The Harbour

by Scott Bevan

  ‘Five Bells’: Slessor, Kenneth, Selected Poems, HarperCollins Publishers Australia, 2014, published in Haskell, Dennis (editor), Kenneth Slessor, pp46-47, reproduced with permission.

  ‘a doubly sterile mass of rugged grey rocks …’: Tucker, James, Ralph Rashleigh, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, published as an ebook by Project Gutenberg Australia, accessed at www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/03012291.txt on 25 March, 2017.

  ‘Since Captain Cook’s arrival, no more memorable event has happened …’: Read at www.awm.gov.au/royal-australian-navy-fleet-entry-1913, accessed on 25 March, 2017.

  marked a new kind of real estate: Marr, David, ‘The irresistible city’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December, 1997, p3.

  ‘no’ to an offer of $25 million: Macken, Lucy, ‘Russell Crowe pulls his Finger Wharf apartment off the market, says no to $25m’, 5 February, 2017, accessed at www.domain.com.au on 6 February, 2017.

  ‘I can never pass the island … without feeling indignant …’: Lang, John Dunmore, An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, 1875, quoted on information plaque at Fort Denison.

  Convicts … were banished … with nothing but bread and water: Nagle, Jacob, Collection 08: Jacob Nagle – memoir, titled ‘Jacob Nagle his Book A.D. One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Nine May 19th. Canton. Stark County Ohio’, 1775-1802, compiled 1829, p84, State Library of NSW, MLMSS 5954 (Safe 1 / 156), www.sl.nsw.gov.au.

  advised Barney to do some creative accounting: Semple Kerr, James, Fort Denison, The National Trust of Australia, Sydney, 1986, pp9-10.

  sea levels are increasingly rising: Read at Fort Denison, 17 February, 2017.

  ‘noble estuary with countless bays and inlets …’: Meredith, Louisa Anne, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, p34.

  ‘fabled palace of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights’: ‘Destruction of the Garden Palace by Fire’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September, 1882, p7.

  ‘fairy-like and bewildering …’: ‘Notes of the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879’, Government Printing Office, 1880, reproduced in Proudfoot, Peter; Maguire, Roslyn: and Freestone, Robert (editors), Colonial City, Global City: Sydney’s International Exhibition 1879, Crossing Press, Sydney, 2000, p26.

  a ‘splendid spectacle’: ‘Destruction of the Garden Palace by Fire’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September, 1882, p7.

  ‘the first and the finest white Australian’: Robertson, Geoffrey, ‘Beyond the Bicentennial’, in Dreaming Too Loud, Vintage, Sydney, 2013, p9, © Geoffrey Robertson 2013, reproduced by permission of Penguin Random House Australia.

  ‘repatriation’ was utterly inappropriate: I spoke with Sir Roger Carrick and Geoffrey Robertson for Arthur Phillip: Governor, Sailor, Spy, ABC DVD, 2015.

  those who expected … a prison were greeted with a palace: Information from www.governor.nsw.gov.au, accessed on 31 March, 2017.

  ‘Gentlemen, here is your Opera House’: Matthiesen, Stig; Bente Jensen; and Molvig, Thomas, The joy is not in owning – but in creating, Utzon Center, Aalborg, Denmark, 2011, p53.

  13

  the greatest building of the 20th Century: Keating, Paul., ‘Building a Masterpiece: The Sydney Opera House’, in After Words: The Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011, p5.

  ‘It questions “Which is reality?”’: Olsen, John, excerpt from journal entry, 21 April, 1973, in Drawn to Life, Duffy & Snellgrove, Potts Point, 1997, p105.

  Lyrics from The Eighth Wonder: composer Alan John, librettists Dennis Watkins and Alan John, 1995, revised as Sydney Opera House: The Opera (The Eighth Wonder), 2016, reproduced with permission of Alan John and Dennis Watkins.

  Fort Macquarie was being derided: Sydney Gazette, 13 September, 1834, quoted in Kerr, ‘Fort Denison’, p7.

  ‘The closing of Bennelong Point … would be an irreparable loss …’: ‘Letter to the Editor’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June, 1910, p11, accessed at trove.nla.gov.au on 8 August, 2016.

  demanded that the Toaster be torn down: An extract of that speech was published as ‘Little but shame to build on’, The Australian, 29 April, 1998, p13.

  ‘This cove … is about a quarter of a mile across’: Phillip, Arthur to Lord Sydney, May 15, 1788, quoted in Barton, G.B., History of New South Wales from the Records. Vol 1 – Governor Phillip, 1783-1789, Charles Potter, Government Printer, Sydney, 1889, p269.

  a chief architect of the idea of a penal colony: For more on Lord Sydney, see Tink, Andrew, Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2011.

