The Great Synagogue Sydney, 1878

For an excellent history of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation, read Rabbi Apple in OzTorah » Blog Archive » A history of the Great Synagogue, Sydney. The formal establishment of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation came in Nov 1831 when “The Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews’ Synagogue held over Mr Rowell’s shop in George St”. Later interior alterations were made by Barnett Aaron Phil­l­ips, a carpenter who had worked at Drury Lane and built Aust­ralia’s first stage scenery in the Theatre Royal. The synagogue ark 1830s was one of the earliest pieces of religious furniture in the country.

Eventually numbers of congregants grew to over 300 adults, so larger premises were leased in Bridge St Sydney. When even bigger facilities were required, a building went up in York St Sydney. This new synagogue had comfortable space for 500 seats and was elab­or­ately furnished. Its ark, larger and even more impressive than that in Bridge St, also survives. The final move came in the 1870s when a site in Elizabeth St was purchased.

Pest Synagogue, 1854-9 [above] ..Brussels Synagogue 1875 [below]

The Great Synagogue in Sydney was to reflect the important Great Synagogue in the City of London 1788-90 in its practices and possibly its appearance. However the Sydney arch­itecture may have derived its inspiration from a number of different sources, including the Great Synagogue Pest 1854-9 or the Great Synagogue Brussels 1875 built in the Romanesque-Byzantine style.

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A comp­et­ition for the design for the new building was won by Sydney architect Thomas Rowe, who planned a building in the French Gothic taste. For financial reasons his plans had to be modified, so Rowe did not get to create his elaborate, dream building. But it didn’t matter; the foundation stone was laid in 1875.

Great Synagogue, Elizabeth St entrance, Sydney, 1878

Great Synagogue, rose window

The Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878. This cathedral synagogue was built in sandstone in the neo-gothic style of course, but with some clear Byzantine elements. The most cathedral-like element was the giant rose window in the front wall, facing Elizabeth St and the gorgeous Hyde Park outside. Two square towers flanked the central compart­ment, terminating in beautiful domes, and the entire front was enclosed by ornate cast-iron gates (as seen in The Great Synagogue: Sydney sandstone tour Part 12, in the Sydney Daily Photo blog.

The interior of the synagogue was designed to maximise the sense of space, due to the height of the cast iron columns. The main décor­at­ive elements were the moulded plaster decorations, the panelled and groined ceiling, carved timber work, stained glass windows and gas-light pendants. As fas as I can see, the deep blue ceiling and silvery stars represented the night sky.

Interior space, men on the ground floor, women in the upper gallery.

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Sydney City and Suburbs blog showed a delightful photo of The Great Synagogue as it appears now, still beautiful but hemmed in between the two adjoining buildings. The building is heritage listed.

St David's Church Haberfield, 1869. Another Sydney building designed by Rowe

Keith's Site - Sydney Life - the suburb of Haberfield showed St David’s Uniting Church 1869 that was designed by the same architect, Thomas Rowe. In particular, note the square Norman style tower, not totally dissimilar to the square towers in front of the Great Synagogue, created just a few years later.

New West End Synagogue London, 1879

Another comparison will prove useful. The New West End Synagogue 1879 in St Petersburgh Place Bayswater, is one of the oldest and most impressive synagogues in London. Compare the date and the architecture with the Great Synagogue in Sydney.

Traditional Vs Modern Art: 1930s Australia

In "Addled Art" by Lionel Lindsay and "Addled Art": dishonest art dealers, I noted that James S Macdonald and Lionel Lindsay were not the only fiercely anti-modernists in the Australian art world of the 1930s and early 40s. However they were definitely the most powerfully placed, thus influencing important public decisions. Jane Hunt’s 'Victors' and 'Victims'?: Men, Women, Modernism and Art in Australia in Journal of Australian Studies, 80, 2004 was very useful in explaining their fear of modernity, so I will quote her extensively.

In the years between the two world wars the Australian art estab­lish­ment was run by a band of traditionalists who were at first irritated and later ser­ious­ly threatened by a bunch of critical young innovators. The story of the emergence of modern art in Australia seems to be about the vict­ory of the innovators. It is the victors who write history. Four key art histories present this story of victory: Australian Painting by Ber­nard Smith; Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese; The Innovat­ors by Geoffrey Dutton; and Black Swan of Trespass by Humphrey McQueen. Smith argued that after WW1 'the old men of the tribe, their years of exile over, began to lay down the law for the guidance of the young'. Their chief objective entailed the prot­ection of the health, sanity and vitality of Australian art from the madness of Europe. In their day the Heidel­berg painters were regarded as innovative and modern. But many of them were in fact realists who mellowed with time and event­ually became art critics, publishers and trustees.

Their law-making coincided with the emergence in Sydney of small group of artists who, following European trends, exper­im­ented with a range of stylistic and technical innovations collect­ively thought of by many as modern art. By the 1920s a few artists had begun to ex­periment with modern aesthetic ideas. In 1926 two artists formed the Sydney Contemporary Group with a large proportion of modernist women artists. Two artists opened the Modern Art Centre in 1932. In 1932, two Melbourne art teachers formed the Melbourne Contemporary Group.

In the political and economic uncertainty of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the established experts to bellig­erence. By the late 1930s these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the Melbourne and Sydney art worlds. They re­volved around a dichotomous relationship between ideologically and artistically con­servative forces and aesthetically modern, politic­ally radical ones. The moments of greatest interest to art historians include the formation of the Academy of Australian Art in 1937 and the subsequent founding of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938; a series of challenges to the authority of the conservative art estab­lishment in Sydney; and the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell.

Modigliani, Portrait of Morgan Russell, 1919. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

When Robert Menzies (later Prime Minister) proposed the form­at­ion of an Australian Academy of Art, Melbourne modernists were con­cerned that their departure from conventional artistic practice would be marginalised. Their fears seemed confirmed when Menzies opened the Victorian Artists' Society show in April 1937 and singled out for attack a wall of modernist paintings. A deb­ate ensued in the press: Adrian Lawlor compiled the resulting copy in a booklet entitled Arquebus. Leaders of the modernist group, inc­lud­ing Lawlor and George Bell, formed the Contemporary Art Society 1938.

