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Sydney—Her magnificent harbour—Its
unrivalled beauties—The city—General charge of dirtiness—Not so bad as it is
generally .painted—Comparison of Sydney with other towns—Sydney for her age
a wonderful city—Rapid extension—General aspect of the city—The
suburbs—Suburban villas—Sydney freestone— Small allotments and undue
sub-division of land—Absence of cottage gardens—Want of sanitation—The term
"Cornstalk"— Sydney streets—Public buildings—Causes of her chronic
indebtedness—Unfitness of her aldermen—Testimony of one of their
number—Summary.
My next place of sojourn
after quitting Queensland was Sydney—who has not heard of Sydney, with its
famous harbour ? "What schoolboy knows not the strange, romantic history of
Captain Cook, and the beautiful inlet he discovered and christened Botany
Bay ? What strange associations are connected with the early history of this
wonderful settlement! What an eventful wealth of incident has gathered round
the city in its hundred years or less of existence! Many points in the
historical retrospect might well be shrouded in oblivion. The wrecked hopes,
the bad passions, the stupid political blunders, the sad memory of
brutalities, failures, cruelties, and crimes, all fade quite away in
presence of the majestic beauty with which bountiful nature has surrounded
the city. The eternal barriers of rock still frown over the everheaving sea,
that lashes itself into furv on their adamantine fronts as sternly as they
did myriads of years ago. The sun reflects back the glory of his beams from
countless inlets of placid loveliness; and the marvellous beauty of the
harbour is so perfect that even all the prosaic, oft-times disfiguring
evidences of man's presence, the pollution of the city's drainage, the
frowning batteries, lowbrowed mounds that mark torpedo-firing stations,
smoke of steam-ships and factories, and all the uglinesses of our
utilitarian age of coal, iron, smoke, and steam, are powerless to dim the
lustre of the majestic profusion of beauty which is here presented on every
hand.
In the broad and noble
reaches of this truly magnificent bay the navies of the world might ride at
ease. To explore the intricacies of every successive opening, and appraise
the beauties of the countless nooks and windings, each more beautiful than
the other, would be the task of many summers of holidays.
It is no wonder that the
first question asked of the stranger or visitor by the Sydney native
is,—what do you think of the harbour? Yet the first impression, I must
confess, a little disappointed me. I expected the vegetation would have been
more luxuriant; the scenery bolder and more wild. There is little or no
cultivation about the shores of the harbour. There --are, barring the bold
frowning "Heads" at the entrance, no rocky pinnacles, sharp peaks, or
towering crags. The hills all around are gently swelling knolls, clothed
with the dull sombre verdure of the Australian bush. The scenery is not so
vividly green as Point de Galle, Ceylon, nor so strikingly picturesque and
varied, perhaps, as Oban, some other of the bays and harbours on the west
coast of Scotland. As you steam up the harbour, however, opening after
opening breaks upon your view. The water is flashing beneath the rays of a
semi-tropical sun; huge masses of the freestone, so characteristic of the
city, skirt the water's edge; the thick scrub covers every eminence and
undulation; fantastically-shaped islands are crowned with Norfolk pine,
gum-trees, and undergrowth, but all of a uniform, sombre tint. The entrance
to Woo-loomaloo Bay is magnificent. McQuade's Point and Garden Island are
perfect gems of living verdure; the Botanical Gardens, enriched with the
plants and flowers of every clime, look green, cool, and secluded; the city
lies spread out before you, crowning the heights; with cozy villas, nestling
amid groves of ornamental trees, and neat little cottages peeping out at
every point. As we forge slowly ahead, winding channels appear on every
side, each disclosing some view more lovely than its neighbour. The sky-line
is broken by the steeples, towers, domes, and public buildings of the city;
Government House, situate in a spacious demesne, beautifully laid out and
kept, forms a prominent feature in the foreground, and the graceful facade
and bold architecture of the mighty mass of building, now known to all the
world as the Sydney International Exhibition, stands forth as an evidence to
the arriving visitor, of the glorious promise, the boundless resources, and
mighty future which is in store for this wonderful country.
