Bondi Beach – From Boondi and the O'Brien Estate to the Surf Clubs, the Pavilion and Black Sunday – A History

Every Sydneysider has a Bondi story. It might be a sunburn, a first surf, a pie on Campbell Parade, or a day stuck in traffic on Bondi Road trying to find a park. It's only a kilometre of sand between two sandstone headlands, but it's on the National Heritage List, and the Commonwealth's listing says it is "central to Australia's sense of self". Here's how it got that way.

Bondi Beach and Ben Buckler, looking north, 1937. Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Country and the name

Long before anyone drew a map of it, this was Aboriginal country. Waverley Council's heritage assessment names the Bidjigal and Gadigal people. Waverley's Hello Bondi history names the Bidiagal, Birrabirragal and Gadigal as the traditional custodians. You can still see their rock engravings on the headlands. I covered some of them in my post on Sydney's Aboriginal rock engravings.

The sand gave up some of that history in a big storm. Waverley's heritage form says a gale in 1900 moved the dunes and uncovered large numbers of Aboriginal artefacts. Hello Bondi dates the storm to 1899. Waverley's heritage assessment says the stone tools, known as Bondi Points, are now in the Australian Museum.

Heritage NSW's list of Aboriginal place names says Bondi, or Boondi, means "water breaking over rocks". Hello Bondi says the word comes from the Dharawal language and can also mean the noise of water breaking over rocks. It says the word was also linked to fighting clubs, because of the loud thud they made. It has been spelt Bundi, Bundye and Boondye. Hello Bondi says the earliest written mention is "Bundi Bay" in an 1809 field book kept by the surveyor James Meehan.

Roberts, Hall and the Bondi Estate

After the British came, the land was granted to William Roberts, who had built the road to South Head. Waverley's heritage form says the 200-acre grant was made under Governor Paterson in 1809 and confirmed by Macquarie in 1810. Roberts used it as a cattle run and died in 1819.

Edward Smith Hall comes in here. He was the newspaper man behind The Monitor, the same Hall who fought the archdeacon over his pew at St James' in the 1820s. Sources describe his role differently. Waverley's heritage form and the Bondi Park and Pavilion heritage review say that in 1851 the 200 acres went to Roberts's granddaughter Georgiana and her husband Francis O'Brien "via Trustee Edward Smith Hall". Other accounts, such as the Historical Encounters site, say Hall and O'Brien bought the land together and called it the Bondi Estate. They add that Hall was O'Brien's father-in-law, and that O'Brien later bought out his share and renamed it the O'Brien Estate.

Either way, O'Brien ended up running the place. In 1855 the Crown reserved a 100-foot strip above the high-water mark for the public. From 1855 to 1877 O'Brien let people use the beach and the sandhills behind it as a picnic ground. The heritage review says it got "too rowdy", so he shut it in 1877. He went bankrupt that same year, and 51 acres went to his second wife's family, the Curlewises.

A public beach, 1882

Waverley Council had been set up in 1859 and wanted the beach made a public reserve. The government surveyed an area for public recreation in November 1881. In June 1882 it resumed more than 25 acres and dedicated them as a public reserve. Historical Encounters gives the date as 9 June 1882. Waverley Council was made trustee of Bondi Park in September 1885, and the reserve was enlarged to over 28 acres in October 1889.

Bondi Beach around 1900. Powerhouse Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Bondi Aquarium pleasure grounds, around 1891. Henry King, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The trams

The trams made Bondi. The dates are a bit tangled. The national heritage listing says "the first tramway reached the beach in 1884". Waverley's heritage form says a tram to Bondi Beach finished near Hall Street in 1884, and the Bondi Park heritage review says the 1884 line ran to Denham Street for the Royal Aquarium at Tamarama, close enough to walk down to the beach. The Pavilion's own timeline says the line was extended to Bondi Beach in 1894. All the heritage sources agree that the first regular tram service from Circular Quay to Bondi Beach began in 1902. In 1911 the line was pushed along Campbell Parade to a new terminus at North Bondi, where the bus terminus is now.

The trams gave us the saying "shoot through like a Bondi tram", meaning to leave in a hurry. City Hub reports the last Bondi tram, number 1773, left for the depot in the early hours of Sunday 28 February 1960.

A tram at Bondi Junction, early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Bondi trams in February 1960, weeks before the line closed. Photo: lindsaybridge, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

When swimming by day was against the law

For most of the 19th century it was illegal to bathe in the sea in daylight at public beaches. People still swam, at dawn or after dark, or in the rock pools, which Waverley's heritage form says were in use at Bondi from the 1880s. The Bondi Baths were built at the southern end in 1888–89. Bronte's surf club history makes the point that "all bad laws have trouble being enforced".

In 1902 the ban was lifted. The Pavilion's timeline says beaches were then open for bathing between 8am and 8pm. Waverley Council put up its first surf bathing sheds in about 1903. Within a few years thousands of people were in the water, and many of them couldn't swim.

The Bondi dressing sheds built in 1911, photographed in 1917. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

"Beautiful Bondi" ladies' dressing rooms, early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The first surf club: Bondi or Bronte?

With more people drowning, the swimmers started organising. The Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club says it was formed at a meeting at the Royal Hotel, Bondi Junction, on 21 February 1907, and that the meeting was recorded in minutes held at Waverley Library. Heritage NSW's blue plaque program agrees, calling it "Australia's first recorded surf lifesaving club". The national heritage listing goes further and calls it "the first surf life saving club in the world". It says the red and yellow quartered caps of the new patrol were on the beach that summer.

Bronte doesn't accept that. Bronte Surf Life Saving Club says it was founded in 1903. It says a resident, Major Bond, was drilling Bronte regulars in lifesaving before 1900, and that the minutes of the club's 1907 annual meeting describe it as the fourth annual meeting. It also points to a document signed in 1931 by officials of the Surf Life Saving Association and placed in a time capsule under the old Bronte clubhouse, saying Bronte was first.

Bondi's reply is that there are no primary sources for Bronte's 1903 date, and that Bronte's Surf Bathing Association was writing to the papers in May 1907 that it was "now forming" a brigade. In 2005 Surf Life Saving Australia's historians looked at all the claims. They said the first organised group of lifesavers was actually at Manly in 1899, but that "it was the surf bathers of Bondi who first organised themselves as a formal club in February 1907". Bondi itself had long claimed 1906, and the club says it changed its dates in 2006 after that research. You'll still see "1906" on old badges and in some histories.

