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Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney
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National Parks and Reserves

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

National Parks and Reserves

Subject

Apple Tree Bay

Bantry Bay

Barrenjoey

Bobbin Head

Bradleys Head

Clark Island

Commodore Heights

Echo Point

Fort Denison

Goat Island

Marramarra National Park

Parsley Bay: ‘One of the people’s playgrounds’

Rodd Island

Shark Island

du Faur, Eccleston

Gap Bluff Armoury building

Blue Gum Forest

Greater Blue Mountains Area

South Head

St Albans Common

Clark Island Trust

Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife

Friends of Lane Cove National Park

Harbour Foreshores Vigilance Committee

Ku-ring-gai Chase Trust

New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service

Rodd Island Recreation Trust

Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

Du Faur, Frederick Eccleston

Hungerford, Clarrie

Notting, William Albert

Blue Mountains National Park

Cattai National Park

Fort Denison

Garigal National Park

Georges River National Park

Kamay Botany Bay National Park

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

Lane Cove National Park

Marramarra National Park

Mitchell Park

Parsley Bay Reserve

Royal National Park

Sydney Harbour National Park

West Head Lookout

Yengo National Park

'Dugga', dense Riverflat forest, still standing in Mitchell Park at Cattai November 2011

A creek, National Park 1886

Berowra Waters 2006

Blue Lake and De Burghs Bridge, Lane Cove National Park 1908

Cockatoo Island 2009

Cowan Creek 2007

Cowan Creek 2007

Cowan Creek, Ku-ring-gai Chase c1900-1910

Dangar Island and the Hawkesbury River 2006

Eccleston du Faur FRGS 1897

Engraved whale at Balls Head, Port Jackson

Far from the Madding Crowd (National Park) 1886

Fort Denison 2003

Frederick Eccleston du Faur c1910

Goat Island 2003

Grotto Point and Washaway Beach 2005

In the National Park 1886

Katoomba and the Three Sisters 1930s

Lady Carrington Road, National Park 1886

Luncheon Creek, National Park 1886

Mists in Jamison Valley, Echo Point 1935

On the road, National Park 1886

Parlsey Bay c1930s

Parsley Bay c1845

Parsley Bay c1890s

Parsley Bay, Sydney, N.S.W. c1910

Pitts Amphitheatre 1815-1816

Plan of land at Parsley Bay resumed by Crown for public recreation : Parish of Alexandria, County of Cumberland c1906

Pulpit Rock, Blackheath, Blue Mountains 1950s

Sketch guide map National Park Port Hacking River, County of Cumberland, New South Wales : shewing rivers, creeks, roads, railways, bridle paths, &c.

The waterfall, National Park 1886

Three Sisters, Katoomba c1905

View - National Park 1886

View from below the Dam, National Park 1886

View from below the Dam, National Park 1886

View, National Park 1886

View, National Park 1886

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National Parks and Reserves

Apple Tree Bay

Named in 1832, Apple Tree Bay became a popular swimming and boating spot by the early twentieth century.

Bantry Bay

Situated on Garigal land, a nineteenth-century pleasure ground, Bantry Bay was a defence site for much of the next century. Having been returned to the people, it is now a little-known harbourside retreat right in people's backyards.

Barrenjoey

Located in the traditional lands of the Garigal people, Barrenjoey was an important gateway to Broken Bay, the Hawkesbury River and Pittwater when most access to Sydney was by ship. The lighthouse remains a reminder of this important role.

Bobbin Head

Bobbin Head was preserved as bushland by the activism of Eccleston du Faur, who campaigned for the establishment of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Bobbin Head has become one of the main recreation areas in the park.

Bradleys Head

Extending like a long finger into the harbour, Bradleys Head was known as Borogegy to its first people, the Borogegal clan. Long a military and naval site for the colonial and later the Australian government, it became a popular park and an important part of Sydney Harbour's remnant bushland.

Clark Island

Tiny, yet beautiful, Clark Island became a popular picnic spot in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Commodore Heights

Commanding views over Broken Bay and Pittwater, Commodore Heights was named for a Royal Navy officer, Rowley Lambert. Its chequered history of private and government ownership ended with its incorporation into Ku-ring-Gai Chase National Park.

Echo Point

Situated in Gundungurra and Darug country, Echo Point emerged as a major tourist destination in the 1920s and today attracts around 1.4 million visitors a year. Combining a 'holiday playground' atmosphere with the sublime, Echo Point is a compelling site for thinking about the many different ways of seeing that have shaped the Blue Mountains landscape: Indigenous, Romantic, commercial and environmental.

Fort Denison

Originally a rocky island used as a place of punishment for convicts, Fort Denison was built over and renamed when fortifications were constructed there in the mid-nineteenth century in an attempt to protect the city from seaborne invasion. Though the fort was never used for that purpose, it has collected tidal and meteorological information since it was built.

Goat Island

Goat Island stands tall and proud in the centre of Sydney Harbour. It has many traces of heritage left over from the convict and industrial past.