  ‘the finest harbour in the known world’: Fowell, Newton (Irvine, Nance – editor), The Sirius letters: the complete letters of Newton Fowell, midshipman & lieutenant aboard the Sirius flagship of the first fleet on its voyage to New South Wales, Fairfax Library, Sydney, 1988. p73.

  ‘Here a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security’: The letter can be read at http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/terra_australis/letters/phillip/

  ‘I think it will be cheaper to feed the convicts on turtle …’: Quoted in Barton, G.B. History of New South Wales from the Records. Vol 1 – Governor Phillip, 1783-1789, Charles Potter, Government Printer, Sydney, 1889, p500.

  sixty-seven canoes were counted: Tench, Watkin, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, G. Nicol and J. Sewell, London, 1793, p9, republished by the University of Sydney library, Sydney, 1998, accessed at www.setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit on 22 January, 2017.

  ‘possesses the best anchorage the whole way’: Wentworth, W.C., Description of The Colony of New South Wales, p12.

  ‘The spot chosen … was at the head of the cove’: Collins, David, An Account of the English Colony in NSW Vol 1, T. Cadell Jun and W. Davies, London, 1798, reproduced by Project Gutenberg Australia, accessed at www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00010.html on 4 February, 2017.

  the Tank Stream is a ghost creek: Falconer, Delia, Sydney, New South, Sydney, 2010, pp33-34.

  ‘our steam-ferry system is capable of improvement’: ‘Vagrant Musings’, by Uralla, Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier, 6 September, 1879, p3, accessed at www.trove.nla.gov.au on 30 October, 2016.

  The numbers using the ferries were enormous: Figures from Lalor, Peter. The Bridge, p37.

  ‘seem to slip like fishes from one side of the harbour to the other’: Lawrence, D.H., Kangaroo, p5.

  ‘From the harbour, city towers dominated the skyline …’: Rees, Lloyd, Small Treasures of a Lifetime, p46.

  ‘infested with all sorts of bums and stiffs’: Hugill, Stan, Sailortown, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1967, p279.

  ‘polluted with the presence of that floating hell …’: ‘The Great Protest Meeting’, Sydney Morning Herald report, 12 June, 1849, p2.

  ‘the yachts will be racing on the crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires …’: James, Clive, Unreliable Memoirs, Picador, London, 1981, p174, reproduced with permission.

  his ashes to be scattered off Dawes Point: ‘Clive James makes poetic appeal for final trip home’, Kaya Burgess, The Times, 28 July, 2016, reproduced in www.theaustralian.com.au, accessed 15 April, 2017.

  ‘an utter disgrace … copying old Greece and Rome’: Quoted in Spigelman, Alice, Almost Full Circle: Harry Seidler, p191, reproduced with permission.

  the most profligate and depraved part of the population: Karskens, Grace, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney, Melbourne University Press, 1997, 167.

  ‘he would rather regard himself as in some country town in England’: Reproduced in Neville, Richard, ‘Sydney Watercolours: Portrait of a Town’, in McPhee, John (editor), Joseph Lycett: Convict Artist, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Sydney, 2006, p123, reproduced with permission of Sydney Living Museums.

  This defined … early Sydney as a maritime town: Karskens, Grace, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney, p18.

  ‘full to suffocation of the lowest women … and ruffians’: Harris, Alexande
r, Settlers and Convicts, p6.

  Gatu piryala, or ‘we two are talking to each other’: Some of the phrases recorded by Dawes were published in Flannery, Tim (editor/introduction), The Birth of Sydney, Text, Melbourne, 1999, pp111-115.

  Sydney Harbour’s watermen had … plied their trade on the Thames: Karskens, Grace, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney, p185.

  more should be done to help mariners: ‘Poor Jack’, letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August, 1906, p9.

  recalled how meaningful a Mission picnic was for him: Jones, William, H.S., The Cape Horn Breed, first published 1956, reprinted 1999, Ibex, Melbourne, p197.

  a viewing tower or part of a Museum of Sydney Harbour: www.nationaltrust.org.au, accessed 9 February, 2016.

  ‘We always looked north … Now I think we’ll look west’: Paul Keating at the Barangaroo Reserve opening, 22 August, 2015.

  14

  ‘The ordinary observer … cannot fail to see [the] metamorphosis: ‘The Wharves of Sydney’, Evening News, 23 June, 1905, p7, retrieved from trove.nla.gov.au, on 8 August, 2016.

