The coves, tributaries and bays of Sydney Harbour are today the domain of pleasure craft and ferries but once they were busy industrial waterways populated by barges and lighters that carried raw materials to and from the hundreds of factories located along their shores. Many of these manufacturers transferred their materials from the wharves to their factories using small gauge railways which ran any distance from a few metres to a few kilometres.
When rail and road transport took over as the major means of transport for goods in and around Sydney, industry began to move away from the river and towards the major road and rail arteries. Industrial activity along the harbour and river foreshores fell into gradual decline and one by one the light rail networks around the harbour were abandoned. Today, very little evidence of their existence remains, nior are there many photographs of them as they were generally temporary structures.
These are just some of the light railways that once connected the harbour with the industries and other activities along its shores.
A 2'3" gauge line was used to transport immigrant's bags and suitcases from the wharf, up an incline to the various buildings of the quarantine station on the ridge above. Powered by an internal combustion locomotive with a winch on its rear end, it was a cable tramway system, that today would be called a funicular railway.
A c. 3'6" gauge line carried passenger's luggage from the ferries along the wharf to the street tramway terminus and taxi rank. The first wharf was constructed in 1856 on the same site as the present wharf by English-born merchant and Manly enthusiast, Henry Gilbert Smith, who envisaged the place as a seaside resort. Smith bought up land in 1853 and eventually acquired an interest in steam ferries serving the locality. As well as building a house known as "Fairlight", Smith was responsible for cottages, a hotel, church, school, pleasure grounds and swimming baths. He also had much to do with planting the first Norfolk Island pines (Araucaria heterophylla) on the ocean front.
Prior to the construction of the first Spit Bridge in 1928, retired passenger ferries were used as cargo carriers. It is thought that the narrow gauge line was built at this time to bring the cargo up from the cargo carriers to the road level. Following the closure of the cargo service, an amusement park, Manly Fun Pier, was opened on the east wharf. The amusement park closed in 1989 and the two wharf structures were redeveloped in 1990.
Located in Brothers Avenue, Cammeray, Tunks Park is one of the local Council's largest parks. Extending from the foreshore of Long Bay west under the Cammeray Suspension Bridge to Flat Rock Gully Reserve, the Park is characterised by playing fields bordered by large sweeps of bushland and a lively foreshore area on Cammeray's Long Bay.
Like most bays around Port Jackson, the head of Long Bay where Tunks Park is today was originally low lying swampy ground where mangroves proliferated. At the time the Cammeray Supspension Bridge was being the built in 1939, the mangroves mudflats were filled in
From 1899, a 2' narrow gauge railway lines was also used to bring fill for the reclamation of that part of Willoughby Bay near Folly Point as part of the construction of the Folly Point sewerage works. The Tunks Park Aqueduct, built 28 years later, is a key component and one of the few substantial visible parts of the Northern Suburbs Ocean Outfall Sewer, a major Sydney engineering work of the early 20th century which serves a considerable extent of Sydney. It is a tunnel that is over 26 kilometres long and extends from Parramatta all the way to Manly.
In 1955, two Planet locomotives hauled skips full of wet concrete for construction of the new Spit Bridge. Plans for a new bridge were first drawn in 1939, however economic difficulties meant it wasn’t until 1949 that agreement was reached to build the new four lane lift bridge. The new bridge was expected for completion in 1954, but a shortage of resources meant it took 4 years longer, opening in November 1958.
In 1922-25, narrow gauge skips were used to haul spoil excavated in the construction of a stormwater outlet and the Middle Harbour Syphon that was dumped into Pearl Bay to reclaim the mud flats. At 358 meters long this inverted syphon (or pressure tunnel) allows sewerage to pass under Middle Harbour between Parriwi Point and Clontarf. It basically helps to keep waste moving while allowing for marine traffic to pass over the top.
The Middle Harbour Syphon was part of the Northern Suburbs Ocean Outfall Sewer that was under construction. This vital piece of infrastructure runs along the north side of the Parramatta River, extending as far west as Blacktown and transporting wastewater all the way to the North Head Water Resource Recovery Facility in Manly. It was a major Sydney engineering work of the early 20th century which serves a considerable extent of Sydney.
Because of its isolation from the rest of the city and its narrow entry, and steep sided valley, Bantry Bay was chosen as the site for a public explosives magazine in 1907 when development of Seaforth began, and the powder hulks anchored there had to be moved. There was public outcry that this untouched public recreational area would be used for such a purpose, but to no avail. Work began on the complex in 1909, but progress was slow until the advent of World War I, which saw construction accelerated and an opening date of August 1914 set and achieved.
