement has run from here for well over a century. In World War II a shell from USS Chicago, firing during the Japanese midget-submarine attack, damaged the tower. Since 1995 the fort has sat in Sydney Harbour National Park. Check NPWS alerts before you plan lunch on the bastion — conservation closures are not rare.

Fort Denison (Pinchgut) from the water, c.1885 Martello tower and battery already a harbour landmark.

Pinchgut – From John Dunmore Lang

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

FRANCIS MORGAN. Was Strung Up on A Gibbet

Garden Island, Pinchgut and Clark Island from Rose Bay

From Rose Bay the harbour still reads as a set of rocks in a drowned valley, even though one of them has been stapled to the mainland. Garden Island was the First Fleet’s kitchen garden for HMS Sirius in 1788, which is the whole of the English name. The navy never really left. By the 1850s it was a Royal Navy yard; the RAN took it in 1913; in the 1940s the Captain Cook Graving Dock filled the channel to Potts Point, and the island became a peninsula. What you photograph from Rose Bay is a working dockyard pretending to be a headland.

The little fortified stack closer in is Pinchgut, officially Fort Denison. Governor Phillip’s Rock Island became a convict isolation rock — the “pinchgut” ration story is folklore with a nautical rival, a pinch in the harbour. George Barney had the old pyramid cut down and raised a Martello tower, finished in 1857. John Dunmore Lang called the levelling vandalism against a work of God. He had a point; the silhouette is now all gun and garrison.

Clark Island sits off Darling Point, named for Lieutenant Ralph Clark of the First Fleet, who ran a convict-tended vegetable garden there. It is a pocket of Sydney Harbour National Park: picnic tables, no ferry, bookings for weddings. Three different fates in one view — dockyard, fort, picnic — which is the harbour in miniature.