Original members of the Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club, October 1908. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

North Bondi's club began in 1907 too, as the Bondi Surf and Social Club, in a tent on the sandhills at the north end. In October 1907 the clubs came together as the Surf Bathing Association of New South Wales, which is now Surf Life Saving Australia. The National Museum of Australia dates that meeting to 18 October 1907, while Wikipedia's surf lifesaving article gives 10 October.

A Bondi team in the march past, 1920s or 1930s. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Pavilion

In 1923 Waverley Council ran a design competition for a Bondi Beach improvement scheme. The Pavilion's own history says the architects Robertson and Marks won it, with Leith McCredie as the designer. The plan had Turkish baths, shops, lockers, a gym and a ballroom, in a mix of Georgian revival and Mediterranean styles. The foundation stone was laid in May 1928, and the old Castle Pavilion was pulled down that June.

The Pavilion itself didn't open until 1929, not 1928. The Turkish and hot sea water baths opened on 20 July 1929, and the Pavilion officially opened on 21 December 1929. The national heritage listing says the opening drew an estimated 200,000 people, and that by then about 60,000 people came to the beach on a summer weekend day. After a $48 million restoration, the Pavilion reopened in late 2022. The Guardian reported in September 2022 that 1920s murals that had been hidden for years were back on show.

The Bondi Pavilion under construction, October 1928. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The new Pavilion around 1930. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Bondi Icebergs

At the southern end, the ocean pool belongs to the Icebergs. The national heritage listing says the Bondi Icebergs swimming club was formed in 1929. To be a member you have to swim in the Bondi Baths on at least three out of every four Sundays through winter, for five years. Waverley's heritage form says the Icebergs have been at the baths since 1929. The listing describes the members as "a club of larrikins who retain the discipline to complete their winter duty".

The Icebergs pool, looking across the beach to Ben Buckler. Photo: Sgroey, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Black Sunday, 6 February 1938

It was a hot Sunday. The Bondi club's account says about 35,000 people were on the beach. The Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience says the temperature was about 40 degrees in the early afternoon and nearly 750 people were in the water. Around 3pm, as the club's patrols were changing over and about 60 members were waiting for a surf carnival, three huge waves came in one after another. The water had no time to run out. When it did, the backwash dragged swimmers into a deep channel and out to sea.

The lifesavers went straight in with the reels, rubber floats, boards and skis. The club says it took about 30 minutes to clear the water. About 250 people needed help: 150 were rescued unharmed, 60 had swallowed a lot of water, 35 were brought back from unconsciousness, and five died. The disaster institute puts the rescues at 245 in about 20 minutes. The five who died were Bernard Byrne, Ronald McGregor, Charles Sauer, Michael Kennedy and Leslie Potter. Heritage NSW's blue plaque calls it "the largest mass surf rescue in Australia's history". A visiting American doctor, Marshall Dyer, said he had never seen "such magnificent work as was done by those lifesavers".

Bondi surf lifesavers photographed by George Caddy, April 1938, two months after Black Sunday. George Caddy, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

War, a queen and the changing crowd

The Sydney Morning Herald's 2024 history says the beach was fortified with barbed wire and defence blocks during the Second World War, and that soldiers on watch slept in the tunnels under Campbell Parade. In 1954 the young Queen Elizabeth II was driven along the beach in a jeep. After the war came the migrants: the Herald mentions Central European cake shops, Greek milk bars and Jewish delis, and later the backpackers.

Bondi was also home to Graeme Thorne, the eight-year-old kidnapped on his way to school in 1960, whose story I've told in an earlier post. The same year the last tram left.

Up to today

Bondi went onto the National Heritage List on 25 January 2008, as the ABC reported at the time. The listing covers the beach, Bondi Park and the headlands, the Pavilion, the two surf clubs and the Icebergs pool. The Pavilion says the Bondi Beach Cultural Landscape was added to the State Heritage Register that June.

Then came the darkest day in the beach's history. On 14 December 2025, two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration near Archer Park at Bondi, killing 15 people, among them a 10-year-old girl, two rabbis and a Holocaust survivor, the ABC and Reuters reported. Flowers were piled up at the Pavilion for days afterwards.

The floral tribute at Bondi Pavilion after the attack of 14 December 2025. Photo: J03098, 2025, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The beach is still where Sydney goes when it gets hot. Next time you're on Campbell Parade, think of the Gadigal fishing these waters, O'Brien's rowdy picnickers, and the lifesavers running into the surf on Black Sunday.

Bondi Pavilion and the beach, looking south, 2023. Photo: DXR, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Where this came from

• Australian Government (DCCEEW): Bondi Beach, National Heritage List (inscribed 25 January 2008), and the Commonwealth Gazette listing.
• Waverley Council: Draft Waverley Heritage Assessment, Vol. II, Thematic History (2020); Bondi Beach Urban Conservation Area heritage inventory form; Bondi Beach Inter-War Study (2014).
• Bondi Park and Pavilion Heritage Review (Australia ICOMOS).
• Bondi Pavilion: Our history (bondipavilion.com.au).
• Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club: The Beginning of the Club; History; Black Sunday.
• Bronte Surf Life Saving Club: About Us.
• Heritage NSW: Blue Plaques, Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club; Aboriginal place names.
• Hello Bondi (Waverley Council): First Nations history.
• Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience: Bondi's Black Sunday, 1938.
• National Museum of Australia: First lifesaving club.
• Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 2024; City Hub (last Bondi tram); The Guardian, 24 September 2022; ABC News, 25 January 2008 and 15–16 December 2025; Reuters, 15 December 2025.
• Historical Encounters: Bondi Beach (for the Hall–O'Brien purchase version and the 9 June 1882 date).

The Judge's House – 531 Kent Street, Sydney – William Harper, Judge Dowling and the City Night Refuge – The 1820s to Today

Walk down Kent Street towards Bathurst Street, between the apartment towers and office blocks, and you'll suddenly come to a low sandstone cottage with a verandah, sitting back in its own garden. It looks like it's been dropped in from a country town. That's the Judge's House at 531 Kent Street. Sydney Open calls it the oldest building in the city centre that was built as a private home.

