Sydney – Scholar Gipsy

A Day Out in the People’s Park

By Scholar Gipsy | July 21, 2020 | Comments 10 comments

*The rugged coastline of Sydney’s Royal National Park*.

Early in 1879, the New South Wales Legislative Assembly passed a resolution stating that ‘the health of the people should be the primary consideration of all good Governments, and, to ensure the sound health and vigour of the community … all cities towns and villages should be possessed of parks and pleasure grounds as places of recreation.’ The resolution led directly to the establishment of Australia’s first, and the world’s second, national park. For 140 years the large tract of open land on the southern outskirts of Sydney originally known simply as ‘The National Park’ and later renamed ‘Royal National Park’ has been a place of retreat and recreation for the inhabitants of Australia’s biggest city.

Now, when ‘the sound health and vigour of the community’ needs to be supported as much as possible, how grateful we can be for our national parks! For reasons of mental as much as physical health, they’ve provided a lifeline for pent-up bodies and spirits itching to escape the confines of ‘lockdown’.

*Enjoying a day away from the city*, *without really leaving the city. Photo: Sara Freeland*.

Yesterday five members of my extended family met up with Sara Freeland of The Freeland Hiking Company for a private day hike in the Royal National Park. What we were after: fresh air, exercise, far-reaching views and a chance to connect with an iconic Sydney landscape. What we got: all that plus great company, delicious food, wildlife encounters and some intriguing insights into the history and ecology of the Park.

Our walking route comprised the middle section of the 26km Coast Track, which runs down the eastern edge of the Park from Bundeena in the north to Otford in the south. We drove to Wattamolla Beach, left our cars in the car park there, then walked the approximately 7km to Garie Beach and back again. At a leisurely pace, with plenty of time for photography and stops for morning tea and lunch, the entire walk lasted just under 8 hours.

*Morning tea was served on this elevated rock platform known as ‘The Balcony’.*

The geology of this area is so rugged and the flora so distinctively Australian that it’s hard to believe that the original plans for the Park included English-style ‘ornamental plantations, lawns and gardens’, racecourses and a zoo! Our guide, Sara, explained how public and government thinking about what a National Park should be changed radically over the first hundred years, tending more and more towards conservation. By the 1970s Park philosophy had swung so far in this direction that there little place for human visitors at all; today there is more of a balance between recreational and environmental demands, while the human heritage of the Park is also acknowledged along with its natural features.

*A Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo munching on casuarina seeds.*

With a keen birdwatcher in our group, we were on the lookout from the beginning for bird life along the walking route. The first we saw were large groups of noisy Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos feeding on the seeds of banksia and casuarina trees. Later in the day, as the terrain changed to coastal heathland, we saw dozens of New Holland Honeyeaters, tiny balls of concentrated energy flitting through and just above the low scrub. Pretty little Welcome Swallows appeared later along the route, and we were also lucky enough to see a White-bellied Sea Eagle soaring overhead.

*New Holland Honeyeater. Photo: Peter Lewis*.

We weren’t expecting to see native animals along this well used walking route, but one member of the group cannily followed (with her eyes) a rustling sound in the undergrowth beside the track and discovered an echidna hiding amongst the ferns. I know we are not meant to favour the ‘cute and cuddly’ kinds of wildlife, but my goodness this little fellow had an adorable face, peering up at us with an expression part inquisitive, part mystified.

*This shy but also slightly curious echidna was spotted beside the track.* *Photo: Peter Lewis.*

Finally, as the afternoon wore on we saw unmistakable signs of whale activity a short distance off-shore, which Sara identified as humpbacks migrating from Antartica to give birth in warmer waters. So all in all it was a good day on the wildlife front!

Something I appreciate about walking with a guide is the enlightenment they can provide about the plants you see along the way. We can all recognize an echidna, but who’s going to know the name of that nice purple flower, or what that weird-looking tree is? That’s when a knowledgeable guide becomes invaluable. Sara’s commentary made us realize that almost everything in the landscape has a story, from the bright orange fungus that helps carry information and nutrients through the ‘wood wide web’ to the burnt tree trunks bedecked with bright green foliage, examples of ‘epicormic growth’ in the wake of a bushfire.