Sydney Garden Palace - Part 3

HISTORY
For nightwatchman F. Kirchen of the Insurance Brigade, the early morning of 22 September 1882 had proceeded with little incident. At 3.00 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. senior police constables had visited the Garden Palace in Sydney's Inner Domain to pay their customary calls. At 5.35 a.m. Kirchen walked to the Domain roadway entrance to meet his replacement, J. McKnight. The man chatted for a few minutes. Shortly afterwards, they noticed smoke coming from under the dome of the Palace.
They ran to the small watchmen's entrance set in the larger entrance doors of the west tower. Kirchen unlocked the door. Inside was a great pall of smoke. A burst of flame leapt from the basement to ring the great statue of Queen Victoria that stood beneath the central dome. The fire spread rapidly, feeding along the dry wooden framework. From high overhead the stained glass of the skylight dropped like molten rain.
A telephone connected the building with No. 2Volunteer Fire Brigade Station. The men raised the alarm then fled the building. Kirchen braved the flames to return and rescue his pet dog. But there was nothing Kirchen, McKnight or the fire brigade, when it arrived minutes later, could do except watch helplessly as fire consumed the once magnificent building.
To the citizens of New South Wales, it was a day of incomparable disaster. The grandest building in Australia had burnt to the ground, barely three years after its construction. The blaze was visible for miles, a huge glowing pyre in the predawn darkness. With morning came the crowds, hundreds of the curious who flocked to the Macquarie Street gates and silently watched the smouldering ruins. 
Once the Garden Palace had been the pride of New South Wales and the envy of other colonies. Now all that remained were a labyrinth of brick foundations and the tottering remains of the entrance towers .The Sydney Morning Herald, summing up the fire and its aftermath, commented succinctly that "the scene was the most imposing, as it was the most pitiful, ever seen in the colonies".
Built on a ridge of high ground in what is now the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Garden Palace dominated the city. From the ground to the tip of the dome, it measured 64 metres and it was this dramatic sight that greeted travellers as they sailed up the harbour towards Farm Cove. It was a rich evocation of the Victorian era, typifying the period's obsession with overstated style and grandeur. 
The Garden Palace came into being as "a temple of the industrial arts" for the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879-80. The building was a symbol of New South Wales' emerging maturity and the colony's hopes of becoming a respected elder son of the British Empire. The centenary of New South Wales was still some years distant but the exhibition, and its most conspicuous manifestation, the Garden Palace, sought to prove a point. The year 1879, the Australian Building and Engineering News testified,
will be looked back to by posterity with pride as the yearn which the parent colony first drew together the peoples of the earth to witness the rapid strides the colony handmade in the van of progress amongst nations of the arts, sciences and manufacturing industries . . . [The exhibition is] an undertaking which has long been looked forward to by some of its ardent patriots as a means of attracting the attention of the various nations of the world to its immense importance, and it is now, figuratively speaking, about to claim a sort of public admission tithe society of nations. 
The exhibition was a success. The technology of the world wagon display. The United States, Great Britain, the leading countries of Europe and all the Australian colonies mounted extensive exhibits. Over a million people passed the entrance gates in the 185 days of the exhibition, a remarkable figure ima country whose population barely exceeded 2.2 million. The increase in trade was astounding as Australian markets opened to the technological products of more advanced nations. The Garden Palace sprawled across the Inner Domain, occupying the area between what is now the State Library of New South Wales and the Conservatorium of Music. It was cruciform in design, much like the layout of a cathedral. Thematic. thrust of the building, the nave, was 244 metres in length and the transepts or intersecting arms, 152 metres. The nave and the transepts terminated in four stone entrance towers 20metres high, increased by the decorative wooden superstructures to 36 metres. Exhibition space on the ground floor exceeded two hectares. Above it a gallery, over five metres from the ground floor, ringed the building. 
There was additional exhibition space in the basement and on two floors of the four entrance towers. The centre of the building was dominated by a massive dome, 30 metres in diameter, reaching its apex 47 metres above the ground floor. It was topped by a 12 metre lantern and further extended by a finial, an ornamental finishing piece. The dome was a thirty-six-sided polygon sheathed in galvanised iron. It was a source of immense pride that the dome was the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and the sixth largest in the world only slightly smaller than the domes of St Peter's, Rome, or St Paul's, London. The framework of the dome, and indeed of most of the Garden Palace, was made of wood. Twelve principal ribs, each weighing over five tonnes, were strengthened by twenty four intermediate ribs. Bolts and iron straps held the framework together. It was, as a journal of the period quaintly observed,” unique of its kind in construction”. 
The Garden Palace was an architectural and engineering marvel, but it was the dome itself that attracted the most attention. It provided light to the interior of the pavilion by way of twenty-six oval windows, each measuring 3 metres by 2 metres, set into the drum of the dome, as well as the skylight under the lantern. The interior was tinted pale blue and dotted with gold stars; the woodwork was buff picked out with red and gold. On a cornice at the base of the dome was inscribed Psalm7, Verse 24: "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the World, and they that dwell therein”. Under the dome, on the ground floor, was an opening 9 metres in diameter, which illuminated the basement area. Rising from the opening was a pedestal, on which stood a bronze statue of Queen Victoria. 
Fashioned by English sculptor, Marshall Wood, it towered 7 metres above the ground floor. From the railing around the base of the statue were views of the basement, where, amidst elegant fountains, the cream of society came to take refreshments.138Entry to the basement was by four stairways from the main floor, at points near the statue, and a main entrance athel east tower. The eastern side of the building, the main facade, had wide balconies along the basement and ground floors. 
The view from these balconies, across the Botanic Gardens to Farm Cove and W Woolloomooloo and taking in the expanse of the harbour, was nothing short of breathtaking. From the eastern and southern entrances to the Garden Palace the entire Exhibition grounds could be seen, comprising much of the Botanic Gardenias well as the southern half of the Domain. 
At this southern extremity, bordered by the carriage drives (now Hospital Road and Art Gallery Road) were machinery halls, the agricultural hall, horse and cattle stalls and the livestock parade ground. Theine Arts Gallery, forerunner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was also in the area. Thousands flocked daily to the entrance gates, purchasing day tickets at one shilling each or leather-cased season tickets priced at three guineas. 
There were miles of pathways through beautifully maintained gardens dotted with statues and such exhibits as the Maori House, restaurants including Compagnoni's, Cripp's and Emerson's Oyster Saloon, and the products of the world's industrial achievement crammed into little more than 14 hectares. But it was the Garden Palace itself that commanded the most attention, that drew the crowds like magnet to its majestic bulk. The Garden Palace was designed by James Johnstone Barnet, colonial architect of New South Wales. 
That it was the grandest of Barnet's 12, 000-odd projects in his years in the position there is little doubt, but there are sufficient reminders of his work, both in Sydney and throughout New South Wales, to give some idea of the ability of this architect. His General Post Office (1866- 85), Lands Department (1876-92) and Chief Secretary’s Department (1878) in Sydney, and the Bathurst(1878) and Goulburn (1885 - 87) courthouses are outstanding examples of Renaissance-influenced Neoclassical architecture. It was Barnet who almost single-handedly created Sydney's High Victorian character. Initially the Sydney International Exhibition was to have been housed in the exhibition buildings at Prince Alfred Park and run by the Agricultural Society of New South Wales. 
The society had held a number of successful exhibitions including the Intercolonial Exhibition of 1870, which celebrated the centenary of Cook's discovery of the east coast of Australia. New South Wales had sent exhibits to the London International Exhibitions in 1851 , 1862 and 1873, to the Paris Exposition Universale of 1855, 1867 and 1878, and to the massive Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876. Returning from the United States, officials were fired with enthusiasm and it was to be The Garden Palace from Fort Denison in January 1880expected that moves would be made to organise the first Australian international exhibition. 
Early in 1878 a proclamation appeared in the Government Gazette serving notice that the Agricultural Society of New South Wales intended mounting an international exhibition in Sydney. As invitations were extended to the nations of Europe, to America, Japan and the colonies of the British Empire, the enormity of the project soon became evident. Within months the society's facilities and its meagre resources were stretched to the limit; by October it appeared as if its plans would have to be abandoned. 
The success of such an exhibition was of paramount importance. Australia in general, and New South Wales in particular, would be on show to the world. The politicians in Macquarie Street were beginning to voice their doubt that any private organization, even one as respected as the Agricultural Society, could mount such an event. No-one was so aware of this as the premier, Sir Henry Parkes. 
It was realised that the best way to ensure that the exhibition be mounted in the most acceptable fashion- in a way best calculated to ensure the most glowing success-was to have the project under complete control of the government. But how to wrest it away from the Agricultural Society? In a deft piece of political manoeuvring, Parkes waited until the society was closest to terminating the project, until the commissioners came, hats in hand, to Macquarie Street, and then generously offered to take control. In November 1878 the government accepted the responsibility of planning and carrying out the Sydney International Exhibition. 
Parkes moved with lightning speed. He instructed James Barnet to prepare plans for a pavilion to house the majority of the exhibits. The overwhelming prerequisite was that the building should befit such a momentous event. Asthe Illustrated Sydney News later pointed out: "It is satisfactory tolearn that the building to be erected by the government will beworthy of the occasion and the colony. The colony can afford to carry out this undertaking in a liberal and handsome manner;140but we may doubt whether it can afford to carry out the [project]shabbily".
A site was chosen on high ground adjacent to Macquarie Street in the Inner Domain, which at that time was used as a run for the governor's livestock. Barnet produced his finest work in the Garden Palace, a task that was made more remarkable by the constraints upon him. The government had less than ten months before the advertised opening date. The building had to be erected quickly but be as grand and luxurious as possible, even though it was initially envisaged as a temporary structure. The site was laid out on 2 January 1879, two days before Barnet's plans were formally approved. On 13 January construction commenced and just one month later a foundation stone was laid at the dome's eastern pier by Lady Robinson,the wife of Governor Sir Hercules Robinson. 
To mark the occasion the governor read a speech before an official party including Parkes and Barnet: The distinctive feature of this great show is this, that whereas in all former exhibitions the colonies have, asit were, been brought into competition with each other, in this case the Australian colonies, as a whole, will enter into friendly rivalry in the arts of peace with the outside world ... [the exhibition will] serve to show the ready identity of all Australian interests and hasten the day when these Australian provinces will occupy a proud position before the world as a united federal dominion. It is easy to imagine a self-satisfied smile crossing the lips of Sir Henry Parkes at the mention of federation and perhaps a half murmured "Here, Here".By May over 3000 labourers were employed on the construction and allied work, most of them on the Garden Palace itself. 
The builder, John Young, had installed a number of large carbon-arc electric lights, which were among the first to be seen in Australia. They floodlit the site and allowed work to continue around the clock. There were only minor interruptions to the rapidprogress. On the night of 22 April, a twenty-four-year-old labourer, Samuel Allan, was killed when he fell from the framework. The next day a strike was called by the majority of the site's 650 carpenters. The demand was for increased wages, from ten shillings to twelve shillings a day, supposedly to offset the danger of working high above the ground . The government held firm against the demands and the strike collapsed within four days.
The Garden Palace was completed on schedule, just weeks before the official opening. Tradesmen worked feverishly to complete the interior and exterior decorations, even while the exhibits were being laid out. Over 18,000 people crammed the grounds for the official opening. While previous days had seen heavy rain, the morning of 17 September was clear and bright, a perfect spring day on which to launch the Sydney International Exhibition.. The official party and invited guests congregated in the north transept. 
Towering above the crowd was an organ built by Gray and Davison of London in the 1820s and purchased for the exhibition by Sir Daniel Cooper. The opening ceremonycommenced with a performance of the official cantata, with words composed by Henry Kenqall and music by Paolo Giorza. A large number of musicians and a chorus of 700, including many schoolchildren, gave a splendid reci(al.The exhibits of Great Britain (with a single Irishexhibitor), Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Japan a~d the United States attracted considerable attention as did the displays from India, Ceylon, Fiji and the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca).Considerable space had been reserved for the Australian colonies and New Zealand. There was Japanese porcelain, Florentine mosaics,French tapestries and bronze. In the basement, an English firm displayed iron piping claimed to be immune from rust. In the afternoon hundreds assembled to watch the first demonstration of a new washing machine. 
Operated by a thirteen-year-old girl, the machine washed a selection of dirty work clothes, borrowed from engineers in the machinery shacks. In the northern tower the Whittier Machine Company of America had installed the first passenger elevator in Australia. The wooden elevator car was made of highly polished ash and fitted with carpets and seats. It sat on top of a shaft which, powered by a steam engine, rose from a pit sunk into the foundations of the building.
The social life of Sydney was just as exciting as the exhibition itself. Dozens of official receptions and balls were held to honour visiting dignitaries. In October 1879 a ball was held aboard the French man-of-war, Le Rhin, presided over byCaptain Adolphe Fran<;ois Mathieu, Commissioner-General for France. The vessel , moored in Farm Cove, was lit by hundredsof candles mounted on the gunwhales. The following month a garden party for 500 guests was held at Rosemont, Woollahra, the home of merchant and politician Alexander Campbell. Guests entered the estate to the strains of a Highland piper. 
A German band played between two revolving fountains and refreshments were served at the upper end of the garden where it was possible to look across to the city where the dome of the Garden Palace glinted in the afternoon sunlight. Although the exhibition did not officially close until late April 1880, by March many of the principal exhibits had been dismantled for shipment to Victoria and the Melbourne International Exhibition. By the time of the closing ceremonies, approximately1.1 million visitors had passed through the gates. There had been14,000 exhibits in the Garden Palace alone and a total of 7 500awards were made, the result of deliberations by 220 judges who had worked for several months evaluating the merits of the exhibits.
The Sydney International Exhibition had been a success and although the Garden Palace had started life as a temporary structure, the fame it had brought New South Wales was not repaid with demolition. The only question was how best to use the building, a problem that attracted considerable attention. The Illustrated Sydney News suggested that the "basement of the Exhibition building could be easily converted into what would be the largest aquarium in the world ... The manner in which the whole of the basement is lighted suggests its suitability for the formation of a collection of marine life".
The Garden Palace, far from having bass and bream in the basement, became a warren of government offices and archives for the next two and a half years. The Linnean Society had offices on the ground floor and parts of their enclave became a museum. Also in the building was the Technological and Sanitary Museum, forerunner of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Government bodies included the Trial Surveys Branch of the Railway Department, branch offices of the Department of Mines, the Fisheries Commission, the Census Office and the Harbours and Rivers Department. Some areas were also hired out for concerts and balls. Its destruction, when it came, was sudden and spectacular. 
As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, "To describe the progress of the fire is to analyse the events of a few minutes". The fire, on bursting through the dome, swept along the nave and transepts. Then, with a great roar of expelled air, the dome fell inwards. The updraft swept pieces of iron and clouds of burning material for' miles . Cinders ignited the roof of a house in Potts Point. Sheets 0f iron fell in the grounds of William Macleay's Elizabeth Bay House. The Herald commented that"the sun was seen behind the ·burning Palace through the haze of smoke raising above the horizon its crimson disc".
For those living in Macquarie Street opposite the Garden Palace, the scene presented a spectacle that many would find difficult to forget. Miss Ethel Pockley was fourteen years old and a student of Miss Flowers' Sydney Ladies College at 161Macquarie Street. In a letter to her brother, Frank, dated 22September 1882, she gave a vivid account of the fire, of the windows of their school cracking with the heat and the paint blistering from the exterior walls and doors .You could hear crash after crash and the flames seemed to reach enormous heights. The sun rose and was of course quite blood colour with the fire and seemed to be' spinning round and round . Every now and then through all the smoke and dust and flames we could seethe reflection on the sea beyond and it was lovely. 
Tower after tower fell and when the glass was all burnt and broken we could see the flames inside and the statue of the Queen on the fountain stood such a long time with the flames all round and above it. It blazed for about an hour and a half and now all that remains are skeletons of the four towers (north, south, east and west) and a huge heap of smouldering, smoking black rubbish. Inquiries proceeded, vainly as it turned out, to find the cause of the blaze. Everything in the Palace had been destroyed. The Technological and Sanitary Museum and the collections of the Linnean Society were lost, as were over 300 paintings and various objets d'art for the annual exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales. All documents relating to the colony's census of 1881 were burnt, as were irreplaceable papers belonging to the various government departments. 
In addition, the curator of the Botanic Gardens estimated that between 20,000and 30,000 plants had been destroyed .An official inquiry could find no explanation for the fire, although it was noted that "the authorities are deserving of censure in not having provided more efficient supervision over such a valuable property". There was conflicting testimony from witnesses as to where the fire was first sighted. The evidence was inconclusive. Rumours circulated that the fire had been deliberately lit, although this remained unproved.
Today, apart from the ornate commemorative gates fronting Macquarie Street, there is little to suggest that the Garden Palace ever existed . Further into the Royal Botanic Gardens is the Pioneer's Memorial Garden. Opened in 1938 to commemorate Australia's earliest settlers, it stands on the spot where the statue of Queen Victoria once towered over her subjects. A simple bronze plaque, inconspicuously placed, marks the site of the Garden Palace.
Source
Lost Glories: A Memorial to Forgotten Australian Buildings
David Latta, Angus & Robertson, 1986