Consisting of explosive storage buildings, offices, wharves, seawalls, tramlines, a dam and landing stages, the complex was built between 1911 and 1915. Many of the explosives magazine's disused buildings still stand. The twelve storage buildings of the complex, which were partially built into the hillside to deaden the effects of an explosion, have double brick walls and corrugated iron roofs designed to lift on impact.
The complex was manned by a team of 16 to 18 people who wore special clothing to protect them in case of an explosion. At its peak, it had two jetties, two pontoons, a Watchman's Cottage, a Testing Shed, a Sailmaker's Loft, an Office and a Slipway. The remnants of these structures can still be seen, as well as the terracing that was created at the northern end of the eastern shore complex. Hand-pushed narrow gauge flat-wagons carried explosives between a series of store bunkers and several wharves along the bay. This railway was in use from the time the Magazine opened in 1915 until its closure in May 1974.
In the 1870s Georges Heights became a key part of new fortifications designed to protect the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Remains of these fortifications, located at the highest point opposite the Harbour entrance, still exist and can be accessed via a walking path from Chowder Bay. Most of the tunnels, lookouts and gun emplacements seen today above the rocks between Obelisk Bay and Georges Head were constructed in 1871. No road existed into the area at the time and it was considered too difficult a task to bring the guns ashore from ships and drag them up the rugged outcrops of Georges Head and neighbouring Middle Head.
With the development of armour cladding and steam power, the battery was considered obsolete by the time it was completed. In an effort to update it, an ingenious and advanced designed Beehive Casemate battery became a key part of the fortifications at Middle Head. They were built to the design of Colonel Scratchley between 1882 and 1886 in accordance with the 1877 recommendations of Sir William Jervois. It originally housed three 18 tonne 10-inch rifled-muzzle-loading guns, two of which were transferred here from Georges Heights and one from Middle Head in 1886. These guns were housed in three giant chambers built of mass concrete with walls and roof about 1.8 metres thick. Each chamber was provided with a magazine and shell store and opened at the rear to a covered roadway. 2' gauge lines connected the numerous underground armament magazines and gun emplacements along the headland.
Up until recently, the eastern side of the bay was off limits to the public. It was home to a naval base with historic buildings originally used as a Submarine Miners Depot. The Depot was completed in 1892 for the Submarine Mining Corps, which maintained an electrically triggered minefield within Sydney Harbour as a defence against enemy ships. This was later converted to barracks and mess buildings. A light rail incline was built which ran from the Submarine Miners wharf up the side of the hill to a military warehouse (photo below). Another line carried anti-submarine mines from the shore out along the jetty.
In 1999, the Sydney Federation Harbour Trust took control of the whole defence complex at Chowder Bay and decided to undertake the Depot's revitalisation as one of its first building conservation projects. The whole complex has now been given back to the public for recrational use. The Submarine Miners Depot buildings are today home to backpacker accommodation, cafes, a scuba diving centre and The Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS)research facility.
A narrow-gauge track ran along the floor of the NSW government railway's electric cable tunnel under Sydney Harbour. During the tunnel's construction, the line was used to carry spoil from the tunnel face to a wharf where the skips were emptied into barges. Constructed between 1916 and 1926, the tunnel, which passes under Sydney Harbour from Long Nose Point on the tip of the Balmain Peninsula to Greenwich, was part of an important communications link, having been constructed to bring electrical power to the railway and tramway systems of the North Shore from the recently completed Ultimo Power Station.
It was the biggest such venture of its kind to be undertaken in Australia without overseas assistance. The tunnel is lined with concrete in some areas, cast iron in some and bedrock in others. At the centre of the tunnel is a large chamber where pumps were located to remove water. One side of the tunnel is lined with reinforced concrete shelves to house the electricity cables.
The tunnel still holds twelve cables, 8 x 11,000 volt and two 50 pair communication cables. In 1952 the Electricity Commission took over all power generation in Sydney but the railways retained the tunnel and cables which continued to carry electricity despite the tunnel having become flooded due to a lack of adequate maintenance. Use of the the tunnel ceased in 1969. Its northern entrance is marked by a concrete block placed over it in the reserve on the headland of Manns Point. Visitors to Manns Point will enjoy a good view of the Harbour in all directions, as well as observe at close range the ship-loading activities at the neighbouring Shell Oil Refinery Terminal.