Herbert Vere Evatt M.P (later Leader of the Labour Party) be­came involved as an approving observer and occasional public advocate. At an exhibition opening in June 1937 Evatt urged Australian galleries to show more modern paintings. He drew a strong rejoinder from James MacDonald, a cultural conservative who had served as art director in New South Wales before moving to the National Gallery of Victoria; “Australian art galleries simply did not like modern art, and it should not be hung in public at all”, said MacDonald (11).

The Looking Glass blog recorded something very similar in The art of Mary Alice Evatt. The NSW Chief Librarian W.H. Ifould was also a trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. Ifould told people in the mid 1930s “there are no books on modern art in the Country Reference Section … because to the best of my knowledge no one in the country is interested in modern art”.

In March 1937 George Bell led an anti-Academy vote in the Vic­tor­ian Artists' Society on the grounds that the Academy would recognise only a lim­ited range of art­istic practices. Was it coincidence that mod­ernist exhibition entries were on prominent display when Menzies con­demned modernism at the opening of the Victorian Artists' Society exhibition? Evatt’s speech at the first Contemporary Art Society exhibit­ion, in June 1939, echoed the polemic of the debates.

Art historical accounts of the Sydney story draw on rich anti-labour, anti-Semitic, anti-modernist polemic, with the result of sketching neat divides that were more complex in real­ity. In particular, the art histories draw on the writings of Lionel Lindsay, member of the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The main confrontations centred on the public display of the Herald Exhibition of French and British Art from late 1939, the award of the 1943 Arch­ibald Prize to William Dobell, and the nomination of modernist sym­pathisers to positions on the board of trustees. Lindsay and other trustees complained to James S Macdonald in Melbourne, and to a politically embat­tled Robert Menzies, over the travesties being wrought in the name of art.

Embedded in modernism is a sense of ambivalence concerning the reality of late C19th and C20th society and politics. While some creative intellectuals may have revelled in The Modern, others were deeply troubled by it. In writing on the metaphysics of modernism, Michael Bell captures the anxiety that the spectre of modernity evoked in some, in his discussion of the Coll­apse of Idealism. It appears that anxiety, anti-modern loathing, racial suprematism and fascist inclinations on the one hand and the open embrace of urb­an­isation, mass production and new aesthetic possibilities, on the other, may both be regarded as characteristic of modernism.

Stanley Spencer, Parents Resurrecting 1933. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art.

While signs of modernity were apparent in Australia by 1913, modernism was something that, due to cultural lag, the highly liter­ate public only knew about European developments via newspapers. Modernism, in both its negative and positive strains, came late to Australia. It was only during WW1 that artistic modernism emerged in Australia, and in the wake of the war that the Lindsay brothers, state libraries and galleries and most newspaper critics and politicians, acting on a nostalgic isolationism, began to attack modernism in art and literary forms.

There was contradictory responsiveness to the modern. Lionel Lind­say's taste combined a conservative cultural nationalism with an isolationist horror at all the 'revolutionary manias of a rotted world', as he described modern Europe in 1923. Lionel Lindsay's views epitomised the fascist-leaning, anti-modern loathing described by Blair as one side of the possible intellectual response to modernity. However, as the William Dobell Archibald Prize nomination by Lindsay demonst­rat­ed, his rejection of modernist innovation was not absolute.

Artistic conservatives reasoned that art should serve as an educator in higher ideals, but did so in a way that justified their rejection of modernism in art in favour of idealised nature. The Lindsays genuinely believed that modernism threatened the Canons of Beauty. To James Macdonald, the New School set out 'to prove the innate ugliness of all that seems beautiful'. Modernists not only perverted beauty, but were 'unconcerned with and only affected infinitesimally man's search for truth'.(59) Only nationalist land­scape paintings were concerned with permanent things like Love, Truth and Beauty. It appears that artistic allusions to a set of eternal values, or lessons drawn from great traditions of the past were comforting in the uncertainty of the present, whatever the type of art that was seen to convey them. Idealism and nostalgia were both characteristic intellectual and artistic responses to modernity.

Edward Wadsworth, The English Channel 1934. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of British and French Contemporary Art.

Conclusion

In all of Hunt’s excellent analysis, two thoughts stand out. In the political and economic crises of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the establishment to fear-based respon­ses. James MacDonald, for example, assured the public that modernism was 'gangrened stuff which attracts the human blowflies of the world who thrive on putrid fare'. Hunt doesn’t explain why the traditionalists used the neo-Nazi language of Josef Goebbels, but she does explain why these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the art worlds in the late 1930s and early 40s.

And the flow of progressive ideas was eventually unstoppable. Lionel Lindsay was still writing with great venom in 1942, but he could no longer do any harm.

(11) Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1939; 3 July 1939.
(59) James S Macdonald Papers, NLA MS 430, box 1, pp 15, 27.

Excellent references:
1. Chanin, Eileen and Steven Miller The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, Melb, 2005
2. Haese, Richard Rebels And Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, Allen Lane, Melbourne, 1981 and

3.Dear Kitty. Some blog's post called Australia: modern art conflict in 1930s

Medical Heritage Trail: University of Sydney

The University of Sydney has created a Medical Heritage Trail, a very informative self-guided walk that covers the medical architecture, museums, libraries and artworks of the first university to be estab­lished in Australasia. I love the idea of Australian universities analysing and publishing their own histories, but I also have a personal fascination – University of Sydney Medical School is my husband’s alma mater.

The Medical Cottage

The University was incorporated 1850 and inaugurated Oct 1852. In 1855, the Government gave the University land at Grose Farm, about 3 ks from the city. The first plans for the University's original building, the Quadrangle, were drawn up by architect Edmund Blacket. By 1862 the famous Great Tower had been completed. But a medical faculty was not thought of, at that stage.

