The Olympic Pool Very colourful. Milson's Point, North Sydney.
The pool was built on the old Dorman and Long site where much of the construction work for the Sydney Harbour Bridge had been carried out.
When it was opened in 1936, it was hailed as the 'wonder pool of Australasia' because of the high standard of its facilities and the sophistication of its modern filtration system - at that time one of the most advanced in the world.
The pool is unique because of its harbourside location between the Bridge and Luna Park, the strong art deco styling and decorative plasterwork of its architecture, and its place in Australia's sporting history.
Rebranded for the Occasion On the 19th of March 2022, Red Rattler Set F1 (HB90) is seen at Milsons Point on its way back to Wynyard during one of the many shuttles of the day.
Stuart Milson 1947 Douglas AD-1 Skyraider (N2AD), Bad News
Inda boosh at my former rural bushland abode 52252500653_7fe199a81b_b
The Independent Theatre, 269-271 Miller Street, North Sydney, NSW, formerly part of the North Sydney tram depot The Independent Theatre at North Sydney is a rare surviving example of a small suburban variety theatre built in the traditional music hall style. The building’s ornamental facade dates from 1910 but it was originally part of a tram shed to house cable trams which commenced in North Sydney in 1886. The side brick walls of the theatre still indicate its original use as a tram depot.
Steam trams were introduced in Sydney in 1879 and their popularity ensured a rapid extension of routes to nearby suburbs. In North Sydney, since steam and horse trams could not be used on the steep grades leading up from Milson’s Point ferry terminus, American-style cable traction was adopted.
The operating principal of cable trams involved the movement of an endless cable at constant speed in a shallow channel between the rails. The cable was pulled by a steam winding engine in a winder house at the depot. Trams were of two types: grip cars and trailers. The grip car was operated by a gripman who operated levers through a slit in the floor in order to grip the cable running below in the road.
Between 1883 and 1885 the N.S.W. Railway Commissioners purchased land on the corner of Rider and Miller Streets, North Sydney, to build a cable tram terminus and depot. The site fell away steeply at the rear enabling a powerhouse with steam winding equipment in the rear and a brick car shed on street level to Miller Street. The North Shore Cable Tramway was officially opened in 1886 providing a service from the Milson’s Point ferry wharves (to take passengers and vehicles across the Harbour before the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932) along a route via Alfred, Junction, Blue and Miller Streets to the depot.
The depot was altered and extended prior to the opening of the tram route to Crows Nest in 1893 and electrification of the lines in 1900 which saw more major additions and refurbishments. The tram shed, when completed, comprised twelve tram roads on the ground floor with electric generating equipment and a substation in the basement. Three years later a cross-harbour submarine cable brought power to the depot from Ultimo power-station (now the Powerhouse Museum). Thirty electric tram cars were attached to the depot, increasing to fifty-three in 1905. The depot only operated until 1909 when increasing congestion in Ridge Street saw a new depot opened in Military Road, Neutral Bay, and all the trams were transferred there.
During 1910 the tram depot was converted into the North Sydney Coliseum (which comprised a roller-skating rink and a theatre). This building featured an elaborate French Renaissance façade of stuccoed brick which was added to the tram shed. The rink was 112 feet (34.1 m) by 83 feet (25.3 m) with commodious dressing rooms, refreshment rooms and lavatories. Skaters whirred their way around the rink to music provided by a live orchestra and sometimes themed fancy dress mask carnivals were held. It is thought the roller-skating rink later became a factory and was used to store ammunition during World War II. Its decorative façade was removed in 1949 and the building housed a car dealer, was used by the Postmaster-General’s Department and this part of the building was eventually demolished and replaced with home units.
The theatre section survives and is shown here. When converted to a vaudeville theatre it had seating for 778 with a stage and proscenium of reinforced concrete. “The Sun” newspaper’s description made particular mention of the building’s conspicuous dome topped by a flag staff from which an arc light was suspended visible from every part of Sydney! The architect responsible for the conversion was Joseph A. Kethel, and the builder, J. Stidwell.
From 1919 until 1930 Harry Clay’s vaudeville company performed at the North Sydney Coliseum, one of several suburban theatres used for variety entertainment. Based at the Bridge Theatre at Newtown, Harry Clay (1864-1925) was a performer and theatre manager involved in vaudeville, revue and pantomime and his popular shows played to packed houses in the suburbs around Sydney.
In December 1934 the Coliseum Theatre’s licence was amended to allow boxing, organised by promoters, Messrs Maye and Austin. Known as the North Sydney Stadium, the boxing matches were short-lived as by 1936 the NSW Professional Boxers, Managers and Trainers’ Association complained about safety aspects in the theatre and apparently it was condemned.
