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 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 . Other sites of historical interest will also feature along the way.

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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 , 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. [Loading would take] about three of four days…”

In November 1940 a freak windstorm damaged one of the gantry cranes beyond repair leaving only one crane in operation until the late 1950s. In October 1992, the Balls Head Coal Loader ceased operations resulting in the dismantling of Wallarah Coal Company ship alongside Balls the site. Only the wharf, coal loading platform, Head Coal Loader, 1920s. (North Sydney tunnels and a few brick administrative buildings Heritage Centre, PF 2667) remain as evidence of its former operation.

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The Council’s plans for the site include a night, there would be somebody on hand to get Sustainability Centre occupying the former in touch with and take them down. But they also caretakers/administration cottage on the eastern used to fumigate ships”. side of the Waverton Peninsula. It is part of the adaptive re-use of more than 5 hectares of regionally significant industrial land on the Sydney Harbour Foreshore.

The building will showcase a range of sustainability features such as energy and water efficiency, waste minimisation and use of recycled building materials and will be used as a base for community learning. Bill Riddington captains the Jenner approaching The Centre will function as a sustainability the Quarantine Launch Depot, c1912. (North resource space and operate a variety of Sydney Heritage Centre, PF 733). programs including public tours of the building, sustainable living workshops and sustainable The site is now the National Maritime Museum’s arts exhibitions. working depot.

The key features of the site, including the Walk back along Balls Head Rd proximity to natural bushland and Sydney Harbour, as well as existing Aboriginal and About 1906 the Woodley family acquired a lease industrial heritage will form the focus for in Berrys Bay from the Sydney Harbour Trust learning. and NSW Government Lands Dept. The site at this time contained a two-rail slipway used to slip Walk along Balls Head Drive on left to torpedo boats. Gradually the site was expanded enter Balls Head Reserve. Take path with reclamation of the waterfront to create a flat on left working space.

The Quarantine Launch Depot was established in Berrys Bay in 1912 to service the boats operating to and from the Quarantine station at North Head.

Brian Stewart’s father was a skipper based at the Depot and his family occupied one of the two houses here. “There had to be a skipper on call, and an engineer on call. My father was a skipper. He was there from at least 1932 on – that’s when I was born…Anybody who come in or a doctor had to be put on board a ship Woodleys Ltd primitive boatshed and slip, 1908. somewhere urgently during the middle of the (North Sydney Heritage Centre, PF 703). North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 6

Woodley’s Limited continues to build and Berry's Bay was known as Torpedo Bay well into repair ships on the site. The steam yacht Ena, the 1920s. originally built for Thomas Dibbs on the opposite side of Berrys Bay at Watty Ford’s, was restored in the 1980s at Woodley’s.

Enter the BP Park past Woodleys Boatyard This site is significant for European history and its connections to the land grantees and business partners, Alexander Berry and Edward Wollstonecraft, dating back to the 1800s.Please take time to read the signs as you walk through View across Berrys Bay to BP and adjoining the site. industrial sites, Balls Head, c1980. (North Sydney Heritage Centre, PF 1179/2). Firstly, they constructed a stone wharf, then a stone warehouse, and workers' cottages and Boatyards for repair and maintenance, and huts. Berry's overseer, W G Mathews, lived in boatbuilding, have been regular landmarks on the cottage on the site which consisted of only the North Sydney foreshores. Woodleys one room and a loft. This provided Mathews with adjacent to the BP site and the Quarantine boat an office and housing for 20 years. Due to a depot are examples of this type of use. number of circumstances, Mathews relocated to Woodleys still operates as a slipway and marina. a new cottage in 1854 located on a parcel of land leading to Ball's Head. This cottage was the The Anglo Persian Oil Company's occupation of Mathews family home for the next 44 years. the site could date to as early as 1908 but it Nearby stood the workers' cottages and wasn't until 1923 that their first tank was remnants of the foundations can be seen today. installed. The tanks grew in number to 31 by the late 1960s and were a prominent feature of this In the mid 1800s Berry leased the site for a short part of the Harbour up until they were dismantled time as a coaling depot to shipping companies, in the mid 1990s. The site is now undergoing a P & O and General Steam Screw Ship remediation process. Company. Other uses for the site included: ship repairs, storage of ballast and even a distillery The Commonwealth Oil Refineries took over the which operated out of the stone storehouse Anglo Persian Oil Company (now BP) and many between 1872 and the 1880s and had still recall the large letters of COR in lights on top connections to the Rag and Famish Hotel in the of the cliff face. The cliff face in the past was heart of North Sydney. In the late 1870s the area known as Gibralter and this is evidenced in was leased to the NSW Torpedo Corps as a historical maps of the area and could relate to depot. This Corps was instrumental in the the character of the cliff face or the loss of a defence of Sydney Harbour in the period of the similar cliff over at Blue's Point. Russian threat. The Corps eventually relocated to Middle Head in the late 1880s. This part of The substantial stone store erected by Berry and Wollstonecraft was demolished to open the way North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 7