Sydney's forgotten palaceRichard Macey September 15, 2007 NO ONE knows how the Garden Palace fire of 1882 started. One theory was that wealthy Macquarie Street residents, upset their harbour views had been stolen by the giant building, lit the blaze. Another was that it was burnt to destroy the census of 1881. Stored in the palace, the records apparently exposed embarrassing secrets about the convict and squatter origins of many leading families. Or possibility it was an accident. What ever the cause, the loss of Sydney's grandest building on September 22, 1882 was a disaster for the infant city. The Herald reported it as news "the whole colony - indeed the whole of the Australian colonies, and we might add, the whole of the civilised world - will hear with deep regret". Built from timber and galvanised iron in a corner of the Botanic Gardens for Sydney's International Exhibition of 1879, it housed displays of manufactured and agricultural products, including crystal glass, tobacco, maize and even electric light. It was huge, but most people have never heard of it," one guide, Heather Branch, said yesterday. "It was several times bigger than the Queen Victoria Building."Directly under its 64-metre-high central dome was a fountain and a colossal statue of Queen Victoria. There were restaurants, an oyster bar and tea rooms. The Herald's account of the fire described how witnesses saw smoke, "then an immense burst of fire" beneath the dome. "The roar of the flames leaping up from the basement through the circular aperture for the fountain sounded, the men said, like an explosion. "Flames wreathed round the great bronze statue of Her Majesty the Queen …" and went "rushing up in long tongues to the dome". "The stained glass of the skylight dropped in a molten rain …Volumes of black smoke rolled up, and with a crash like a peal of thunder the mighty dome fell in." Falling cinders set fire to a house in Potts Point and the heat cracked Macquarie Street windows. Today little remains in the gardens, except for some entrance steps and a statue of a huntsman and his two dogs. A graphite elephant is held in the Powerhouse Museum. Where Queen Victoria's statue once stood is now a statue of Eros, erected decades after the blaze. The executive director of the Botanic Gardens Trust, Dr Tim Entwisle, admitted the destruction of the massive building wasn't all bad. "It left us with a lot more space." ------------ There are a few major differences between Sydney's Garden Palace and Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building. The Sydney building had less time to prepare, so timber was the most practical option. The Melbourne structure had more stone used in its construction, although time is used in beams supporting the roof.  In terms of these buildings being a white elephant, much of Melbourne's REB has been demolished. It was far, far bigger in 1880. (this picture shows an entire Northern Wing behind the current building that stands today)