To the right we have the
north shore with its churches, terraces, and gardens; on the left "Wooloo-maloo
seeming a huge city by itself; and far ahead, the piled-up masses of the
buildings, all of solid sandstone loom out in the morning mist, vague,
shadowy, and undefined, against the sky-line. Massive walls of masonry line
the harbour on all sides, whilst each fresh channel discloses endless
shipping with its busy crews and labour-gangs. Looking back across the noble
stretch of water, you see the Heads once more grimly guarding the portals of
approach to this scene of wondrous beauty. It is, however, more from a
nautical point of view that the magnificence of the harbour strikes your
imagination. Here is deep water close up to the land on all sides, with room
for the accumulated navies of the world. The harbour is entirely
land-locked, and thus protected from every gale; it can be "made" in any
weather, and its waters lie unruffled, no matter what hurricane may be
raging without. It is indeed a noble refuge. "Well may the natives of Sydney
pride themselves on its possession.
Of the city itself, I am
afraid that strict truthfulness compels one to give a less flattering
estimate. A closer acquaintance does not disclose many fresh beauties.
Sydney, even by its most pronounced admirers, is generally admitted to be a
dirty town. The inhabitants have been so long in the habit of hearing this
proverbial reproach of filthiness, levelled against their queen city of the
south, as they delight to call it, that they have come to acquiesce in it;
and in a half apologetic, half indignant way they reluctantly allow the
truth of the general dictum. And yet, comparatively speaking, perhaps Sydney
is not after all such a filthy town as is generally imagined. Certainly to
see it during a continued spell of wet weather, when the mud is churned up
on the macadamised roads, by the throng of vehicles, quadrupeds, and
pedestrians, till the streets are covered foot deep in places, with the
sloppy deposit, would not favourably impress a stranger. Or again, let the
observant foreigner encounter the full force of a "southerly buster," in one
of the principal streets of the New South Wales metropolis; his remarks, if
heard at all amid the dust-laden whirlwinds, will hardly be pleasant to
hear, yet, under ordinary circumstances, the streets of Sydney are not half
so bad as the tongue of detraction would make them. Granted, that in wet
weather they are miry to a more than ordinary degree. Granted, that in dry
windy weather, the dust whirls in eddying volumes through every
thoroughfare, blinding the traveller, destroying clothes and any exposed
merchandise, and exacerbating the temper, still, under similar
circumstances, Sydney is not a whit inferior to other towns of equal
pretensions, but might perhaps issue favourably from a comparison.
Take, for instance, Melbourne
or even London. Sydney in its fiercest tornado, in its gustiest, dustiest,
and bleakest day cannot for a moment vie with the whirlwinds and columns of
dust, that completely blind the sun, on a windy day, in the Victorian
capital. In her -slushiest moments, the pavements are never so greasy,
slimy, and dangerous to pedestrians, as are the pavements of the Modern
Babylon during the continuance of a genuine November fog.
It has become quite the
fashion with a certain class of travellers, to spy out only the bad features
of a landscape. They have the nose of a sleuth-hound for an unsavoury taint,
can follow the trail of a "drag," with unerring accuracy; but the fragrant
perfume of the violet and woodruff, for them waste their sweetness on the
desert air. It is no evidence of a cultivated taste, or even of much
critical acumen, to be eternally finding fault. That the streets of Sydney
are unfortunately narrow and crooked, that the pavements are rough and
uneven, that the drainage is defective, and that the order of street
architecture does not come up to the marble glories of Tuscan Palaces or
rich" picturesque adornment of Princes Street in Edinburgh; no one will for
a moment deny. But in this as in most; other cases, the superficial aspect
is not often the truest, and the apparent is not the most just criterion of
the real.
The city, as I have said, is
scarcely yet a century old. I do not intend in a book of rambling notes like
this, to spin out a chapter on the earlier history of the Queen of the
Pacific; but for its age, I think the natives may point with' pardonable
pride to the progress that has already been made:—and if the promise of
present progression be maintained, Sydney will yet vie with some of the
finest cities of the world for architectural wealth and magnificence, as she
indubitably now surpasses most in the splendour and beauty of her natural
position and surroundings. "When in the old convict days, the first
palisades were erected, and the barracks, gaol, stockades, stores, and other
nondescript structures of a penal settlement were laid out, the founders of
the tiny township could little have foreseen the mighty city that in so
comparatively short a time was to extend its vast structures over all the
surrounding heights.
