Stories From Sydney

A Partial Account of Watkin Tench’s Journeys to the Hawkesbury-Nepean

We're back for Season 4! Instead of our usual 2 minute teaser episode we are launching with a bang: just shy of 2 hours of mostly 18th century prose!

In this episode Jed surprises Alistair with a dramatic reading of several passages  from Watkin Tench's 1793 publication 'A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson'. The stories we explore relate to some of the first journeys the colonisers made to Dyarubbin, the river that they had mistakenly identified as both the Hawkesbury and the Nepean.

Tench's writing gives us access to life on the river in the first years of the colony and shows some of the earliest interactions between the British and the Dharug people in the brief period before their displacement began.

Bonus Episode: Following the Flow West

In this bonus episode we discuss Following the Flow, a documentary exploring the people, places, ecology and history of the Macquarie Wambool River in Western NSW.

Alongside Stories from Sydney, Jed has been working on this project for the past 3 years and is very excited to be bringing it to Sydney for a screening at the Golden Age Cinema in Surry Hills in July. As well as chatting inland waterways we crack open the vault and return to some fondly remembered clips from Jed's episodes 'Celebrating a New Beginning Across the Blue Mountains' and 'The Town Where the Bell Meets the Macquarie'.

Head to www.followingtheflow.com.au to watch the trailer and join our mailing list or connect with @FollowingtheFlowfilm on facebook and instagram. We hope to see you there!

The Tragedy of Newcastle Coal

In the last episode of Season 3 we briefly trace the history of Australia's first and most important export, coal, and the city with which it is inextricably linked. We trace this history from the dreaming of the Awabakal people all the way to the open cut coal mines of the Upper Hunter that frame our national narrative to this day.

One particular mystery, however, forms the focus of the episode; just why did roughly 50 merchant ships laden with Newcastle coal go missing in the Pacific Ocean bound for the West Coast of the Americas? And why were the powers that be so stubborn in their refusal to address an issue that cost over 1000 lives in the late 19th Century?

The Theosophists and the Star of Balmoral

This fortnight we discuss the Theosophical Society and their impact on Sydney, from the 2GB radio station, to the Star Amphitheatre in Balmoral (pictured) and The Manor in Clifton Gardens.

 

Tune in to hear about the famous Australian figures associated with the movement, their early interest in Buddhism, and the touted messianic hero who renounced his role and brought a decade of eager anticipation crashing down around him!

Palaces of Consumerism

In the early years of the 20th century Sydney was the undisputed Department Store capital of the world. Retail family dynasties competed with each other to open the largest, most modern and most spectacular stores from Broadway to Wynyard.

Alas, the 1960s brought changing fortunes for these icons as the CBD started to decay and sprawling Sydneysiders begun to favour newer, more climate controlled suburban shopping centres with plenty of onsite car parking.

This episode we discuss five of the biggest names in Sydney's department store history, charting their rises and inevitable falls to find out what has become of some of these epic buildings and one-time institutions today.

The War and the Wobblies

In this episode we discuss tensions within working class politics in Sydney during the First World War.

 

If you enjoyed this episode you might be interested in this podcast episode about the Great Strike of 1917 from the City Of Sydney.

 

Also, we really enjoyed this podcast episode from Forgotten Australia about Percy Brookfield, which was what alerted us to this story in the first place.

 

And finally, here is an article about the Sweetacres factory in Roseberry.

The Tall Tale of Captain Moonlite

In 1880 the bushranger era came to a dramatic end in Eastern Australia with the infamous death of Ned Kelly in Melbourne. Earlier that same year a man just as infamous at the time was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol after engaging in his own wayward adventures across the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria and in the South Pacific.

Some 110 years later the letters Andrew George Scott, known to the 19th century public as 'Captain Moonlite' wrote,came to light in the New South Wales State Archives. These letters gave a surprising insight into the mind of a fascinating character and gave queer Sydney an erstwhile hero.

In this episode we explore just a few of Scott's misadventures and discuss his ongoing significance to Australian culture.

This episode was written based on the work of Garry Linnell is his book 'Captain Moonlite: The Tragic Love Story of Captain Moonlite and the Bloody End of the Bushrangers'.

Red Gold and the Cedar Getters

Well before the gold rushes of the mid 1800s, there was another all but forgotten resource extraction boom which played an important role in the expansion of the early colony. After being first logged along the Hawkesbury River, red cedar soon became the third largest export from the nascent port of Sydney and was known colloquially as “red gold”. It played a vital role in the foundation of places as diverse as Kiama, Maitland, and Byron Bay, and its presence is still to be observed in many buildings throughout Sydney today. 

 

A short video on red cedar which features the Reading Room in Canberra is available here. You can also check out the Macquarie Armchair, the oldest surviving piece of Australian red cedar furniture, or read this short article which contains many beautiful images of red cedar trees. Stories about red cedar have also featured in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Newcastle Herald.

Sydney Cove and Her Preservation

This episode we discuss the story of the Sydney Cove, a ship that set sail from Calcutta bound for its eponymous port in 1796. The Sydney Cove never quite made it the whole way, but after countless misadventures just under half of her crew did.

Join us as we discuss a story that is not only all but unbelievable but is one of the most significant stories of first contact between First Nations people and visitors from across the British Empire. This tale was more or less lost to time for much of the 20th century but from the unearthing of the shipwreck in 1977 there was no putting this tale back in the rum bottle, as it were.

The original inspiration for this story came from reading Jock Serong's work of historical fiction: Preservation. The factual heavy lifting was largely courtesy of Mark McKenna's book: From the Edge; Australia's Lost Histories. If you'd like to read the full text of William Clark's published account of their journey you can find it, and an assortment of other relevant correspondence, here.

And if you know where we an get a carton of James Squire's Preservation Ale we'd love to hear from you!

The Local Bowlo

We discuss the history and significance of the local bowlo with special guest Louis Heath. Perhaps you, like us, have always wondered where this quaint game comes from, and why so many bowling clubs dot the streets of Sydney. If so, then you're in luck! We'll dive into the royal origins of the sport, its enormous boom in popularity in the post-war era, and what the future holds for these local institutions.

If you would like to discuss bowlos or share resources with Louis, you can reach him at louisheath@hotmail.com. You can also read his thesis here, or simply reference this graph showing the steady rise and fall of bowling clubs over the last 100+ years. Here is the newspaper article about the significance of third places during the COVID pandemic that is mentioned during the episode.

 

You can also read Wendy Bacon's investigative stories on the proposed development of Paddington Bowling Club here, and this Herald article about the recent restoration of the land to the Aboriginal Land Council.