Woolaware Bennelong

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.

Woollarawarre Bennelong was a Wangal man from the Parramatta River. He was born around 1764 and died at Kissing Point on 3 January 1813. He's the most famous Aboriginal person of the first years of the colony, and probably the most misunderstood. He was kidnapped at Manly in November 1789 and held at Government House, and he escaped in May 1790. That September he was there when Governor Phillip was speared at Manly, and a month later he chose to come in to Sydney on his own terms. Phillip built him a little brick hut on the point that now carries his name and the Opera House. In December 1792 he sailed to England with his young kinsman Yemmerrawanne, who never came home. Bennelong came back in 1795, and later he led his own people at Kissing Point. He was buried in James Squire's orchard at Putney, and in 2011 researchers announced they'd pinpointed the spot. Below I've told the full story first, and then my original 2015 post, the Sun-Herald article on the grave finding, follows in its own section.

Bennelong, drawn in 1798. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Early Life – A Wangal Man of the River

Bennelong was Wangal. Keith Vincent Smith, in the Dictionary of Sydney, centres the clan's heartland on The Flats, now Homebush Bay, "with its salt marsh, reed swamps and mudflats, a rich fishing ground". Wangal Country ran along the south bank of the Parramatta River east to Memel (Goat Island), ending at Gomora (Darling Harbour), where the Cadigal began.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography's 2026 entry by Emma Dortins says his father's name may have been Goorah Goorah and his mother's Gagulh. He had three sisters, Wariwear, Karangarang and Worogan, and five names: Wollarrebarre (Woollarawarre), Wogultrowe, Bannellon (Bennelong), Boinba and Bundebunda. Bundebunda meant "hawk". David Collins wrote that "Bennillong told me, his name was that of a large fish, but one that I never saw taken."

