Goat island, Sydney Harbour.
Goat Island is a rocky island in Sydney Harbour. It is about 400 m by 200 m in size and is located north-west of the Sydney central business district.
Goat Island lies off the shores of the Sydney suburbs of Balmain and
Millers Point, at the junction of Darling Harbour with the main
channel of Sydney Harbour. Over the years Goat Island has served as a
quarry, convict stockade, explosives store, police station, fire
station, boatyard and film set.
Today the island forms part of the Sydney Harbour National Park.
Whilst the use of Goat Island as both a naval arsenal and a convict stockade were discussed during the late 1820s, the first use of the island was in 1831, as a sandstone quarry. This use set the tone for the first of many bureaucratic disputes between the colony's local civil government and the local military establishment who reported directly to the War Office in London.
By the early 1830s there was considerable concern about the amount of
military explosives being stored in the Commissariat in The Rocks
district of central Sydney. In 1833 gangs of convicts started work
quarrying stone and levelling ground on a site at the south-western
side of the island. The powder magazine was completed by January 1839,
and is a substantial, stone-built, bomb-proof construction.
It was during this original period of construction that the convict
Charles Anderson was said to have been kept chained to a rock for two
years. A stone cut couch, with fixing points for a platform and the
wooden lid said to have provided him with shelter, can still be seen.
Also in the late 1830s, a water police station was built on Goat Island. This was constructed at the north-eastern tip of the island and at the opposite end from the magazine. For defensive reasons, and to provide a clear boundary between the domain of the police, part of the colonial civil government, and that of the military magazine, a water level ditch was cut to separate the north-eastern tip of the island from the bulk of the island. This 'cut' can still be seen today.
In 1854 a new Colonial Magazine was constructed to the north of the
existing magazine, which became known as the Queen's Magazine. This
was a building of much lighter construction, and was intended for the
storage of civilian explosives belonging to the colonial government
and local merchants. In 1864 the police station was converted into a
laboratory for the preparation of cartridges, requiring the building
of a bridge over the cut and the water police were moved.
In the 1870s magazines were built on the east side of the island to
house the new explosive dynamite. By this time most of the storage of
propellant powders and cartridge manufacturing had moved to nearby
Spectacle Island.
In 1900 all explosives were removed from Goat Island. The island is
believed to have been used for a period in that year as a bacteriology
station, for the investigation of the major outbreak of bubonic plague
in the nearby Rocks district, but firm evidence for this usage is
lacking. What is certain is that by 1901 the island had become the
depot for the Sydney Harbour Trust, responsible for the maintenance of
that body's significant fleet of tugs, dredgers and other floating
plant.
Over the following years until the mid-1920s, the island saw the
construction of a harbour master's house on the highest point of the
island, together with four cottages for married members of the
fireboat crew stationed on the island, and a barracks for the
unmarried members of the same crew.
Between 1925 and 1931 the magazine area to the south-weat of the
island was converted into a shipyard for the repair of the trusts
vessels and floating plant. Over the following years this had grown to
include four slipways, of 500 ton, 150 ton and 12 ton (x2) capacity
respectively, plus a 770 foot wharf. The Colonial Magazine was
recycled as a shipwright's workshop, whilst the Queens Magazine became
a general store. In 1936 the Sydney Harbour Trust was replaced by the
New South Wales Maritime Services Board, but the island retained its
role.
The Maritime Services Board finally relinquished control of the island
in 1995, and Goat Island became a unit of the Sydney Harbour National
Park.
~~ Extract from Wikipedia~~
Comments and faves
MountainEagleCrafter (Catching Up) (34 months ago | reply)
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39th view
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Nice view.
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75 - 100 Views
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John of Witney (9 months ago | reply)
Very nice!
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150-200 Views
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Chris*4 (6 months ago | reply)
Nice one Nev.
Chris
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Viewed and admired in 100-150 Views