*A grass tree – one of the strange plants we needed our guide to identify.*

All this botanizing seems a long way from the early plans (never carried out) to build cricket pitches and rifle ranges on this land, but in fact the Trustees’ original vision for a People’s Park remains; it’s just expressed differently. We saw lots of other walkers and runners who had come out here alone, in pairs or in groups to enjoy the scenery, the sense of height and space (much of the track runs along a cliff top), and the ability to move freely on foot over long distances.

National Parks make access to the magnificence of nature a democratic right. Over lunch – a sumptuous array of platters with fruit and cheese and bread and meats, which Sara had somehow produced from her backpack – we rested our legs and took in the view over Garie Beach, feeling much like the royalty for whom the Park is named. ‘I wouldn’t want to be anyone but us right now,’ my niece declared, and I think we all felt exactly the same way.

*Our lunch view overlooking Garie Beach.*

[We did the Freeland Hiking Company’s Sydney Coastal Trek, but it’s also worth checking out the much cheaper Royal Hiking Adventure, which is specifically geared towards Sydney locals.]

Where the bodies are buried.

By Scholar Gipsy | March 1, 2020 | Comments 2 comments

A few weeks ago I visited the Dead Central exhibition at the State Library of New South Wales. Billed as an exhibition ‘In Memory of a Lost Cemetery’, it tells the story of one of Sydney’s oldest burial grounds, the Devonshire Street Cemetery, which in 1901 was partly moved and partly overbuilt to create Central Railway Station.

Cemeteries fascinate me, especially if they’re old. I think they can be among the most interesting landmarks to visit in any location, whether at home or away. Highgate Cemetery in London, Père Lachaise in Paris, the ancient Jewish burial ground in Prague, the Protestant Cemetery in Rome and the community graveyard on Norfolk Island (Australia) have provided some of my most memorable travel experiences. Cemeteries can tell you so much about a society and its history, as well as being full of individual stories that are often gripping, tragic or just strange.

I first learnt of the existence of the Devonshire Street burial ground when I reviewed Lisa Murray’s Sydney Cemeteries: A Field Guide for the Sydney Review of Books. Before that I had no idea that the bones of thousands of Sydney’s nineteenth-century citizens once lay beneath the concourses of Central Station, or that even older bones remain in the earth on which Sydney Town Hall stands, the site of the city’s original Burial Ground (used from 1792-1820). I wonder how many people do know that our city is literally built on the graves of our ancestors?

*Painting of Central Railway station by William Young, 1923. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.*

Dead Central aims to bring this knowledge, which has been forgotten or repressed, to light, and it does it very well. This is a beautifully curated exhibition, well supported by technology. There’s an app, which visitors download to their own devices and through which they can listen to a 35-minute audio recording that adds a lot of emotion and personality to the visual exhibits. If after this you still want to find out more, the library has produced a six-episode podcast called The Burial Files, which delves further into the interlocking histories of the cemetery and the railway.

The exhibits at Dead Central include a couple of names that most Sydneysiders will recognize. One is Mary Reibey, the legendary convict turned successful businesswoman, whom most of us learn about in primary school – or at least we did back in the 1970s. You’ll remember her face from the Australian $20 note. The other is First Fleeter James Squire, who established the colony’s first successful brewing business, and whose name is still stamped on craft beers we enjoy today. Both were buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery, Squire in 1822 and the longer-lived Reibey in 1855.

*Portrait of Mary Reibey, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.*

Having opened in 1820, Devonshire Street was closed to new burials in 1867; thereafter the site became increasingly rundown and neglected, and some voices called for its complete closure. It wasn’t until 1901, though, that the New South Wales parliament decided to resume the land and use it to build Central Station. The other option, apparently, was to build the new station on Hyde Park – so thank goodness they made the choice they did, rather than taking away our largest green space in the city centre!