Smith works out that Bennelong would have been about six when Cook's Endeavour spent a week at Botany Bay in 1770. As a young man he was initiated, with scars raised on his chest and arms and an upper front tooth knocked out. He was in his mid-twenties when the First Fleet arrived in January 1788. Then came smallpox in 1789. Bennelong survived, but he told the British it killed about half his people, his first wife among them. Her name isn't recorded.

Sydney Cove in 1788, painted by William Bradley, the year the British arrived in Eora Country. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Captured at Manly – 25 November 1789

Arabanoo, the man Phillip had kidnapped earlier that year, died of smallpox in May 1789. Phillip then ordered Lieutenant William Bradley of HMS Sirius to bring in "a Man or two". On 25 November 1789 at Kayeemy, Manly Cove, Bradley's men held out two big fish, and Bennelong and Colebee waded out for them. Bradley wrote it all down afterwards, and he wasn't proud of it:

"They eagerly took the fish, they were dancing together when the Signal was given by me, and the two poor devils were seiz'd & handed into the boat in an instant… It was by far the most unpleasant service I was ever ordered to Execute."

The ADB adds that the people on shore showered the boat with spears and the British fired back as they got away.

At Sydney, Tench judged Bennelong "about twenty-six years old, of good stature, and stoutly made, with a bold intrepid countenance, which bespoke defiance and revenge". Colbee escaped in December. Captain John Hunter thought Bennelong was "much more cheerful after Co-al-by's absence", which he took to mean that Colbee was the more senior man. (There's more on Colbee in his own page.)

'Taking of Colbee and Bennelong 25 November 1789', by William Bradley, who led the kidnapping. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Six Months at Government House

Bennelong picked up English fast and taught the officers a great deal. Smith credits him with giving Phillip the names and locations of the Sydney clans, and the Aboriginal name of Parramatta. Tench noted that unlike Arabanoo he took to British food and "would drink the strongest liquors" with delight. In February 1790, still in his shackle, he threw a spear about 90 metres into a strong wind at South Head. On the way back the boat stopped near Rose Bay and he spoke to a woman he was "very fond of", Barangaroo.

The Escape – 3 May 1790

His leg iron came off in April 1790. Then, Smith writes, at two o'clock on the morning of 3 May 1790 Bennelong said he felt sick and asked to go downstairs. Once outside he stripped off his English clothes, jumped onto an empty water butt and leapt the paling fence. Phillip told Joseph Banks that it "proves that nothing will make these people amends for the loss of their liberty".

The Spearing at Manly – 7 September 1790

In September 1790 a whale washed up at Manly, and Smith says about 200 people gathered for the feast. Bennelong and Colebee were among them. Bennelong sent Phillip a lump of blubber and asked him to come over. Phillip arrived, Bennelong shook his hand, called him beanga, father, and joked with Lieutenant Henry Waterhouse. Bennelong put a fine barbed spear down in the grass. Then he introduced an older man as his "very intimate friend". Phillip threw down his sword as a sign of peace, and the man, Willemering, a clever man from Broken Bay, picked up that spear and threw it. It went into Phillip's right shoulder. "For God's sake haul out the spear," Phillip begged Waterhouse.

Was it a set-up? Smith thinks it "seems in retrospect to be a ritual spearing or 'payback' arranged by Bennelong and Colebee for the deprivation of their liberty". The ADB lays out the range of views, from a misunderstanding, to deliberate non-lethal payback, to Bennelong as a bystander "whose attempt at diplomacy was hijacked", to Bennelong as the organiser. Either way, Phillip ordered no reprisals, and things changed fast.

The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove, by the Port Jackson Painter. Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The plaque at Manly Cove recording the spearing. Pilotwriter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Coming In, and the Hut at Bennelong Point

On 8 October 1790 Bennelong and his friends "came in" peacefully to Sydney. It was on his terms. He visited Phillip regularly for dinner, and the ADB describes him "largely damping down retaliatory responses" through the conflicts that followed. One of those came in December 1790, when his friend Bangai was shot dead near Dawes Point. Wikipedia says Bennelong led a counter-raid, and that he and Phillip had patched things up again by February 1791.

At Bennelong's request, Phillip built him a brick hut "on a point of land fixed upon by himself", the headland of Tubowgulle on the east side of Sydney Cove. Smith gives its size as 12 feet square, with a tiled roof and an outside fireplace. The two men also exchanged names. Bennelong gave Phillip the name Wolarawaree and, as Tench put it, called him "Been-èn-a (father), adopting to himself the name of governor."

The ADB makes another point worth knowing: Bennelong and Pemulwuy, the Bidjigal resistance leader, "were not opposed". They spent time together at Bennelong Point.

Sydney Cove around 1792, by the Port Jackson Painter, when Bennelong's hut stood on the eastern point. Port Jackson Painter, 1792, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Barangaroo and Bennelong's Other Wives

His second wife was Barangaroo, a Cammeraygal woman, older than him and a formidable fisherwoman. She broke his fish-gig on the rocks when he first went across to see the Governor, and she refused British wine and clothes. Her story is told in full on her own page. Their daughter Dilboong lived only a few months. Barangaroo died in 1791, and Bennelong cremated her with her fishing gear. Collins described him gathering her ashes into a mound with great care and "heartfelt affection".

In November 1790, Smith says, Bennelong was badly gashed in a fight at Botany Bay with the Gweagal elder Mety and took Mety's daughter Kurubarabulu back to Sydney. She stayed with him until he sailed for England. Later in life he married Boorong, the sister of the Burramattagal leader Bidgee Bidgee, and their son Dicky (Digidigi) was born in 1803.

Sydney Cove in 1794, by Thomas Watling, the town Bennelong came home to the following year. Thomas Watling, 1794, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

England – 1792 to 1795

On 10 December 1792 Bennelong and his young kinsman Yemmerrawanne sailed with Phillip on the Atlantic. The ADB says they were the first Aboriginal people known to have visited England.

