The image, from a postcard dating to the first 10 years of the 20th century, is an evocative glimpse into a business that has long been linked to Martin Place (then Moore Street).
Martin Place had long been a bustling hive of activity, full of people going about their daily work. This bustling activity made it a perfect place for flower sellers to ply their trade, attracting passersby and many impulse sales. Yet most flower sellers did not start off in Martin Place at all, being forced off other, busier streets to make room for ever increasing traffic. Martin Place was the ideal place for flower sellers to congregate though, setting themselves up near the steps of the General Post Office and pouncing on people hurrying to mail their letters.
The earliest Martin Place flower sellers began to set up stalls in the 19th century, but it was during the 20th century that Sydney’s most iconic flower seller plied her trade. Rosie Shaw had once had high hopes of a career in opera, coming to Sydney from London in 1927 to seek fame and fortune in the land Dame Nellie Melba had called home. Rosie’s dreams never came to pass, but she grew to the status of a Sydney icon none the less. In 1931 she first set up shop on Martin Place, plying her customers not just with flowers, but with snatches of opera and tall tales of her history of a ballerina and singer. Rosie soon became very popular and increasingly influential, using her iconic status to act as one of the earliest defenders of gay men in Sydney. She sold flowers for 40 years, finally packing up her stall in 1971.
One of the prettiest islands in Port Jackson has the distinction of having given us our first bushranger, Black Caesar, whose story was in the August newsletter. The principal and almost the only policy of the Government of New South Wales during its earliest years consisted mainly of finding something to eat for the thousand…
Captain John Hunter led the first British exploration of the Parramatta River in February 1788. On the 5th February, while having breakfast he made the first contact with local Aboriginals of the Wangal Clan. The location is referred to as Breakfast Point on the survey map of 1799. The Wangal called the area Booridiow-o-gule. The…
The struggle for a station at North Strathfield was very much a people’s struggle. In the early 1900s there had been a general acknowledgment of the need for a station between Strathfield and Concord West by the NSW Railway Commissioners, but an alleged shortage of money – the cost was reckoned to be about £4000…
A favourite pastime of residents is to walk along the waterfront to enjoy the peaceful vista. Not many of us know that between the “green lights” opposite the cove is a monument to one of Australia’s greatest rowing athletes, Henry Ernest Searle. Little is known of his childhood except that he came to Sydney when…
In December 1916 William Graham Eyles, a former alderman of Drummoyne, was sentenced to death in Sydney’s Central Criminal Court for the murder of his wife, Ellen, who was found hanging by a strap from a bedpost in her house in Courland Street, Five Dock. There were signs of a struggle with numerous bruises on…
