Sydney: The Harbour City

My kind of Town

[exploring-sydney]

Cook’s ‘Discovery’

Europeans brought disaster to the lands they ‘discovered’. Most indigenous peoples that came in contact died from viruses brought by them. It is fitting in this time of the #coronavirus that we recall the first European in #Sydney: #JamesCook on 250th anniversary (29 April 2020).

Cook set foot at Kurnell Peninsula on 29 April 1770. Kurnell is on the southern side of Botany Bay, Sydney.

[exploring-sydney]

Bayview Park Concord, Sydney, Australia: Exiles that Changed the Nation

[exploring-sydney]

The Guantanamo of the 19th Century

#Australia is a land of #migrants. Even the indigenous people were migrants. They came across from Asia, in the pre-history of 60,000 years ago, most likely from the tip of the sub-continent. Then came the Europeans, many many years later, with the Dutch first landing in Western Australia (which became New Holland) in the early part of the 17th Century CE. And the British who landed in the 18th Century. But what about the French?

The British came into #Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson) near the end of January 1788. They came with 11 ships (known as the First Fleet) with 1500 on board, that took almost a year to reach Terra Australis Incognita. The British intention was to establish a penal colony, which eventually became the #Guantanamo Bay of the 19th Century. Why Guantanamo? Because of the political detainees were shipped here in in the early 1800s, including Irish, Scottish, American and Canadians.

Around 1837 a group of French Canadians from Quebec (then known as Lower Canada) wanted ‘Liberte’ from British yoke. They were assisted in ‘Fraternite’, in their rebellion by American patriots. Unfortunately, the rebellion did not succeed and was cruelly crushed. However, about 100 rebels survived, with 58 of these being French speaking. They were exiled for their part in uprisings against the hated English. These rebels were condemned to transportation to the Guantanamo of Terra Australis. The prison ship, Buffalo, took them from Canada to Tasmania (then know as Van Diemen’s Land). The Americans were left on the island, but the French Canadians were shipped north, to Sydney Cove in 1840.

The Quebecois Canadian rebels were then sent further up the Parramatta River to spent the next four years in the area of Concord. They were jailed at Longbottom's Stockade, now the site of Sydney's Concord Oval. They were subjected to forced labor.At first there was no bedding while food and clothing was of poor quality. Work included breaking stones for the construction of Parramatta Road. Many of them collected oyster shells along the shores of Parramatta River to be be made into lime, a commodity then in high demand for building purposes.

However, the Canadians were apparently treated much better than the Americans; they were liberated sooner, and assisted in getting home. After much global outcry about the treatment of these political detainees, and due to their excellent behaviour, the Governor of the colony, released them in 1844. Nearly all returned to Canada.

The Bays around this area have been renamed in their honour as France Bay, Exile Bay and Canada Bay. In Bayview Park there is a monument in their honour written in both English and French. And around Canada Bay there is a very long walk named Frenchman’s Walk.

Canada's Acting High Commissioner in Australia Charles Reeves said the rebels fought for greater self-determination. "One of the things they were arguing for was more responsible government, having their own say in how the colonies were governed and basically started an armed rebellion," he said. "I think it just illustrates, sort of, the breadth and depth of the Australia-Canada relationship and how far back in history it goes. Hobart Lord Mayor Sue Hickey said "These people were exiled mainly because of their political beliefs and they were sent out here, way across the seas to this land they'd never heard of, and sent to work and to build things for our towns.” Maureen Polley is one of those descendants and travelled from Wollongong in New South Wales to honour her great-grandfather Ira Polley. "He was only 19," she said."[He] probably thought this was a bit of an adventure and was caught up in this rebellion."

This post is getting too long. So I will leave to a future post the further  French influence on the Sydney Colony: Moocooboola: The Colony’s French Quarter.

[exploring-sydney]

Bedlam Point, Looking Glass Bay, Great North Road and Banjo Paterson

[exploring-sydney]

Paradise to Purgatory: The Great North Road

Great North Road, which was one of the first major roads for expansion of the penal colony into the interior, almost started at Bedlam Point. The Point also provided a cable-drawn punt, which was built in 1832, for those that wanted to cross the Parramatta River at its narrowest strait (a little over 200m). The punt connected the southern shore at Abbotsford and the northern shore at Bedlam Point. From then they could travel the Great North Road that snaked through current Banjo Paterson Park and into current Victoria Road, proceeding to north-west to Dural, all the way to the Hunter Valley, some 264km of road, rubble paved.

The Great North Road was built by convicts, 700 at a time, under forced slavish and laborious work conditions, for a period of 9 years between 1826 and 1835. The colony at the time had been converted from a 'paradise' into a 'purgatory' for these convicts. They were chained in leg irons at all times as they worked in harsh conditions. They were house in moveable hut prisons, on wheels, that held 20 men each. The mobile huts were around 2.21m wide by 4.27m long and about 1.83m high, which allowed barely 0.46m space for each prisoner, as they lie side by side on shelves.

Bedlam Point was also the location of the old colonial lunatic asylum was in operation for 160 years. Now it still has the disused Gladesville Mental Hospital.

Another memorable note for this area is the first contact by Arthur Phillip, First Governor of the colony, with local indigenous people. This contact occurred on 15 February 1788, at 20 days after the First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove. Phillip met a Wallamadegal male, who was noted to be called 'Jacky', and he gifted a Jacky a mirror or 'looking glass'. Hence, the name given to the bay just to the west of Bedlam Point: Looking Glass Bay. The Wallamadegal fished from Bedlam Point and also crossed the river, at this narrow straight, to its southern bank, where there was another tribe: the Wanngal. The indigenous life style was based on compatibility with the natural environment and a sacred duty to protect the land. This led to conflicts with the new arrivals: the Europeans. After 33 years of occupation or of founding the colony (although the colony was only formally proclaimed in 7 February 1788), it was noted in 1821 that the Wallamadegal tribe had become very small and they were disappearing from the landscape.

It is over this Looking Glass Bay that the young eyes of Banjo Paterson, Australia's most famous poet and singer of the bush, looked, when he lived with his grandmother at her cottage, Rockend, at the top of the hill over looking the bay. The grandmother, Emily Barton, lived at the cottage from 1866 to 1909. Paterson gave the Australian people an identity, sponsored individual pride, inspired Australians to be come independent and patriotic: "we are all Australian now".

[exploring-sydney]

The Harbour: Sydney City’s Heart and Soul

To those living in Sydney city, its Harbour is beyond compare. The Harbour has a tight grip on the heart and soul of the city. But no matter who we are or where we are from, we conjure up mental images of the Harbour, and we feel at peace. It is the “finest and most extensive harbour in the universe;…exhibits a variety of romantic views, all thrown in sweet confusion by the careless hand of nature” (john White, chief surgeon, and fellow surgeon, George Worgan, around 1788). The Harbour holds about 500 gigalitres of water, encompassing 316 kilometres of shoreline. The Harbour is actually an estuary, i.e. the tidal mouth of large rivers. Circular Quay and where its office towers rise from the ground, was once swamps and mudflats. When one looks at the Harbour, it’s often as a diversion, an escape from life, until it becomes part of your life. To gaze at its water is like gazing into a magic mirror. It’s an interesting biological fact that we have the same percentage of salt in our blood as what there is in the sea. Below is a painting by the colonial painter, Conrad Martens, and other painters, depicting what the Harbour looked like in the 18th century. And I have also included some more of my iPhotos.