As recorded in the University’s on-line history, Places - Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive, there was an attempt upon the life of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh on a Sydney beach in 1868. The Duke was taken to Government House and attended by the surgeons of HMS Galatea and HMS Challenger. The Sydney community raised money in thanks, and the Duke asked that the money be used to build a hospital (Prince Alfred Memorial Hospital). The University of Sydney granted the use of University land, provided that a] a portion of the land was reserved for a school of medicine and b] that the hospital be open for clinical teaching to students of the medical school.

The entire medical student body 1887

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In 1882 Royal Prince Alfred Hospital opened and became the Faculty’s first teaching hospital. That same year, the government agreed to finance a medical school. The Faculty of Medicine was largely shaped by the hard work and brilliance of Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart, who travelled to Australia from Edinburgh. Anderson Stuart took up the Professorship at the University of Sydney in 1883 and immediately began the task of opening the medical school. In that first year, 4 students started their studies in a 4-roomed cottage built behind the Great Hall of the University.

It was a slow start. Of the 29 students who enrolled in the first three University intakes, 11 graduated in minimum time and 3 after repeating one or more years. But confidence in the quality of the medical degree encouraged increased enrolments so that by 1893, 10 years after its inception, there were 100 students.

The Sydney Hospital for Sick Children was founded in 1880 in Glebe. Dr Alfred Roberts, who already had played a key role in the founding of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Coast Hospital, became one of the first surgeons of the Sydney Hospital for Sick Children. By 1884, Sydney Hospital for Sick Children was already recognised as a teach­ing hospital by the University of Sydney. And the very next year, 1885, Callan Park Hospital for the Insane also became a teaching hospital. Designed by colonial architect James, Callan Park Hospital had patients’ wards, joined by a central block which contained med­ical consulting rooms, a library and a pathology museum. Typical of Australian colonial architecture, the building had high ceil­ings, wide verandas, large windows and long covered walkways. The Royal Hospital for Women Paddington didn’t become a teaching hospital for Obstetric training until 1888.

Sydney Hospital for Sick Children, Glebe, c1860

Anderson Stuart wanted a more suitable medical school and in 1887, a new building was commenced. The first part of this Tudor-gothic building, later called the Anderson Stuart Building, was designed by architect Edmund Blacket and finished in 1891. Like mid-late C19th university buildings in Britain, this building had ornate carved elements including crenellations, pinnacles and grotesques.

Anderson Stuart Medical Building, 1891

iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge: 1932-2012

We assume that iconic buildings were always in the site they currently grace. We cannot imagine Pisa without its leaning tower or Paris without its Eiffel Tower. Yet each structure, however iconic now, was once the subject of vigorous council debates, contradictory community input, contested tenders, budgetary problems, technical concerns and finally uncertain public use.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was no different. This week is the 80th anniversary of its opening in March 1932.

Sydney Harbour Bridge today. Note the Art Deco pylons.

Virtually since the beginning of European settlement in Sydney, transportation links between the north and south shores of Sydney Harbour had been problematic. I am very proud to see that my favourite architect from the colonial period,  Francis Greenway, recommended to Governor Macquarie that the North Shore should be linked to Sydney by a bridge. In letters to The Australian in 1825 ex-convict Greenway wrote that such a bridge would 'give an idea of strength and magnificence that would reflect credit and glory on the colony and the Mother Country'.

Over the next few decades, engineers proposed every possible design type  eg truss bridges, arch bridges or floating bridges.

But it wasn’t until governmental engineer John C Bradfield (1867-1943) took hold of the project that Sydney could  make this long-held fantasy a reality. He favoured building a cantilever overpass, without piers, between Dawes Point and McMahons Point.

In 1916 the Legislative Assembly (lower state house) passed the Bill for the construction of a cantilever bridge. It was going to happen, at last.

Of course we know that projects don't necessarily run smoothly. In this case, the Legislative Council (upper state house) rejected the legislation on the grounds that money would be better used for the war effort. This setback did not deter Bradfield who developed the full specifications and scheme to finance the construction of a cantilever bridge. In 1921 he went on a research tour overseas which convinced him that tenders should be called for both cantilever and arch designs.

Finally, in the post-war period, the necessary Act for the construction of a high-level cantilever or arch bridge across Sydney Harbour was passed; it was to connect Dawes Point with Milson's Point. The 1922 Act provided for both the construction of the bridge and the construction of electric railway lines.

In 1923 tenders were called for a cantilever or arch bridge. Twenty tenders were received from local companies and from abroad. In March 1924 the contract was given to the English firm Dorman Long & Co of Middlesbrough with a design for an arch bridge at a tender price of £4.2 million. The arch design was not only cheaper than the cantilever and suspension proposals, but had the advantage of greater rigidity. This would be important for the heavy traffic that the bridge was going to be carrying.

Thomas Tait was the consulting architect to Dorman Long with responsibility for the design of the purely decorative pylons. Tait drew on the Roman cenotaph form and on the iconography of Egyptian monuments to add a war memorial symbol after the Great War.

Under construction. Photo credit: National Library of Australia

Construction began in 1923 and of course there was great pain for the location population. The first thing that happened was the demolition of 800 solid homes. The owners of these homes received compensation, but their tenant occupants did not. And eventually there was also considerable morbidity and mortality amongst the workers.

The contractors set up two workshops at Milson's Point on the North Shore where the girders were made from steel. Abutments, which supported the ends of the bridge, were contained at the base of the very Art Deco pylons. They prevented the bridge from stretching or compressing due to temperature variations. The steel used for the bridge was largely imported. 80% came from Redcar in the North East of Britain while the rest was locally made. The granite used was quarried in the south coast town of Moruya, and the concrete used was also Australian made. The total weight of the bridge was 52,800 tonnes, and six million hand-driven rivets held the bridge together.