The Judge's House at 531 Kent Street, with its verandah and garden. Photo: Collywolly, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

William Harper, surveyor

The house was built for William Harper, a surveyor. Sydney Open says he arrived at Port Jackson in 1821 with his wife and two children, and soon applied for land grants in the usual way, including one for a family home. The State Heritage Register describes Harper as "a surveyor and the likely designer of the house". Sydney Open says he "most likely" designed it too. The heritage listing also points out that these early grants to well-connected colonists often pushed the traditional owners off their land. Here those were the Gadigal people of the Eora.

Sources disagree on when it was built. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built for Harper in 1827. Sydney Open's fact panel says 1822, though its own text only says "the 1820s". The heritage listing calls it an "1820s Colonial Georgian single storey bungalow" and doesn't commit to a year. I'd say the 1820s and leave it there until someone finds the building records.

It's a textbook Colonial Georgian house: freestanding, symmetrical and well proportioned. Sydney Open says it had six rooms and a hall, with a verandah around the front and sides and two extra "verandah rooms" closed in under the roof. A newspaper ad at the time called it "elegant and modern". It sat high above Darling Harbour, and back then it had views right across the water.

The front of the house, with the verandah rooms enclosed at each end. Photo: Collywolly, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The judge

The name comes from one tenant. Harper and his family only lived there for a few years. In 1828 the house was let to Judge James Dowling, later Sir James Dowling, the second Chief Justice of New South Wales. Sydney Open says he rented the cottage while his permanent home on Woolloomooloo Hill was being built. The Dictionary of Sydney gives his lease as 1828 to 1831, so it was about a three-year stay that gave the place its name.

The heritage listing says Dowling was also a member of the Legislative Council from 1836 to 1843, and that he presided over the first Myall Creek massacre trial in 1838. So the judge who gave the house its name wasn't just any judge. The trial he ran was one of the most important in the colony's history.

A hundred years feeding the hungry

The house's longest chapter came later. The Dictionary of Sydney says the trustees of the City Night Refuge and Soup Kitchen leased it from 1868 and bought it outright in 1879. The heritage listing calls the refuge "a pioneer charitable organisation (later the Sydney City Mission)" and says it ran there from 1868 to 1972, more than a hundred years. The listing also makes the point that because a charity owned it for so long, the house survived while everything around it was knocked down and rebuilt. A City of Sydney community heritage walk says the house went from "housing the well-to-do" to giving relief to the city's poorest for over 100 years.

The side of the house and its verandah. Photo: Collywolly, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Restaurants and restorers

In the 1970s the Dictionary of Sydney says some outbuildings were pulled down, and the house was sold to commercial owners and turned into a restaurant. Sydney Open says Grosvenor International began restoring it in 1971 and sold it in 1984 to the David family, who did more restoration. In 1997 Capital Investment Group bought it for its head office and did further work, including a new timber shingle roof.

The heritage listing says a Suntory Japanese restaurant and garden were added in 1979, and that Tetsuya Wakuda renewed them in 2000. It sees that as a sign of how Sydney's tastes changed, with big fine-dining Asian restaurants becoming popular as the city embraced multiculturalism.

What's special about it

The Judges House is listed on the State Heritage Register as item 00060, at 529–531 Kent Street. The listing says it's "the earliest surviving, single storey freestanding house in the central area of Sydney". It's also rare as an 1820s Colonial Georgian bungalow that survives in nearly its original form, with a verandah on three sides ending in stone-walled rooms, all under one hipped roof with a flatter pitch over the verandah.

The listing also values its craftsmanship: the use of sandstone, the fine joinery, and the original plaster walls, run cornices and ceilings. It says the verandah roof shows "one of the earliest uses of corrugated iron in NSW". It notes that the house still has a garden around it that recalls its old Kent Street setting.

Detail of the sandstone walls and joinery. Photo: Collywolly, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Judge's House in its garden among the Kent Street towers. Photo: Collywolly, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Today

Capital Investment Group still owns and looks after the house, according to Sydney Open. It isn't usually open to the public. It sometimes opens for Sydney Open, which is your best chance to see inside. Otherwise you can see it from Kent Street, and it's well worth the walk down from Town Hall.

Next time you're on Kent Street, stop at the fence. The verandah has been there since before Sydney had gas street lamps, and it was home to a Chief Justice before it became a soup kitchen for a hundred years.

Where this came from

• Dictionary of Sydney: Judge's House, Kent Street (building entry).
• NSW State Heritage Register: The Judges House (SHR 00060), statement of significance (updated 28 June 2021), Heritage NSW.
• Sydney Open (Museums of History NSW): The Judge's House.
• NSW Government: Judges House Sydney (City of Sydney community walking tour).

St Stephen's Uniting Church – 197 Macquarie Street – From Lang's Breakaway and Phillip Street to the Burdekin House Site – 1842 to Today

Halfway along Macquarie Street, opposite Parliament House and Sydney Hospital, there's a sandstone Gothic church with a big tracery window across the front. Over its roof leans a curved glass office tower. That's St Stephen's Uniting Church at number 197. The building only dates from 1935, but the congregation goes back to 1842, and it spent nearly a century moving around the city before it ended up here.

St Stephen's Uniting Church, 197 Macquarie Street. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Breaking away from Dr Lang

Presbyterianism in Sydney started with the Reverend John Dunmore Lang, who founded the Scots Church on Church Hill in 1824. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him "fiery and at times controversial". In 1842 he led his people out of the Synod of Australia to form his own Synod of New South Wales. St Stephen's own history says that the same year, 22 communicants left Scots Church during Lang's ministry and started their own fellowship.

They moved around a lot. The church's history says they met first in a hall in Macquarie Place. In 1846 they moved to the Wesleyan Chapel in Macquarie Street, opposite the Mint, and in 1848 to the Independent Chapel in Pitt Street, next to the Sydney School of Arts. In 1845 the church in Scotland split into the Established Church and the Free Church, and the colonial congregations were urged to take sides. The Dictionary of Sydney says the minister, Thomas Mowbray, stayed neutral, but some of his people left to form a Free Presbyterian congregation anyway.

The Iron Church and the name

During the Gold Rush the congregation imported a prefabricated iron church that seated 800. The church's history says it went up in 1855 on what is now the State Library site, next to Parliament House. That's where the name St Stephen's comes from. The Westminster Parliament met in St Stephen's Chapel from 1543 to 1834, and a church beside Sydney's Parliament seemed like a good match. The heritage listing gives the same reason for the name.

