The dialogue of townscape: The rocks and Sydney, 1788-1820

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 108, 1997, Pages 88-112

  Karskens, Grace ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845477546     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314619708596029     Document Type: Review

References (106)

1. William Noah, 'A Voyage to Sydney in New South Wales', R494, Mitchell Library [hereafter ML], Sydney.
2. See 'The Life and Adventures of Joseph Holt', published in Peter O'Shaughnessy (ed.), A Rum Story: The Adventures of Joseph Holt, Thirteen Years in New South Wales, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1988, pp. 46-7.
3. George Suttor, Memoirs 1774-1859, A3072, ML, Sydney
4. Hills District Historical Society, The Beginnings of the Hills District, Castle Hill, 1987, p. 57.
5. See J.M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History (1968), Penguin, Melbourne, 1982
6. Robert Irving, 'Georgian Australian', in Robert Irving (ed.), The History and Design of the Australian House, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 37-43;
7. Robert Irving and Judy Nelson, maps, charts, and building chronologies to accompany 'Dating the Views', in Tim McCormick, First Views of Australia 1788-1825: A History of Early Sydney, David Ell Press, Sydney, 1987, pp. 288-95;
8. Helen Proudfoot, 'Fixing the Settlement upon a Savage Shore: Planning and Building', in Graeme Aplin (ed.), A Difficult Infant: Sydney before Macquarie, New South Wales University Press, Sydney, 1988, pp. 54-71;
9. Peter Bridges, Foundations of Identity: Building Early Sydney 1788-1822, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1995.
10. See Dell Upton, 'The City as Material Culture', in Anne Yentsch and Mary Beaudry (eds), The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1992, pp. 51-74.
11. John Hirst, Convict Society and its Enemies, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983;
12. Kay Daniels discusses this 'unconscious scaffolding' in 'Prostitution in Tasmania', in Kay Daniels (ed.), So Much Hard Work: Women and Prostitution in Australia, Fontana, Sydney, 1984, p. 27. There have been many other studies of convicts, dealing with culture, rank, ethnicity, work and gender, including Alan Atkinson, 'Four Patterns of Convict Protest', Labour History, no. 37, November 1979, pp. 28-50;
13. Marian Aveling, 'Bending the Bars: Convict Women and the State', in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 1992, pp. 144-57;
14. Deborah Oxley, 'Packing her (Economic) Bags: Convict Women Workers', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 102, April 1994, pp. 57-76;
15. Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996;
16. Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia (1986), New South Wales University Press, Sydney, 1993
17. Stephen Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1988
18. Paula-Jane Byrne, Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales 1810-1830, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1993;
19. Jane Elliot, 'Was there a Convict Dandy? Convict Consumer Interests in Sydney 1788-1815', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 104, April 1995, pp. 373-92;
20. Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure: A History of Australian Popular Culture since 1788, Longman, Melbourne, 1995, chap. 1.
21. See, for example, Freeland, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure: A History of Australian Popular Culture since 1788, op. cit., pp. 42, 226;
22. Portia Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay: A Reinterpretation of the Role of Women in the Origins of Australian Society, Macquarie Library, Sydney, 1988, p. 214;
23. Michael Cannon, Who's Master, Who's Man?, Viking O'Neil, Melbourne, 1971, pp. 22-5
24. James Broadbent, 'Macquarie's Domain', in James Broadbent and Joy Hughes (eds), The Age of Macquarie, Melbourne University Press and Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Melbourne, 1992, p. 6;
25. Pamela Statham, 'Patterns and Perspectives', in Pamela Statham (ed.), The Origins of Australian Capital Cities. Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1989, p. 23.
26. R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History: Documents, Narrative and Argument, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 57-8.
27. Alan Mayne, 'Reading a Cultural Landscape: The Need for Integration', Urban History/Planning History, papers from Urban Research Program Conference 27-30 June 1995, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1995, vol. 3, pp. 1-20.
28. Gordon Bull, 'The Artistic Background
29. in McCormick, The Artistic Background,op. cit., p. 24.
30. William Bradley, 'Sydney Cove, Port Jackson', March 1788, ML, Sydney
31. James Meehan, 'Plan of the Town of Sydney in New South Wales', 1807, ML, Sydney
32. Charles Grimes, 'Plan of Sydney', 1800, facs. of original reproduced in Historical Records of New South Wales (hereafter HRNSW), vol. 5, 1897, p. 838.
33. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, London, 1798, vol. 1, p. 5.