  ‘there are few places in the world …’: ‘Linnaean Society’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February, 1879, p8, retrieved from trove.nla.gov.au on 6 March, 2017.

  its eight floors has external fire escape stairs: Fire safety information for Royal Edward Victualling Yard from www.environment.nsw.gov.au

  the same pair of scissors as Jack Lang in 1932: ‘Anzac Bridge’, www.environment.nsw.gov.au, accessed 3 May, 2017.

  fifty tonnes of seafood are traded each day: Figures from www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au, accessed 2 May, 2017.

  ‘the first white man that ever caught a fish in Sidney Cove’: Nagle, Jacob, Collection 08: Jacob Nagle – memoir. Titled ‘Jacob Nagle his Book A.D. One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Nine May 19th. Canton. Stark County Ohio’, 1775-1802, compiled 1829, pp83-84, State Library of NSW, MLMSS 5954 (Safe 1 / 156), www.sl.nsw.gov.au.

  The ‘natives’ … ‘were liberally rewarded with fish’: White, John, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301531.txt, accessed 9 May, 2016.

  the Aboriginal people passed his ship daily but never came close: Fowell, Newton (Irvine, Nance – editor), The Sirius letters: the complete letters of Newton Fowell, midshipman & lieutenant aboard the Sirius flagship of the first fleet on its voyage to New South Wales, Fairfax Library, Sydney, 1988, p79.

  ‘Our harbour has partaken largely of the character of a “dead sea”’: ‘Discoloration of Sydney Harbour’, Goulburn Herald, Monday 27 April, 1891, page 4, accessed trove.nla.gov.au on 21 July, 2016.

  places where old boats came to die: Park, Ruth, Ruth Park’s Sydney, revised edition, revised by Ruth Park and Rafe Champion, Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 1999, p166.

  ships were moved at the mercy of Mother Nature: Svensen, Randi, Heroic, Forceful and Fearless: Australia’s Tugboat Heritage, Citrus Press, in association with the Australian National Maritime Museum, Ultimo, 2011, p16-18.

  could be used for exporting silicon: Clennell, Andrew, ‘The Dawn of a New Bay’, Daily Telegraph, 22 October, 2015, pp4-5.

  there are not enough berths: Markson, Sharri, ‘Cruising for a Bruising’, Daily Telegraph, 27 April, 2017, pp8-9.

  reminisced about his Tom Sawyer existence: Tyrrell, James R., Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney, pp5-7.

  the MSB began winding back its operations: For some of the details of the history of Goat Island, I’m indebted to Mary Shelley Clark and Jack Clark’s The Islands of Sydney Harbour.

  15

  zig-zagging down the steep hill, casual workers would gather: Information from www.lakeview.net.au. accessed 10 May, 2017.

  the company went into liquidation: For more on Thomas Mort’s business career, see Barnard, Alan, Visions and Profits, Melbourne University Press, on behalf of the Australian National University, 1961.

  industrial structures … could form … inspiring public spaces: ‘Reflections on a Maritime City: An Appreciation of the Trust Lands on Sydney Harbour’, the Interim Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, Mosman, 2000, p29.

  Les Murray verse: Lines from ‘The Death of Isaac Newton, 1864’, from an information plaque at Tank 101, read on 30 October, 2016, reproduced with permission.

  The company’s fleet featured craft with the prefix ‘Pro-’: Andrews, Graeme, The Watermen of Sydney, Turton & Armstrong, Wahroonga, 2004, p29-34.

  Among the vessels listed were 559 lighters …: Andrews, Graeme, The Watermen of Sydney, p59.

  Yurulbin means ‘swift running water’: Details from information plaque in the park, read 18 April, 2016.

  The colliery was a tolerated neighbour: Details from information plaque, located on site, River St, Leichhardt Council, read 18 April, 2016.

  little evidence a massive Balmain power station was ever here: Details from information plaque, located on site, read 18 April, 2016.

  the Rotary Club of Five Dock moved the cross: Details from plaque on site, read 5 September, 2016.

  ‘a Number of small Islands, which are covered with Trees …’: Worgan, George, ‘Journal Kept on a Voyage to New South Wales with the First Fleet’, http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/terra_australis/journals/worgan/, accessed 12 January, 2017, from Collection 10: George Bouchier Worgan – letter written to his brother Richard Worgan, 12–18 June 1788. Includes journal fragment kept by George on a voyage to New South Wales with the First Fleet on board HMS Sirius, 20 January 1788–11 July 1788: Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales [Safe 1/114].

