TRAVEL

A good reference book and walk around the city will help you to discern the shape and growth of Sydney from the settlement to the city it is today.

The people of Sydney are justly proud of the way their city has developed into one of the world’s most sought after places to visit.

Many cities have landmarks that are synonymous with their name, like New York with its Time Square and the grand old Empire State Building. But probably no metropolis has a more identifiable showpiece than the Sydney Opera House, a building so visible and so striking that one could hardly miss it.

But talking of missing, I wonder if travellers to these shores realise that Sydney possesses a rich history of architecture.

Take a walk along Macquarie Street from Bennalong Point (after a browse around the Opera House, naturally) to Hyde Park, and much of that history unfolds before your eyes.

Although none of the buildings of the first settlement survive today, the architecture of Macquarie Street, plus the names of nearby streets, coves and parks — even the pattern of the nearby streets — can help one to understand the way the city developed so quickly from a pristine rocky landscape to an internationally renowned social centre, and all within 200 years.

The wonderful thing about architecture is that it is not hidden away in galleries or museums, so the sense of the past is very real.

Having a safe, deep harbour was what made this place irresistible to Captain Arthur Phillip, when in 1788 he unloaded 1,480 convicts, soldiers and officials at what is now called Circular Quay. Life was as hard as one could imagine in a hot unforgiving environment so strange to British sensibilities, but build these early settler had to, and build they did. Soon their tents were replaced by the roughest of structures.

However, the wattle and daub and cabbage tree huts, and even the first stone structures failed to withstand the Sydney weather for long. But with each successive generation of buildings replacing a previous one, or going up around it, the pathway between the patchwork of blocks eventually became the streets.

They are hardly the carefully planned and laid-out web one finds in Melbourne but ask any Sydney-sider which has more character.

Between 1820 and 1840, Sydney became a thriving whaling centre, and this brought even more colourful characters to what was now known as The Rocks. Hotels, inns and sly grog shops lined every street. The narrow roads and laneways became even more crammed with buildings but as the local sandstone was easy to cut and shape, the town was soon bristling with a forest of simple, plain Georgian-styled houses so common in England at the time.

The first stone to be quarried was softer and easier to work but easily eroded. Stone from lower down had the benefit of being tougher, and perhaps the homes and inns which survive today do so because of this, or perhaps it’s sheer luck?

More old buildings may have survived, but in 1910 Sydney had a bubonic plague scare and many were demolished as a consequence. Then in the 1920s, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, precursor of the Opera House, appeared as the face of Australia and whole streets were demolished in its wake.

Beside The Hero Of Waterloo in Windmill Street are two other magnificent survivors — an early inn, The Shipwright’s Arms, and a five-storey block of flats built for working men in 1910.

Today The Rocks has become a most acceptable place to live and many cottages have been lovingly restored. Georgian paned windows, dormer windows and delicate fanlights above doorways create a streetscape of infinite variety. Old warehouses have become galleries, restaurants and boutiques. Once again, The Rocks is buzzing with people from all over the world — and this time they weren’t compelled but chose to come.

The three-storey house at 39, Lower Fort Street was designed by John Verge. Convicts were usually servants in houses like this, and in this instance, a special retractable staircase was used to isolate the domestic staff from the rest of the house.

In 1810, Governor Macquarie had great plans for Sydney but was thwarted by the conservative English government who did not share his zeal. However, an early scheme of his resulted in a hospital with a barracks for surgeons. What remains today are those barracks.

Being a political animal by nature, and perhaps an opportunist — and how could you not be and survive in the colonies? — Macquarie did a deal with three businessmen to build the hospital in return for three years’ monopoly in the rum trade.

A rum deal indeed, you might say, but Sydney got its hospital, even if it was one where one was more likely to leave it dead than alive, or so they used to say.

The south wing of that hospital survives to this very day as it became the Mint in 1855. Ten million dollars worth of gold sovereigns were minted in the three years following the gold rushes in NSW and Victoria at the time.

Meanwhile, the eager-beaver Macquarie found he could not rely on the designs in the architecture book his wife had brought out from England, and so in 1814, he latched on to Francis Greenway, a man transported to the colonies for the crime of forgery.

Perhaps Macquarie recognised a fellow dynamo in Greenway, who was from a family of architects, stone masons and quarry-men — three trades desperately needed in the colonies.

Hyde Park Barracks was designed by Greenway in the traditional Georgian style and demonstrates his considerable skill. Nine hundred male convicts were housed in the Barracks. These men had previously had to fend for themselves, but the nightmare brawling, robbery and worse decreased markedly after the Barracks came into use.

On completion of this building, Greenway was granted a full pardon.

After “transportation” ceased in 1842, Mrs Caroline Chisholm took over the Barracks and turned it into an accommodation for single female immigrants.

Just one of the more sophisticated ventures in this primitive time was Vaucluse House, which became the home of W. C. Wentworth in 1830. W. C. was the son of Darcy Wentworth, who was one of the Rum Hospital financiers and is famous for his crossing of the Blue Mountains to help open up the vast potential which lay beyond.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the first building on the site was a small stone cottage built by an eccentric Irishman — aren’t they all? — who had a phobia of black snakes. He dug a six-foot moat dug around the property and, for good measure, filled it with 150 tons of good Irish soil specially imported from home in biscuit barrels.

In case you’re wondering, apparently the moat worked, and he was never troubled by snakes again.

Who knows what Macquarie would make of the present day Sydney, but is it any wonder that it is such a thriving bustling place with its history of such dedicated and creative thinkers and doers? Take a wander around. There’s much more of the past to see than I have dipped into here.

Get yourself a taste of the past.