A cable tramway ulilising hopper cars transported coal from beneath the Balls Head Coal loader bunker, along the jetty to load coal into ships. The Balls Head Coal Loader was constructed on the western edge of the Balls Head peninsula in 1917 to act as a steamship bunkering station, and was a significant Sydney Harbour industrial landmark. During its working life, the coal loader's gantry cranes and cable hopper cars unloaded and loaded coal onto the many ships, both passenger and commercial, that passed in and out of the Harbour. A freak wind storm damaged one of the gantry cranes beyond repair in November 1940, leaving only one crane in operation until the late 1950s.
The Loader ceased operations in October 1992, resulting in the dismantling of the site. In October 1992, the Balls Head Coal Loader ceased operations resulting in the dismantling of the site. Only the wharf, coal loading platform, tunnels and a few brick administrative buildings remain as evidence of its former operation. The Coal Loader site is now a heritage reserve.
An extensive network of lines carried armaments from the Newington Navy Armaments Depot wharf to a series of storage bunkers. The line was worked by battery-powered electric locomotives. Newington Armory is today a heritage-listed former Royal Australian Navy armament depot, now used for tourism purposes, at Holker Street, Sydney Olympic Park.. It was built from 1897 by the Royal Australian Navy. By the 1880s, Sydney's defence storage facilities had reached maximum capacity, and were considered too close to populated area.
Newington was chosen as a replacement for the storage of gunpowder and other explosives for its relative isolation. Over the years the site was enlarged, 200 acres of mudflats were drained, and the foreshore had moved out into the bay and been straightened. The gradual closure of the site as a military base began in 1957 when explosives storage was transferred to Kingswood in Sydney's greater west, and was completed in December 1999 when the Royal Australian Navy made its last transshipment of ammunition through Newington Wharf.
Newington Armory has now evolved from its military-industrial origins into a unique arts precinct, including a theatre, outdoor amphitheatre, artist studios and an exhibition space, which features the longest continuous gallery wall in Australia. The Armory has free exhibitions throughout the year, plus film festivals, public art, cultural activities and kids activities. One of these is an historic railway ride that was once used to move missiles and torpedoes around the Armament Depot. Every Sunday 11am to 1pm, every half hour. Location: Jamieson Street, Sydney Olympic Park. Limited parking available in Blaxland Riverside Park.
A network of standard gauge lines carried self propelled travelling cranes around the construction site during the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. During construction,four rack-railway self-propelled creeper cranes were used to build the arch. Each crane travelled forward on the top of the structure, and in each new position built up another part of the bridge in front of itself. The cranes were first tested in England. The crane drivers were given orders by telephone from officials working some 130 metres below.
The bridge is a two hinged steel arch, with a steel deck hanging from the arch and five steel truss approach spans leading to the arch. The arch is hinged at the base on each side of the harbour, the hinges allowing expansion and contraction and take the full weight of the bridge through large solid sandstone skewbacks. 63% of the steelwork of the arch is needed to support the deadweight of the bridge itself, 25% for the live load, 5% for wind pressure (it can withstand winds up to 200 km/hour), 5% for the effect of temperature (it can stand temperature variations of 49 degrees Celsius) and 2% for the braking of trains.
Lyne Park seawall, Rose Bay
Lyne Park was created by the reclaimation of mangrove mudflats on the shores of Rose Bay to provide a landing place for flying boats. The idea of Rose Bay being a suitable landing place for aircraft close to the city centre was birthed when a Farman Hydro-aeroplane made an emergency landing there in May 1924. Work commenced on creating a flat area jutting out into Rose Bay soon after, perhaps where small aircraft and flying boats could both land. A horse hauled tramway carted sandstone for building the retaining walls behind which were filled with dredged material.
Twenty years later a flying boat base was established on a temporary basis, and became a terminus for Qantas Empire Airways and Imperial Airways for their London to Sydney passenger services. The first passenger flight, by an Empire class Coo-ee, left for Southampton on 2nd February 1938. The service continued until the end of 1947 when Lockheed Constellation airliners replaced the flying boats that had pioneered the Kangaroo Route , the name Australians gave to the England to Australia run.