Despite this, the Coliseum was leased in 1937 to the theatre and vaudeville producer, Les Shipp, for vaudeville shows, followed by the Criterion Theatre for a short time. Eventually it became the New Kursaal Theatre under theatre producer, Alexander Scott, founder of the Sydney Repertory Theatre.
In April 1939, the theatre was granted a licence for “dramatic purposes” with a reduced seating capacity of 412 people. Despite by then being old fashioned and run-down, the Coliseum Theatre historically began its most significant period of use when it was taken over by Doris Fitton and her Independent Theatre Company.
Doris (later Dame Doris) Alice Fitton (1897-1985) was born in Manilla, the Philippines, and arrived in Victoria in 1902. She studied drama and played her first part with the Melbourne Repertory Company when she was eighteen. She moved to Sydney in 1930 and formed her own theatre company, The Independent, after Jacob Thomas Grein’s Théâtre Libre established in London in 1891. Her first production was Siegfried Geyer’s comedy, “By Candlelight”, at the St James’ Hall in Phillip Street, Sydney, though she used various venues around Sydney.
Doris moved her company, somewhat reluctantly, across the harbour to the old Coliseum motivated by an advantageous lease arrangement and opened there with Terence Rattigan’s 1936 comic play, “French Without Tears”, in late 1939.
Her Independent Theatre’s home at North Sydney featured stalls on a sloping floor with a small, rickety gallery across the back. The auditorium was painted a dusty pink and reached by a long downward sloping corridor ending in a small cramped foyer. There was a proscenium arch and shallow stage with very little wing or backstage area. Behind the stage were two dressing rooms and underneath it an area known evocatively as “the Crypt” accommodated wardrobe and dressing rooms for the ‘non star’ performers. Scenery construction was undertaken in lean-to sheds behind the building or in the open alley beside the auditorium. A rabbit warren of rooms upstairs held offices and the Studio, where the Independent Theatre School operated.
In late 1947 the theatre’s owners tried to close it down and convert it into a furniture warehouse, but a public meeting raised 7,000 pounds ($14,000) to buy the building for the use of the Independent Theatre. Hundreds of productions were staged on a semi-professional basis until 1977 when Doris and the company were in such severe financial difficulties they had to leave.
After this, the theatre survived precariously on short term leases, initially as John Howitt’s 269 Playhouse which saw major alterations and renovations undertaken including the seats replaced with cabaret chairs and tables and the interior redecorated. From 1980, Hayes Gordon, who founded the Ensemble Theatre in 1952, began using the premises as an acting school and performance venue. It was Sydney’s largest private acting school, considered the only alternative in Sydney to the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, and trained numerous Australian television and stage personalities. The students also formed their own company, the Studios Repertory Company, and used the school’s facilities for their productions.
In 1989 ownership of the theatre transferred from Theatre Freehold Ltd to Roncord Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. It was planned to restore the building, expand the capacity of the theatre to 450 seats, incorporate administrative offices above for the Trust and create a museum of theatre history. These plans did not eventuate due to the Trust going into liquidation in 1991. Then, in 1992, it was announced that North Sydney Council would purchase the theatre and restore it for light entertainment but economic circumstances made this impractical. By this time the theatre was in a very dilapidated condition but was finally saved by its purchase in 1993 by a charitable foundation, the Seaborn Broughton and Walford Foundation for the Performing Arts, together with $200,000 made available by Council for its restoration. The newly-restored and partially redecorated theatre re-opened as the SBW Independent Theatre in 1998.
A revived Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust then bought back the theatre in 2004 and undertook further acoustic and heritage refurbishment, making it suitable for musical performances as well as theatre. Finally, in 2013, the Independent Theatre was purchased by the nearby private girls’ school, Wenona, and is currently (2022) used by them for school drama performances, music recitals and other functions. It now comprises a 300-seat venue, has a Steinway concert grand piano and can also be hired by the public for productions, concerts and other events.
References
‘Independent Theatre – North Sydney Coliseum – Kursaal Theatre, Sydney Theatre History, Australian Catholic University, resource.acu.edu.au/siryan/Academy/theatres/Syd_Independe...
‘North Sydney Coliseum’, in “The Sun” (Sydney), 15 Aug 1910, p. 8.
McPherson, Alison, ‘Independent Theatre’, State Library of NSW Dictionary of Sydney, dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/independent_theatre
Simpson, Margaret “Old Sydney Buildings : a social history”, Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst, NSW, 1995, pp. 183-5.
“Flowton”, 434 Bobbin Head Road, North Turramurra, NSW, part of Lady Davidson Private Hospital Within the grounds of the Lady Davidson Private Hospital at North Turramurra, on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, stands a Federation cottage called “Flowton”. It was built in 1895 as the family home of public servant and patron of exploration, Frederick Eccleston Du Faur (1832-1915), known as Eccleston.