The problem of what to do with the graves was, of course, immense. According to Lisa Murray, ‘[a]pproximately 8500 remains were claimed by descendants and removed with their associated monumentation to other cemeteries’ (Sydney Cemeteries, p.53). Around 30,000 more were exhumed and moved to Bunnerong Cemetery in the Eastern Suburbs, a grisly task according to eyewitnesses. Other human remains were inadvertently left behind, because no one really knew how many people had been buried at Devonshire Street.

The fact that we have as many records as we do of the old cemetery is thanks to the heroes of this story, a married couple named Josephine Ethel Foster and Arthur George Foster. He worked in retail at Anthony Hordern’s department store. She, as far as I can tell, wasn’t employeds outside the home, but was a keen photographer. They both loved history. The Fosters decided that someone needed to record as much information as possible about the Devonshire Street graves before they were moved or destroyed.

*A. G. Foster’s meticulous record book, in which he not only transcribed epitaphs but carefully drew the shape of each headstone.*

With this aim, they spent every weekend for two years at the derelict site. She photographed the headstones and memorials, while he transcribed the epitaphs. Unpaid, working on their own initiative, these two private citizens performed an invaluable service to the city they loved and to the cause of history in general. They went on to become very active founding members of the Royal Australian Historical Society.

So, what remains of the Devonshire Street Cemetery? 746 headstones and memorials – those that remained in reasonably good condition – were moved from Bunnerong Cemetery in the 1970s to the Botany Pioneer Memorial Park at Matraville, where they can be visited today. For the rest, we have only the Fosters’ images and texts to remind us of what once was.

*One of Josephine Ethel Foster’s photographs of the old Devonshire Street Cemetery.*

Seeing this exhibition has altered my perception of Central Station. To me, it was always ‘just there’, part of my world since childhood. It’s good to have this glimpse into its hidden history and to know that, beneath its everyday surface, lies a complex human past.

Did you know?

Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market and New York’s Central Park are two other examples of prominent urban landmarks that were established over the top of disused burial grounds.

In Quarantine!

By Scholar Gipsy | February 3, 2020 | Comments 8 comments

How would you feel if you found out you had to go into quarantine?

Would you feel angry, resigned, regretful, afraid? Would concern about your health override all other feelings? Or could there be a part of you that might enjoy the enforced rest and extra time off work?

How would you pass the days? Would you value the chance of some time out, or would you be itching to get back to the world and resume your normal responsibilities and activities?

As the residents of Wuhan in China enter their second week of coronavirus lockdown, and foreign nationals evacuated from China face periods of up to fourteen days in isolation facilities, I thought I’d take a look at a practice that has been part of the travel experience for nearly seven centuries: quarantine.

*Venice harbour, where the modern system of quarantine was first introduced. Painting by Canaletto, 18th century. Public Domain.*

The word comes from the Italian quaranta– forty – because early disease-control practices in Europe mandated a forty-day period of isolation before ships coming from plague-affected areas were allowed to enter ports in ‘safe’ areas. It’s not clear exactly where the practice originated, but it was the Republic of Venice, a major trade hub during the medieval period, that in the fourteenth century created the first government-regulated quarantine. Many other Mediterranean ports copied the Venetian example, followed in time by countries all over the world.

1885 cartoon from Harper’s Weekly depicting the importance of quarantine for keeping cholera, yellow fever and smallpox out of New York.

Travellers these days do NOT expect to find themselves in quarantine, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was a routine part of the tourist experience. It wasn’t just plague but also, increasingly, cholera that countries wanted to keep out, and in the effort to do so they often subjected foreign visitors to quite arduous quarantine conditions.

The historian John Pemble, in his book The Mediterranean Passion, notes that for travellers in the nineteenth century the ‘cumulative delay’ caused by multiple quarantines could be considerable. ‘For example, tourists visiting Egypt, the Holy Land, Turkey, and Greece in that order had a minimum of three quarantines: one at Beirut for having been at Alexandria, one at Constantinople for having been in Beirut, and one in Greece for having been in Constantinople.’ Travellers who wanted to visit ‘the East’ or move around the Mediterranean were resigned to spending lengthy periods in detention along the way.