In London they lodged with William Waterhouse at 125 Mount Street, Mayfair. They got new clothes, and an ink sketch signed "WW" shows Bennelong in frock coat, ruffled shirt and spotted waistcoat. From the expense claims, Wikipedia says, historian Jack Brook reconstructed their outings to St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, the theatre, and bathing from a hired boat. On 16 April 1794 they attended the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings at Westminster.

Did Bennelong meet King George III? It's often said he did. Smith says the claim that he was presented at court on 24 May 1793 "cannot be substantiated", and that the Royal Archives had no record of him. He thinks Bennelong may at least have glimpsed the King in the royal box at Covent Garden on 24 February 1794.

'Benelong, a native of New Holland', an engraving published around 1803 from an earlier portrait. Samuel John Neele, c.1803, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A portrait signed "W.W.", thought to show Bennelong in the clothes made for him in England. It's held in the State Library of NSW. W.W., public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The trial of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall. Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne were in the crowd in April 1794. Robert Pollard, Francis Jukes and Edward Dayes, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Yemmerrawanne

England was hard on them both. In September 1793 a London paper described them walking near Mount Street, sick and dispirited, needing sticks to walk, and "constantly dejected". In October they moved to Eltham in Kent to stay with Edward Kent. Yemmerrawanne died there of a lung complaint on 18 May 1794. Smith says he was only nineteen, though the ADB gives his dates as c.1775–1794. He's buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist at Eltham.

St John the Baptist, Eltham, where Yemmerrawanne was buried in 1794. Chris Roberts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Long Way Home

Bennelong boarded HMS Reliance at Chatham on 30 July 1794, then waited months while she sat in port. By January 1795 John Hunter, the new governor, feared he was so ill and "broken in Spirit" that he might die. The ship finally sailed on 2 March 1795 and anchored in Sydney Cove on 7 September 1795. Wikipedia says the surgeon George Bass, also aboard, nursed him and learned some of the Sydney language from him. Smith adds that Bennelong had been away two years and ten months, eighteen months of it on ships.

Home Again

He came back to find Kurubarabulu with another man, and his brick hut was pulled down that November. On 29 August 1796 he dictated a letter to Mr and Mrs Phillips in England, thanking Mrs Phillips for nursing him and asking for stockings and handkerchiefs. The ADB calls it "the earliest piece of writing produced by an Aboriginal author". One line stands out: "Not me go to England no more. I am at home now."

In 1802 a French officer, Pierre Bernard Milius, invited him to sail to France. Smith says Bennelong answered that "there was no better country than his own and that he did not wish to leave it".

Thomas Watling's drawing of an initiation ceremony near Sydney in 1795. Bennelong officiated at a ceremony like this on the north shore in 1797. Thomas Watling, 1795, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kissing Point – Leader on the River

The old story is that Bennelong ended up a drunk, despised by both peoples. Smith and the ADB both reject it. In 1797 he officiated at an initiation ceremony on the north shore. Some time after 1803 he re-established himself as leader of a group of about 100 people on the Parramatta River west of Ryde. The ADB explains that his Wangal people had joined with the Burramattagal and Wallumedagal at Kissing Point, on Wallumedagal Country on the north bank, "where boat keels 'kissed' the river mud". His marriage to Boorong bound the river clans together.

He still visited governors Hunter, King, Bligh and Macquarie, and he kept on good terms with the settlers along the river, the brewer James Squire above all. The ADB notes there's no sign he joined the fighting on the Cumberland Plain in those years. "Perhaps a deliberate policy," it suggests. He still took part in ritual payback battles, sometimes taking punishment, sometimes giving it.

Kissing Point, Putney, on the Parramatta River, where Bennelong spent his last years. J Bar, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking across the river from Kissing Point to Rhodes, on the Wangal side. 43MZrinyiII, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Death – January 1813

Bennelong died at Kissing Point on 3 January 1813. That's the date given by the ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia. The Sydney Gazette said he died "on Sunday morning last", and 3 January 1813 was a Sunday. The Gazette's obituary was savage, calling him "a thorough savage" whose "propensity for drunkenness was inordinate". The ADB says that view "has tinted—and tainted—many subsequent biographies".

The account Smith trusts most came in 1815 from Old Phillip, brother of Gnung-a Gnung-a "Collins", who said Bennelong "died after a short illness" and that they buried him and his wife at Kissing Point. Not long afterwards about two hundred men fought a great ritual battle in his honour. A passenger on the Henrietta saw it and wrote that "the spears flew very thick, and about thirty men were wounded".

Burial in Squire's Orchard

Bennelong was buried in James Squire's orchard. Boorong, who also died in 1813, lies with him. Nanbarry, Colebee's nephew, died in 1821 and asked to be buried in the same grave, and Smith calls that the greatest mark of respect there could be. In July 1821 Lieutenant Allen Gardiner wrote that "Both Ben-ni-long & his Gin are interred in the Garden of this farm." Bidgee Bidgee kept visiting the grave, and Wikipedia says he asked to be buried there too, though nobody knows where he was.

The 2011 Grave Finding – The Sun-Herald Story

On 20 March 2011 Peter Mitchell, an environmental scientist then working with Macquarie University, announced that he'd located the grave under a house at 25 Watson Street, Putney. In November 2018 the NSW Government said it had bought the house and would make the site a public memorial. Here's the Sun-Herald story by Eamonn Duff that I saved back in 2015:

History unearthed ... a painting of the kidnap of Bennelong.Photo: Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

An unlikely friendship between a colonial brewer and the first Aboriginal statesman has helped to reveal Bennelong's final resting place, writes Eamonn Duff.

Woollarawarre Bennelong is immortalised in every school history book recounting the early years of white settlement in Australia. James Squire, meanwhile, is an ex-convict brewer whose name has recently gained popular currency as a commercial beer brand.