In 1865 the various Presbyterian groups joined to form the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, and the Dictionary of Sydney says the Iron Church was formally named St Stephen's then. It soon got too small. The congregation joined with another one in Phillip Street, which was also called St Stephen's, and the Phillip Street church became home. The dates differ. The Dictionary of Sydney says the merger came in 1872, while the church's own history says 1875.

St Stephen's Church, photographed by Charles Percy Pickering in 1872. Charles Percy Pickering, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

St Stephen's, Phillip Street

The Phillip Street church became the leading Presbyterian church in the country. When the NSW General Assembly first met in 1901, it met there. The Reverend John Ferguson was inducted in August 1894, when it was the largest Presbyterian congregation in Australia, and he was moderator-general of the national church in 1909. He collapsed in the pulpit in October 1924 and died the next year. Peter Dodds McCormick, who wrote Advance Australia Fair, worked as a stonemason on the Phillip Street church as a young man and later led its choir.

Then the council needed the land. In the 1930s Sydney City Council resumed property to push Martin Place all the way through to Macquarie Street. The church's history says the Phillip Street church stood partly under where the north-west corner of the Reserve Bank is now. The Dictionary of Sydney says the new church went up quickly because of "pressure to demolish the previous St Stephen's church in Phillip Street, which was in the way of the extension of Martin Place".

Martin Place being pushed through from Pitt Street to Macquarie Street in the 1930s. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Building on the Burdekin House site

The new site at 197 Macquarie Street had been Burdekin House. The heritage listing says Thomas Burdekin built it in 1841–42, and it stayed in the family until it was sold in 1924. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was once called the finest private house in Sydney, and pulling it down became one of the first rallying points for heritage campaigners in the city.

The Dictionary of Sydney says the foundation stone was laid on 23 March 1934 and the church was dedicated a year later, on 23 March 1935. The church's history also puts the dedication in 1935. The heritage listing, as summarised on Wikipedia, says it was built from 1935 to 1937, so the finishing work probably carried on after the dedication. The builders were Kell and Rigby.

Building St Stephen's in Macquarie Street, 13 September 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The architects and the design

The architects were John Reid and Finlay Munro junior. The church says they were probably inspired by St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster. Their design is in the Interwar Gothic style, and both the church and the Dictionary of Sydney say it's one of only three churches in that style in the city, along with the Scots Church and the Central Baptist Church. The front is sandstone, with carved tracery and leadlight windows arranged symmetrically around the big east window. Stairs on either side of the entrance lead up to the gallery and down to the Ferguson Hall.

Sydney Open says the church was made with Australian materials by local craftspeople. Inside there's panelling in polished Queensland maple and plaster ceilings based on English Perpendicular Gothic.

The sandstone front and tracery window of St Stephen's. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The windows

The windows were designed by Norman St Clair Carter, the artist who also did the clerestory windows at St Andrew's Cathedral. The church says they were dedicated over about thirty years from 1935. Each window has two medallions with Bible scenes, a coat of arms at the bottom linked to the donor or the person being remembered, and etched verses from the King James Bible. Some of the old Phillip Street windows came along too. The church says they are now in the Ferguson Hall downstairs.

The organ and the music

The organ was built in 1934 by the Melbourne branch of the English firm Hill, Norman and Beard. It has 61 stops and around 2,500 pipes. In the 1970s it was altered in the neo-Baroque style that was fashionable then. Restoration since 2009 has been reversing some of those changes, and a new console by Daniel Bittner of Australian Pipe Organs went in in 2021. Harry Chandler was organist for 50 years, from 1890 to 1940, which spans both the Phillip Street and Macquarie Street churches. The current music director is Mark Quarmby.

Dame Joan Sutherland grew up in this congregation. Her father was an elder and her mother sang in the choir, and she joined the choir herself at six. These days the church holds Friday lunchtime concerts and jazz nights as well as services.

Notable ministers

The ministers' list starts with Dr Robert Steel (1862–1893) and John Ferguson (1894–1925) at Phillip Street. James McLeod (1933–1939) took the congregation over to Macquarie Street. Gordon Powell (1952–1965) was the best known of them. He regularly preached to more than a thousand people on Sundays and at Wednesday lunchtimes, broadcast for thirty years, and is credited with bringing Alcoholics Anonymous to Australia. In 1956, according to the Dictionary of Sydney, St Stephen's broadcast the first televised church service in Australia. The Reverend Fred McKay, who took over from John Flynn at the Australian Inland Mission, was associate minister from 1974 to 1986. Two NSW governors, Sir John Northcott and Sir Eric Woodward, had their state funerals here.

Uniting Church, 1977

In 1977 the Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian churches joined to form the Uniting Church in Australia, and St Stephen's went in with the union. The Dictionary of Sydney and the church's own history both give 1977. The heritage listing says the congregation's story is "interwoven with the development of the Presbyterian and Uniting Churches in NSW and Australia".

St Stephen's was listed on the State Heritage Register on 3 September 2004 as item 01704. In 2015 Hassell won a design competition for a 33-storey tower at 60 Martin Place, which curves out over the church's roof. The church says the developers, Investa, struck a deal that involved joining the two land titles for a time. Sydney Open says Tonkin Zulaikha Greer restored the east and west facades.

Macquarie Street in 2023. Photo: -wuppertaler, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The church is open on weekdays from 12pm to 5pm. Next time you're on Macquarie Street, pop in and look up at the Carter windows. The congregation that started with 22 people walking out on Dr Lang has worshipped near Parliament for over 150 years.

Where this came from

• Dictionary of Sydney: St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Macquarie Street.
• St Stephen's Uniting Church: Our History and Our Building (ssms.org.au).
• Sydney Open (Museums of History NSW): St Stephen's Uniting Church.
• NSW State Heritage Register: St Stephen's Uniting Church (SHR 01704), as reproduced in the Wikipedia article (ministers' and organists' lists, organ details, notable members).
• State Library of NSW photographs by Sam Hood and Charles Percy Pickering, via Wikimedia Commons.

St James' Church, King Street – Queens Square, Sydney – Greenway's Courthouse That Became a Church – 1819 to Today

Come up out of St James Station by the Queens Square exit and the first thing you see is a plain brick church with a copper spire, looking across at Hyde Park Barracks. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It's the oldest church still standing in the middle of Sydney, though, and it was designed by a convicted forger and built by convicts. Before that, it was supposed to be a courthouse. The station is even named after it.

