With my partner in Sydney last month for work, I decided to join her for a few days. I had no time off work so each morning during the week I’d walk past Hyde Park on way to my de facto office at the State Library. This particular morning the sun was gleaming off the 309m Sydney Tower, the city’s tallest structure and the second tallest observation tower in the Southern Hemisphere behind Auckland’s tower.
As I walked further north I passed Sydney’s Catholic Cathedral, St Mary’s (and not St Patrick’s as I’d long assumed). Built on the site of an old church which caught fire in 1865 it was dedicated though still unfinished in 1882. The nave was not completed until 1928 while the spires were not added until 2000.
Across the road is a statue to early governor Lachlan Macquarie. Lachlan Macquarie was a British military officer who from 1810 to 1821 was the last governor of New South Wales with autocratic powers. Historians consider his influence crucial on the transition from a penal colony to a free settlement. He has left a large legacy to Sydney and has given his name to streets, towns, rivers, a university and even a dictionary. An inscription on his tomb in Scotland describes him as “The Father of Australia” but there are solid claims he is a mass murderer. In April 1816, Macquarie ordered his soldiers to kill or capture any Aboriginal people they encountered during a military operation aimed at creating a sense of “terror”. At least 14 men, women and children were brutally killed, some shot, others driven over a cliff.
Macquarie’s name appears on the inscription over the Hyde Park Barracks. Macquarie commissioned the convict-built building which opened in 1819 as the colony’s first convict barracks. Previously, convicts were allowed to find their own accommodation, but by housing them in a barracks Macquarie hoped to increase their productivity and improve their moral character. The three-storey building with massive shingled roof and a simple yet striking facade was designed by convict architect Francis Greenway, for which Macquarie granted Greenway a full pardon. From 1830 the Barracks also housed a Court of General Session.
Outside the Barracks is the 1999 Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine. In 1848 Hyde Park Barracks was remodelled as an immigration depot and hiring office for female immigrants. Many women travelled alone to the colony, including thousands of Irish women fleeing the Great Famine. This monument is both a memorial to the famine and a celebration of the contribution of Irish immigrants to Australia. A table cuts through the centre of the wall, representing the famine experience on one side and the colonies on the other. There is also a shelf holding potatoes and a loy, a traditional spade for potato digging, leaning against the wall. On two glass panels are the names of 420 women, sandblasted into the glass, who came to Australia as orphans in the Earl Grey Scheme.
One of Macquarie’s first buildings was a hospital built in 1811. This south wing was one of three buildings. The north wing is now the state parliament while a middle wing was demolished. It became known as the Rum Hospital when Macquarie gave the contractors a monopoly on the import of 45,000 gallons of rum to build it. However the building was deficient and Greenway was called in to fix it up in 1816. The building was the Sydney Mint from 1854 to 1926 and is now a museum.
Il Porcellino, Italian for “the little pig”, is a larger than life-sized bronze wild boar outside Sydney Hospital, facing Macquarie Street. The sculpture is a replica of an original by Pietro Tacca which has stood in Florence since 1633, and shares the Florentine nickname. It was a gift to Sydney from Marchesa Fiaschi Torrigiani in 1968 as a memorial to her father Thomas Fiaschi and brother Piero Fiaschi who both worked as honorary surgeons at the Hospital, Sydney’s oldest.
Further north on Macquarie St is the state parliament building, also part of the original Rum Hospital. When the Legislative Council started in 1824, it did not have a permanent home and met in various locations. In 1829, the Council’s membership increased from five to 15 members, and met in the Surgeon’s quarters of the hospital, gradually expanding to take over what was the largest building in Sydney at the time.
Moving on to my destination at the State Library I pause to admire the statue of Matthew Flinders. Flinders was a Navy captain who charted much of the Australian coast at the turn of the 19th century. In 1798 he sailed south from Sydney in the sloop Norfolk, passed through Bass Strait and circumnavigated Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), proving it to be an island. From 1801 to 1803 he circumnavigated mainland Australia in HMS Investigator. A smaller statue to the rear commemorates Flinders’ cat Trim who accompanied him on the voyage. When Flinders tried to return to England in 1803, he was imprisoned for 10 years in Mauritius by a suspicious French governor. Trim went missing in Mauritius.
The State Library of NSW is the oldest library in Australia first established as the Australian Subscription Library in 1826. In 1869 the NSW Government purchased it to form the Sydney Free Public Library. The library had several locations before moving into a new building in 1845 at Bent and Macquarie Streets. Work on the Mitchell Wing started in 1906 and was completed in 1910. It houses the Mitchell Library reading rooms, work areas and galleries.
In 1922 Matthew Flinders’ grandson Sir Flinders Petrie offered the first Australian state to erect a statue in Flinders’ honour all of his grandfather’s papers. In 1925 Sydney won the honour and the Flinders papers now reside in the Mitchell Library building. This was my magnificent work space for several days, and a great chance to do side research on my own Thomas Francis Meagher project.
At lunchtime I walked across the road to enjoy the fresh air of the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens with sweeping views over the harbour. Yet another initiative of Macquarie, the 30-hectare garden opened in 1816. It is the oldest scientific institution in Australia and has played a major role in the acclimatisation of plants from other regions.
Hidden beside the gardens is Government House, the heritage-listed home of the governor of New South Wales. Construction of the romantic Gothic revival style building began in 1837 though the first resident, Governor George Gipps, did not move in until 1845. It housed the new Governor-General of Australia from 1901 to 1914 before that eminence moved to Yarralumla, Canberra. It has since housed the state governor apart from an interregnum between 1996 and 2011 when premier Bob Carr kicked them out.
Sydney was enjoying the Vivid sound and light festival when we were there. So it was an enjoyable exercise each night to walk around the harbour and enjoy the light show on Sydney’s great civic architecture including the Opera House.
Another pleasing view of Jørn Utzon’s masterpiece was this one from the Domain. It was fitting as Queensland had just beaten New South Wales at rugby league State of Origin in Sydney when I saw this Queensland bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris) lording over enemy territory. It is a tree I know well from my days in the Brigalow Belt in Roma, Western Queensland.
Mrs Macquarie’s Point is further along the Domain at the north-easterly point of Farm Cove. Mrs Macquarie’s Chair is a sandstone rock formation carved to resemble a bench, named in honour of Macquarie’s wife, Elizabeth in 1810. Elizabeth was said to have sat on the rock to watch for ships sailing into the harbour. Above the seat there is an inscription dedicated to Mrs Macquarie’s Road built between 1813 and 1818 which links Government House and Mrs Macquarie’s Point. The road was Macquarie’s idea to benefit his wife, though the passageway no longer remains.
Woolly Days 