  Of those fourteen islands, eight remain: Clark and Clark, The Islands of Sydney Harbour, p1.

  now in the care of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust: ‘Shaping the Harbour’, the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, 2001-2011, 2011, p95.

  once the landing stage for Drummoyne House: Plaque read on 1 June, 2016.

  Wright was obsessive about its quality: Blaxell, Gregory, The River, p84.

  commit to memory the names of all the inlets: Andrews, Graeme, The Ferries of Sydney, p109.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BOOKS

  Ancher, Edward A., The Romance of an Old Whaling Station: The Story of the Pioneers of Mosman and Cremorne, first published in the Australian Historical Societies’ Journal, Vol.2, parts 10 and 11, 1909, republished in 1976 by the Mosman Historical Society.

  Anderson, Patricia, Art + Australia, Pandora Press, Sydney, 2005.

  Andrews, Graeme, The Ferries of Sydney, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Sydney, 1975.

  Andrews, Graeme, The Watermen of Sydney, Turton & Armstrong, Wahroonga, 2004.

  Aplin, Graeme and Storey, John, Waterfront Sydney 1860-1920, Allen & Unwin, 1991.

  Barnard, Alan, Visions and Profits: Studies in the Business Career of T.S. Mort, Melbourne University Press on behalf of the Australian National University, Melbourne, 1961.

  Barnard, Marjorie, Macquarie’s World, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1971 (republished).

  Barton, G.B. History of New South Wales from the Records, Vol 1 – Governor Phillip, 1783-1789, Charles Potter, Government Printer, Sydney, 1889.

  Bennett, Scott, The Clarence Comet: The Career of Henry Searle 1866-89, Sydney University Press, 1973.

  Blaxell, Gregory, The River: Sydney Cove to Parramatta, Halstead Press, Ultimo, 2009.

  Boyd, Robin, The Australian Ugliness, Australian Pelican, Ringwood, Victoria, 1968 (revised edition).

  Brodsky, Isadore, Hunters Hill, New South Wale: 1861-1961, John D. Jukes for the Council of the Municipality of Hunters Hill, 1961.

  Carlton, Mike, First Victory: 1914, William Heinemann, Sydney, 2013.

  Carruthers, Steven L., Japanese Submarine Raiders, 1942: A Maritime Mystery, Casper Publications, Narrabeen, 2006.

  Cash, Frank, Parables of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, self-published, Sydney, 1930.

  Cherry, Derelie, Alexander Macleay: From Scotland to Sydney, Paradise Publishers, Kulnura, 2012.

  Clark, Mary Shelley and
Clark, Jack, The Islands of Sydney Harbour, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 2000.

  Clifford, Pam, Northbridge – Building a New Suburb, self-published, Sydney, 2014.

  Cook, James, The Journals of Captain Cook, selected and edited by Philip Edwards, Penguin Books, 1999.

  Croll, R.H., Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1946.

  Coupe, Sheena, Concord: A Centenary History, Council of the Municipality of Concord, NSW, 1983.

  Culotta, Nino, They’re a Weird Mob, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1958.

  Day, A. Grove, Louis Becke, Hill of Content, Melbourne, 1967.

  Doak, Frank, Australian Defence Heritage, The Fairfax Library, Sydney, 1988.

  Dundon, Gwen, A History of Ferries on the Central Coast of NSW, self-published, in association with Deerubbin Press, Berowra Heights, 2010.

  Dundy, Elaine, Finch, Bloody Finch, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980.

  Eldershaw, M. Barnard, Phillip of Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1972.

  Emanuel, Cedric (drawings) & Dutton, Geoffrey (text), Waterways of Sydney, J.M. Dent, Melbourne, 1988.

  Emmett, Peter, Sydney: Metropolis. Suburb. Harbour., Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000.

  Ewald, Connie, The Industrial Village of Woolwich, The Hunters Hill Trust, 2000.

  Falconer, Delia, Sydney, New South, Sydney, 2010.

  Flannery, Tim (editor), The Birth of Sydney, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999.

  Fletcher, Patrick, The Story of Bungaree, Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, Sydney, 2009.

  Fletcher, Patrick (editor), The Hospital on the Hill, Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, Sydney, 2012.

  Fowell, Newton, The Sirius Letters: The Complete Letters of Newton Fowell (edited and with commentary by Nance Irvine), the Fairfax Library, Sydney, 1988 (reprinted 2007).

  Frampton, Kenneth and Drew, Phillip, Harry Seidler, Thames and Hudson, London, 1992.

  Free, Renée (in collaboration with Lloyd Rees), Lloyd Rees: The Last Twenty Years, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1990.

  Groom, Linda, First Fleet Artist, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2009.