Stories From Sydney: Recent Episodes
storiesfromsydney
A fortnightly history podcast about the people, places, and events that have shaped the city of Sydney and its surrounds. Find us on facebook or instagram @storiesfromsydney
In this episode, we explore the very earliest years of the colony in Sydney Cove by following the fates of two ships: Sirius and Supply. Join us as we learn about a struggling outpost on the brink of starvation, and the extreme lengths they would go to fetch some flour.
This episode is full of quotations from First Fleet diaries, which were found in the excellent Buried Alive: Eyewitness Accounts of the Making of a Nation by Jack Egan
In this particularly lengthy episode the boys chart the history of Sydney's drinking water from the well-known Tank Stream to the well-known Desal plant, with stop-offs at several obscure systems along the way. Jed's enthusiasm for the minutae of water volumes is only surpassed by Alistair's pure joy at finally learning where the water he's been swilling for most of his life has travelled from.
To get the most out of this episode you'll want to arm yourself with a map of Sydney's drinking water catchments. We recommend this one from Sydney water: https://www.waternsw.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/55975/Fact-sheet-and-map-Sydney-drinking-water-catchments.pdf or this slightly altered version from the Welcome Reef Dam astroturfing campaign: https://welcomereef.com/sydney-water-catchments/
Sources for this episode include:
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wikipedia
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Sydney History youtube channel
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UNSW ARTS3242 Course playlist on youtube
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Sydney's Water Sewerage and Drainage System by Donald Hector. Originally published in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW, Vol. 144, p. 3-25, 2011
We discuss the life of father of surfing Duke Kahanamoku and his trip to Australia in 1914, where he gave a surfing demonstration at Freshwater beach which popularised surfing in this country. Intertwined with the story of this legendary Hawaiian is that of early Australian female swimming pioneers, and the explosion of beach culture in the early 20th Century.
Sources:
David Davis: Waterman, The life and times of Duke Kahanamoku - A thorough biography of Duke
Waterman - A high quality documentary about Duke Kahanamoku with lots of primary footage
Phil Jarratt: That Summer at Boomerang - Duke's trip to Freshwater from an Australian perspective
We'd also recommend this gallery of wonderful images of Duke
This episode Jed digs up a history book that tells the story of one of colonial Sydney's early families.
Like so many others, Thomas West found himself in Sydney in 1801 as a guest of the crown. From inauspicious beginnings, West quickly established himself as a capable man, right as the colony was beginning to boom. Having what appears to be a personal relationship with Governor Macquarie, within 10 years of arriving in chains West managed to secure himself an unofficial land grant on the South Head Road, beyond the edge of Sydney town, to establish Sydney's first water mill.
West's story brings 19th century Sydney to life as he crosses paths with familiar characters and navigates the political, economic, social and ecological changes of his day.
In this episode, we discuss the significance of the whaling industry in the early history of Sydney, jumping from familiar Sydney locations like Liverpool, Mosman, and Neutral Bay, all the way down the coast to Eden, and even the foundation of Hobart.
Whales celebrate the drilling of oil wells - A Vanity Fair cartoon depicting whales celebrating the Pennsylvania oil rush
The whale ghosts - A short story set in Mosman which uses its whaling past as a motif - appeared in Overland in 2021
Whaling in Eden - An ABC podcast episode on the killer whales in Eden
A short history of lighting - A great ten minute listen which emphasises the importance of whale oil for lighting
John Job Crew Bradfield was one of the defining engineers of early 20th century New South Wales. In this episode we discuss the man's contribution to Sydney's water and transport systems and his largely unrealised vision to completely reshape the hydrology of inland Australia. As unlikely as that might sound, proponents of Bradfield's eponymous scheme continue to reference him to this day as they call for massive water diversion programs to fulfill their own nation building fantasies.
Further reading:
The City and Suburban Electric Railways and Sydney Harbour Bridge - JJC Bradfield (1924)
Watering Inland Australia - JJC Bradfield (1941)
The Revised Bradfield Scheme (1981)
Bradfield, 75 Years On (5 part blog series) - The Strategic Week
In this short and punchy episode the boys discuss three different plant species/genera common to Sydney Harbour. Yes, genera is the correct word for the plural of genus, and hence we would like to apologise in advance for insisting on using 'genuses' throughout the episode.
Listen in to our last episode of Season 4 as we discuss some well known facts, obscure trivia and maybe even the odd tall tale about three plants dear to Jed's heart; Lomandra longifolia, Xanthorrhoea and Tetragonia tetragonioides!