Eccelston was born in London, his ancestors having migrated from Gascony in France to England in 1765. He arrived in Sydney in July, 1863, and soon joined the Surveyor-General’s Office as a draughtsman. In 1866 he transferred to the Crown Lands Office and for ten years laboured on a map of the runs available for selectors. It was unfortunately destroyed in the massive Garden Palace fire in the Botanic Gardens in 1882 which is said to have been one of the reasons why Eccleston ultimately left the public service. He went on to run a pastoral company, Du Faur and Gerard, which invested in land on the Upper North Shore in an area Eccleston had officially called by its Aboriginal name, Turramurra, meaning ‘lofty place’.
In 1873 Eccleston had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, was chairman of its Geographical Section, and helped to finance the last expedition to ascertain the fate of the explorer, Leichhardt, who had disappeared in 1848. In 1883 he became the first chairman of the Geographical Society of Australia and suggested exploration of Antarctica decades before Scott, Shackleton and others joined the polar race. Eccleston considered that the Australian climate was affected by weather conditions in Antarctica and was on the committee which raised funds in support of Mawson’s expedition.
Eccleston decided to move his family from the inner west to the North Shore and in 1888 commissioned his friend, the unconventional American architect, John Horbury Hunt, to design him a large two-storey home for his family at Warrawee, south of Hornsby, then surrounded by bush and orchards. Named Pibrac after Eccleston’s French grandfather, the Count Du Faur of Pibrac, it illustrated Horbury Hunt’s enthusiasm for the Arts and Crafts style and timber shingle walls.
The declaration of Yellowstone National Park in the USA in 1872 and his walks in rugged country around Sydney and Mount Wilson had inspired Eccleston to advocate for the preservation of Ku-ring-gai Chase, north of Sydney, in 1891. After being informed by the Minister for Lands that no further land was available for national parks, Eccleston invited the Governor, the Earl of Jersey, to a picnic in the bush there. The Governor was said to have been so impressed by the natural beauty of the area, it was declared a national park and gazetted on the 20th June, 1894. Eccleston subsequently purchased land adjoining the new national park at North Turramurra and, in 1895 sold Pibrac, which he said was too expensive to maintain. He again engaged Horbury Hunt to this time design a single-storey Federation cottage on his land which he called Flowton, after the graceful English Du Faur family mansion, Flowton Hall, near Ipswich, in Suffolk.
Flowton was located in a very remote location, six and a half kilometres from Turramurra Station. Eccleston’s wife, Blanche, never got used to its isolation. Just getting to the city involved driving the horse and buggy to the station, leaving them at the livery stables, catching a train to Milsons Point then a ferry across the harbour.
Eccleston became the first Managing Trustee and President of Kur-ring-gai Chase and worked tirelessly to safeguard it from development. Over the years it was threatened with kaolin mining, country club building and, in 1899, was even put forward as one of the sites for the new capital of the Commonwealth of Australia. Called Pacivica, the plans included a copy of Windsor Castle and the Tower of London together with lakes, gardens and bridges!
Along with Francis Kirkpatrick, a business associate, Eccleston supervised and even actually built part of the original road through to Ku-ring-gai Chase to Bobbin Head. Eccleston’s three children, Guy, John (Bertie) and Freda were enlisted to watch over the native flora in the Chase around Christmas time to protect the valuable waratahs from city flower sellers illegally stealing them. Freda Du Faur honed her rock-climbing skills on the cliffs around Flowton and went on to become a well-known New Zealand mountaineer, being the first woman to climb Mt Cook.
It was Eccleston’s son, Guy, who developed the gardens and horticulture at Flowton. He corresponded with Joseph Maiden, the Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Gardens, who gave him advice on plants and interesting ones to grow in the Flowton gardens. Guy was assisted by a caretaker, Clarence Buisst, whose wife, Gertrude, was employed as Flowton’s housekeeper. At this time it was still lit with candles and kerosene lamps and did not have mains water until 1914. The gardens provided produce, the milkman called twice daily, baker three times and week and a butcher arrived in his cutting cart with a bevy of flies in summer.
Blanche Du Faur died at Flowton in 1907 followed by Eccleston in 1915 at the age of 82. They were buried together in the churchyard of St John’s at Gordon. Over a few years the contents of Flowton were gradually auctioned including the Jacobean furniture, some of it having been in the Du Faur family for generations, the painting collection including those by Conrad Martens, Medici prints, together with the farm machinery, a four-in-hand coach, buggy and horses.
In 1918, 53 acres of the Flowton property, including the house, was acquired by the Commonwealth Department of Defence and a home operated by the Red Cross was built with 75 beds for returned servicemen suffering from the effects of being gassed or having tuberculosis. Its mountain-like fresh air was seen as an asset. The facility was officially opened on the 7th July, 1920, and named the Lady Davison Home after Lady Margaret Davidson, wife of the New South Wales Governor, Sir Walter Davidson. She had been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 for her work with the Red Cross and the Scouts and Girl Guides in New South Wales.