The overflow of bricks and
mortar has spread like a lava-flood, over the adjacent slopes, heights, and
valleys, till the houses now lie, pile on pile, tier on tier, and succeed
each other row after row, street after street, far into the surrounding
country; and the eruption is still in active play, and everywhere the work
of building and city extension proceeds at a rapid pace. The invasion of
construction has bridged the harbour, and laid out streets innumerable on
the North Shore: masonry crowns every island in the spacious basin—every
projecting buttress of rock maintains a pedestal of wall and gable and roof.
Verandahs overrun the heights, and chimney-stacks peep out from the hollows.
The sand drives are covered with cottages, the very marshes have a crop of
dwellings, that are constantly springing up, like mushrooms; - often alas,
like that, very fragile and brittle and little calculated to withstand a
lengthened wear and tear, nurtured in corruption and redolent of putridity
and decay. Land is so valuable, that open drains have been boxed in with
timber, and weatherboard cottages have been in many cases erected on this
fever propagating substructure. Handsome villa residences, match-box
cottages, toy houses, and flimsy habitations stud the slopes in all
directions round the city; and suburban extension is proceeding with
wonderful speed. Everywhere the sound of the workmen's tools is heard, all
through the busy day. Brick-yards are worked to their utmost capacity; iron
foundries are taxed to their greatest powers, saw-mills and joinery
establishments are in full activity, and at present the building trades are
in constant and vigorous employment.
The villas in the suburbs of
Sydney, those at least of the better sort, may well excuse a pardonable
feeling of exultation on the part of the native-born New South Welshman.
These villas, many of them, would do credit to any capital in Europe. Those
of stone arc built of the magnificent white sandstone for which the Sydney
quarries are famous. It hardens by contact with the air, and assumes a rich
warm yellow tint which is very effective, and pleases the artistic eye.
Even the less pretentious
structures bear many marks of good taste, and an advanced order of
embellishment. Indeed the suburban villas of Sydney inhabited by the
well-to-do tradesmen, the highly intelligent, quick witted, practical,
money-making middle classes, give one a high opinion of the material
prosperity, and the solid domestic comfort which their appearance implies.
But these unfortunately are only the plums in the pudding. The mass is
composed of more objectionable elements.
When we come a step lower,
and look at the workmen's dwellings, and speculators' houses, the picture is
not without its shadows—Building Societies are very plentiful and
numerically strong in membership in Sydney. The great aim of the well-to-do
mechanic is to run up a house of his own. By aid of the building societies
he is enabled to indulge his laudable hobby; but in his haste to become the
possessor of this house of his own, which he so much covets, he is not so
particular as he ought to be as to solidity of construction, and excellence
of material. As a result of the prevalence of this desire of the artisan to
become a proprietory householder, the land has acquired an abnormal value.
Building sites are therefore enormously dear. Areas have to be
circumscribed—societies, speculators, jobbers, have bought up all the
estates, and vacant blocks around Sydney; and they divide and sub-divide,
and cut up these, into little rabbit-hutch patches, and the houses spring up
like bee-hive cells, each containing a working bee it is true; but little
honey, I am afraid, will ever be extracted from the vast ever-growing hive.
To illustrate my meaning.
There are few cottage gardens about Sydney. Land is too valuable and too
much cut up into fifty-feet sections, to admit of horticulture. What
gardening ther^is, is in the hands of chinamen, whose prosaic souls do not
rise above the level of culinary roots and herbs. There are few flower-plots
about the workmen's houses of Sydney. There are still fewer back gardens.
The pot-herb patches, the mushroom beds, homely cabbage rows, of artisan
dwellings in western Europe, are altogether wanting. The cottages are
dependent entirely on purchased poultry and meat for the requirements of
their cuisine, and where beef and mutton can be had all the year round from
twopence to fourpence per pound, it is not considered worth the trouble to
keep pigs or poultry in the back yard. I am strongly of opinion, that
flowers exercise a deeply softening influence on those who are brought
continually into contact with their bright presence, and I should like very
much to see more attention bestowed on flower culture by the cottagers
around Sydney, than seems to be in prospect at present.