Reid Park, a flat, infilled area known as Burns Bay Reserve, has unusually, a heritage listed sewerage aqueduct across it that forms something of a gateway to the main park area from the foreshore. 2' gauge skips were used to bring tunnel spoil out to form the embankments across the head of the bay. The aqueduct is part of Sydney's Northern Suburbs Ocean Outfall Sewer, built between 1916 and 1930. This vital piece of infrastructure runs along the north side of the Parramatta River, extending as far west as Blacktown and transporting wastewater all the way to the North Head Water Resource Recovery Facility in Manly. Completed in 1929, it was a major Sydney engineering work of the early 20th century which serves a considerable extent of Sydney.
Burns Bay is one of a number of tranquil bays on the Lane Cove River, and is a great picnic spot in spite of the aqueduct that somewhat spoils the view. Behind it is a soccer field (Burns Bay Oval), also on reclaimed mangrove mudflats, backed by a pleasant shaded park area alongside Tannery Creek (also known as Burns Bay Creek). Back in 1858 the hillside to the west of the park was occupied by two tanneries, the last of which closed in 1974. Apartments have since filled the site.
Troop carrier Queen Mary anchored off Athol Bay during World War II
Numerous small narrow gauge railways were employed by industry that operated along the Mosman Bay/Sydney Harbour shoreline before major residential changed Mosmn's landscape. In 1901, an inclined tramway was built to carry feed from the wharf up to the Athol animal quarantine station, a site that is now part of Taronga Park. Around the time Sydney Ferries sold the site of its ferry wharf to the Taronga Park trustees in 1911, the surrounding bushland, military reserve and animal quarantine station were resumed for incorporation into Ashton Park.
Two sites on Charles Jenkins's estate, one near Athol and the other closer to Whiting Beach, had been reserved in 1878 for the reception of imported stock. In 1903 there were two stablishments: Athol Quarantine Station, run by Walter J. Bootle; and a sheep and dog quarantine station, run by Charles Strachan, near the corner of Bradleys Head Road and Whiting Beach Road.
On the western side of Bradleys Head is the open, southwest-facing Athol Bay, which has two small beaches located on its western, south-facing shore. The Ferrier family constructed a five room stone house named 'Athol' with a wharf, two wells, an orchard and gardens on Athol Bay in 1837. The Crown resumed Point Pleasant for defence purposes in 1871. A 3'6" gauge line was built from Bradleys Head stone pier along a flat area of Athol Bay to assist in the service of military vessels moored offshore until World war II. After the war, the railway and service facilities were removed, though old Australian warships continued to be anchored in the bay before being scrapped. During the 1980s, Australia's Majestic class aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne laid idle for a number of years in Athol Bay, waiting to be towed to China for breaking.
A quarry was opened by Mr RH Hartmett at Mosman in 1878 and was noted for its ecellent stone. The quarry was a very lucrative business, and employed 33 quarrymen. A tramway was excavated down the slope from the quarry face to a loading wharf at the water's edge. The work took three months of blasting, splitting and lifting. The finished tramway comprised 900 feet of rail with three parallel rails and four rails in a short middle section, allowing ascending and descending skips to pass each other. Mosman Bay stone from the quarry at the end of Royalist Road, Mosman, was used in the construction of many buildings in Sydney, and also for the seawall of the Royal Botanic Gardens on Farm Cove.
Goat Island is the largest island in Sydney Harbour, located just north of Darling Harbour, between Balmain and Millers Point, opposite the new Barangaroo Reserve. Over the years, Goat Island has served as a home for Aboriginal people, a quarry, convict stockade, explosives store, police station, fire station, boatyard and film set. Today the island forms part of the Sydney Harbour National Park. The island has limited facilities.
In 1901 Goat Island was vested in the newly formed Sydney Harbour Trust which used Goat Island as a depot, constructing wharves, berthing facilities, coal-store, four cottages, Harbour Masters Residence and workshop as well as making major alterations and additions to the former barrack and cook house. Between 1925 and 1931 the Trust developed a shipyard which consisted of spillways, installation of cranes and rail system to connect the various wharves, stores and worshops on the island. These lay abandoned today.
Photo: Digitalised Collections, University of Melbourne
Balmain is one of Sydneys oldest waterfront areas, within 2 km of the CBD and commanding outstanding Harbour views. By the mid 19th century Balmain had developed into Sydneys biggest maritime industrial/residential area, with clusters of workmens cottages standing cheek-by-jowl with the industries in which their tenants eked out a living. Boat yards, ship repair and ship building yards abounded around the foreshores of Balmain, as well as on Cockatoo Island, Goat Island and neighbouring headlands. Thy all had slipways that utilised some form of rail transportation to get ships and boats in and out of the water. A standard gauge tramway ran from the wharf around the maintenance works of Sydney Ferries Limited from 1926 until well into the 1960s.