for additional fuel storage tanks in the mid Director of the Art Gallery of NSW from 1937 to 1930s. The bund wall left standing contains the 1944. stones of the storehouse and is listed in the Waverton Peninsula Conservation Management Godrevy, No. 24 Larkin St Plan as having 'high' heritage significance. In the This large and impressive Federation house was early 1950s additional tanks for storage were the home of noted Australian artist Will Ashton in added in Unnecessary Road (planned extension the 1920s. The house was built in 1915. Will of Rose Street which is today Larkin Street) and Ashton and his family lived here from 1920 to adjacent properties purchased to provide 1928. accommodation for the staff. Larkin St (formerly Rose St) is believed to The last tanks were dismantled in the mid 1990s be named after Sergeant Edward Rennix Larkin, and today you can see the outline of the tanks killed in WWI. Larkin had been a North Sydney and get an impression of their size and bulk and policeman, the first Labor member of the see the many layers of history they have Legislative Assembly and founder of the North covered or replaced from Aboriginal to Berry and Sydney Rugby League Club. Wollstonecraft and days, to the fuel depot period. Continue along Larkin St to Woolcott St and enter Waverton Park The BP Park was opened in 2005 and comprises pathways, access stairs and lookout Woolcott St is named in honour of the former platforms, fences and handrails, seating and City of Sydney Town Clerk, Charles Henry extensive planting of locally native species. The Woolcott. He was Town Clerk there from 1857 - design also incorporates remnants of the site's 1887 and he lived in Ivycliff (now demolished) on industrial heritage and includes wetland areas the shores of Berrys Bay. This street was known linked to the original drainage system. as Horace Street at one time (the continuation of Woolcott Street across Bay Road is still called Follow the main upper pathway and Horace Street). exit to Larkin St via one of three exits The entrance gates to Waverton Park, The Will Ashton Lookout Geraghty Gates, located at the corner of Larkin Named in honour of the well-known artist and and Woolcott Streets, commemorate the late Waverton resident, Sir John William Ashton. James Geraghty MLA who helped to save this Prior to being knighted in 1960, he received an parcel of land for open space, in conjunction with OBE in 1941. Will Ashton began his art career the Waverton Progress Association. The land when he studied art in his father's studio in set aside as public recreation to include a Adelaide until 1899, at which time he travelled to bowling green and childrens' playground, was Europe to paint and continue his studies. On his dedicated in 1944 and opened by the Premier, return to Sydney he established himself as a Hon. W J McKell. painter of European subjects based on his European travels. In 1906 he won the Wynne The foreshore area of this park, where the Prize for an Australian landscape (he also won playing fields are located today, is mostly this prize in 1930 and 1939). He was the reclaimed mud flat. The area which is now North Sydney History Walk : Waverton Peninsula Page 8

beautiful North Sydney parkland was used for that this is a most convenient spot, and would many years as a tip by North Sydney Council - prove useful for recreative purposes, besides as were many of our parks prior to modern beautifying the locality which at low tide is concerns of contamination and environmental anything but an attractive part of the harbour." protection.

To create the Park and form the bowling greens, Our Waverton Peninsula walking tour fill from the Oyster Cove Gas Works was used. finishes here at Waverton Park. However the waste tip at Waverton Park, in the gully adjacent to the new bowling green, was set To finish/extend the Waverton Peninsula on fire in November 1948, and was not able to walking tour you could return to be extinguished because of the partly spent Waverton Station via Woolcott Street and coke and clinker dumped here for many years. Bay Road or walk east along Woolcott Complicating matters, flammable debris Street under the railway bridge and into collected during a Clean Up Week Campaign Union Street to continue your walk added to the problem. Despite Council attempts around the streets and parks of North to get it under control it continued to burn deep Sydney. From Union St you will be able underneath. There were numerous complaints to walk further east to Milsons Point from residents as to potentially noxious fumes Station (crossing Blues Point Road and emanating from the fire and very grave fears that walking along Lavender Street turning “the beautification of the park, notably the right into Alfred Street) or you can bowling green now nearing completion, is in choose to walk north up Blues Point danger of being destroyed”. Road to Blue Street and North Sydney Station. The underground fire continued to burn unabated into 1949, extending under and These walking tour notes were compiled damaging a portion of the new bowling green. by the Historical Services team from The Council’s only course of action was to doze resources held in the North Sydney away the ashes, clinker, partially spent coke, Heritage Centre, Stanton Library. oxide, etc in the south western corner of the Ph: 99368400 bowling green to the original ground level and get completely behind the fire, at the same time bringing in filling from the eastern side of the Park and building up and consolidating to the proper level again.

In March 1923, the Mayor, Alderman Clark, sought: "to secure the dedication to the Council of Berry's Bay to low water mark for the purpose of a Park and Recreation ground ... it is well known to the Aldermen that Victoria Ward is without a park or reserve of any kind and it appears to me