The two arches met at the centre of the span in August 1930. The road, and the two sets of tram and railway tracks, were completed in 1931. Power, lines telephone lines, water, gas and drainage pipes were all added to the bridge in that year. In January 1932, the first test steam locomotive crossed the bridge without incident.

Bradfield on test-train on Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1932. State Records NSW

Premier Jack Lang opened the Harbour Bridge on 19th March 1932. One moment of ugliness occurred with Francis Edward de Groot, a member of a nasty rightwing organisation called the New Guard, disrupted the opening ceremony by slashing the ceremonial ribbon before the Premier was able to officially open the bridge. But in typical Australian fashion, the ribbon was simply stuck back together and the Premier completed his task.

I am amazed that the opening celebrations were an all-singing all-dancing roadshow since we know that Sydney, like most of the world, was suffering terribly from Great Depression in 1932. Yet half a million people participated in the Venetian-type carnival with floats, bands and a procession of passenger ships under the Bridge. It was a very big party!

poster, opening celebrations, 1932

The total financial cost of the bridge was £10 million which was not paid off in full for another 55 years. But the money was well spent. Sydney had a symbol that, from 1932 on, would be instantly recognised around the world.

William Bland - convict, surgeon, politician, inventor

“Lost and Found” is a television programme that focuses on the contents of The State Library of NSW, one of Australia’s loveliest heritage buildings. Inside lurk plenty of amazing, yet little known stories that shine a light on Australian history in the earliest decades. One character I had never heard discussed, except at the University of Sydney Medical Museum, was Dr William Bland.

William Bland (1789–1868) was born in London, the son of D Robert Bland. He trained in medicine and was qualified by the Royal College of Surgeons as surgeon's mate in the navy in 1809. He was promoted to the rank of naval surgeon in 1812. While serving on a navy ship in Bombay, this middle class naval officer was involved in a brawl with the purser. As a result, Bland fought a duel with the purser and killed him. Bland was tried for murder in Bombay in 1813 and found guilty. It is not clear why he was recommended for mercy, but luckily he was only sentenced to transportation for seven years. He was not hanged.

Dr Bland, c1845, oldest daguerreotype known in The State Library of NSW

Bland was shipped to Australia, reaching Hobart Town in January 1814 and then Sydney in July 1814 where he was a prisoner of His Majesty’s at Castle Hill gaol. Once again the gods shone on William Bland - he was totally pardoned in January 1815! Presumably this was because Bland was the first private doctor to arrive in Australia.

He immediately began private medical practice in Sydney, which apparently did very well, to the extent that in 1817 he was able to afford an assistant. But clearly he didn’t learn to stay out of trouble. In September 1818 Bland was back in court and convicted of libel against noone less that the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie. This time the good doctor was given a hefty fine and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment which he served at Parramatta.

Bland returned to his private medical practice, and in 1821 began a long association with the Benevolent Society, providing much needed medical services at the Castle Hill lunatic asylum. This was the colony's first mental hospital, established in 1811, which was in fact an old barn surrounded by a stockade. He must have been a very busy man, since he was also on the staff of the Sydney Dispensary. Plus he lectured and wrote on important medical topics such as Dislocations, Sanitary Reform and Bites of Venomous Snakes in Australia. The surgical instruments that he invented were published in The Lancet.

Most people agreed that despite his argumentative and somewhat prickly personality, Dr Bland was an able and patient surgeon who showed selfless affection for the sick and the poor.

133 Macquarie Street, Sydney, built on land that Dr Bland once owned.

For a medical man, I think some of his greatest contributions were, surprisingly, in the field of education. In 1830 Sydney College, which later became the very prestigious Sydney Grammar School, was founded with William Bland as president. He was also a generous benefactor to the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts and helped in its formal opening in 1833. [Happy Mechanics’ Institutes were my favourite providers of education to working families in the 19th century].

Only on one occasion was he a major promoter of higher education yet was not credited for his contributions. Dr Bland was very involved in the foundation of the University of Sydney, but his name was dropped from the senate because former convicts were excluded from taking part in the management of that august institution.

Bland was a person of well thought out political views. In 1830 he actively opposed attempts to alienate large areas of crown land, and in 1831 joined the committee of the Australian Landowners Association to fight against land regulations. At another public meeting in 1830 a committee, which included Bland, was formed to demand legislation by representation and to appoint a parliamentary agent in the House of Commons. 

NSW Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney

He had some failures. Petitions demanding representative government and trial by jury failed in 1830 and 1833. But he also had amazing successes. Clearly having been a transported convict and a gaolbird was no handicap, politically. Bland was an elected member of the NSW Legislative Council twice (1843–48, 1849–50) and after the introduction of responsible government, was appointed to the NSW Legislative Council once (1858–61). A banquet was held in July 1856 to celebrate the granting of a new Constitution by the British government. Dr Bland was given the honour of chairing the evening.

In 1858 he was given a valuable award for his services to the community.

Perhaps the greatest medical office that he achieved was becoming the inaugural President of the Australian Medical Society, following its foundation in 1859.  Bland continued in active medical practice until his death.

In 1861 he was surprisingly declared a bankrupt, even though he had at one time been a large landowner, with property at Prospect Hill, Hunters Hill, Yass etc. What went so badly wrong? Bland died intestate in Sydney in 1868 at a decent age, and the family graciously accepted a state funeral. Not bad for an ex convict.

Sydney University had become a very impressive campus, 1859

I am very grateful to the author of  Duelling Surgeon, Colonial Patriot: The Remarkable Life of William Bland, Robert Lehane, for sending me a copy of the book. Unfortunately it was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in Dec 2011, long after I had written this post. However there was more and more to learn about Bland, as I soon found out. Never has a person lived his life so brightly in the public gaze.