What most people wouldn't realise is that in the early 19th century, these two were the best of mates. In fact, the history books will soon be rewritten to include the fact that it was this unlikely friendship that has ultimately led to one of the most significant historical finds of the past century.

When Bennelong's remarkable life ended on 3 January 1813, not only did he die on James Squire's farm along the banks of the Parramatta River - he was buried in the brewer's orchard.

The Aboriginal warrior.

While the grave disappeared beneath generations of urban sprawl, The Sun-Herald can reveal there is sufficient historical evidence about Squire's acreage and Bennelong's final resting place for environmental scientist Peter Mitchell and surveying experts to finally locate the sacred site, 198 years on.

Before Bennelong met Squire or any other white man, he had been a senior member of the Wangal tribe, who called themselves the Eora, meaning ''the people''.

But on November 25, 1789, almost two years after the landing of the First Fleet, his life would change forever. Lured to the water's edge at Manly Cove with a gift of two fish, as Lieutenant William Bradley recorded, Bennelong and fellow tribesman Colby were seized by colonists, bundled into a waiting long boat and taken to the settlement of Sydney.

The kidnapping was conducted under the orders of Governor Arthur Phillip as part of a plan to learn more about the Aboriginal people, their language, customs and cultures.

In his journal account titled The Settlement at Port Jackson, First Fleetmarine Watkin Tench described Bennelong ''to be about 26 years old, of good stature and stoutly made with a bold intrepid countenance which bespoke defiance and revenge''.

Colby escaped within a week but intrigued by all the attention, Bennelong stayed. He proved to be a swift learner and in no time was communicating in reasonable English and adopting what must have seemed like a bizarre series of traditions, including formal dining etiquette. In turn, he taught the settlers the ways of his people.

After six months, however, it seems Bennelong was yearning for his old life. Early one morning, he fled the governor's house and returned to the Eora. But fascinated, perhaps, by this strange world he'd witnessed, he maintained contact.

He organised for the governor to visit him at Manly in September 1790, but the outcome was Phillip was ambushed and speared in the shoulder.

It has always been suggested that the attack may have been prompted by Bennelong as payback for his kidnapping.

Either way, further bloodshed was avoided after Phillip was finally convinced that the incident was the result of a misunderstanding.

From then on, historians agree, a close, genuine friendship developed between these two figures. In October 1790, the Eora arrived at the colonial settlement of Sydney under an agreement which ushered in a new era of peace. No more kidnappings. No more ambush attacks.

Thanks to Bennelong's intermediary skills, the two vastly different cultures would now live, communicate and trade as one.

For Bennelong, it was arguably his greatest achievement. It strengthened his standing among his own clan and it brought him new-found respect among the colonists - who in modern-day terms practically handed him the keys to Sydney.

Bennelong was now dining with the fleet's elite. Governor Phillip, meanwhile, had a brick dwelling built for him at Tubowgule, now known as Bennelong Point, the site of the Sydney Opera House.

The two men also exchanged names - Bennelong was known as ''Governor'' while Phillip became ''Woollarawarre'', and later ''beanga'' meaning ''father''.

But in December 1792, after five years as governor, Phillip decided to return to England. Much to Bennelong's delight, he was invited to sail too. The pair apparently arrived in London to much fanfare, their unique bond celebrated as proof that two people from such contrasting backgrounds could exist in harmony.

But as Dr Kate Fullagar points out in her 2009 Aboriginal history study Bennelong in Britain, historians these days are deeply divided about Bennelong's trip to Britain. She states: ''They split between those who claim it was an instance of patronising celebration and those who declare it was more an example of gross exploitation.''

Certainly, most available literature portrays Bennelong as a man in his element, a holidaying stranger who indulged in all the trappings London's high society could offer.

He grew accustomed to wearing ruffled lace shirts and fancy waistcoats typical of the period. While there is also some debate about whether or not he met George III, he is documented visiting Parliament once, attending the Warren Hastings trial and the House of Commons on 16 April 1794. He was said to have dined ''as elegantly as the Englishmen, bowed, toasted, paid the ladies compliments and loved wine''. Unfortunately, the demon drink would eventually prove to be his undoing.

After growing increasingly ill and homesick, Bennelong farewelled his old friend Phillip and in September 1795, alongside the colony's new governor, Captain Hunter, he returned to Australia.

Once home, colonial writers claimed that drink consumed him and that he was shunned by both peoples, but current historians such as Keith Vincent Smith (Dictionary of Sydney) and Emma Dortins (Australian Dictionary of Biography) say the record shows he kept his standing among his own people.

He moved to the north side of the Parramatta River, between Kissing Point and Parramatta where, according to written evidence, he became a leader of a hundred-strong local clan.

In the same year that Bennelong returned from Britain, Squire arrived on the same side of the Parramatta River after being handed a 30-acre (12-hectare) land grant.

In the years that followed, the canny brewer purchased further plots from struggling farmers. By 1806, he had amassed more than 1000 acres on which he grew hops and established the first brewery.

While there is no evidence to explain how Bennelong and Squire first met, historians surmise that Bennelong regularly ''wandered'' on to the brewer's property and that over time, the pair became such good friends he later lived on the land.

Bennelong eventually died at the farm on 3 January 1813, after a short illness according to his countryman Old Phillip. (A later story that he drowned in a vat has no support in the historical record.)

Either way, the brewer insisted on burying his dear friend personally and later erected a plaque in his honour. The Reverend Charles Wilton, minister of the parish of the Field of Mars, later wrote (after Nanbarry was buried there in 1821): ''He lies interred, between his wife and another chief (Nanbarry), amidst the orange trees of the garden.''

A few days later, Bennelong's obituary in the Sydney Gazette was far from flattering, stating: ''His propensity for drunkenness was inordinate and when in that state he was insolent, menacing and overbearing.'' A contributor for the newspaper wrote the tribesman had been ''much addicted to spirit drinking and for the last five months of his life was seldom sober''.

While Bennelong has rested in peace, the world above has continued to develop.

