Defending the colony (1)

This drawing jumps ahead a bit and shows Dawes Point and its battery in 1825. However, it also shows the height of the ridge and the slope to the waters' edge.

Consider the southern approach to the harbour bridge akin to a long, red, fake nail that has been slipped over a finger. I am interested in the finger underneath: what was it like before being graced with the nail; and, how the nail has changed the finger since.

Left: the slope down to The Rocks showing all that is left of the original promontory. Right: The slope down to Millers Point and Dawes Point. You can see the plateau that is now occupied by the Sydney Observatory.

The finger consists of a ridge running out along a promontory and gently sloping down to the water on both sides and around the finger tip. The ridge itself used to be York Street which extended well nigh to the finger pad but which during the late 1920s was dramatically redecorated and aligned to form the southern abuttment of the Harbour Bridge and to be renamed as the Bradfield Highway.

Imagine yourself standing at the point where York St morphs into this highway (facing north): face toward the bridge. To the right of you - to the East - the land gently slopes down from the ridge to the edge of Sydney Cove. This slope is now the inner city suburb known as The Rocks. To the left of you - to the West - the land plateaus for maybe 200 metres before gently sloping down to the edge of Walsh Bay and Darling Harbour. This slope is now the inner city suburb of Millers Point. At the front of the finger - underneath the fake nail to extend the metaphor - the land dramatically slopes down to the harbour waters. This land is known as Dawes Point. It is not a suburb. No-one lives in Dawes Point.

The middle photo was taken in April 1925 and looks down what is left of York St North. The photo on the left, was taken under the bridge showing well-nigh that same view today. Both these photos are facing north. The photo on the right is facing south and shooting along the Mlllers Point side of the bridge approaches. Now see those terraces there that appear to be white? Look in the 1925 photo on the LHS. The same row of terraces.

Governor Arthur Philip granted Lieutenant William Dawes' request to locate an observatory on this high point. Dawes named the northern most extent of the ridge Point Maskelyne after his benefactor, the Astronomer Royal. A roughly housed observatory was constructed but did not long survive the return to England of Dawes - in 1792 - and Philip in December 1791. Dawes' observatory is not the Observatory that we have today.

This high ridge was an ideal vantage point from which to defend the early colony and that is pretty much the role it played from 1792 until about 1920.

The Dawes point hypothesis ...

This is not a definitive answer: I have unearthed no official documentation.


This structure was part of the rebuilding of Millers Point after much of the suburb was razed as a response to the bubonic plague just prior to WW1. The plague was used as an excuse by the state government of the day to take control of the area and develop the maritime infrastructure that is so essential for an island continent. Hickson Road was carved through the suburb and ended at the edge of the harbour beneath the Dawes Point Battery which stood on the high part of Dawes Point facing to the east and was an essential part of the defence of the colony.


This entire wharf area was restricted, with the hoi-poloi kept out

From 1910 to 2005 the general public was kept out of Walsh Bay for their own safety and the security of goods being discharged.

When the old Sydney Harbour Trust took charge in about 1913, they sliced through the area and carved out Hickson Road which, effectively, separated the residential area of Millers Point from the maritime area of Walsh Bay.


As I said in my post on Sydney Eye

Hickson Road - named after Robert Hickson, an Irishman who was the first president of the Sydney Harbour Trust - was carved from the steep slope that ran down to Walsh Bay. Henry Walsh - after whom the wharf area was named and who migrated to Australia from Ireland in 1877 - was the Chief Publc Works Engineer between 1901 and 1919 instigating improvements to the ports of Sydney and Newcastle.

Now look at these diagrams:


See in the RHS photo how Hickson Road snakes through and does a big curve to the right at Pier 1. This is the location of the towerette. It is in line with the curve of the sandstone escarpment. Now look at the sandstone blocks embedded in the bitumen: they run from the towerette in the direction of the escarpment which has been "lined" with a very similar sandstone block. The LHS image shows just how intrusive Hickson Road was: how much land was resumed. The sandstone footings noticed by Sally - and totally overlooked by muggins here - are in line from the tower to the sandstone reinforced escarpment.