Marramarra National Park

Dharug country before the Europeans came, Marramarra National Park contains many Aboriginal sites and artefacts. It was established in 1979 in rugged bush near Hornsby.

Parsley Bay: ‘One of the people’s playgrounds’

Parsley Bay is an inlet of Sydney Harbour bordered by Point Seymour and Village Point, and is the traditional land of the Birrabirragal people. In 1907 the bay and immediate surrounds became a public reserve, and it has remained ‘one of the people’s playgrounds’ ever since.

Rodd Island

Island which sits peacefully in the middle of Iron Cove. During the 1880s it became the centre of a number of remarkable scientific experiments.

Shark Island

Shark Island sits in Sydney Harbour, just 1km from Rose Bay. In 1945 the first Sydney to Hobart race was launched from its banks.

du Faur, Eccleston

Draftsman, explorer, innovator, Eccleston du Faur was also one of Sydney's pioneering environmentalists.

Gap Bluff Armoury building

Fortification formerly part of School of Artillery and Gunnery, now managed by National Parks and Wildlife Service.

full record »

Blue Gum Forest

Forested area of Grose Gorge at the junction of Govetts Creek. Historically and naturally significant, the area was saved from the axe by bushwalkers in the 1930s.

full record »

Greater Blue Mountains Area

UNESCO world heritage area of 1.03 million hectares of sandstone plateaux, escarpments and gorges dominated by temperate eucalypt forest. It is noted for its representation of the evolutionary adaptation and diversification of the eucalypts in post-Gondwana isolation on the Australian continent.

Spread across eight adjacent conservation reserves, it constitutes one of the largest and most intact tracts of protected bushland in Australia. The eight reserves are: from the south, Thirlmere National Park; Nattai National Park; Kanangra Boyd National Park; Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve; Blue Mountains National Park; Gardens of Stone National Park; Wollemi National Park and Yengo National Park.

full record »

South Head

full record »

Southern headland marking the entrance to Port Jackson which, since colonial times, has been an important location for civil and military maritime activities, and is now part of Sydney Harbour National Park.

St Albans Common

The St Albans, or Wallambine, Common on the Macdonald River is a 1035 hectare reserve on a swamp at the convergence of the Macdonald River and Mogo Creek just north of the St Albans village. It was gazetted as Common land in 1853.

full record »

Clark Island Trust

Trust established in 1892 to beautify Clark Island and improve facilities for visitors.

full record »

Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife

Not-for-profit organisation that purchases land for conservation as national parks in NSW.

full record »

Friends of Lane Cove National Park

Community conservation group.

full record »

Harbour Foreshores Vigilance Committee

Association formed in 1905 to protect public access to the foreshores of Sydney Harbour and to lobby for the resumption of areas of private land to create public reserves.

full record »

Ku-ring-gai Chase Trust

Trust established to manage Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

full record »

New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service

Statutory body established by the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1967, with responsibility for national parks, state parks and historic sites in New South Wales, including a number in Sydney. In 2003 the Service became part of the Department of Sustainable Natural Resources, later the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water.

full record »

Rodd Island Recreation Trust

Trust established in 1894 to manage Rodd Island after closure of the laboratories which had attempted to solve the rabbit infestation problem. The Trust ended in February 1982.

full record »

Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

Statutory body established to manage former Defence and other Commonwealth lands on Sydney Harbour.

full record »

Du Faur, Frederick Eccleston

full record »

Founder and supporter of scientific and artistic organisations in Sydney, who helped establish Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and was a landowner at Mount Wilson. He worked as a chief draftsman at the Department of Lands, and often explored the Bliue Mountains, camping near Govetts Creek and the Grose Rover.

Hungerford, Clarrie

Bilpin farmer whose lease of the Blue Gum Forest was to accelerate the campaign to have the park protected, which it was successfully in 1932.

full record »

Notting, William Albert

Accountant and estate agent who was a keen sailor and the Commodore of the Sydney Sailing Club. He recognised the importance of keeping access to Sydney Harbour in public hands and as founder and secretary of the Harbour Foreshore Vigilance Committee in the early 1900s lobbied the state government to resume lands and create public reserves.

full record »

Blue Mountains National Park

Natural bushland and dramatic escarpments which were protected for their natural beauty and rich Aboriginal cultural significance.

full record »

Cattai National Park

National park north-west of Sydney on site of Thomas Arndell's farm.

full record »

Fort Denison

full record »

Rocky island in Sydney Harbour, colloquially known as Pinchgut, on which a Martello tower fort was built in the 1840s and 50s.

