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.
The 26 January, through 200 years or more of debate and controversy, has remained the traditional Australian celebratory day since that date in January 1788 when ‘formal possession was taken of the Colony of New South Wales. On that day, Captain Arthur Phillip became Governor of the Colony, having jurisdiction over the area bounded by…
A short while ago our member, Trish Skehan, was fortunate in being able to access diaries of a young 21-year-old Jean Curlewis, as well as a series of letters which she had written to her mother, Ethel Turner, and brother Adrian. This is Jean’s story of her first three weeks as a Voluntary Aide (VA),…
Nowadays there’s no mystery about motor cars. They infest every road and are driven with varying degrees of competence by teenagers and grandmothers. When it comes to buying a car, schoolboys can usually give their fathers all the performance figures of the leading makes but back at the dawn of motoring things were very different indeed. Between fifty and sixty years ago the tempo of…
THE Sydney Sun reports . . . . . . that the city council has placed a bubbling water fountain outside the main entrance to a large local brewery. Whether this is a hint on the part of the city council for the brewery employees to get on the ‘water- wagon’ is not known, but…
Turning the First Sod The ceremony of turning the first sod of the tramway line, which is to connect the suburb of Enfield with Mortlake, was performed yesterday afternoon by the Minister for Works, Mr. O’Sullivan. Elaborate preparations had been made by the municipalities interested in honouring the event, as the day was regarded by…
We always think of Halloween as a recent addition to the Australian cultural landscape, but the tradition was alive and well back in 1913, with a large celebration, the Halloween Ball, being held at Yaralla on the 31st of October. Guests travelled up the Parramatta River on the SS Bronzewing, leaving from Fort Macquarie (Bennelong…
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