Looking at these three historic photographs:

There is a timber structure in three (small) sections that is very close to where the towerette now stands. This timber structure (to my eyes) is very similar to a structure on the Opera House walk which now sells coffee but whose original purpose was a tram control point going toward Fort Macquarie. These photos were taken as they were excavating for the southern abutment, the first in April and the other two in May of 1925. The more fascinating photo is the one in the middle which faces west. Look immediately beyond the diggings, yet before Pier 1: there is a small building with pointed eaves. This is what reminds me of a tram control point. Check them out in that old photo that you published of Railway Sq. Sally. Now look immediately in FRONT of this TCP ... dah-dah!! Note that the SHB did not disturb the railings.

I put these things together: people were supposed to be kept out; and, the escarpment ended in an entry point which was overseen by this towerette and (possibly) another towerette on the landward side - now lost to history, like so much else. My best guess: this was constructed immediately prior to WW1 and was part of a control gate, either to control trams or to keep people away from the wharf area, in which case I would expect a similar structure on the Barangaroo side. Now to find out where the trams ran in Millers Point. I think it is now time to contact someone in the council or the SHFA to see if they have anything to help us.

The Dawes Point puzzle ...

Sally has a post with a puzzle today: HB and sandstone and I simply cannot resist an historical treasure-hunt. So I have beavered away this evening chasing down clues ...
Here is Sally's photo on the left with the little structure in question. On the right is a photo I took going out to Cockatoo Island during the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend. Sal took her's on the Saturday and I mine on the Monday. But I digress ...

This image is captioned "HMAS Canberra sailing into Sydney Harbour in 1930" ... look down there to the left of the pylon - near the bow of that tug boat ... could it be ... So it could be that it was in situ prior to the bridge going up. But surely they would not leave it there during construction with all the mess flying around it stood a good chance of being damaged. But as I look more closely, the closest shore is the northern abutments of the bridge. HMAS Canberra is going INTO the harbour. And over there is the southern shore. Looking carefully I can just make out the smoke stack which is just to the east of the southern approaches of the Bradfield Highway. So there is a similar little structure on the northern shore in 1930. This doesn't make sense - yet!

So what was on the southern point (Dawes Point) immediately prior to them demolishing the whole lot for the southern approaches? In 1789 Lt Dawes created a rough observatory with scientific instruments lent to him by Maskelyne. Dawes named the area Point Maskelyne after the Astronomer Royal, but our forebears were not much into boot-licking either and just called it Dawes' Point. The Dawes Point Battery site was further down toward the water than Dawes' own observatory. Dawes himself had nothing to do with the Battery. More on the history of this in the next post.

The railings are interesting. There are similar railings on the other side of Sydney Cove around the Opera House Walk. However, there is a blacksmith working out in the Everleigh Carriageworks Precinct who has a massive reputation:

Guido Gouverneur's work appears all over Sydney. The New Zealand-born master blacksmith's most recent big-scale commission, which occupied him from April to December last year (2007), was the restoration of the balustrade at Dawes Point, running from Horseferry Steps to Pier 1. "It was a huge undertaking for us, restoring it properly and getting the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to recognise that it should be done properly," says Gouverneur.The balustrade had been spot-repaired over years but this was a much larger project: the posts were lifted from their sandstone base and corroded elements were replaced - in some sections, old bars from Parramatta Jail replaced damaged posts.

You can see the railing all along the walk in Sally's photo and again her that I photographed last year:

The above book should give me more information:The Fragile Forts: The Fixed Defences of Sydney Harbour 1788 - 1963 i have borrowed it from Fisher Library at the University and will use it to inform the next post.

There are steps down in this area variously known as Ives Steps and Horseferry Steps. Need to track down the derivation of Horseferry Steps. The ferry from Milson's Point (prior to the SHB) did not stop here but went directly to the Quay.

On the left here is the southern approaches to the bridge dated 1925. On the right is the tram and ferry terminal over at Milson's Point dated about 1920.