In this episode we discuss Bungaree - a significant figure in the early history of Sydney and part of the first voyage to ever circumnavigate the continent of Australia!
The detailed "King Bungaree" by Keith Vincent Smith was our major source for this episode.
In this episode Jed attempts to tell the multi-generational story of Yarramundi, Colebee and Maria of the Boorooberongal clan of the Dharug people of what is now Western Sydney.
From the first encounters between the Dharug and the British on Dyarubbin in 1791, to the first ever land grant from the British regime to the original inhabitants of Australia in 1816, from Macquarie’s aborted ‘native institute’, the first Indigenous/British marriage and all through the stolen generation to the present day, Yarramundi’s family have been at the centre of the unfolding relations amongst the people that call Western Sydney home.
In this podcast we discuss The History Listen podcast episode Yarramundi and the people of Dyarubbin and the Sydney University research that debunks one of the stories they tell. As with anything do with the people of Dyarubbin, Grace Karskens research is wonderfully helpful and the State Government published Dyarubbin: Mapping Aboriginal history, culture and stories of the Hawkesbury River that she was involved with is well worth a look if you’re interested in the specific geography of these last few episodes.
Lastly, at the end of the episode we plug The Australian Histories Podcast and Jed also mentions a book he read on William Buckley, which is Jock Serong’s Buckley’s Chance.
In this episode we discuss the excavation of the Lapstone Creek rock shelter and what it tells us about Aboriginal history and culture in the Sydney region. Tune in to learn more about where you can find the best rock in the region for making stone tools, how it got there, and what kind of innovative uses it was put to by Aboriginal people over their staggeringly deep occupation of this continent!
Sources:
Grace Karskens: People of the River - a wonderful book
The Lapstone Creek Excavation - the foundational text of Australian archaeology
Sourcing Stone from the Sydney Region - a hatchet job
Castlereagh and Penrith Lakes - a lovely blog post
Penrith Lakes Scheme - an aspirational video of what the quarried moonscape could become
We're back for Season 4! Instead of our usual 2 minute teaser episode we are launching with a bang: just shy of 2 hours of mostly 18th century prose!
In this episode Jed surprises Alistair with a dramatic reading of several passages from Watkin Tench's 1793 publication 'A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson'. The stories we explore relate to some of the first journeys the colonisers made to Dyarubbin, the river that they had mistakenly identified as both the Hawkesbury and the Nepean.
Tench's writing gives us access to life on the river in the first years of the colony and shows some of the earliest interactions between the British and the Dharug people in the brief period before their displacement began.
In this bonus episode we discuss Following the Flow, a documentary exploring the people, places, ecology and history of the Macquarie Wambool River in Western NSW.
Alongside Stories from Sydney, Jed has been working on this project for the past 3 years and is very excited to be bringing it to Sydney for a screening at the Golden Age Cinema in Surry Hills in July. As well as chatting inland waterways we crack open the vault and return to some fondly remembered clips from Jed's episodes 'Celebrating a New Beginning Across the Blue Mountains' and 'The Town Where the Bell Meets the Macquarie'.
Head to www.followingtheflow.com.au to watch the trailer and join our mailing list or connect with @FollowingtheFlowfilm on facebook and instagram. We hope to see you there!
In the last episode of Season 3 we briefly trace the history of Australia's first and most important export, coal, and the city with which it is inextricably linked. We trace this history from the dreaming of the Awabakal people all the way to the open cut coal mines of the Upper Hunter that frame our national narrative to this day.
One particular mystery, however, forms the focus of the episode; just why did roughly 50 merchant ships laden with Newcastle coal go missing in the Pacific Ocean bound for the West Coast of the Americas? And why were the powers that be so stubborn in their refusal to address an issue that cost over 1000 lives in the late 19th Century?
This fortnight we discuss the Theosophical Society and their impact on Sydney, from the 2GB radio station, to the Star Amphitheatre in Balmoral (pictured) and The Manor in Clifton Gardens.
Tune in to hear about the famous Australian figures associated with the movement, their early interest in Buddhism, and the touted messianic hero who renounced his role and brought a decade of eager anticipation crashing down around him!
In the early years of the 20th century Sydney was the undisputed Department Store capital of the world. Retail family dynasties competed with each other to open the largest, most modern and most spectacular stores from Broadway to Wynyard.
Alas, the 1960s brought changing fortunes for these icons as the CBD started to decay and sprawling Sydneysiders begun to favour newer, more climate controlled suburban shopping centres with plenty of onsite car parking.
This episode we discuss five of the biggest names in Sydney's department store history, charting their rises and inevitable falls to find out what has become of some of these epic buildings and one-time institutions today.