I am sure that much of the information. available on the public record, Bland would have prefered not to have seen in print. After discovering his wife's infidelity, for example, Bland placed an advertisement in the Gazette, warning vendors not to extend any credit to his (first) wife Sarah since he was no longer going to cover any of her debts. Worse still he had more court appearances, on both sides of the litigants' tables, than most people had had hot dinners. Some were very petty indeed.

Other projects would have made him very proud. For example, Bland proceeded with a very tricky operation on patients' aortas that had never been successful before. Although Bland's patients also died, he wrote up the surgical data in immaculate detail in The Lancet, building up a body of evidence that would revolutionise surgery after the introduction of anaesthesia. Another breakthrough came via Bland's collection of venomous snakes. He analysed the impact of each venom in minute detail and wrote up the treatments, both successes and failures, in The Lancet.

This was a man who moved from the ridiculous and degraded, to the sublime and heroic, and back again. Often.

William Charles Wentworth: an early Australian nationalist

William Charles Wentworth (1790–1872) was born at sea. They were en route to a penal settlement at Norfolk Island, where his parents surgeon D'Arcy Wentworth and convict Catherine Crowley were being transported. D'Arcy Wentworth had been accused of highway robbery, so he accepted transportation instead of something worse.

In 1796, 6-year old William Wentworth arrived with his parents in Sydney, then a primitive settlement for convicts and soldiers. The family lived at Parramatta, where his father became a prosperous landowner, Principal Surgeon, Superintendent of Police and Treasurer of the Police Fund.

In 1803 the lad was packed off to Britain, where he was educated at a school in London. He returned to Sydney in 1810, where he was appointed acting Provost-Marshall by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and given a land grant of 1,750 acres on the Nepean River.

The names William Wentworth, Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson are known by every Australian school child. In 1813, they searched for a route across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, specifically to open up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales. As a reward each of the explorers was granted 1,000 acres of land, enabling Wentworth to become a gentleman pastoralist and South Pacific trader. Wentworth was now doing rather nicely, for a 20-something of rather ordinary parentage.

William Charles Wentworth

In 1819 Wentworth published the first book written by an Australian in which he advocated an elected assembly for New South Wales, trial by jury and settlement of Australia by free emigrants rather than convicts. This was quite radical stuff.

Back in Britain, Wentworth successfully completed his legal studies by 1822 and was admitted to the bar. Wentworth returned to Sydney in 1824 as a young barrister and was admitted to practice in the New South Wales Supreme Court; he took professional rooms in Macquarie Place.

This was in perfect time to inherit the vast property of his recently departed father. Suddenly one of the wealthiest men in the colony, William Wentworth bought land in one of Sydney’s eastern suburbs and rebuilt Vaucluse House. It had started life as a small cottage in 1803 but became quite a mansion under Wentworth’s watchful eye. The neo-gothic style can be seen in the crenellated parapets and turrets. The roofs were made from slate and galvanised iron, and the veranda posts were made of iron. Later additions included a bay windowed front with French windows and louvered shutters, fine Georgian cedar joinery, marble chimney pieces and Pompeii tiles to the hall floor.

Vaucluse House

Vaucluse House still has a large collection of surviving original documents relating to the house, its contents and occupants. Visitors will see a number of extant buildings and gardens, and the house retains much of the original form, interior space and detailing. Where renovations were required, the new decorations were based on mid century inventories and illustrations. As you can see, the drawing room was essentially the feminine domain, excellent for afternoon teas and pre-dinner drinks. The dining room was a heavier room, filled with oak timbers, darkish marble for the chimney piece, formal portraits and dark wall paper.

Wentworth went on to become the colony's leading political figure of the 1820s and 30s, pursuing his causes vigorously: representative government, the abolition of transportation, freedom of the press and trial by jury. These beliefs did NOT always win him friends amongst the powerful elite that ran Sydney society - neither did the fact that his mother was a convict. Perhaps as a result of this social snobbishness, Wentworth joined the Australian Patriotic Association and founded a newspaper, The Australian, to pursue his causes further.

By 1840, transportation to New South Wales ended. With the establishment of an elected Legislative Council, the dominant issue in Sydney Town became the campaign to break the grip of the wealthy landowners over the colony's lands. Yet on this issue, Wentworth sided with his fellow landowners against the democratic party, who wanted to break up the squatters' runs for small farmers! He was elected to the Council in 1843 and became the leader of the conservative party! Why did he change his political views so radically?

In 1853 Wentworth chaired the committee to draft a new constitution for New South Wales, which was to receive full responsible self-government from Britain. His draft provided for a powerful, unelected Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly with high property qualifications for voting and membership. Most of the writing was done in the study of Vaucluse House.

What a tragedy – his progressive nationalism began to disappear. Wentworth suggested the establishment of a colonial peerage drawn from the landowning class! Of course his draft constitution aroused the bitter opposition of the democrats and radicals. In the event, Wentworth’s version was substantially changed to make it more democratic, although the Legislative Council remained unelected. Once the Select Committee that drafted the constitutional document in Sydney had finished its deliberations, Wentworth accompanied the document to England with other Australian selected representatives. Their goal was to facilitate its passage through the British Parliament.

With the establishment of responsible government in 1856, Wentworth retired from the Council.

Dining room (above) and drawing room (below) in Vaucluse House

William Wentworth settled in England and was a member of the Conservative Party in the 1860s. He died in England, but at his request, his body was returned to Sydney for burial. The public funeral of William Charles Wentworth was held in 1873 and the initial service was held at St Andrew's Cathedral Sydney. A lengthy procession followed the hearse to Vaucluse. Amongst the companies of mounted police, guilds, societies and members of government, a contingent of 300-400 Australian-born citizens and a small group of Australian Aborigines marched.

William Wentworth may have gone from progressive explorer, journalist and politician when he was young to… a defender of landed interests when he had substantial money himself. But he WAS one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales and his Vaucluse home remains one of the few colonial estates in Sydney to retain much of its architecture and grounds.

I recommend the Vaucluse House guidebook.