Another indication of the
absence of honey from this hive, is the dirt and disorder which
characterizes the surroundings of many of these habitations. In the small
back yards may often be seen a heterogeneous collection of battered kerosine
cans, broken boxes, empty bottles, and the debris of turned preserves and
provisions, worn-out shoes, and a general assortment of rubbish and filth,
which are highly offensive to every sense, and cannot be conducive to health
of body or mind. Sanitation seems utterly ignored. Be it understood that
there are many pleasing exceptions to this state of affairs. Let no
excitable Cornstalk let loose the vials of his indignation on my devoted
head, and consign me to the tender mercies of all the infernal furies, as a
vile detractor, a scurrilous scribe, a jealous, venomous cynic, who libels
wholesale a glorious people and basely truckles to the sneering antipathy
that the bloated aristocrat ever bears to the horny-handed sons of toil.
Our "Cornstalk" cousins are
keenly sensitive to criticism. They do not love adverse comment, and are
rather jealous of anything savouring of depreciatory remark, but I only care
to speak my own honest convictions, founded on observation.
Home readers ought to be told
that "Cornstalk" is the generic nickname applied to the native-born New
South Welshman. Its application was originally confined to the natives of
the Hawkesbury river valley; they are thus dubbe'd from the prevailing
tendency of the adolescens simplex of Australia to run somewhat more to
length than to breadth. The young Queenslander, again, is called "A Banana
boy." I really do not know if the young Victorians have a nickname at all,
and on application to a friend of Sydney sympathies, to know if any there
be, I was told, "No—they're not even worth a nickname."
One great drawback,
immediately perceptible by even the most inexperienced or carelesi observer,
is the narrowness of the principal streets. The great main artery of the
older and business part of the city is George Street. This was formed on no
definite plan. As the city grew in importance, and ship after ship began to
find its way to the magnificent land-locked harbour, where they could lie
secure from the vexed waters outside the Heads, and lay in ever-increasing
cargoes of tallow, and hides, and horns, and wool, the buildings began to
increase in numbers and size; but as yet they were built after no uniform
plan, and with little perception of the great future that lay before the
city. The present site of George Street was then a bullock track, meandering
over the ridges, and through the swampy hollows, and along this primitive
via dolorosa the weary yoke-galled teams of oxen would drag their massive
lumbering dray and its piled-up bales of wool, thick with the dust of a
three or four -months' journey, over the dusty tracks through the endless
bush, on. to the spacious debouchement, at Circular Quay. Along this track
(at intervals that grew less frequent as time went on), public-houses and
little shops, and general stores and blacksmiths' shanties, and other
nondescript erections gradually rose, and lined the pathways, and thus
slowly and unmethodically the great central street was formed.
Never was a glorious site for
a city more unhappily spoilt. -But the early settlers were not gifted with
prescience, and many of their descendants, sad to say, seem blessed with no
more advanced ideas than possessed the somewhat stolid and apathetic brains
of their ancestors. The fairy godmothers of Sydney gifted her with a noble
site, magnificent surroundings, and the finest building material in the
world; but a combination of disorder, narrow-mindedness, impecuniosity,
greed, jealousy, venality, have retarded her progress, and done their best
to destroy her fair fame, and bring reproach upon her. But she is a
handsome, and a progressive city in spite of it all, and if she maintains
her present rate of progress, and finds capable and patriotic men to preside
over her councils, she may yet sit among the nations, one of the proud
cities of the universe, and claim with justice her boasted titles of the
pearl of Australia and metropolis of the Antipodes.
Within the last ten years the
strides which have been made in every part of the ever-growing city in mural
decoration are astonishing. In York Street for instance, the lower part of
Pitt Street, and that lower portion of the city more particularly devoted to
government buildings and offices, vast piles of buildings have been reared,
which for breadth of design, harmony of detail and evidences of taste,
wealth, and general excellence, will compare favourably with many of the
most famous cities of the old world. York Street, reaching in a long vista
of imposing fronts and princely edifices, closed at the one end by the
magnificent proportions of the stately Town Hall and grand Cathedral, and
opening out at the other into the trim, fresh greenery, and handsome
mansions of Wynyard Square and gardens, forms a street that any capital
might be proud of. Some of these merchants' palaces, built of the
magnificent Sydney freestone, have cost upwards of 30,000Z. and everywhere
as old leases fall in, the work of demolition of old rookeries and
reconstruction of handsome modern buildings proceed apace.