In this episode we discuss tensions within working class politics in Sydney during the First World War.
If you enjoyed this episode you might be interested in this podcast episode about the Great Strike of 1917 from the City Of Sydney.
Also, we really enjoyed this podcast episode from Forgotten Australia about Percy Brookfield, which was what alerted us to this story in the first place.
And finally, here is an article about the Sweetacres factory in Roseberry.
In 1880 the bushranger era came to a dramatic end in Eastern Australia with the infamous death of Ned Kelly in Melbourne. Earlier that same year a man just as infamous at the time was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol after engaging in his own wayward adventures across the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria and in the South Pacific.
Some 110 years later the letters Andrew George Scott, known to the 19th century public as 'Captain Moonlite' wrote,came to light in the New South Wales State Archives. These letters gave a surprising insight into the mind of a fascinating character and gave queer Sydney an erstwhile hero.
In this episode we explore just a few of Scott's misadventures and discuss his ongoing significance to Australian culture.
This episode was written based on the work of Garry Linnell is his book 'Captain Moonlite: The Tragic Love Story of Captain Moonlite and the Bloody End of the Bushrangers'.
Well before the gold rushes of the mid 1800s, there was another all but forgotten resource extraction boom which played an important role in the expansion of the early colony. After being first logged along the Hawkesbury River, red cedar soon became the third largest export from the nascent port of Sydney and was known colloquially as “red gold”. It played a vital role in the foundation of places as diverse as Kiama, Maitland, and Byron Bay, and its presence is still to be observed in many buildings throughout Sydney today.
A short video on red cedar which features the Reading Room in Canberra is available here. You can also check out the Macquarie Armchair, the oldest surviving piece of Australian red cedar furniture, or read this short article which contains many beautiful images of red cedar trees. Stories about red cedar have also featured in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Newcastle Herald.
This episode we discuss the story of the Sydney Cove, a ship that set sail from Calcutta bound for its eponymous port in 1796. The Sydney Cove never quite made it the whole way, but after countless misadventures just under half of her crew did.
Join us as we discuss a story that is not only all but unbelievable but is one of the most significant stories of first contact between First Nations people and visitors from across the British Empire. This tale was more or less lost to time for much of the 20th century but from the unearthing of the shipwreck in 1977 there was no putting this tale back in the rum bottle, as it were.
The original inspiration for this story came from reading Jock Serong's work of historical fiction: Preservation. The factual heavy lifting was largely courtesy of Mark McKenna's book: From the Edge; Australia's Lost Histories. If you'd like to read the full text of William Clark's published account of their journey you can find it, and an assortment of other relevant correspondence, here.
And if you know where we an get a carton of James Squire's Preservation Ale we'd love to hear from you!
We discuss the history and significance of the local bowlo with special guest Louis Heath. Perhaps you, like us, have always wondered where this quaint game comes from, and why so many bowling clubs dot the streets of Sydney. If so, then you're in luck! We'll dive into the royal origins of the sport, its enormous boom in popularity in the post-war era, and what the future holds for these local institutions.
If you would like to discuss bowlos or share resources with Louis, you can reach him at louisheath@hotmail.com. You can also read his thesis here, or simply reference this graph showing the steady rise and fall of bowling clubs over the last 100+ years. Here is the newspaper article about the significance of third places during the COVID pandemic that is mentioned during the episode.
You can also read Wendy Bacon's investigative stories on the proposed development of Paddington Bowling Club here, and this Herald article about the recent restoration of the land to the Aboriginal Land Council.
To celebrate both boys recording from Sydney for the first time ever, we've included some bonus material about Manly in our introductory episode to Season Three - a "vignette from Sydney" as Jed likes to call it! Plus, find out about the exciting new episode format set to feature this season, and hear about the topics that we have prepared for you (or in some cases soon will be preparing).
Despite their household name being all but forgotten, the Macleay family were a force to be reckoned with in Colonial Sydney society. They owned vast swaths of NSW as it was carved up in the 19th century, they represented much more of the colony in parliament, they built a most impressive sandstone mansion at Elizabeth Bay House and after 3 generations of collection famously bequeathed one of the world's vastest natural history collections to the University of Sydney. Join us this episode as we discuss one of the most important but oft overlooked colonial Sydney families; the Macleays.
Tracing the history of sewerage infrastructure in Sydney provides a wild ride through the origins of democracy in NSW, the popularity of Egyptian obelisks in the nineteenth century, and the unsavoury prospect of surfing in the city’s muck. Join us on this week's episode of Stories from Sydney as we discuss the fractious history of the city’s waste disposal projects, and the monumental architecture that still exists right under our noses (or rather, above them!)
