During 2017 and 2018, the Walsh Bay Precinct Association surveyed all the images and documents that are generally available to explain the history of this colourful stretch of Sydney’s waterfront.
When Britain’s First Fleet of 11 ships sailed into Port Jackson, Sydney, in January 1788, the mariners noted angry shouting from spear-carrying natives along the harbour’s south shore. Apparently these Aborigines—from the Gadigal clan of the Eora group—remembered conflicts with earlier sailors from Europe: perhaps those aboard Lt. James Cook’s research bark Endeavour, which moored […]
In the early years of the 19th century, the west headland of Sydney Cove was distinguished by several crucial landmarks on the slopes of Windmill Hill (later known as Flagstaff Hill, Citadel Hill and now Observatory Hill). On the east side, the eight cannons of Dawes Battery were splayed towards arriving ships, above the colony’s […]
As the colony at Port Jackson prospered, its cargo shipping facilities expanded west from Sydney Cove to the much larger deepwater zone that was first named Cockle Bay, then Darling Harbour. This shift began in the 1820s and included the waterfront between Dawes Point and Millers Point—today’s Walsh Bay. Old maps and paintings show locations […]
Several new phenomona affected Sydney’s shipping industry after 1850: the advent of fast clipper ships (slicing freight times), a series of gold rushes in rural areas (causing shortages of sailors and wharf workers in Sydney), a boom in building new wharves, roads and buildings, and the new era of photography (especially landscape panoramas captured from […]
In the late 1800s, Sydney’s economy and culture was surging—and the northern waterfront of Millers Point was one of the city’s busiest shipping precincts. Fast clipper ships continued to berth there, but they were rapidly being replaced by steam-powered ships (which often also carried sails to save coal on long voyages and to use if […]
After two men from Ferry Lane in Millers Point died of bubonic fever in 1900, the state Government proclaimed a rat plague across the entire headland. Public health and safety crews were formed to catch rats for per-corpse payments and wash the streets and buildings. The government announced plans to acquire all the area’s privately […]
From the late 1920s, the freshly built Walsh Bay was disrupted by another major infrastructure project: the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This project had been first discussed many decades earlier but was becoming imperative as a conduit for motor vehicles between the city’s north and south shores. Engineer John Bradfield designed the bridge with its now-legendary […]
As Australia began a modern development boom following the Second World War, Walsh Bay’s wharves became gradually obsolete. They could still host some passenger ships but not giant modern container ships or cruise ships—and aeroplanes became the preferred (and gradually more affordable) mode of international travel and goods freight from the 1960s onwards. The NSW […]
Walsh Bay began to be transformed as a cultural precinct in the early 1980s, when Pier One was redeveloped as a harbourside ‘festival marketplace’ and Wharf 4-5 was renovated to house Sydney’s leading theatre and dance companies. But further revamps of the precinct’s crumbling wharves and warehouses were delayed for more than a decade by […]
Since the latest redevelopment of the Walsh Bay precinct, the precinct and its surrounding neighbourhoods have been gentrifying. The area’s waterside apartments and townhouses have