The new Lands Office, the
Town Hall, the Museum, Cathedral, University, Post-office, Exchange, Mutual
Provident Buildings, and the offices of banks and corporate bodies, are not
one whit behind the best of similar structures in cities of much greater
pretensions than Sydney, and many of the worst features of old Sydney are
fast being obliterated, by the rapid march of modern taste and improvement.
Take for instance the
splendid pile erected recently in "Wynyard Square, for Messrs. Cowan and
Co., the famous paper-makers. From the basement story, sunk in the % solid
rock, to the topmost tier of the stately front, everything that modern
architectural skill and experience could dictate has been expended in making
the building a model of convenience and elegance. The erection alone cost
15,000Z., and the mere site, consisting of sixty-four feet of frontage by
eighty feet of depth, is, at the present moment, worth upwards of 6000/. Ten
years ago 1000Z. would have been considered ample value for such a bit of
land. In all parts of the city the price of building sites has increased in
a like proportion. Frontages to Pitt and George Streets, in the more central
and favoured spots, would now cost not less than 300/. to 400/. per foot.
Some of the more recent
mercantile erections, such as those of Messrs. Dalton Brothers, R. Gray and
Sons, Hoffnung and Co., JohnFraser and Co., Newton Brothers, and many
others, have cost certainly not less than from 20,000/. to 30,000/. each.
This fact alone speaks volumes for the material prosperity of the colony,
and it affords the strongest possible evidence that these firms have
confidence enough in the future of the country, when they are found willing
to invest such enormous sums in stone and lime.
While giving due praise,
however, for whatever is praiseworthy, one cannot shut his eyes to the fact
that, with better municipal government, the city might have been in a more
advanced state now than it is. In the matter of sewerage, for instance,
things are in an appalling state. Not wishing to state anything but bare
facts, I applied to one of the aldermanic body for information on this
subject. My informant is a shrewd, sensible man of the world, who has
travelled far, and he is known as one of the most pushing, energetic, and
successful contractors that has ever set foot in Australia. Referring to the
lamentable defects in sanitary arrangements, and the chronic indebtedness of
the city, I got from him the following information in writing, which is
interesting, and may be taken as correct:—
"The Commission of
twenty-five years ago (1854), appointed by government, consisting of two or
three irresponsible persons, in order to make a show of doing something for
the benefit of the city, set to work and constructed, or rather
misconstructed some sewers, and they could not have done much less, for the
large amount of money they expended, than they did. For the workmen employed
in the work drank champagne daily, the cost of which must have proceeded
from the funds paid for the work—and such work! Some of the sewers were made
with flat bottoms of rough, sand-stone flags. "Where brick sides were built
it was thrown together, and many of the sewers were only planked over with
boards; these rotted and not unfrequently, after a storm, may be seen in
Pitt Street the tops of these, all rotted away, and the metal and rubbish
below in the sewer."
Things seem' to have made but
little progress in all these years, for the same system is still pursued. In
the sewer leading to the Black Wattle Swamp, for instance, the crown of the
sewer is above the roadway, and in many cases from six to eight feet above
the floors of the cottages along the street.
"Thirty to forty years ago,"
continues my friend, " between what is now George and Pitt Streets, there
ran and trickled a crystal stream, -called the Tank Stream. Its course being
over clean sandstone rock, it formed the water supply of old Sydney, and to
make the most of it, large tanks were cut in the rock to retain a supply.
By-and-by the houses got thicker and closer, until the water became too
contaminated to be used for drinking purposes, and the stream became more of
a sewer than anything else, and at the same time very offensive. When the
Commissioners carried out what they called improvements, they turned the
sewage of the principal streets into this Tank Stream: and to this day a
number of shops and houses about Hunter and Bridge Streets, are erected over
this open sewer and over tanks, through which the sewage passes, and in many
of the buildings, by taking up the flooring the sewage can be seen
underneath. This is not yet rectified, for within the last few months a
petition was presented to the Municipal Council, from some jewellers' and
others, stating that the effluvia arising from' the sewage actually turned
their metal-work blue.