34. See McCormick, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, op. cit., plate 21, Thomas Watling (attrib.), West View of Sydney-Cove taken from the Rocks, at the rear of the General Hospital, 1793-94, compare with plate 20, a similar view from Dawes Point, 1793-94, and later views.
35. For references to the Rocks as 'over the water', see, for example, coroner's inquest on Callaghan Rierdon, 6 May 1816, R6021 4/1819, pp. 555-7, Colonial Secretary's Correspondence (hereafter CSC); and trial papers of James Pass and others, 15 March 1813, R2390, p. 318, Court of Criminal Jurisdiction (hereafter CCJ), both in Archives Office of New South Wales (hereafter AONSW).
36. Watkin Tench, Sydney's First Four Years: A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and a Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1789), facs. ed., library of Australian History, Sydney, 1979, p. 57
37. Collins, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 16
38. letter from a female convict, 14 November 1788, HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 747;
39. Alan Atkinson, 'Taking Possession: Sydney's First Householders', in Aplin (ed.), op. cit., pp. 76-7.
40. For details on the construction of the early houses, see Freeland, Taking Possession: Sydney's First Householders, op. cit., pp. 10ff.
41. Letter from Sydney, 20 March 1791. John Harris Papers, A1597, ML, Sydney
42. Anon., A View of Sydney Cove, 1792, watercolour
43. McCormick, A View of Sydney Cove,op. cit., plate 19.
44. Irving, 'Georgian Australia', pp. 46ff.
45. for an account of the Chandler house in Cumberland Street, see Wendy Thorp, 'Report on the Excavation at Lilyvale', draft report for CRI, Sydney, 1994.
46. Lesueur, 'Plan de la Ville de Sydney Capitale des Colonies Anglaises Aux Terre Australes', 1802
47. McCormick, Plan de la Ville de Sydney Capitale des Colonies Anglaises Aux Terre Australes, op. cit., plate 62. The 'goat track' later became Surry Lane, then Essex Lane;
48. it now lies below the line of t h e Cahill expressway. Evidence of James Meehan in J.T. Bigge, Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Colony of New South Wales, London, 1822, appendix. Bonwick Transcripts [hereafter BT] Box 5, pp. 2237-8, ML, Sydney.
49. evidence of James Meehan in Bigge, Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Colony of New South Wales, op. cit., appendix; SG, 5 July 1807, 8 November 1826.
50. and Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993, entry for William Fielder.
51. Thorp, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790, op cit.
52. see Geoffrey Scott, Sydney's Highways of History, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1958, p. 232.
53. Hirst, Sydney's Highways of History, op. cit., p. 41
54. evidence of Major Druitt, Chief Engineer, 27 October 1819, in Bigge, Sydney's Highways of History, op. cit., appendix. BT Box 1, pp.17ff., ML, Sydney.
55. Evidence of James Meehan 1820, in Bigge, Sydney's Highways of History, op. cit., appendix.
56. Mark Girouard, Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History, Yale University Press, New Haven. 1985, chaps 1-4, pp. 35ff., 69ff.
57. See also Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City 1760-1900, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1989, pp. 20ff.
58. for eighteenth-century American cities; compare with Graeme Aplin, 'Models of Urban Change: Sydney 1820-1870'.
59. Australian Geographic Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 1982, pp. 144-58.
60. Stephen A. Mrozowski, 'Landscapes of Inequality', in Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter (eds), The Archaeology of Inequality, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991, pp. 79ff.;
61. compare with Graeme Davison, 'The Past and Future of the Australian Suburb', Australian Planner, vol. 31, no. 2, 1993, pp. 63-9, who argues that Governor Phillip's directives for separate houses on large allotments were expressing the same concerns as those of the suburban ideal.
62. Sydney Gazette advertisements for the sale of houses commonly include this phrase; see also D.R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord and his Contemporaries 1788-1821, Cassell, Melbourne, 1972
63. and Paula-Jane Byrne's analysis of everyday buying and selling in early Sydney, 'The Use of Space in a Port Town: Sydney 1810-1850', The Push, no. 30, 1992, pp. 8-21.
64. Discussed in Blumin, The Push, op. cit., chap. 2.
65. The Push, Ibid., compare with Davison, op. cit.
66. Freeland, op. cit., pp. 20-1.
67. Jim Sait, 'Public Building and Town Planning: The First 100 Years', in Lenore Coltheart (ed.), Significant Sites, History and Public Works in New South Wales, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1989, p. 16
68. Proudfoot, The Push, op. cit.
69. Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, London, Faber & Faber, 1987, pp. 295-6ff.
