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Detail of map showing the mouth of the Tank Stream 1821

From the collections of the
State Library of New South Wales
[M ZM4 811.16/1821/1]
(Detail of 'Sketch of the town of Sydney' 1821) (Mitchell Library)

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Places
Government lumber yard Macquarie Place The Rocks
Buildings
Commissariat Stores Female Orphan School, George Street St Philip's Anglican church York Street
Natural features
Sydney Cove Tank Stream
Structures
Doric fountain Macquarie Place Macquarie Place obelisk

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State Library of New South Wales

Government lumber yard

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Official government lumber yard and workshop on the southern corner of Bridge and George Streets that employed convict labour. Established about 1789 after an earlier yard on Bennelong Point was destroyed by fire, the yard was enlarged and improved by successive governments. In 1832 when the yard closed and the works moved to a smaller site next to Hyde Park Barracks it was providing employment for about 183 convicts. The lumber yard was an important early centre of manufacturing - well as blacksmiths, sawyers and carpenters it employed wheelwrights, tin smiths, tool makers, brass and iron founders, coopers, gunsmiths and wheelwrights. Clothes and shoes were also produced there.

Female Orphan School, George Street

Two storey Georgian building on the corner of George and Bridge Streets that housed destitute girls. It was purchased by the government in 1801 from its former owner Lieutenant Kent and closed in 1829 when the purpose built orphanage at Parramatta was completed.

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Tank Stream

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The fresh water course which supplied the fledgling colony, emptying into Sydney Cove. It was named for three storage tanks which were constructed in the sandstone beside the stream during a drought in 1790. By 1828 the stream had been polluted to such an extent that it could no longer be used as a source of water and was diverted into a sewer, and by the 1870s it had been completely covered. The Tank Stream still flows in a covered storm water drain.

Macquarie Place

The open space at the corner of Loftus and Bridge streets marked with an obelisk from which roads in the colony were measured. Originally the area was swampy mangrove land on the banks of the Tank Stream it has been a public meeting place since the 1790s.

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Doric fountain Macquarie Place

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Sandstone Doric fountain designed by Francis Greenway and Mrs Macquarie. It was built in 1819 by stonemason, Edward Cureton and demolished c1883 to make way for statue of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort.

Macquarie Place obelisk

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Sandstone obelisk erected by Governor Macquarie in 1818 to mark the place from which public roads in the colony were measured. Designed by Francis Greenway and built by Edward Cureton with convict labour.

St Philip's Anglican church York Street

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Anglican church built in 1855 on the site of the first and second St Philip's. Constructed of sandstone and slate in Victorian Academic Gothic style it is centre of the oldest parish in Australia. 

The Rocks

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Suburb located north of the central business district on the western shore of Sydney Cove. Characterised by a precinct of restored nineteenth-century buildings which are a major tourist attraction, it was recognised as a separate suburb in 1993.

Sydney Cove

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Small bay on the southern shore of Port Jackson, which became the site for the European settlement in Sydney.

Commissariat Stores

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Warehouse and offices that stored the goods of the colony, for supply to the convicts, soldiers and others who relied on government rations.