Louis Pasteur, rabbits and sex in Australia

I reread my article on The Divine Sarah Bernhardt in Australia, 1891: sex, theatre and sun, and decided it talked too much about sex romps with young scientists and not enough about the scientific problem at hand. The hard research work for this topic was done by Stephen Dando-Collins whose book is called Pasteur’s Gambit: Louis Pasteur, the Australasian Rabbit Plague and a Ten Million Dollar Prize, published by Vintage Books in 2008.

Prof Louis Pasteur with rabbits, by Holding, 1887

The problem was simple. In 1859 British-born pastoralists had wanted to make Australia more like their homeland, so they released rabbits and partridges into the bush. Anyone who knows the reproductive habits of rabbits will realise that within 20 years, the entire Australian continent was overrun by a rabbit plague. The economies of the eastern colonies were totally threatened. The NSW premier, Sir Henry Parkes, was desperate. So in 1887 he launched an international competition with a huge financial award ($10 million, in today’s money) for any successful scientist.

Professor Louis Pasteur was certain he had the remedy against rabbit plagues and wanted to travel to Australia himself, but he was ill when he read of the competition in a Paris newspaper. So he sent his brilliant nephew Dr Adrien Loir (1862-1941), a handsome young scientist, to represent the family business – the Pasteur Institute.

Dr Adrien Loir, Prof Pasteur's nephew

Dr Loir believed he could knock the rabbit problem off in a very short time, so he only had enough money for six week’s travel and accommodation in Australia. Alas for him, the competition stipulated that the scientists had to test out their cures for a complete year. Fortunately, while Loir was cooling his heels in Melbourne, a job fell into his lap. The major beer makers in Melbourne asked Dr Loir to teach the Pasteur method to the brewers, and paid him very well for his efforts.

Stephen Dando-Collins' book

Eventually Dr Loir was invited to Sydney, to propose Uncle Louis’ solution to Australia’s rabbit problem. The wire manufacturers tried to sabotage the Pasteur entry into the competition, since they hoped to make a fortune building rabbit proof fences around the nation. Plus there were a couple of doctors on the judging panel who actively supported Pasteur’s old critic and rival, Professor Robert Koch. Only the premier, Sir Henry Parkes, wanted to help Team Pasteur, spending a small fortune to erect a laboratory for them on Rodd Island, in Sydney Harbour.

The Rodd Island laboratory had another, almost incidental success. Dr Loir offered an impressive anthrax vaccine trial to the NSW Colonial government. When this was successful at greatly reducing anthrax, Dr Loir produced the vaccine in commercial amounts in the Rodd Island facility.

The Rabbit Commission didn’t give a prize to anyone in the end, but Dr Loir really wanted to stay in Australia and continue his work here. You will have to read the Dando-Collins book to see why the Rodd Island facilities, so hugely successful, eventually failed. In brief, we can say that the eventual Madame Loir hated living on the island and went back to France. Dr Adrien Loir bitterly resented his wife’s sabotage of his important work, and although he dutifully followed her back to France, in time he ran off with the maid and lived an exotic life in Africa and South America.

Rodd Island, Sydney Harbour

Beautiful Rodd Island was used from 1888-90 as a laboratory by scientists working for the Pasteur Institute on the rabbit infestation problem. From 1890-94 its facilities were used to manufacture sheep and cattle vaccines for anthrax and pleuro-pneumonia. After 1894, the laboratories were demolished and the research station residence was converted into a dance hall, which still exists. Over the past 120 years it has been a quarantine station, a USA Army training depot and a pleasure-ground for the ordinary working families of Balmain and Rozelle. The island is now part of the Sydney Harbour National Park and visitors can enjoy an interesting exhibition of photos and memorabilia within the grounds. Dr Loir's house was restored and opened to the public in 1996.

Dr Adrien Loir's two volumes of scrap-books, left by his daughter Dr Marie-Louise Hemphill, are in the Basser Library in the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra. They concerned his two visits to Australia: one in 1888-9 and the second in 1890-3. There are two other volumes of the same kind (not in the Basser Library) which apparently covered Dr Loir's later visits to South Africa and South America and his period as Director of the Pasteur Institute in Tunisia. In all these travels he was acting as the representative of Louis Pasteur, in relation to the development of protective inoculation against anthrax, rabies and other diseases.

Victoria Barracks, Sydney

After spending 3 days trawling around the architectural joys of Paddington, I became a guest writer for Vacation and Travel Photos blog. One extra building complex that I loved in Paddington, but didn't have space to write about for Joao, was the Victoria Barracks. Built from 1841-6 and opened for business in 1848, it was and is a very fine example of colonial military architecture.

Officers' quarters, 1842

The complex was designed by Lieutenant-Colonel George Barney, the man who also built Fort Denison and reconstructed Circular Quay. His main barracks building was constructed in the Regency style from Hawkesbury sandstone, mined locally by convict labour. Since it was only for soldiers, I had expected that the complex would be built without much paying much attention to architectural taste. But it was lovely! Possibly because the first building completed was the Officers' Quarters 1842, the entire complex continued to be very handsomely designed.

Main barrack block 1846 and massive parade ground

Originally occupied by regiments of the British Army, the Main Barrack Block was completed in 1846 and was designed to accommodate 650 soldiers. The bungalow was built in 1847 as the Barrack Master's Residence; a garrison hospital was built in 1845 to accommodate 36 patients; and a bell and clock were added to the building in 1856. 

The Paddington complex should have been even more spacious. The 99th Regiment of Foot had originally been stationed in the George's Square Barracks but when the George's Square Barracks were eventually closed, the soldiers were relocated to the new barracks in Paddington. I wish I had a photo of the room interiors; apparently the base-grade soldiers’ quarters were quite cramped.

Durty Nelly’s in Paddington, opened in 1850 for soldiers from the barracks

The establishment of the barracks changed the character of Paddington. Along with the soldiers came their wives and families and shopkeepers. The original 1840s pubs, which saw enormous business opportunities near the barracks, were appropriately called The Rifle Butts and the Cross Guns. Durty Nelly’s is another pub with a history dating back to 1850 when it catered for the Victoria Barracks crowd.