St James' Church from Queens Square. Photo: Ymblanter, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Greenway and Macquarie

Governor Lachlan Macquarie wanted Sydney to look like a proper town, and his architect was Francis Greenway, a Bristol architect who had been transported for forgery. Greenway had already designed the Hyde Park Barracks for convicts, built from 1817 to 1819. He then designed a new building to stand opposite it, on the other side of what became Queens Square.

That building was meant to be a courthouse. Macquarie's real plan for a church was a huge cathedral on George Street, where St Andrew's is now. Then Commissioner John Thomas Bigge arrived from London to look into Macquarie's government and spending. Macquarie and Bigge laid the foundation stone together on 7 October 1819. By February 1820, less than four months after he arrived, Bigge was pushing hard for the courthouse to be turned into a church instead. The cathedral was shelved, a steeple was added to the west end of Greenway's design, and the school buildings next door were used as the court. Those school buildings later became part of the Supreme Court in King Street.

Why did Bigge change his mind? The Supreme Court of NSW's own history of the King Street court complex has a dry answer. It notes that three years later his brother-in-law and secretary, a wine merchant called Thomas Hobbes Scott, was made Archdeacon.

St James' Church, painted by Frederick Garling. Frederick Garling, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Built by convicts, 1820 to 1824

The State Heritage Register says the church was commissioned in 1819, designed by Greenway and built between 1820 and 1824 with convict labour. The walls are local brick, divided into bays by brick pilasters, with tall round-arched windows. There's a Doric portico on each side. Greenway lined the church up with his barracks across the square, and the two buildings share the same proportions, pilasters and gables. J. M. Freeland's history of Australian architecture counts it among Greenway's finest works.

The first service was held in the unfinished church on 6 January 1822, the feast of the Epiphany. The Sydney Gazette expected that the church would hold 2,000 people once it was fitted out. The senior chaplain, Samuel Marsden, consecrated it on 11 February 1824. Its first minister was Richard Hill, and St James' got its own parish in 1835.

The spire stands 46 metres high, and before the tall buildings went up it was used as a landmark by ships coming up the harbour. Varney Parkes replaced it in copper in 1894, using copper that had already been weathered so it wouldn't look too different. It was fully restored between 2008 and 2010. The spire was on the old paper ten-dollar note from 1966 to 1993, alongside other Greenway buildings.

St James' in 1836, from a lithograph by Robert Russell printed by John Gardner Austin. State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The interior in 1831, with the three-decker pulpit and box pews. William Bradridge, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The convicts' gallery

In the early years the church was laid out for preaching. A three-decker pulpit stood in the middle of the east end, with box pews facing each other across the aisle. Pews were rented out, and the poor sat in the free seats. The heritage listing says the western gallery, which is still there, was built for the convicts from the barracks across the square.

John Verge added a vestry at the east end in 1832 in Greenway's style, and galleries were added along the north and east walls. Around 1900 the architect John Buckeridge rebuilt the interior for the rector William Carr Smith, an Anglo-Catholic. He added an apse for the altar, raised the chancel, and took out the box pews and the north and east galleries. Only the red cedar gallery at the west end survives. The coffered ceiling dates from 1882.

The interior today, looking towards the chancel. Photo: Sardaka, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Westminster Abbey of the South

The walls are covered in memorials. There are more than 300, and they're the reason St James' has been called "the Westminster Abbey of the South". The first was for Commodore Sir James Brisbane, who died in Sydney on his way to take command in South America. It was carved by Sir Francis Chantrey and put up in 1830. The tablet for the explorer Edmund Kennedy is the only memorial in the church that shows an Aboriginal man, Jackey Jackey, who was with Kennedy when he was killed. There are also memorials to the Macleays, and a window for Keith Mackellar, brother of the poet Dorothea Mackellar, who was killed in the Boer War at 20. Hardy Wilson designed the First World War memorial, dedicated on 14 June 1922. In 2014 the Governor, Marie Bashir, unveiled a plaque for Arthur Phillip, like one placed in Westminster Abbey that same year.

The memorial to the actress Nellie Stewart, one of more than 300 in the church. Photo: Roger Garland, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The crypt and the Children's Chapel

Under the church is a big brick crypt with vaulted ceilings. It has been used for all sorts of things over the years. Richard Hill's widow lived down there, it housed the parish schools, and in both world wars it was a shelter and hostel for servicemen. One source says more than 30,000 Allied servicemen were given a bed there during the Second World War. Since 1954 the Sister Freda Mission has served meals to the homeless from the crypt. The mission started with the Sisters of the Church in 1899.

The best-known room in the crypt is the Chapel of St Mary and the Angels, better known as the Children's Chapel. It opened in 1929 as a chapel for little children. All four walls and the ceiling are painted with murals designed by the writer and artist Ethel Anderson. They were painted by the Turramurra Wall Painters Union, a group of modernist painters she started in 1927. The murals were conserved in 1992–93. Geoffrey Danks restored the crypt itself in 1977–78.

The brick vaults of the crypt. Photo: Whiteghost.ink, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Music

St James' has had music since the 1820s. Its first organ, by John Gray of London, was played for the first time on 7 October 1827, and The Australian reported an overflowing congregation. James Pearson became choir leader the same year. Isaac Nathan, often called Australia's first composer, set up a musical society at the church in the 1840s. The Dictionary of Sydney's entry on him by Graeme Skinner covers that period.

In recent years the parish ordered a new organ from Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Iowa. The workshop burned down on 15 June 2021 with the organ inside. Dobson started again, and the new Bicentennial Pipe Organ was dedicated at the church's patronal festival in July 2024, the ABC and the parish reported. There's also a ring of eight bells. The tenor was cast in 1795 by John Rudhall and came from St Paul's Church in Bristol. The other seven were cast by John Taylor of Loughborough in 2002 and dedicated on 27 July 2003. They're named after people linked to the church, including Francis Greenway, Lachlan Macquarie, Mary Reibey and Sister Freda. One is named Eora, after the traditional owners of the land.

