Waverton Peninsula
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Waverton Peninsula Introduction The suburb of Waverton takes its name from A walking tour of Waverton’s Waverton House built by Joseph Purser in 1845 Industrial Heritage on land purchased from Alexander Berry. William Carr and later his widow, Charlotte, owned the house from 1850-1865. The Old Distance: 4 km family owned it from 1865-1974. Sadly, the Approximate time: 2 hours house was then demolished. Grading: low to medium The whole of Waverton (including Balls Head) was part of the large Wollstonecraft land grant (524 acres). Edward Wollstonecraft and Alexander Berry were business partners who settled on this side of the harbour and built Crows Nest Cottage - from which the suburb of Crows Nest takes its name. The Berry/Wollstonecraft partnership also received land on the South Coast at the Shoalhaven River. Alexander Berry was married to Elizabeth Wollstonecraft (Edward's sister) and after Edward's early death in 1832; Alexander and Elizabeth shared the partnership. Elizabeth died in 1845 and their impressive pyramid shaped tomb stands as a memorial to her in St Thomas' Rest Park. Upon Alexander Berry's death in 1872 the land at Coolangatta (on the Shoalhaven) and in North Sydney passed to David Berry - the town of Berry bears his name. This walking tour will take you on a tour of the Waverton Peninsula’s three ex-industrial sites: Caltex, Balls Head Coal Loader and BP, as well as the former Quarantine Launch Depot and the adjoining boat maintenance yards on the western shores of Berrys Bay. Other sites of historical interest will also feature along the way. North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 2 Our walk begins at Waverton The line chosen terminated at Milson's Point Station, Bay Road Ferry Arcade and provided a transport interchange for rail, ferry, bus and tram Waverton Railway Station commuters from the north shore. The line was The first railway line on this side of the harbour, also a windfall to the Berry Estate, helping to the Hornsby to St Leonards line, opened in 1890 strengthen the market demand for land bringing modern transport to the people who development. lived on the north shore. Discussions took place in Parliament and at North Sydney Council on Three new stations featured along the extension the extension of the line further down for people route - Edwards Road (now Wollstonecraft who lived between St Leonards and the harbour Station) at Shirley Road, Bay Road (now foreshores. John Whitton (chief engineer of the Waverton Station) and Milson's Point. The Railways Department and known as the 'father Waverton and Wollstonecraft Stations were built of NSW railways') lived in North Sydney and is by the Eaton Brothers, well known local timber buried at St Thomas Cemetery (Rest Park). He merchants. (Sawmillers Reserve at Berrys Bay provided estimates to the Government in 1880s is located on the site of the former Eatons timber for the southern extension as two options: yard.) • the St Leonards to Milson's Point option to cost £350,000 (excluding the necessary land resumptions; • and the other more fanciful option of the line to Balls Head at £710,000 (including the wharves required). The Ball's Head extension was being considered at that time in light of the burgeoning industries at Pyrmont and Darling Harbour. Commercial interests hoped Balls Head Bay would become another Darling Harbour. As the Bay Road Station (prior to name change), railway debate raged so too did the continuing between 1893 and 1900. (North Sydney discussions about a harbour crossing which Heritage Centre, PF2980) would provide a land connection over the harbour and open up the north side. The Waverton Station was restored by State Rail and Government Architect, Francis Greenway, reopened in 1993 with a local event celebrating created the earliest design for a harbour its Centenary. It is listed on Council's heritage crossing in 1815. It took much more public database and classified by the National Trust. discussion, political will and the passage of 116 The name of the station changed from Bay Road years before the Sydney Harbour Bridge finally to Waverton in 1929. Important heritage features opened in March 1932. of the Station include its: • Victorian appearance and its relationship to the The St Leonards to Milson's Point railway village environment that developed around the extension opened in 1893 to much fanfare but station; not without great cost, public debate and • intactness, and its position as the station for disruption to the area. visitors to Balls Head Reserve, a popular picnic spot (then and now). Note the sign that has graced the station for many of its years stating North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 3 "Alight