As well as being one of Australia’s greatest writers, Henry Lawson (1867–1922) was a tragic drunk. During the last decades of his life, after his hard-scrabble early years of odd jobs around farming settlements, he was writing for The Bulletin, publishing books and anthologies of his poems and short stories, and living at various addresses […]
Walsh Bay has more wharves and jetties—plus more prestigious arts and culture venues—than any other shore of Sydney Harbour. So why is our city’s oldest colonial headland a blatant exclusion from the city’s network of public ferry stops? Local campaigners, led by Yasmina Bonnet, vice-president of the Millers Point Community Residents Action Group (MPCRAG), are […]
Below the footpath around The Parbury apartment building at Windmill and Pottinger Streets, pedestrians often notice several mysterious windows. Two display fragments of blue-and-white china teacups, plates and glass bottles which were used by mid-19th century occupants of a stone cottage that was built on this site, probably during the 1820s. Another window shows a […]
Long before today’s coronavirus crisis and 18 years before the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, Sydney was terrorised by a rat plague which began in China’s Yunan province in 1855 and spread here in 1900 via a ship that probably berthed at our Central Wharf (today’s Pier 6-7 Apartments). Australia’s first case of bubonic fever was […]
Walsh Bay is one of five neighbourhoods on our peninsula which have changed dramatically since British colonists settled along The Rocks from 1788. To accompany this site’s historical imagery of our waterfront strip, we compiled some surprising pictures of the Argyle Cut with its original steep stairway to Grosvenor Street, the old tram terminus at […]
Long before the 1900 rat plague or the 1918 naming of Walsh Bay, our headland was a new frontier of global commerce for colonial shipping agents who built the first jetties and bond stores here.
Builders now renovating Pier 2-3 and Wharf 4-5 are sometimes finding it useful to check the original structural drawings produced by architects and engineers at the Sydney Harbour Trust during the 1910s. Several hundred sheets of paper drawings were hand-drafted to guide the builders of Walsh Bay’s modern wharves, sheds, bridges and warehouses after the […]
Lavender Bay artist Peter Kingston was furious about 1990s plans to redevelop the wharves at Walsh Bay—and especially to replace the single-storey Pier 6/7 with a brand-new, over-water apartment block
In 1900 the NSW government declared a rat plague in Sydney. To solve the crisis, it resumed most properties around our headland and created the Sydney Harbour Trust to modernise the entire port
On the big screen outside Barangaroo Park’s Cutaway events venue, an amazing film now reveals the daily activities and culture of the Eora people who lived on our shoreline long before
During the 1980s, before Pier One was converted into a boutique hotel, it was a popular shopping and leisure centre, inspired by successful ‘harbourside marketplaces’ in Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. This venue attracted tabloid headlines in 1984—when about 30 people, including children, fell into deep water as an overloaded gangway collapsed during a belly […]
All the Walsh Bay piers had been abandoned for shipping since the advent of container ships and were used mainly for short-term storage. Two exceptions in the early 1980s were that the MSB leased out Pier One
Walsh Bay could have boasted a Venice-style canal along Hickson Road, an internal street along Pier 8/9, jetties jutting from three piers, and a landscaped wharf promenade leading to an outdoor pool and pub
My sketches are drawn quickly—five minutes or less. I like to work quickly because it keeps me from getting bogged down in detail or overthinking things. They are drawn mostly en plein air, outdoors
Before new developments of Barangaroo, it was a major berth for container and cruise ships. JANE BENNETT, artist-in-residence for Patrick and Sydney Ports, painted the end of freight handling at East Darling Harbour and Walsh Bay. Over the past 30 years, I have painted so many aspects of this area’s fascinating history. I painted on […]
During the 1950s, the last decade of his life, legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was cantankerous and dismissive of Sydney’s two greatest icons: the Sydney Harbour Bridge (opened in 1932) and Jørn Utzon’s 1957 design for the Sydney Opera House. In 1954, Wright was visited in New York by a reporter for The […]
Before Pier 6-7 was rebuilt as marina apartments, the earlier wharf was operated by Burns Philp, a major South Pacific merchant shipping company. Pier resident IAN DANCE recalls his grandfather
Our headland bay was never given a unique name on early maps of Sydney—but the label ‘Walsh Bay’ suddenly appeared on a 1918 aerial perspective illustration of the Sydney Harbour Trust’s local wharves development, then under construction. Printed copies of this poster were folded into the Trust’s annual report for 1919—suggesting that 2019 is the […]
Soon after Sydney was settled by Britain’s First Fleet in 1788, it became the busiest port in the South Pacific—not just for delivering British convicts but also to export whale oil
Completed in 1916 to replace another Palisade hotel built in 1880, the architecture of this building has been described as ‘Federation Free Style’. This expressionist design approach, blending ancient classical forms with
Walsh Bay’s main street, Hickson Road, is named after Irish civil engineer Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson (1842–1923), who led major 19th century public works programs to modernise Sydney for a new era of
At the end of the 20th century, most of Walsh Bay’s old wharves and warehouses were abandoned, padlocked and dilapidated—but also the subject of intense opposition from local residents and heritage conservationists against state government plans to redevelop the precinct. French architect Philippe Robert (pronounced ‘Robear’) was invited to Sydney in 1997 to advise the […]
Three minutes walk from Walsh Bay is a busy building site for the future Barangaroo Metro train station: to be built largely underground and due to open in 2024.
Since the site geared up in early 2018,
Walsh Bay’s wharves and warehouses might have been demolished within a decade of their construction—if architect-engineer Ernest Stowe’s 1922 vision for the Sydney Harbour Bridge had been adopted.
Physical development of our headland is best understood by looking at key maps and birdseye views of this area, in chronological order. Three First Fleet artists produced the first European maps