70. Compare with Paula-Jane Byrne, 'The Use of Space', who focuses on the life of Sydney's streets, the world of the 'lower classes and what they made of life on the fringes of the convict system, and how they used . the new colonial space' with their buying and selling, their fighting and drinking. Curiously, Byrne nevertheless attributes Sydney's 'vibrant' town culture to the 'artificial structures of an economy tied to the convict system and the competition of the port', rather than to 'the attitudes they [the lower classes] brought with them', pp. 12, 14, 16.
71. Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, op. cit., p. 306
72. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1985, chap. 3.
73. Phillip to Sydney, 1 February 1790, and enclosure no. 1, HRA. vol. 1, pp. 134ff.
74. Phillip to Sydney, 15 May 1788, HRA, vol. 1, pp. 17-18.
75. David Collins, HRA, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 125, 212;
76. Carol Liston, 'The Capital of the County', in Terry Kass, Carol Liston and John McClymont, Parramatta: A Past Revealed, Council of the City of Parramatta, Parramatta, 1996, chaps 1-3
77. see also Tench, Parramatta: A Past Revealed, op. cit., p. 192.
78. Liston, HRA, op. cit., pp. 112-17.
79. Elliot, HRA, op. cit.
80. Hunter himself wrote in 1796 that some of the emancipists would be 'suited as recruits' for the army, 'in preference to their returning to their old habits in their town. Many of them would probably make better soldiers than farmers' (my emphasis). See Hunter to Portland, 15 August 1796, HRA, vol. 1, p. 584.
81. Collins, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 44
82. King to Portland, 10 March 1801, HRA, vol. 3, pp. 44-5.
83. For discussion, see Robert Dixon, The Course of Empire: Neo-classical Culture in New South Wales, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1986
84. compare with discussion in Carter, op. cit., chap. 10.
85. See the sequence of official correspondence 1788-1805, for example: Phillip to Grenville, 17 July 1790, HRA, vol. 1, p. 194;
86. August 13th 1806', HRA, vol. 6, p. 98.
87. King to Hobart, 1 March 1804, HRA. vol. 4, p. 468.
88. Bligh to Windham, 30 September 1807, HRA, vol. 6, p. 137.
89. For discussion, see Waterhouse, HRA, op. cit., p. 10.
90. Marian Aveling, 'Imagining New South Wales as a Gendered Society 1783-1821', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 25, no. 98, April 1992, pp. 1-12.
91. Aveling, 'Bending the Bars', pp. 144-57;
92. Grace Karskens. The Rocks: Everyday Life in Early Sydney (forthcoming), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1997, chaps 11 and 18.
93. Collins, HRA, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 194.
94. See Karskens, The Rocks, chaps 7, 10-13.
95. Atkinson, 'Taking Possession', p. 85.
96. Sarah Wills, letter to h e r mother, cited in F r a n k Clune, Bound for Botany Bay: Narrative of a Voyage in 1798 aboard the Death Ship Hillsborough, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1964, p . 103.
97. E.W. Dunlop, 'Gamham Blaxcell (1778-1817)', in A.G.L. Shaw and C.M.H. Clark (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography 1788-1850, vol. 1, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1966.
98. Compare to D o n n a Merwick, Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, introduction and p. 8.
99. See Lesueur, 'Plan de la Ville', 1802
100. evidence of Major Druitt, 1819, in Bigge, op. cit., appendix. BT Box 1, Sydney pp. 8, 16, ML, Sydney
101. For example, the 1813 court evidence of the thief, William Howells, is typical. He recounted his movement from Simeon Lord's warehouse 'across the water . by Barney Williams . up the Rocks by Mr [Daniel] Cubitt's, near the watchhouse by George Phillips'; he and his accomplice arranged to meet 'at the back of one Wood's house at the back of the Rocks intirely', where they divided up the loot as day was breaking. Compare with David Garrioch, Neighbourhoods and Community in Paris 1740-1790, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 27ff.
102. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868, Collins Harville, London, 1987;
103. Peter Love, 'From Convicts to Communists', in Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (eds), Staining the Wattle: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/ Penguin, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 150-63
104. Philip McMichael, 'Brutalized, Beggared and Bought', in Burgmann and Lee (eds), A Most Valuable Acquisition: A People's History of Australia since 1788, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 57-72
105. David Neal, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in New South Wales, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1991;
106. Jan Kociumbas, The Oxford History of Australia, Volume 2, 1770-1860: Possessions, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992.