here for beautiful Balls Head Reserve" Aboriginal cultural sites on the lower north shore. which was restored and repainted. Large caves and routes were another popular location for local tribes and bands, and remnants Cross over Bay Rd and walk to the of their occupation can still be found scattered south past the small group of shops throughout North Sydney today. No. 75 Bay Rd, Uniting Church Rock engravings such as this large one near the Community Hall entrance to Balls Head are special places which From Council's rating records it appears that the had strong significance to the Cammeraygals cottage located behind the Church Hall dates to and would have related to the Sydney Dreaming. an earlier period than the Hall itself. The There are other smaller engravings located property, originally owned by Frank Naylor, was around this site but they are covered by the purchased by the Methodist Church in c1919. A roadway. They were surveyed as early as 1899 notation for a Hall appears in the 1925-27 and are discussed as part of the Waverton valuation records and the address for the Peninsula Conservation Management Plan as Trustees, who include Reverend Joseph Walker, important Aboriginal components of the site. is The Parsonage, Bay Road, Waverton. Chair of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Cross over Woolcott St and walk Council, Jenny Munro, has said that there are: down Balls Head Rd to Balls Head "approximately 4,000 sites contained in the Drive Sydney region and [they] represent the largest unified body of art so far established. They are HMAS Waterhen was established at this site the only indigenous art sites of such in the early 1960s, however, the site was used magnificence and magnitude that are to be previously by the Royal Australian Navy in found in a large cosmopolitan city anywhere in conjunction with the US Navy during WWII as a the world." Boom Defence Depot. For further information on local Aboriginal sites Continue along Balls Head Dve and and their significance visit the Gadyan Track at stop at Aboriginal carving site Berry Island Reserve (a brochure is available North Sydney is rich in Aboriginal culture and from North Sydney Council). history. The original occupants of this region, the Cammeraygals of the Kuringai Tribe, lived along Waverton Peninsula Industrial the foreshores and in the surrounding bushland Sites prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The David Berry, by his will made on the day of his landscape of Balls Head, Berry Island, Kirribilli, death, 23 September 1889, left the princely Cammeray and Cremorne is dotted with the legacy of £100,000 for the erection and cultural remains of the Cammeraygals and tells endowment of a hospital for the benefit of the their story even though the people who once people of Berry and the Shoalhaven district. A lived here were displaced many years ago. further 30 acres of land near Berry was given by John Hay, David Berry's heir, to the hospital It is the foreshore areas of Balls Head and Berry trustees. Island that have some of finest examples of North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 4 88½ acres of Berry land at North Sydney During its working life, the coal loader's gantry (Waverton Peninsula), the value of which cranes and cable hopper cars unloaded and amounted to at least £100,000 at that time, was loaded coal onto the many ships, both appropriated in satisfaction for the £100,000 passenger and commercial, that passed in and provided for by David Berry in his will; this 88½ out of the Harbour. acres was transferred to the hospital trustees to be utilised by them in accordance with the trusts by which they were bound; also, by the time of the passing of this Act of Parliament in 1906. The £100,000 provided for by David Berry in 1889, for which was substituted 88½ acres of land on the lower North Shore of Sydney, and which was taken over by the Crown in 1906, was sufficient for the erection of the David Berry Hospital at Berry and for its endowment in perpetuity. Continue along Balls Head Rd High Adventure docked at coal loading wharf, 1940s. (North Sydney Heritage Centre, PF 1165) Balls Head Coal Loader Constructed on the western edge of the Balls Reginald Swift “Started working there in 1954. I Head peninsula in 1917 to act as a steamship was a chute hand. They put me down on the bunkering station, the Balls Head Coal Loader ships, on the deck looking after the chute, site was a significant Sydney Harbour industrial shifting it from one hatch to another. And then if landmark. there was a man short or anything I’d be up on the top there driving the out-loaders putting the coal into the ships… The crew, they’d come out and they only had to put their hatches on… Some would take 40,000 tons of coal, the big ships.