Until more recent years Sydney's large and visible queer community was generally ill considered by wider society, in large part due to the negative light the police and mainsteam media portrayed them in. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, a secret world of partially hidden dance parties was occurring across the city on an epic scale. This episode tracks the history of Sydney's gay bashes (the good kind) over the last 100 years, always present, but just out of sight - except of those who knew where to look.
We discuss the swimming scene in Sydney at the turn of the century, some iconic locations, our first Olympic champion, and the stroke that changed everything.
This episode we head West from Sydney to a town that has long shared connections with the Harbour City. From Ancient Caves to Pistol Duels and Unfinished Roads, through 3 short stories (and a generous introduction) we learn a little bit about a little town called Wellington.
On a quiet autumn day in 1935, a recently captured Tiger Shark on display in the swimming pool at the Coogee Palace suddenly regurgitated an entire human arm. How did the arm get there, and what does this murder mystery reveal about Sydney society during the Great Depression?
In the 1890s the temperance movement took off across Australia. At first laughed out of the room, the coming of World War One dramatically changed public attitudes and saw the cultural centre of towns and suburbs move away from the public bar. A new, arguably less civilised, drinking culture took hold across the land and Sydneysiders had to grapple with the tension between their disposition towards authoritarianism and their love of a hard and fast drink.
Despite arriving as a convict in the very early years of the colony, Billy Blue went on to achieve considerable success as a ferryman and harbour master and gave his name to many locations on Sydney's North Shore. Tune it to find out more about this colourful figure and the little-known history of African-American convicts in Sydney.
Tune in to this week's short trailer to get yourself geared up for another season of Stories from Sydney, find out what's changed (not much) and to hear our first episode's all important clue!
Colonial Sydney was rife with grand schemes to put the town firmly on the map and in hearts and minds across the Empire. Few such schemes were as demanding, or as necessary, as the plan to build a road connecting the Parramatta, Hawkesbury and Hunter Rivers. Things didn't quite go as planned, but the present day residents of the route might just be better off for it.
The so called "Rum Hospital", which still stands on Macquarie Street, was constructed in return for exclusive rights to import rum into the young colony. How did it come to pass that rum was such an important commodity in colonial Sydney? Did this government contract exacerbate the drunken debauchery that Macquarie had been tasked with bringing under control? And was this novel contract a good deal for the government, or an absolute bonanza for the rum-importing, hospital- constructing cartel?
In the 19th century British settlement irreversibly altered the ecological and cultural landscape of the Burragorang Valley. For the Gandangara people of the valley, the 20th century would bring only greater pain, as Sydney's demands for water and recreation would see them displaced again and again. The 21st century brought greater recognition of the struggles of the Gandangara people of the Burragorang, but with it the threat of yet further destruction.
This week's episode follows the story of Louisa Collins, a working class woman who in 1888 saw not one but two husbands die under mysterious circumstances. During the episode, we discuss the history of the Darlinghurst Courthouse and Gaol, and touch on the struggle for female political emancipation and growing opposition to capital punishment in the late 1800s.
It took white Australians 25 years to find a way across the Blue Mountains, but only 10 years for a pub to open on the way down the other side. This story is about a pub that burned briefly, but burned bright, leaving an indelible mark on Australia forevermore.
The notebooks of William Dawes, astronomer of the First Fleet, disappeared from public view for nearly 200 years before being uncovered in 1972. These weren’t just any old diaries, but instead contained an extensive account of the indigenous language of Sydney. This episode is about how these notebooks came to be written and then forgotten, and what we can learn from reading the conversations that Dawes recorded in them. Along the way, we too will learn a little about the local Aboriginal language of Sydney!
The role the railways played in the growth of Sydney and New South Wales could hardly be overstated. But when, and how, did it all begin? Tune in to find out just how close Sydney came to missing the proverbial boat of the world's first rail boom.
On Boxing Day, 1908, before a crowd of 20,000 Sydneysiders, an African American boxer named Jack Johnson defeated Tommy Burns, a white Canadian, to become the first ever black Heavyweight Champion of the World. This episode tells the story of how this important event ended up taking place in Rushcutters Bay at the newly built "Sydney Stadium".
Hello and welcome to Stories from Sydney: History of the Harbour City. In this episode we’d like to briefly introduce ourselves and give you a quick rundown of what you can expect from this podcast. Every fortnight one of us tells the other a story from the rich and varied history of Sydney and her surrounds.