The Mears bell, the old service bell cast at Whitechapel in 1820. Photo: Whiteghost.ink, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Hyde Park Barracks across the square

St James' and Hyde Park Barracks belong together. Greenway designed both, and he lined them up across the square. The church was built with convict labour, and its gallery was meant for the convicts. The heritage listing treats them, with the old Supreme Court and the Rum Hospital buildings, as one of the most important groups of colonial buildings in the country. The barracks is on the World Heritage List as part of the Australian Convict Sites. In the middle of the 20th century the church and its neighbours were threatened with demolition, and the eighth rector, Philip Micklem, was an early champion of saving Sydney's colonial buildings, the Australian Dictionary of Biography says.

Queens Square around 1930, with St James' on the left. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Visiting

St James' was listed on the State Heritage Register on 3 September 2004, as item 01703. It still holds the annual service that opens the legal year, when the judges come over from the courts next door in their wigs. The church is open most days, and the crypt and Children's Chapel are worth asking about. Have a look at the convicts' gallery at the back, then cross the square and stand at the barracks gate. You'll see how carefully Greenway lined the two buildings up.

St James' Church, King Street, 2021. Photo: Kgbo, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Where this came from

• NSW State Heritage Register: St James' Anglican Church (SHR 01703), as reproduced in the Wikipedia article on St James' Church, Sydney.
• Kenneth Cable and Rosemary Annable, St James' 1824–1999, Churchwardens of St James', 1999; and A Short Story of Historic St James', 1963 (both cited, not read).
• The Sunday Times, 5 October 1919, p. 23, "Hundredth Anniversary of Famous Sydney Church" (Trove, cited).
• Supreme Court of NSW: King Street court complex history (cited).
• J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia – A History, 1968 (cited).
• The Australian, 10 October 1827, p. 3 (Trove, cited), on the first organ.
• ABC News, 23 December 2023, on the Dobson organ and the fire.
• K. J. Cable, "Micklem, Philip Arthur", Australian Dictionary of Biography (cited).
• Graeme Skinner, "Nathan, Isaac", Dictionary of Sydney (cited).

St Andrew's Cathedral and the Chapter House – George Street, Sydney – Macquarie's Stone, Blacket's Towers and Australia's Oldest Cathedral – 1819 to Today

If you've ever waited on the Town Hall steps for a mate, you've had St Andrew's Cathedral right next to you. It's the honey-coloured sandstone church with the twin towers, half hidden behind the trees on George Street. Most people walk past it without a second look. It's the oldest cathedral in Australia, though, and it took the best part of fifty years, three architects and a couple of false starts to get it built.

St Andrew's Cathedral on George Street, next to Sydney Town Hall. Photo: Maksym Kozlenko, 2013, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Macquarie's grand plan, 1819

Governor Lachlan Macquarie wanted a cathedral in the middle of a big square, surrounded by the colony's main public buildings. He and the convict architect Francis Greenway planned a church 200 feet square. The State Heritage Register says the foundation stone was laid with full ceremony on 31 August 1819. Hardly anything was built. Work stopped in 1820, and after Commissioner Bigge arrived to investigate Macquarie's spending, St James' in King Street was put up as Sydney's main church instead. The square was later dropped too, when Governor Bourke had George Street run straight through.

Broughton and Hume, 1837

Bishop William Grant Broughton revived the idea. A new foundation stone was laid in 1837 on the present site, and the heritage listing names Governor Bourke as the man who laid it. James Hume drew up much more modest plans for a cross-shaped Gothic church. The heritage listing says the Church Act of 1836 helped with £1,000 from the government. The foundations went in and some walls went up to about 15 feet, but in 1842 drought and depression stopped work again.

Edmund Blacket takes over

That same year, 1842, a young English architect called Edmund Blacket turned up in Sydney with a letter of recommendation from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The heritage listing says he became "Church Architect" on his arrival in 1842 and was made architect for finishing St Andrew's in 1846. He went on to design dozens of churches, the University of Sydney's main building, and Christ Church St Laurence down at Railway Square.

Blacket's problem was making a proper cathedral out of foundations the size of a big English parish church. His answer was the Perpendicular Gothic style of Canterbury, Winchester and York. He added two bays to the length, put in a central tower, and gave it twin towers on the west front based loosely on York Minster. In October 1850 six Australasian bishops met in Sydney and each of the six nave pillars was named after one of them.

Detail of Blacket's Perpendicular Gothic stonework. Photo: Sardaka, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Broughton never saw it finished. He died on a trip to England in 1853 and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral. His successor, Bishop Frederic Barker, consecrated St Andrew's on St Andrew's Day, 30 November 1868. A report in the Sydney Mail of 5 December 1868 describes the day. The heritage listing says seven of the nine Australian bishops came. The towers and pinnacles weren't finished until 1874.

St Andrew's around 1880. Australian National Maritime Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

St Andrew's and the Town Hall around 1900. Henry King, Powerhouse Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Glass, organ and bells

The best thing inside is the stained glass. The heritage listing says a set of windows was ordered from John Hardman and Co. of Birmingham between 1861 and 1867, and calls it "one of the finest collections of Hardman glass in Australia". The lower windows tell the life and parables of Jesus. The great east window shows scenes from the life of Christ where St Andrew was there, such as the Feeding of the Five Thousand. The clerestory windows high in the nave were designed by Norman Carter in 1953–54.

A pipe organ by William Hill and Son went into the south transept in 1866. The heritage listing says it was the first of about 40 organs that Hill supplied to NSW. In 1998 the Canadian firm Orgues Létourneau rebuilt it into a four-manual instrument using the best pipes from a later John Whitely organ. The cathedral has held lunchtime organ recitals on Thursdays for more than 40 years.

The bells came later. There's a ring of 12 bells cast by John Taylor and Co. of Loughborough and installed in 1965 in memory of Ernest Samuel Trigg. Ringers from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Bellringers ring them on Sunday mornings.

Inside St Andrew's. Photo: sv1ambo, 2012, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Stained glass at St Andrew's. Photo: sv1ambo, 2012, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The alabaster reredos behind the altar caused a row. It was carved by Thomas Earp under the architect J. L. Pearson, and the heritage listing says it was completed in November 1888. Its centre panel was originally a Crucifixion. In 1887 some members of the synod objected that it might be seen as idolatrous, and it was swapped, at the objectors' expense, for the Transfiguration you see today.