Garigal National Park

Bush and sandstone park along Middle Harbour Creek.

full record »

Georges River National Park

Park with striking rock formations, steep forested hillsides, plateaus and riverside flats along the Georges River.

full record »

Kamay Botany Bay National Park

National park on northern (La Perouse) and southern (Kurnell) headlands of Botany Bay. The park takes in land set aside in 1899 for public recreation at Captain Cook's landing place.

full record »

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

National park in Sydney's north created in 1894 largely because of the work of Eccleston du Faur.

full record »

Lane Cove National Park

Small national park in northern Sydney, based on the Lane Cove River bank land set aside for a park in the 1920s.

full record »

Marramarra National Park

National park on the south bank of the Hawkesbury River to Sydney's north.

full record »

Mitchell Park

Part of Cattai National Park on Cattai Creek. The surrounding bushland includes huge forest red gums and a rare remnant rainforest

full record »

Parsley Bay Reserve

Public recreation ground at the head of Parsley Bay in Sydney's eastern suburbs that was created by the NSW State Government in 1907 after resuming the land, formerly part of the Wentworth Vaucluse estate, in 1906. The reserve is adminstered by Woollahra Council.

full record »

Royal National Park

Australia's first national park, on the coast south of Sydney.

full record »

Sydney Harbour National Park

National park proclaimed in 1975 and expanded in 1979 and 1995, which protects part of Sydney Harbour's foreshores and islands from development.

full record »

West Head Lookout

Lookout at the eastern tip of the Lambert Peninsula overlooking Pittwater and the Hawkesbury River.

full record »

Yengo National Park

World heritage listed national park between the Lower Hunter and Hawkesbury that forms part of the Great Dividing Range. Founded in 1993, it is one of the eight conservation areas in the Greater Blue Mountains Heritage area. The Macdonald River (Gununday) flows from the north west to the south east of the park, where it reaches the Hawkesbury River.

full record »

'Dugga', dense Riverflat forest, still standing in Mitchell Park at Cattai November 2011

full record »

By

Contributed By

A creek, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 13a]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Berowra Waters 2006

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0612-1811-89]

Blue Lake and De Burghs Bridge, Lane Cove National Park 1908

full record »

Contributed By

State Archives & Records New South Wales

[18526_a024_000029]

Cockatoo Island 2009

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0901-2937-34]

Cowan Creek 2007

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0703-1415-89]

Cowan Creek 2007

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0703-1524-30]

Cowan Creek, Ku-ring-gai Chase c1900-1910

full record »

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[a116499 / PXE 711/499]

Dangar Island and the Hawkesbury River 2006

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0602-1713-09]

Eccleston du Faur FRGS 1897

full record »

By

Contributed By

Art Gallery of New South Wales

(marble, 64.7 x 50 x 30.5, Purchased 1898)

Engraved whale at Balls Head, Port Jackson

full record »

By

Contributed By

Australian Museum

Far from the Madding Crowd (National Park) 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 21b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Fort Denison 2003

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0309-1571-44]

Frederick Eccleston du Faur c1910

full record »

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

(Mitchell Library)

Goat Island 2003

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0308-2657-12]

Grotto Point and Washaway Beach 2005

full record »

Image courtesy of

[0505-0301-66]

In the National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 12a]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Katoomba and the Three Sisters 1930s

full record »

By

Edward William Searle

Contributed By

National Library of Australia

[nla.obj-142176801]

Lady Carrington Road, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 12b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Luncheon Creek, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 10c]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Mists in Jamison Valley, Echo Point 1935

full record »

By

Contributed By

Blue Mountains City Library

(Local Studies Collection)

On the road, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 17a]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Parlsey Bay c1930s

full record »

By

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[Home and Away - 35262]

(Mitchell Library)

Parsley Bay c1845

full record »

By

George Edwards Peacock

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

(Dixson Galleries)

Parsley Bay c1890s

full record »

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

(Mitchell Library)

Parsley Bay, Sydney, N.S.W. c1910

full record »

Contributed By

National Museum of Australia

[1986.0117.7557]

Pitts Amphitheatre 1815-1816

full record »

By

John William Lewin

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[a303003 / PXE 888, 2]

(Mitchell Library)

Plan of land at Parsley Bay resumed by Crown for public recreation : Parish of Alexandria, County of Cumberland c1906

full record »

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[M1 811.18131/1900/1]

Pulpit Rock, Blackheath, Blue Mountains 1950s

full record »

By

Contributed By

National Library of Australia

[nla.pic-an24017857]

Sketch guide map National Park Port Hacking River, County of Cumberland, New South Wales : shewing rivers, creeks, roads, railways, ...

full record »

Contributed By

National Library of Australia

(Metropolitan and Coast District Survey Office, Sydney ; drawn by P. B. James, under the supervision of William Freeman, Chief Draftsman ; J.W. Deering, Metrop. and Coast Dist. Sur)

The waterfall, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 13b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Three Sisters, Katoomba c1905

full record »

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[a116310 / PXE 711/310]

(Mitchell Library)

View - National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 16a]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

View from below the Dam, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 3a]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

View from below the Dam, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 3b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

View, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 16b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

View, National Park 1886

full record »

By

Contributed By

[Page 17b]

(from the album 'Works by Members of the Amateur Photographic Society of N.S.W presented by the Society to His Excellency Lord Carrington August 1886')

Cultural Institutions