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Aerial view of site of St Peters brickpits and ...

Aerial view of site of St Peters brickpits and surrounds 1949

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City of Sydney Archives

[Aerial Survey of the City of Sydney, 1949, Main Survey, section AO119]

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From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal Sydney Park: kangaroo ground to brickpits

Natural features

Sheas Creek

Places

Alexandria St Peters Sydney Park

Structures

Alexandra canal

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City of Sydney Archives

From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal

Once a stream draining much of southern Sydney, the conversion of the Sheas Creek to an industrial canal resulted in a polluted and ugly corridor that has defied attempts at remediation

Sydney Park: kangaroo ground to brickpits

The site now occupied by Sydney Park was a kangaroo ground for the Gadigal and Wangal before being granted to emancipated First Fleet convict Elizabeth Needham in 1796. In the nineteenth century it became a site for brick making and other industries before being converted to a rubbish tip in the 1940s.

Sheas Creek

Creek now confined to a stormwater channel flowing from Alexandria into the Alexandra Canal.

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Alexandria

Largely industrial inner-city suburb located south of Sydney's central business district, named after Princess Alexandra, wife of Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). By the 1940s, it was the nation's largest industrial district, and called itself the "Birmingham of Australia".

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St Peters

Inner western residential, commercial and industrial suburb, named after the Anglican church around which it developed. It is recognisable by the iconic chimneys of the former brickworks, now part of Sydney Park, built to take advantage of vast deposits of clay.

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Sydney Park

Largest park in the City of Sydney, comprising 44 hectares of rolling hills, wetlands, playgrounds, and sporting facilities, built on the site of former brickpits, kilns and municipal rubbish dumps. The brick kilns and chimneys remain as a reminder of former uses.

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Alexandra canal

Canal excavated out of Sheas Creek between 1887 and 1900 and named in honour of Princess Alexandra, Princess of Wales and later Queen consort to Edward VII. It has a catchment area of 1380 hectares which includes the suburbs of Alexandria, Moore Park, Redfern. Surry Hills and Rosebery.

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