An archived photograph taken of Squire's property circa 1900 is said to show ''the known grave site of Bennelong'', with a Mitchell librarian having noted on the back: ''Very near the righthand corner was the black man's grave, a slightly raised mound covered with old bricks made in Squire's time.''

The unmarked site was allegedly found again in 1927 by Charles Watson, a descendant of Squire, who was told by his mother about a black man's grave underneath a tennis court that had been built behind the brewer's old house.

In the decades that followed roads were laid down, further clouding Bennelong's location. In 1970, a local elderly man who had visited the site in 1927 with Watson insisted the grave was now part of a suburban allotment on the intersection of two streets in Putney.

Today, a memorial plaque sits in Cleves Park, Putney, to mark the approximate area where he is believed to be buried. After almost two centuries, the speculation is finally over.

eduff@sunherald.com.au

The Aboriginal warrior.

Legacy

His name is everywhere. Bennelong Point, where his hut stood, is home to the Sydney Opera House, and one of its restaurants is called Bennelong. The federal seat of Bennelong, created in 1949, takes in Putney, and Wikipedia says it was the first electorate named after an Indigenous Australian. There's Bennelong Park at Kissing Point, a plaque in Cleves Park, Putney, and the Bennelong Bridge across Homebush Bay, opened in 2016 in the old Wangal heartland.

The ADB sums up what it thinks he was after all along: "to preserve and remain embedded in kin networks". Two hundred men turning out to fight in his honour suggests he managed it.

A ferry passing Fort Macquarie on Bennelong Point in the early 1900s. William Joseph MacPherson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Sydney Opera House on Bennelong Point today. Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Bennelong restaurant at the Sydney Opera House. Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bennelong Bridge across Homebush Bay, opened in 2016. Whats new?, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• c.1764 – Born, Wangal clan, Parramatta River.
• January 1788 – First Fleet arrives.
• 1789 – Smallpox kills his first wife. Arabanoo dies in May.
• 25 November 1789 – Kidnapped with Colebee at Manly Cove.
• 12 December 1789 – Colebee escapes.
• 3 May 1790 – Bennelong escapes over the Government House fence.
• 7 September 1790 – Phillip speared by Willemering at Manly.
• 8 October 1790 – Bennelong "comes in" to Sydney. A brick hut is later built for him at Tubowgulle (Bennelong Point).
• 1791 – Barangaroo dies and is cremated.
• 10 December 1792 – Sails for England with Phillip and Yemmerrawanne on the Atlantic.
• 16 April 1794 – Attends the Warren Hastings trial.
• 18 May 1794 – Yemmerrawanne dies at Eltham.
• 2 March 1795 – Reliance sails. It arrives at Sydney Cove on 7 September 1795.
• November 1795 – His hut is demolished.
• 29 August 1796 – Letter to Mr and Mrs Phillips.
• 1797 – Officiates at an initiation on the north shore.
• 1803 – Son Dicky born. Bennelong leads the Kissing Point group.
• 3 January 1813 – Dies at Kissing Point. Buried in James Squire's orchard.
• 1821 – Nanbarry buried in the same grave.
• 1949 – Federal seat of Bennelong created.
• 20 March 2011 – Grave site at 25 Watson Street, Putney announced.
• 2016 – Bennelong Bridge opens.
• November 2018 – NSW Government buys the Watson Street house for a memorial.

Where the Sources Disagree

• Date of death. The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say 3 January 1813, and the Gazette's "Sunday morning last" fits that date. The 2011 article as I first saved it said 2 January (now corrected).
• How he died. Old Phillip said "after a short illness". A later story that he drowned in a vat has no support in the sources I read.
• Meeting the King. Sydney Barani says he "was presented to King George III on 24 May 1793". Smith and Wikipedia say there's no evidence for it.
• When the spearing happened. Sydney Barani says May 1790. Every eyewitness-based source gives 7 September 1790.
• When he got home. Wikipedia and Sydney Barani say he returned in February 1795. Smith gives sailing on 2 March and arrival on 7 September 1795.
• Barangaroo's labour. Karskens says Bennelong wanted her to give birth at Government House and she refused. Sydney Barani says it was she who wanted Government House and that Phillip sent her to the hospital instead.
• Where Barangaroo was cremated. Smith and Wikipedia say in Phillip's garden. Collins doesn't name the place of the pyre.
• His age. Tench guessed 26 in 1789. Smith says about 24 in January 1788. Both fit roughly with c.1764.
• Was he "shunned"? Older accounts, including the 2011 Sun-Herald article, said he was exiled from both communities. Smith and the ADB say the record shows him leading a 100-strong group at Kissing Point, and point to the 200 men at his memorial battle.
• The Wilton quote. Rev. Charles Wilton described the grave as "between his wife and another chief (Nanbarry)". Nanbarry wasn't buried there until 1821, so the description must date from after that.

My Earlier Posts

• Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong
• Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
• Fort Macquarie – Bennelong Point
• The Man O'War Steps – Farm Cove – The Navy's Landing at Bennelong Point
• Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788
• First Government House – Corner of Bridge Street & Phillip Street
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Bungaree – The Broken Bay Man Who Sailed Around Australia with Flinders
• Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales

Sources

• Emma Dortins, "Bennelong (c.1764–1813)", Australian Dictionary of Biography (Indigenous ADB), 2026 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bennelong-1769
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Woollarawarre Bennelong", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woollarawarre_bennelong
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Willemering", Dictionary of Sydney, 2016 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/willemering
• Grace Karskens, "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen", Dictionary of Sydney, 2014 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_eora_fisherwomen
• "Bennelong", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney) – https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/bennelong/
• "Bennelong", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennelong
• Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3534
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
• Eamonn Duff, "Bennelong's grave found under a front yard in Sydney's suburbs", Sun-Herald / Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 2011 (reproduced above)
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture. The pictures in the 2011 article section are from the original Sun-Herald story.