"How persons can quietly live
over such pest-generators is marvellous. And now the Corporation have not
the power to borrow money to remedy these evils; in fact, as it now stands,
they must not turn any more sewage into the harbour, or construct any sewer.
We are promised next session an act to construct new sewers for Sydney,
under a plan approved of by a Commission appointed twelve years ago for that
purpose, and within the last year or two, corroborated by Mr. Clark, C.E., a
gentleman sent for from England to examine into the sewerage and water
supply for Sydney. But, while the grass is growing the steed is starving.
Still, perhaps in another ten years, we may get some of the sewers made, and
some few improvements inaugurated, if we are not all dead from typhoid in
the meantime.
"But to return to the
Commission of 1854. They managed to spend 3 or 400,000/., and got very
little indeed for their money. It was a job from beginning to end. The
contractor, it is said on good authority, made upwards of 50,000/. profit
from them, besides all the champagne and other drinks required in those
thirsty times.
"It was about this time that
the wharf on the west side of the Circular Quay was constructed, where the
planking used was largely of spruce and other timber, that rots in a year or
two, and upon this metal was placed; consequently, soon afterwards all had
to be taken up and replaced, but not before all had been paid for
previously.
"But this sort of thing came
to an end, and about twenty years ago, the corporation as at present
constituted undertook the management of the city, very foolishly without
having had proper legislative powers given to them. For their Building Act
was an abortive one, and could not be enforced. It was intended to enforce a
sewage rate, but after levying it, they could not obtain payment, and so it
lapsed, and it is only in this present year (1879) that a new Building Act
has been passed by the Legislature, and also a new Sydney Corporation Act."
In answer to a question,
"What points in the Municipal system of Sydney most need reform, my
correspondent goes, I think, very near the root of the difficulty. He says,
" Many of the aldermen are men who came to the country thirty years ago, at
the time young, and without experience, having only had the opportunity of
seeing Sydney, or in some few cases perhaps Melbourne as well. They are
therefore, deficient in knowledge of the progress achieved in other towns in
municipal affairs, and the improvements constantly being made, and they
consequently are narrow-minded, and inclined to fancy Sydney is the world."
He charges these "fossils of
a primary epoch," with want of enterprise or broad, liberal views, and with
having no general experience, and his accusation is echoed by every
independent newspaper in the country. And yet the citizens return such men
year after year. Why ? Because they fancy their rates will thus remain
stationary, insufficient as they are to provide for the due government of
the city, and though their wives may droop, and their little ones wither,
and their streets be a reproach to the world, yet will their miserable
pockets be untouched. It is only lately that one candidate for civic honours
boasted on the hustings, that his principal claim on their suffrages was the
fact, that "he had never been thirty miles outside of Sydney."
Under enlightened and liberal
treatment, Sydney might be made truly a Paradise of residence, as one Sydney
native called it. Unless capable men, however, take the helm, the present
system of dust-bin and sink-hole will continue, and her name will stink in
the nostrils of men, as her streets now undoubtedly do in a more literal
sense in those of her pedestrians. Still, I have, while showing her defects,
also pointed out a few of the promising features which exist.
I have shown the marvellous
progress that has been made in some directions within the past few years.
There seems to be a moving among the dry-bones. The fossils are
disappearing, and vigorous and progressive young men are coming to the
front. If the city's progress in some respects has been so pronounced in
spite of all drawbacks, under the depressing influences of long-continued
droughts, great commercial depression, hard times, and general depreciation
of pastoral and station properties, what may we not expect to see within the
next couple of decades ? Our uneven pavements, our hambling shambling shops,
ricketty warehouses, and unsightly blocks of old-fashioned cramped
structures, are rapidly giving place to buildings more worthy of the age,
and more suggestive of the great future of the colony. The city will ever
lie under the disadvantage of having her principal streets too narrow and
tortuous, but many of the more superficial and potent objections that might
be made to her ranking among the great capitals of the world are fast
disappearing; and Sydney bids fair to become, what from her position and
surroundings she was destined by nature to be, the fit representative of a
great and powerful nation. |