Lever Brothers Sunlight factory, Balmain
Big industry also established itself on the foreshore, with many utilising lighty rail to move goods and raw materials around their yards as well as on and off ships. In Gow Street, Iron Cove, an incline was built in 1919 that ran up from a covered wharf to the Elliott Brothers Ltd's Balmain Chemical Works. Their factory employed 150 workers. This site also provided the last large vehicle access and wharf for transport to and from nearby Cockatoo Island. The firm of Elliott Bros. was established when three brothers George, Frederick and James Elliott purchased an established importing, wholesale druggist and dry salting business in Sydney in 1859. The brothers expanded the business to include the manufacture of drugs and chemicals and the sale of surgical instruments.
A Cowan & Israel soap box
A self-acting incline, installed in 1898, ran between the wharf on White Bay and Lever Brothers soap and candle factory. It operated from 1895 until 1988, making Sunlight soap from oil extracted from imported copra (dried coconut kernels). Numerous lines ran through the factory site. 5 and 7 Rosebery Place are two of only three of the original buildings that remain. From 1864, a line ran between the stone wharf and Messrs.
The largest and most complete soap and candle works in the colony is that of Messrs. Cowan and Israel, at Glebe Point on Johnstons Bay, Glebe. Their business commenced as a boiling down works, but it soon grew, with three large soap boilers, several buildings, a deepwater wharf, jetty and tramway connecting them. In 1861 Samuel Cowan and Moses Israel, of Annandale, Johnstone's Bay, soap and candle manufacturers was listed as insolvent with liabilities of £8378 12s.; Assets of £4701 7s.4d and a Deficit of £3577 4s. 8d. However, Cowan and Israel fortune's changed when the the British Government awarded to Cowan's family's firm Messrs. Cowan and Sons, the largest ever Naval contract for the supply of 300 tons of soap for the navy. The Balmain factory then expanded into manufacturing scented toilet soaps.
Cockatoo Island is the largest island in Sydney Harbour. Located at the junction of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers, Cockatoo Island has been put to a number of uses since colonisation, the remnants of which can be seen today. It has been a convict prison, industrial school and girls reformatory. Many buildings from this era remain and can be visited.
Fitzroy Dock was the first of two graving docks that have been cut into the bedrock of the island. The dock was designed by Gother Kerr Mann, the island's Civil Engineer, and built between 1847 and 1857 utilising convict labour. The foundation stone of its ashlar lining was laid on 5 June 1854 by Governor Charles Augustus FitzRoy, with the dock being named in his honour. Tramways were used in constructing the Fitzroy Graving Dock.
Cockatoo Island is also the site of one of Australia's biggest shipyards during the twentieth century. The first of its two dry docks was built by convicts and was completed in 1857. Large sections of the shipyard facility remain, including the two dry docks, the shipbuilding slipways and many of the buildings within the shipyard. The lower part of the island, which surrounds the central area, has been mostly levelled and developed for dockyard purposes and still accommodates over 80 industrial buildings, concrete pads from demolished buildings, cranes, dry docks and wharf related structures. Electric powered crane railways ran around the docks and wharves.
Spectacle Island lies in the main channel of the western section of Sydney Harbour (it is actually in the Parramtta River), upstream of the Harbour Bridge, adjacent to the Sydney suburb of Drummoyne and tucked in behind Cockatoo Island. Dating from 1865, the island is historically significant as it is the oldest naval explosives manufacturing and storage complex in Australia. Originally built to store government gunpowder, the island was converted to store naval munitions in 1893, for which purpose it hosts store sheds, jettys and an internal railway system. Wooden tramways connected the wharf and ammunition loading buildings. Standard gauge lines connected various buildings. Lines are still visible at the entrance to the main store shed (photo above).
The island has been significantly increased in size by the use of waste from the coalmine in nearby Balmain. Today, the island is a depository of heritage items of the Royal Australian Navy and also is the home of Training Ship Sydney, a unit of the Australian Navy Cadets.