The reredos around 1900. Powerhouse Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Turning the cathedral around

Cathedrals are normally laid out with the main door at the west and the altar at the east. St Andrew's was built that way too, but the busy road was George Street on the east side. Once electric trams started running down George Street, the noise often drowned out the services. The heritage listing says that by the 1930s fewer people lived west of Kent Street, so most worshippers were coming from the east anyway.

In 1941 the cathedral was turned around. A new chancel went in at the west end, the west door was closed, and the reredos was moved against it. People came in through a new east entrance off George Street. You'll sometimes see this dated to the 1970s, but the heritage listing and the cathedral's own conservation plan put it in 1941. The 1970s were when the big restoration of the stonework began, after a report by Ancher Mortlock and Woolley in 1972. The cathedral was turned back to its original layout in 1999–2000, under Dean Boak Jobbins, and the heritage listing says the surviving Blacket fittings were put back.

The George Street end of the cathedral. Photo: Maksym Kozlenko, 2013, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Chapter House

Next door, on the corner, is the Chapter House. In 1883 the cathedral decided to build a synod hall as a memorial to Bishop Barker, who had died the year before. Barker was a great believer in church government by synod. Edmund Blacket had died in 1883 too, so the job went to his son Cyril Blacket. The heritage listing says the foundation stone was laid on 30 November 1885 and the building was finished in 1886. Lord Carrington opened it, and it was first used for the General Synod in October 1886. Wiltshire and Day enlarged it in 1916. The site was cramped, and there are notes in the listing about later changes, such as the cloister being filled in with coloured glass in 1895.

The Chapter House was built as a hall, and it has been used for big gatherings as well as church business. One example turns up in photographs on Wikimedia Commons. In June 1953 Sydney's Ukrainian Orthodox community held a memorial service there for the millions who died in the Holodomor famine in Soviet Ukraine. You'll often read that the hall was a popular spot for public meetings in the 19th century. I haven't yet found that in the newspapers, so treat it with some caution.

The Chapter House beside the cathedral. Photo: Sardaka, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The stairs in the Chapter House. Photo: TTaylor, 2000, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The choir and the school

The cathedral choir of men and boys goes back to the 1820s, before even the temporary wooden cathedral, and it's said to be the oldest continuous musical group in Australia. St Andrew's Cathedral School was founded in 1885 to supply the boy choristers. Two of its best-known old boys from the choir were Edmund Barton, Australia's first prime minister, and the aviator Charles Kingsford Smith.

Heritage

St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral and Chapter House was listed on the State Heritage Register on 3 September 2004, as item 01708. It had been on the old Register of the National Estate since 21 March 1978. The heritage listing calls it "a perfect example of the colonial desire to reproduce England in Australia in the mid-nineteenth century", a phrase it takes from the architectural historian Joan Kerr.

St Andrew's from George Street. Photo: Bernard Spragg, 2015, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

Next time you're waiting on the Town Hall steps, wander next door and have a look at the Hardman windows. It was 49 years from Macquarie's first stone in 1819 to the day the cathedral was consecrated in 1868.

Where this came from

• NSW State Heritage Register: St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral and Chapter House (SHR 01708), as reproduced in the Wikipedia article on the cathedral (CC BY 4.0 text from Heritage NSW).
• Paul Davies, St Andrew's Cathedral Church Conservation Plan, 1999 (cited in the heritage listing).
• Sydney Mail, 5 December 1868, p. 10 (Trove), on the consecration.
• Joan Kerr, Our Great Victorian Architect, Edmund Thomas Blacket, National Trust, 1983 (quoted in the listing).
• Wikimedia Commons: Ukrainian Orthodox Church service to commemorate the Holodomor in Sydney, 1953 (file description).

The Royal Automobile Club of Australia – 89 Macquarie Street – Australia's First Motoring Club and Its 1928 Clubhouse – 1903 to Today

At the corner of Macquarie and Albert Streets, near Circular Quay, there's a dark brick building with sandstone trim and a stone colonnade along the front, with a wrought iron balustrade on top. Plenty of people stroll past it on the way to the Botanic Garden without realising it's a club. It's the Royal Automobile Club of Australia, the oldest motoring body in the country, and it has been here since 1928.

The Royal Automobile Club of Australia at 89–91 Macquarie Street. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Three men in a hotel bar

The club's beginnings were told well by the Governor of NSW, Margaret Beazley, at a RACA dinner in August 2025. Her speech is published on the Governor's website with full footnotes. She drew on the club's centenary history, Royal Automobile Club of Australia: 100 Years, edited by Jez Ford in 2003, and on the newspapers of the day.

In 1903 cars were still a rare and smelly sight in Sydney. The first imported four-wheeled car, Billy Elliott's 3.5 horsepower De Dion, had only arrived three years earlier. Harrie Skinner, a theatre manager, left his own De Dion parked in George Street one day and came back to find an officer telling him he was breaking the law, because an unattended car might start up on its own. Skinner showed him the spark plug he always kept in his pocket, but it still took a trip to the Traffic Department to sort it out. It convinced him that laws were coming "to hamper us".

Skinner and his friend W. E. Fisher, a typewriter salesman, sent out a circular calling car owners to a meeting at the Hotel Australia in Castlereagh Street. It rained, and only one other man, H. A. Jones, turned up, so the meeting was put off. On 20 March 1903 they tried again with a bigger crowd, and the Automobile Club of Australia was formed "to protect the interests of motorists". The Australian Star reported it on 26 March 1903. The Wikipedia summary of the heritage listing also gives 20 March 1903 and calls it the first motoring association in Australia, with state clubs following later in 1903 in South Australia and Victoria.

At the first general meeting, on 28 October 1903, Jones was elected president. By December the club had a constitution and its colours, red, blue and gold.

Fighting for motorists

The club started out on the defensive. The Governor's footnotes, drawn from the centenary history, say it fought a 6-mile-an-hour speed limit in Parramatta and a proposed Inflammable Liquids Act in 1904. It also had a say in the Motor Traffic Act of 1909, which brought in driver's licences. Skinner and another member became the state's first two driving examiners. The same Act finally made it legal to leave your car unattended. That was the very thing that had started the club off, though it came a week too late for one Augustus Gordon, who was fined for leaving his car in Castlereagh Street for "upwards of 25 minutes".

It wasn't all lobbying. The heritage listing notes that the club quickly moved on to road races and reliability trials. It held charity parades and social runs as well.