The British troops vacated the site in 1870, yet the Barracks remained the premier military training site for the New South Wales colonial forces until after Federation in 1901. Sydney Daily Photo noted that since Federation, the complex has been home to both Headquarters Land Command and Headquarters Training Command.

I cannot imagine developers trying to pull down the barracks today, but just in case someone thought of it, the entire barracks complex is on the Register of the National Estate.

Queen Victoria Gate in Oxford St

Alas the complex is only open on Sundays, which may not fit into every tourist’s programme. But the museum, which is housed in the former 25-cell prison, is easier to access.

In Brisbane, the first military barracks, guard houses and official quarters were built in 1839. But we cannot see the original barracks because they became the Treasury building. What Your Brisbane: Past and Present blog does show very well is the garrison for troops built on Petrie Terrace: the Victoria Barracks. These Brisbane barracks were built in 1864, based on the architectural plans which came from London, yet they look similar to Sydney's Victoria Barracks built in the early 1840s. 

part of Victoria Barracks Brisbane, opened 1864

Francis Greenway: convict architect in Sydney

Francis Greenway (1777–1837) was born near Bristol and became something of a well known architect in Bristol and Bath. It is not clear to me what when wrong with his career or personal life, but he came to grief with the law. In 1809 Greenway was declared bankrupt, and in 1812 he was charged with forging a financial document and was found guilty. The punishment, rather harsh I thought, was death, later commuted to 14 years transportation to Australia.

Only one good thing came out of this horrible era. Greenway had been friendly with Arthur Phillip (ex Governor of NSW) who was living in retirement at Bath, and Phillip wrote to Lachlan Macquarie (current Governor of NSW), recommending Greenway to him.

Hyde Park Barracks, main entrance

Greenway arrived in Sydney in February 1814 to serve his sentence and immediately was given work as a colonial architect. My major reference for this era is Shaping Sydney by Chris Johnson. Johnson reported that Greenway first met Macquarie in July 1814 and it was during this meeting that Macquarie mentioned wanting a new town hall and a new courthouse. What is certain is that Greenway was appointed Acting Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer in March 1816.

Between 1816 and 1818, whilst still a convict, Greenway was responsible for the design and construction of certain colonial buildings. So successful was he that the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, gave Greenway his ticket of leave. He was a free man. And as Acting Civil Architect, he went on to build many significant buildings in the new colony.

Hyde Park Barracks, convicts' sleeping space

The first Governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Phillip, had a very flimsy residence that badly needed remodelling. By 1816 Francis Greenway was commissioned to construct a substantial extension and ballroom by Governor Macquarie, transforming Phillip's house into an Italianate cottage. The stables commissioned for the house by Macquarie in 1816 still stand in the Botanic Gardens today, and form a facade for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. And Greenway also designed the Macquarie Lighthouse in 1818 to guide ships entering the Heads at Sydney Harbour. Built of sandstone quarried on site, the material was so soft that it eventually eroded and had to be replaced, but the original design is still intact.


There are still 49 buildings in central Sydney attributed to Greenway's designs. If these buildings had been in Melbourne, and had been built several decades later, Greenway might have been asked to design banks, gold safes, the royal mint and a customs office. But early Sydney had a penal population, so they required facilities more suited to law and order.

St James' Church

I want to concentrate on three main Greenway designs: Hyde Park Barracks and St James Church, both of which were finished during his working career, and the Supreme Courthouse, which was finished after Greenway retired from architecture.

Greenway sited the Hyde Park Barracks directly opposite St James Church in Macquarie St. And the courthouse was built on a site immediately to the west of St James Church, thus forming a linear relationship with both the church and the barracks. Johnson showed that Greenway was clearly interested in the individual buildings AND in a total civic context for the new city.

St James' Church, looking towards the apse

Constructed by convict labour, the Hyde Park Barracks became the principal male convict residence in New South Wales, providing lodgings for convicts working in government employment gangs around Sydney. Inside the tall brick walls of the barracks, convicts were mustered daily and marched to worksites around town. Their tools, equipment, food and clothing were also supplied by convicts, people who had been skilled in cobbling, weaving, carpentry before their deportation from Britain.

The barracks remained in active service until 1848, and now the building functions as an excellent museum of colonial Sydney.

St James’ Church, designed by Greenway in 1819 in the Old Colonial Regency style, was originally designed as a courthouse – a purpose revealed by two strange, non-clerical elements: the very large western gallery and the central positioning of the porch. The building wasn’t consecrated as a church until 1824, so clearly there were already Anglican churches in the colony. Nonetheless Gov Macquarie saw this church as one of the key elements of his town plan for Sydney and St James’ Church became the site in which the first Bishop of Australia was installed, in 1836.

The interior of the church, which today looks as it was following the renovations of 1900-1902, faces east. Note the sanctuary that is set within an apse with gold mosaic semi-dome. The sanctuary has marble and mosaic flooring, and is flanked by the organ and choir. The church connection to law and order is still celebrated today: the beginning of the legal year is marked with a church service attended by the Supreme Court justices, fully robed up.

In July 1813, Governor Macquarie, aware of the need for a court house in Sydney, started a public subscription for the building. An appeal was launched, but few of the settlers shared the official enthusiasm. Soon the appeal was abandoned and Governor Macquarie reluctantly decided that if he was to have a court house, it would have to be built with convict labour.

He engaged an architect to produce a design for the building. When the plans for a two-storey building with two wings and a Doric portico were finished, Gov Macquarie sent the plans and a request for funds to Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London. But funds were denied.

Supreme Court

It was not until 6 years later, in October 1819, that Macquarie set the foundation stone of "a large and commodious court house' designed by Francis Greenway. As I mentioned, the site was at the western end of St James' Church! A guest at the ceremony was Commissioner John Thomas Bigge who had recently arrived from England to conduct a Royal Commission of inquiry into the colony.

