The boat shed at the bottom of Hilly Street, looking towards Green Point, taken from the top of Montgomery’s Palace Hotel c1920s. The Mortlake-Putney Punt now crosses the Parramatta River from this spot. Nearby is a small beach, known as Fairmile Cove, where naval boats were assembled during World War II.
In the middle distance is Green Point, previously called Bachelor’s Point, which was refurbished in 2019 and renamed Wangal Reserve, in recognition of the traditional owners whose lands stretched along the southern shore of the Parramatta River (Burramattagal) from Blackwattle Bay to Silverwater.
At the northern end of the reserve was a community dance hall, a popular venue on a Saturday night. In the distance can be seen the Dutch-style gatehouse marking the entrance to “Rivendell”, formerly Thomas Walker Hospital, completed in 1893 by Dame Eadith Walker in memory of her father.
In the opposite direction, taken from the same vantage point is Tennyson Road, formerly Wharf Road and once part of Burwood Road that snaked its way across country to link with the current Burwood Road. At the top of the hill the AGL works can be made out with one of its gasholders visible on the left.
Cows can be seen grazing near the tramway about halfway up the hill. The village of Mortake is scattered about with houses and a few stores well-spaced out. Many of the workers at the gas works came to work on the tram that ran between Enfield and Mortlake via Burwood.
You never know what you might find on a leisurely stroll. This is the inscription on a plaque I found recently . . . This is the site of the first settlement on 10th January 1792ByWilliam Careless and James Weaversin the locality set up by Governor Phillip asfarms of the eastern boundary (later called Kissing…
Keeping Time. These days, almost everything has the time. Your computer, your mobile phone, the clock in your car, your blackberry, your iPhone…everything does! But back when the only timekeepers were mechanical tickers, how did you keep time? And how did you know the right time? The Pocket Watch. A hundred years ago, men didn’t…
With all the news about the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) health alert it doesn’t take much imagination to compare it with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. The following article by historian Troy Lennon in the Daily Telegraph (27/2/20) points this out. “In 1918 reports of a deadly flu virus began filtering from overseas into Australia. …
While much of the world is seen as a ‘man’s world’, there’s no doubt that women have had a huge influence in just every field in history, you just don’t tend to hear about it. I could have written about queens, warriors, suffragettes, and other well-known females who did make an influence on the world,…
The Japanese invaded Sumatra in 1942 and, using the engineers from the infamous Thai Burma Railway, put over 120,000 newly captured slaves to work building a railway. These slaves were not only local Indonesians, but also POW’s captured as the eastern colonies fell. This is the history of that railway… Very early on the Dutch government in Indonesia had investigated the…
Last drinks for 150-year-old Concord pub, hosted by three generations of the one family Following hot on the heels of the demolition of Parramatta’s historic Royal Oak Hotel, the NSW Government is about to raze another of Sydney’s landmark pubs in the name of public transport infrastructure. With much controversy and media attention, the Royal…