Roads, signs and the NRMA

The club also pushed for better roads. Wikipedia's NRMA article says RACA started a Good Roads Association in 1912. When the National Roads Association was formed on 4 February 1920, RACA backed it, and RACA's president W. J. McKinney and D. M. Cooper of its Roads and Tours committee were on the provisional committee. The NRMA's own centenary timeline gives the 4 February 1920 date and says the body became the NRMA in December 1923. Wikipedia's NRMA article says the reorganisation came at the start of 1924. It also says that at a 1925 meeting called by RACA, the motoring groups complained about the "plethora of danger signs" on the streets and the "frequently incomprehensible" hand signals of police at intersections, though Wikipedia doesn't give a source for that.

The NRMA soon became a rival as much as a partner, with its own road service patrols. After the Second World War RACA stopped its road service altogether. Its members got full NRMA services under an agreement between the two. That's why it's the NRMA, not RACA, that most NSW drivers think of today when it comes to road signs and breakdowns. The NRMA's timeline credits itself with improving road signs throughout NSW by the end of the 1920s.

Those years were full of new road rules. The Dictionary of Sydney blog points out that the round steel "silent cops" were trialled at intersections in September 1921, painted pedestrian crossings appeared in 1925, and the first centre line went down at King and Market Streets in 1926. Sydney's first traffic lights went up at Kent and Market Streets in October 1933. I couldn't find a source that credits any of these to RACA directly, so I've left the club out of that part of the story.

A Royal Automobile Club of Australia car badge. Photo: Kgbo, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Royal, and on the move

The club spent its early years moving around. The heritage listing says it met first in a city hotel, then from 1906 to 1908 in a room over a garage at 109 Elizabeth Street, and from 1908 to 1914 in the basement of Challis House in Martin Place. In 1914 it bought its own three-storey building at 132 Phillip Street. Motoring nearly stopped during the First World War. In 1919 the club became the Royal Automobile Club, and the Governor's speech says King George V approved the title that year. It also took over 134 Phillip Street as somewhere for country members to sleep.

The Macquarie Street clubhouse

In 1922–23 the club bought the site at 89–91 Macquarie Street. Sydney Open says the club asked its architect members to submit designs. The job went to Ruskin Rowe of H. E. Ross and Rowe, who designed the building and supervised its construction as a goodwill gift. The builders were William Hughes and Co. The Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven, laid the foundation stone on 17 May 1927, as the Daily Telegraph reported the next day. The Governor of NSW, Sir Dudley de Chair, opened the clubhouse on 23 March 1928.

At the opening, de Chair said membership had grown more than a hundredfold to 2,300 since the first meeting of around 20 people. The club's president, Sir Samuel Hordern, gave him a gold pen, and he used it to sign the first page of the visitors' book. The Daily Telegraph headlined its report "All Motorists are Law-Breakers!".

The colonnade and terrace on the Macquarie Street front. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The State Heritage Inventory calls the building "a fine and characteristic example of the Interwar Commercial Palazzo style", a style that was popular for big commercial buildings, especially in the United States. It has five storeys and three basement levels. The facades are divided into a three-part classical arrangement in dark face brick with lighter sandstone dressings. French doors open from the first floor onto the colonnade terrace.

Being a motoring club, it had garaging built in. Sydney Open says the new building had garaging and a service station for members, along with bedrooms, dining and lounge rooms, a billiard room, racquet courts, a gymnasium and baths. The heritage listing says the two lowest floors were garages. There was separate accommodation for women, though Sydney Open notes they couldn't join as members until 1946.

Inside

The interiors are part of the heritage listing. Sydney Open lists marble floors and columns, crystal chandeliers, elaborate glasswork and a terrazzo staircase. The dining room has a coffered ceiling and a leadlight dome. According to the heritage listing, the terrazzo staircase was made by Melocco Bros, the wall tiles beside it by the Australian Tesselated Tile Co., and the first lifts by Major, Stevens and Coates Ltd. Those lifts were replaced in 1947.

Inside the RACA building. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Inside the RACA building. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Later changes

The Depression and the war years were lean. After the war came a run of alterations. The heritage listing records work on floors 3, 5 and 6 in 1961 by Crane, Scott and Ferris, and more from 1963 to 1973 by Rudder, Littlemore and Rudder. The second-storey windows on Albert Street were bricked up in 1961. The building was designed to take four more storeys, and plans for two extra floors were published in 1953, but they were never built. The heritage inventory says the building is largely intact outside but has been altered and redecorated a lot inside, especially the bedrooms, function rooms and the old basement car park.

The Royal Automobile Club was listed on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 as item 00700. The inventory says it had been a heritage item since 1989. The listing calls it "an important and relatively rare surviving example of a purpose built gentleman's club from the early 20th century" that still provides many of its original services, including rooms for country members.

The RACA building from Macquarie Street in 2026. Photo: Xyxyzyz, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

Detail of the RACA building, 2026. Photo: Xyxyzyz, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The club today

Sydney Open says the club today has a members' bar, a restaurant, a rooftop terrace, function rooms, a gym and a sauna, and that cars are still at the heart of it. In her 2025 speech the Governor said the club was making a "hairpin turn" to build up membership and find new uses for the building. The building opens to the public now and then through Sydney Open.

Next time you're on your way down Macquarie Street to the Quay, have a look at that colonnade. The whole thing started because a policeman didn't believe a car couldn't start itself.

The corner of Macquarie and Albert Streets. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Where this came from

• Governor of NSW, Margaret Beazley: speech at the RACA Foundation Charity Gala Dinner, 9 August 2025 (governor.nsw.gov.au), citing Jez Ford (ed.), Royal Automobile Club of Australia: 100 Years (2003), The Australian Star 26 March 1903, Evening News 29 October 1903, Daily Telegraph 18 May 1927 and 24 March 1928, and Sunday Times 25 March 1928.
• NSW State Heritage Inventory: "Royal Automobile Club" including interiors (archived 2018), and SHR 00700 listing.
• Sydney Open (Museums of History NSW): Royal Automobile Club of Australia.
• NRMA: Our history – 100 years of the NRMA timeline; No progress without roads.
• Dictionary of Sydney blog: "It's a sign".
• Wikipedia: NRMA (RACA section), used only for the 1912 Good Roads Association and 1925 meeting, which are flagged as unconfirmed.