The most significant impetus to Meadowbank's development was the construction of the Strathfield-Hornsby railway line, with a single track opening in 1886. The Meadowbank railway bridge was built in 1885-1886. Tramways were used to carry rock from a wharf during construction of the bridge. The railway had its most immediate impact at Meadowbank and West Ryde, where the owners of the large Meadowbank Estate carried out their first subdivision on the western side of the railway line in 1883, in anticipation of the railway, and a later subdivision closer to the line in 1888.
Mellor Brothers, a South Australian firm, established the Meadowbank Manufacturing Company on the east side of the railway line in 1890. The company became a lrading manufactueer of stump-jump implements, strippers, windmills, pumps, horse-rakes, wheat separators, ploughs, harrows, scarifiers, shares and other agricultural and general implements. A standard gauge tramway ran from an agricultural equipment works down to a wharf where the equipment was shipped to the wharves of Sydney for export.
'Burnside' under construction, Kidman and Mayoh's Shipyard
A short distance downstream from the Meadowbank Railway Bridge is Kissing Point where, Kidman and Mayoh's Shipyard was established in the 1920s to build freight ships to replace the freight fleet after World War I. A self-propelled travelling cranes ran along tracks around a shipyard. The venture had a disastrous outcome, with the two ships built there,both were never commissioned, and were eventually burnt and sold for salvage. Halvorsen's Shipyard was located where James Squire's original wharf stood. Halvorsen's shipyard is located where the wharf of pioneer settler James Squire stood. Halvorsen's made ships for World War II.
Located on the Lower North Shore, Woolwich is one of Sydney's wealthiest suburbs, a remarkable turnaround for what for many years was at the heart of Sydney's shipbuilding industry. Located 11 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, , Woolwich sits on the peninsula between the Lane Cove River and the Parramatta River, jutting out from Hunters Hill. In 1899, Morts Dock and Engineering Company of Balmain began work on a planned new dry dock. This included reclamation work and sea wall construction. The dock was cut 175 metres directly into the sandstone, some 30 metres wide. 85,000 cubic metres of sandstone was excavated to create the dock. a series of lines were built around the dock's to assist i moving ship enginess etc. around the perimeter of the dock.
On 4 December 1901 the dock was officially opened and used for the repair and fitting-out of large ships. Several extensions were carried out between 1902 and 1918 which saw the dock lengthened to its present 260 metres. After the Depression of the 1930s work did not pick up until World War II. At its busiest, the dock employed 1,500 people. New work declined again after the war and in 1958 the company ceased operations and went into voluntary liquidation.
Radium Hill Company's smelter, 1912
Though Hunters Hill is today a residential suburb with no industry, it was not always that way. An early industrial undertaking in the Clarkes Point area was the Radium Hill Company's smelter which began operations in 1909 by the waterfront and up Radium Hill near Kelly's Bush. It was a processing works for the extraction of radium from ore mined at Radium Hill in South Australia. The Company imported pitch blend (the main source of the radium) from Spain and used the Radium Hill ore (carnotite) as a flux. Luminescent paint was a by-product of the process and this was sold to a German watch making company.
A single line of tramway ran along a timber jetty to the factory. The Radium Hill Company ceased its operations in 1916 but the clean-up of the radioactive waste did not take place until over a half a century later. Several properties on Nelson Parade at Hunters Hill were built on land contaminated by the former uranium processing site. The area was also occupied by a carbolic acid plant until the early 1900s and a tin smelter until the 1960s.
Pastoral Finance Association's Kirribili woolstore
The Pastoral Finance Association's Cold Store was located on the Milsons Point foreshore, where Luna Park is today. Built in 1897, a standard gauge line carried wagons of frozen meat from a wharf into the company's cold store. A short distance away, on the Kirribilli foreshore, right next door to Admiralty House, is the site of the Pastoral Finance Association's woolstore.
That seems like an unthinkable place for a pastoral company to build a storage facility, but in the late 19th century century, Sydney Harbour was a working harbour that was seen and used as the city's back door or tradesman's entrance, and not a tourist show piece. In December 1921, however, a fire broke out in the building, razing it to the ground. 30,000 bales of wool were lost in the tragedy. By then, the store was beginning to be looked upon as an eyesore, and foul play was suspected. The Beulah Street wharf is where the Pastoral Finance Association's woolstore wharf used to be.
A tramway ran from a wharf to the timber yard of Messrs. Hart, Hitchcock, & Co. in Darcy Street, Parramatta. The company originally began as Hart and Sons in 1887. In 1894, during the height of the depression, the firm of Hart and Sons ceased trading but was quickly reborn as Hart, Hitchcock and Co. William Hart, the son, had joined with William Williams Hitchcock who came to Parramatta to join Hart in forming the new company.