Alas Bigge intervened and Macquarie felt he had to follow Bigge’s advice. Greenway set about converting the design for the court house and work proceeded. However the building was still incomplete when Macquarie left the colony in Dec 1821. Greenway protested to Macquarie's successor, Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. But Brisbane would not debate architecture with an ex-convict. Thereafter Greenway's relations with officialdom went downhill, until he was dismissed from the Government service in 1822.

After his dismissal, Greenway strongly criticised the work being done on “his” courthouse. Apart from the circular staircase, the Doric portico at the western end of the building, the window treatment and certain recessed wall panels, quite a lot of Greenway's original design did not survive. Still, in 1824, the first Chief Justice of NSW read the Charter of Justice establishing the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The building itself was completed by 1828.

Greenway on the ten dollar note

Greenway’s architectural career in Australia, which started in such a flurry in 1814, was largely over in less than 10 years. He died in 1837, aged 59. Today he is memorialised on Australia's ten dollar note.

Garden Palace: Sydney's Exhibition Building 1879

The 1879 Sydney International Exhibition was held under the supervision of NSW’s Agricultural Society. There was initially some discussion about the Exhibition commemorating Cook’s discovery of Australia’s East coast. But a more urgent theme was emerging: a national interest in technical & industrial development, both in tertiary education and in the creation of museums.

After all, the Inter-colonial Exhibition of 1867 in Melbourne had been such a great stimulus that the NSW government bought many of the exhibits to place in the brand new Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum (later the Powerhouse Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). Industrial development was a hot topic.

Furthermore the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 would be the first World Exhibition in the southern hemisphere, far from the cultural and commercial centres of Europe. So there may have been a bit of national showing off involved.

In 1879, architect James Barnet was put in charge of the Sydney International Exhibition building. It was to be in the grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens because the harbour frontage was so attractive, but in the end it occupied land that was just outside the Gardens.

The Colonial Architect’s Office completed this huge task in nine months, including preparing the drawings, management of the project accounts and payments, and supervision of the building. The Exhibition Building used the first electric light in Sydney, imported from Britain, to get through the project with around-the-clock shifts. To show you how early in electricity’s history this was, it would be another 25 years before a Lady Mayoress turned on the switch to illuminate Sydney streets, using power from Pyrmont Power Station 1904.

Sydney’s Exhibition Building was similar in design to Crystal Palace in London and similar also to the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne.  And it was set in gorgeous garden settings, like these two other cities, thus inspiring the NSW Premier Sir Henry Parkes to call it the Garden Palace.

Garden Palace, exterior

The Italianate building consisted of 3 double storey, turreted wings meeting beneath a central dome which dominated Sydney's harbour skyline. Sydney's first hydraulic lift was contained in the north tower. Directly under its 64m high central dome was a fountain, and a huge statue of Queen Victoria. Inside there were excellent facilities including restaurants, an oyster bar and tea rooms. There was only one structural problem - there had been no time to use permanent and fire-retardant materials. Aside from the brick used in the foundations and the entrance towers, the majority of this vastly enormous building was wood and corrugated iron.
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Garden Palace had an impressive opening ceremony, in Sep 1879. Paolo Giorza (1832-1914) from Milano moved to Australia in late 1871. Politician Sir Patrick Jennings, a passionate music-lover, chose Giorza as director of music for the exhibition. Giorza was commissioned to compose the grand celebratory opening cantata which was scored for a large chorus and children's choir, soloists and a full orchestra. During the exhibition, Giorza also provided daily concerts, some of them grand orchestral and choral occasions, with Handel's oratorios prominent as well as band and chamber music and piano recitals.

Spectacular pieces from the Sèvres porcelain factory, established in 1738 at Chateau de Vincennes, were among the many decorative art items sent by France for the 1879 Exhibition, to demonstrate France’s rich cultural heritage. One label said: “this vase was a gift from the French commissioner which acknowledged "proof of the lively and sincere sympathy of my Government for your flourishing colony but above all a token of the full appreciation my countrymen have of the energy and freedom of the inhabitants of Australia, freedom extended to all, whatever may be their origin."

Garden Palace Interior, display courts

By the time the Sydney Exhibition closed in April 1880, a million visitors had paid to go through the turnstiles. Architect James Barnet might have been criticised in Parliament because the project greatly overran its budget and the Exhibition lost money. Yet the exhibition was judged a determining landmark in the history of the NSW Colony, marking that state's sense of achievement, progress and aspirations on the world stage.

Some collections, put together for the 1879 Exhibition, lasted. The paintings in the fine arts display, for example, became the nucleus of the government’s art collection. The first purpose-built art gallery building was opened in 1884, only 5 years later.

According to Scratching Sydney's Surface, the Garden Palace was originally intended as a temporary structure, but as it had proved such a success, the authorities decided to keep it.  So when the timber Palace was completely engulfed by fire in Sep 1882 and destroyed, it was a total disaster. The newspapers suggested three possible reasons for the blaze. One theory was that wealthy Macquarie St residents, upset their harbour views had been stolen by the giant building, lit the blaze. Another was that it was burnt to destroy the 1881 census. Stored in the Garden Palace, the records apparently exposed embarrassing secrets about the convict origins of many leading families. Or possibly the fire was just an accident.

Garden Palace gates.

What remains of the Garden Palace today? Nothing, really. Even the beautifully carved sandstone gateposts and wrought iron gates, located on the Macquarie Street entrance to the Royal Botanical Gardens, were built as an entrance to the new gardens in 1888.  And the one artefact from the 1879 Exhibition that did survive the fire - a carved graphite statue of an elephant, from Ceylon - is displayed elsewhere (at the Powerhouse Museum). A 1940s-era sunken garden, and fountain featuring a statue of Cupid, merely mark the location of the Palace's once impressive dome.