*Malta, View of the Quarantine Area. Etching by M-A Benoist, c.1770. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.*

Quarantine was such an accepted part of tourism that guidebooks included information on the different quarantine stations or ‘lazzarettos’, as they were also called. Pemble quotes the 1884 edition of Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Greece, which rated Corfu, Piraeus and Malta as having the best quarantine facilities, with Malta being ‘the least inconvenient and best regulated purgatory of them all’.

Several famous British writers were ‘guests’ of this particular quarantine station during the early to mid-nineteenth century. Poet Lord Byron, theologian (and later saint) John Henry Newman, and novelists Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray were all detained there. For each of them, the great question was how to pass the time while waiting to be released.

Let’s just say that Byron didn’t handle it very well when he was quarantined at Malta for 18 days in the spring of 1811. Having too much time and no pleasant distractions, his thoughts turned inwards, and not in a good way. He obsessed about all the things that were wrong with his life – health, finances, relationships – and wrote a list of negative thoughts in his diary. Like prisoners from time immemorial, he carved his name on one of the walls. He decided that his career as an author was just ‘vanity’ and not worth pursuing. He came to believe that his confinement was making him ill. Afterwards, he wrote the poem ‘Farewell to Malta’, which contained the lines: ‘Adieu, thou damned’st quarantine, / That gave me fever, and the spleen [bad temper].’ Not his finest poetic hour, but you get the picture.

*The harbour at Valetta, Malta, where many 19th century travellers underwent quarantine.*

In contrast, when John Henry Newman was confined at the quarantine station at Malta in 1833, he knew he had to be careful not to become depressed. As he wrote home, ‘to one who has been employing his mind actively for years, nothing is so wearisome as idleness’. So he and his travelling companions decided to keep busy and use the time of enforced leisure to their advantage. He wrote to his family:

I assure you we make ourselves very comfortable. We feed well from an hotel across the water. The Froudes draw and paint. I have hired a violin, and, bad as it is, it sounds grand in such spacious halls. I write verses, and get up some Italian, and walk up and down the rooms about an hour and a half daily; and we have a boat, and are allowed to go about the harbour.

With meals brought in from a local hotel and a boat for skimming about the harbour, no wonder Murray’s Handbook rated this the best quarantine station in Europe! But my point is, Newman turned his imprisonment to his advantage, and did everything he could to dispel tedium and keep his spirits up.

Talking of spirits – bad pun – Newman was convinced that the lazaretto was haunted by the souls of previous occupants. He wrote home about the ‘mysterious night visitants’ he heard prowling about his room and the stairs outside, and said that other travellers detained there corroborated his reports.

*Quarantine burial ground, Port Jackson. Engraving after A. William. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.*

There seems to be a thing about quarantine and ghosts. Q Station Sydney, a unique accommodation and conference venue located on the site of the old quarantine station at North Head on the edge of Sydney Harbour, offers nightly ghost tours of ‘what is reputed to be one of Australia’s most haunted sites’. From the 1830s to the 1980s, migrants and overseas visitors suspected of carrying disease had to undergo quarantine here before they could enter the city or its hinterland. Some of those who succumbed to illness and were buried here still haunt the grounds and buildings, creating paranormal phenomena … or so the story goes.

But not all who were detained here were restless, unhappy or doomed. One passenger who sailed to Australia in 1935 on a ship carrying smallpox left a charming record of an unexpected summer holiday in one of Sydney’s most picturesque locations. Her poem is now displayed at the Q Station entrance and makes a good case for the upside of enforced medical isolation– as long as the location is right!

I wonder what the people going into quarantine this month on Christmas Island will make of their stay there. The political irony of Australians being placed in mandatory offshore detention is pretty striking, and perhaps foreshadows a future in which we’re all liable to become refugees of one sort or another. In the mean time, will the individuals sent to Christmas Island be Byrons, sinking into depression, or Newmans, keeping busy and finding interest in their situation? Time – and, presumably, those emerging from quarantine – will tell.

Tag: Sydney