Sandown was an indstrial area where the suburb of Camelia is today. Sandown Railway Station was situated on the Sandown branch line (off the now-closed Carlingford line which follows James Ruse Drive) adjacent to the Parramatta River and was the location for a container terminal as well as a refinery tanker loading facility. It was the terminus for electric train services on the Sandown line which commenced 10 August 1959. In its heyday, the Sandown Line had four platforms including the Hardies station (pictured) and several sidings to move workers and goods to and from the factories around Grand Avenue.
Passenger services for the Abattoirs line were operated by CPH railmotors operating from Sandown via Lidcombe until November 1984. Passenger services to Sandown ceased on 19 December 1991. The Sandown line officially closed on 1 July 2019, with a section of the corridor set aside for use as part of the Parramatta Light Rail. A platform on the Sandown railway line was opened on 7 March 1927 and served the Australian Cream Tartar Company factory in Camellia. It closed in July 1959, the same year the Sandown line was electrified in August.
A signal box, the Steel Plate loading platform and sidings belonging to Shell Clyde Refinery were located beyond Sandown. A siding branched off the line just before the platform. A line from the siding, built in 1897, ran from The Graziers' Meat Export Company canning works to their wharf. A standard gauge street tramway powered by steam tram motors connected Redbank Wharf (near junction of Duck River and Parramatta River) with industries along the route and carried passengers to the Parramatta Park Gates along Macquarie Street.
State Brickworks, Homebush. Photo: State Library of New South Wales
In 1953, a 2' gauge line and a loco were used to haul skips of material to build embankments around Homebush Bay, which were later filled behind with dredged silt. Nor far away was the State Brickworks, established in 1910, which ran a 2' gauge tramway from the brickworks to its wharf on the river. The Abattoirs Railway Branch Line serviced the State Brickworks, State Abattoirs and Homebush Saleyards. By the time construction for the Olympic Games precinct began, must of the area had already been closed down.
CSR was founded in 1855 by a Danish gentleman named Sir Edward Knox. Its first refineries were located in the city and at Canterbury before moving to this site at Pyrmont where they commenced operations in 1877. CSR was not only a sugar refinery, it was also a distillery which at one stage supplied half of Australia’s industrial alcohol needs. It also supplied a third of Australia’s rum.
In 1936 it expanded its operations to produce canite and particle board which are both building materials. CSR had been linked with Concord since 1942 when the Concord Plaster Mill was opened there to process gypsum for the manufacture of Plaster of Paris for the building trade. Gyprock for interior walls and ceilings was manufactured at the plant from 1947, and Caneite, made from sugar cane, followed soon after. Eventually radiata pine replaced bagasse in insulating board manufacture although the well-established product Caneite was retained. In 1948 a floor tile plant was added to the site. The plant was closed in 1982.
Berger & Sons Paint Works, Rhodes, 2 August 1937. The factory is now the site of the Rhodes Shopping Centre
In 1911 when Messrs. G & C. Hoskins established a large foundry specialising in the manufacture of cast iron pipes for gas and city water reticulation purposes, heralding the entry of industry onto the once picturesque and heavily forested isthmus. Rhodes Hall was demolished in 1919 to make way for the John Darling Flour Mills. During the period from about 1930 to the mid-1980s, the western part of the suburb between Homebush Bay and the railway line was taken up by chemical manufacturing. The main manufacturers were CSR Chemicals, Union Carbide, Allied Feeds and Berger Paints. In 1926 until around 1948, a double tracked incline ran between a wharf and the Berger Paints factory. In 1923 Berger Paints contributed 22,7125 litres of paint to the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protect the the bridge steelwork.
Mortlake was notable as the site of the Australian Gas Light Company (AGL) gas works, which first purchased land here in 1883. Colliers from Newcastle brought coal to the gasworks site at Mortlake. When a new Gladesville Bridge was opened in 1964, it was built to replace a bridge that needed to close every time the swing section on the southern end of the bridge had to be opened to permit large vessels to pass through. The gas works closed and the land redeveloped into the Breakfast Point residential development.
Between 1886 and 1953, a network of 3' gauge line operated by steam locomotives carried coal from a wharf on the Parramatta River to the AGL Gasworks. Until 1948, an electric tramway connected Mortlake south to the suburbs of Burwood, Enfield and Ashfield.