Eventually accommodating about 100 ex-soldiers, the patients were expected to work in the orchards and gardens. One of the soldiers, Private William Shirley, decided instead to build a memorial and spent one and a half years carving a sphinx out of solid rock, close to the hospital at the entrance to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
In 1923 the Repatriation Commission took control of the home. During the 1940s more wards were built and patients with other conditions were admitted for convalescence as well. It remained a sanatorium until the 1950s when the incidence of TB in the community reduced. (The last tuberculosis ward closed in the late 1970s). In 1961 the home became an auxiliary to the Repatriation General Hospital at Concord and renamed the Lady Davison Hospital with Flowton being used as its Administrative Centre. Allied health professionals such as physiotherapists, speech and occupational therapists were also employed. One of the main functions of the hospital at this time was the rehabilitation of amputees with prosthetics as well as children affected by their mothers having being prescribed the morning sickness drug, Thalidomide.
The hospital was privatised in 1997, was renamed the Lady Davidson Private Hospital, and was handed over to Australian Hospital Care for the rehabilitation of both veterans and private patients. It has gone through several providers but from 2005 has been operated by Healthscope. Over the years modern spacious wards have replaced the old ones, it currently accommodates 115 patients has five gymnasiums and a large hydrotherapy pool.
In later years Flowton was used a small museum devoted to the Du Faur family and history of the hospital. Sadly, this is now closed and in 2022 the house is abandoned because it is apparently now unsafe. This is a sad fate for a house with such history related not only to the famous Du Faur family, who did so much to ensure the preservation Ku-ring-gai Chase, the history of North Turramurra as well as the work of the hospital throughout much of the twentieth century.
Main References
Irwin, Sally “Between Heaven and Earth: the life of a mountaineer Fred Du Faur 1882-1935”, White Crane Press, Hawthorn, Victoria, 2000.
Lawrence, Joan “North Shore Walks”, 1991
Under the Sydney Harbour Bridge - NSW A colourful sunrise under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
A great start to the day!
I Am The City I Am The City
ABBA
I am the city, you let me be
I am the city
Coming through a cloud you're looking at me from above
And I'm a revelation spreading out before your eyes
And you find me beautiful and irresistible
A kind of creature that forever seems to grow in size
And you feel a strange attraction
The air is vibrant and electrified
Welcome to me here I am, my arms are open wide
Somewhere in the middle of the never ending noise
There is a constant steady rhythm of a heart that beats
And a million voices blend into a single voice
And you can hear it in the glamor of the crowded streets
People come and take their chances
Sometimes you win sometimes you lose a lot
Come make your own contribution to this melting pot
I'm the street you walk
The language you talk
I am the city
The skyline is me and the energy
I am the city
The famous hotels and the cocktail bars
And the funny smells
And the turmoil, the cars and the people
The air that you're breathing is me
Yes I am the city, you let me be
Went into Kirribilli this morning to get this pano. I’ve been waiting quite a while for the right conditions to capture this.
Lots of high cloud at sunrise, no wind and no cruise boats.
Bingo!! This final image is a five shot Panoramic stitched in photoshop and I’m happy with it.
Hope you like “I Am The City”
Cheers, Mike
Gantry Milson's Point
Wall Study 7 Milson's Point
Wall Study 9 Milson's Point
Kay-yacking Milson's Point
Icon Indeed Milson's Point
'The Opera House' - Sydney | Australia After capturing the previous skyline pano I decided to walk around to Milsons Point as it offered a better side on perspective of the Opera House.
Sydney Harbour Bridge from Milsons Point. 52179712572_918a5f5442_b
Lavender Bay, Sydney On my recent visit to Sydney, I walked across the Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, Milson’s Point and Lavender Bay
Lavender Bay Wharf, Sydney On my recent visit to Sydney, I walked across the Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, Milson’s Point and Lavender Bay
Luna Park and Sydney Harbour Bridge On my recent visit to Sydney, I walked across the Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, Milson’s Point and Lavender Bay
Luna Park, Sydney On my recent visit to Sydney, I walked across the Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, Milson’s Point and Lavender Bay
Post Flight Chuck Gardner, Stuart Milson
A Gathering of Eagles 52260382399_3ce9e947b4_b
Stuart Milson P-40 Driver
B.R. RTW Milsons Point Station 1991 52250076251_8b32f7f5ce_b
B.R. RTW Milsons Point Station 1991 52250088613_1eec4cec1b_b
View from the Sydney Harbour Bridge On my recent visit to Sydney, I walked across the Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, Milson’s Point and Lavender Bay