Nestlé factory, Abbotsford. Photo: Canada Bay Local Studies Collection
Nestlé, then known as the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, purchased Abbotsford House and its grounds in 1917 to build the 'largest chocolate factory in the Southern Hemisphere'. Abbotsford House was retained for use as offices, while the factory was constructed on three sides of the house. When the factory opened, a line carried coal from a bunker on the harbour-end of the wharf to the boiler house at the chocolate factory.
Sydney Wiremill, Abbotsford. Photo: Canada Bay Local Studies Collection
Two kilometres to the east of Abbotsford House on Blackwall Point Road at Chiswick was the wire works of Lysaght. The Sydney Wiremill was established by Lysaght Bros & Co on the Parramatta River at Chiswick in 1884. While a range of wire products were produced at the factory, there was a huge demand for wire netting for fences as rabbits had reached plague proportions in agricultural areas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Steamships brought the wire feed from Germany to Sydney where it was unloaded onto barges before being transported along the Parramatta River to the Wiremill. The raw materials were then pushed on trolleys along rails to the machines at the top of the ridge. The factory layout utilised gravity to assist in the transfer of materials through various processes and bringing the finished products back down to the wharf for dispatch. The wire making looms were powered by steam produced on the site prior to electricity being used. The Sydney Wiremill became a subsidiary of BHP which operated it until December 1998 when the factory closed.
Pyrmont was the home of Hudson Brothers, timber merchants, a major manufacturer of railway rolling stock for the NSW Government Railways in the late 19th century. The commenced trading from premises in Redfern before moving the headquarters to Murray Street, Pyrmont, after the Redfern premises was destroyed by fire in October 1898. Much of their timber was initially sourced from their sawmilling operation at Myall Lakes.
Timber merchants and building materials manufacturers Goodlet and Smith grew out of a timber yard and saw milling business in Erskine Street, Sydney in 1855. 12 years later, Goodlet and Smith expanded their interests and began producing bricks, pottery and earthenware, first from premises in Riley Street, Sydney, and later from brickworks in Waterloo and Granville. They operated a 4 HP vertical boiler steam engine and windlass at Darling Harbour that hauled logs from the river along an elevated traveller into their Pyrmont timber works.
Pyrmont Power Station
Commissioned in 1899, Pyrmont Power Station was the first major power station in Sydney and was originally built to supply power for the electric tram network. The Sydney railway and tramway power grid consisted of Ultimo and White Bay Power Stations, which were linked by a 6600 V transmission network and fed railway and tramway sub-feeder stations. A battery powered dump truck carried boiler ash on a standard gauge track between the Power Station and an ash dumping wharf on Darling Harbour. Following the closure of the Sydney tram network in 1961, Ultimo Power Station was decommissioned in 1963. The building was later recycled as the Powerhouse Museum.
Garden Island, located in Sydney Harbour to the east of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Circular Quay, has been associated with the defence of Sydney and eventually Australia, since the first fleet of convicts arrived in 1788. From 1810 Garden Island was used essentially as a picnic area for the residents of Sydney until 1856 when it was set aside for use by the Royal Navy as a base. Since that time, the base has grown in a ramshackle manner with the addition of a plethora of new buildings and facilities over the course of the next century. It is connected to the mainland by the Captain Cook Graving Dock.
Garden Island remains a restricted area and houses the Fleet Base of the Royal Australian Navy and the Garden Island Dockyard. A standard gauge line, installed in the 1880s and extended over the years, links the main wharves and workshops, and was worked by a series of locomotive cranes.
In years gone by, Sydney Cove was the focal centre of maritime activity on Sydney Harbour. It was here that the tall ships of the 19th century unloaded their cargoes, that thousands of migrants - convict and free - got their first sight of Australia, and from here that many troops went off to war. Today, its maritime activity centres around pleasure craft and ferries, trains and buses taking residents and tourists to a variety of locations around the harbour. Circular Quay is graced by the presence of cruise liners particularly during the southern hemisphere's peak cruising season (September to April).
Work commenced on building the seawall in 1841, first on the eastern side and later on the western and southern sides (1854) after reclamation of the mudflats. It was the last major public work to utilise convict labour. The wall was cut from rock quarried on Cockatoo Island. A tramway was built around Sydney Cove to transport the sandstone blocks of the wall from a barge to where they would ultimately placed. The seawall remains intact today.
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