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A Burgeoning Trade Port
Under the governorship of Macquarie (1810-1821), there was a conscious push to transform the town from a penal colony into a city, and trade provided the main means of doing so. He succeeded and by the 1840s approximately 35,000 people lived in the town and convict transportation had ceased to Sydney.
The Rocks became well established as the busy commercial hub of the city, but it also had a dubious reputation. In the 1820s, commissioner JT Bigge reported on the colony's affairs and stated that convicts being released from Hyde Park Barracks "resort to a particular part of town called The Rocks, a place distinguished...for the practice of every debauchery and villainy. The Rocks [is] chiefly inhabited by the most profligate and depraved part of the population."
From Robert Campbell's first private wharf in the early 1800s, there were many merchants and trade flourished. Shipping was the most visible symbol of a successful and profitable city. Wool, the whaling and sealing industries were proving the impetus for a burgeoning trade industry.
Ships from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa called in to Sydney to exchange a variety of goods for colonial exports in wool, whale oil and seal skins. By the 1840s, exports from New South Wales exceeded its imports, and buildings from this period show the town's transformation. In 1842, the City of Sydney was proclaimed and its first municipal council was formed.
It was a time of wealth and prosperity but life was still perilous. Economic depression in the early 1840s ruined the lives of many merchants, as ships sat on the harbour loaded with goods no one wanted to buy. Parts of The Rocks near the foreshore were renowned for drunken debauchery, sailors, brothels and other unsavoury characters. The Mariners' Church opened in 1859 and the Sailors' Home, built next door in the 1860s, went some way to ‘saving' sailors from the many pubs and other temptations by offering a bed, meal and hot bath.
The Rocks was really no different to any other Port City in the world, but it had the added infamy of being populated by convicts and their descendants which enhanced its dangerous reputation, even when it was undeserved.
Eliza Walker, who grew up in The Rocks wrote: "In those days, The Rocks could boast of being the abiding place of very many highly respectable families. I am referring to the more elevated portion...not to that part where the whalers, sailors and old hands used to congregate...The Rocks was the habitat of most respectable families."
In fact, artefacts unearthed at the Cumberland and Gloucester streets archaeological site revealed residents dined on oysters, duck, lamb and pork, with pickled vegetables and flavoursome salad oils. They dined off fine china and surrounded themselves with vases of flowers and decorated their mantelpieces with little porcelain statuettes. Ever present too were rosary beads and religious medallions.
But by the 1870s, many of the wealthier residents were moving out of the area to comfortable homes, set amid gardens in the fashionable townships of Ashfield or St Peters. The ever-increasing traffic, noise, dust, smells and bustle of living so close to a thriving port drove many to quieter, more salubrious surrounds.
Subsequently, as the 19th century drew to a close, many of the houses in The Rocks had been grossly neglected and overcrowded. On the southeast corner of Gloucester and Essex streets was situated one of the most notorious slums in The Rocks, known as ‘Frog Hollow'. Photos from 1901 indicate that there were about 12 houses, each consisting of two rooms, one above the other connected by a stair. The collection of buildings was accessed by a flight of stairs leading down from Gloucester Street. The property was owned by local property developer Peter Hart (1840-1917), who also built the row of terrace houses on the opposite corner now known as Hart's Pub. Like many local property owners, Hart served as an alderman on Sydney Council between 1886 and 1899.
The outbreak of plague in 1900 finally prompted action on the parlous state of the wharves and housing in the area.
When Frog Hollow was inspected in 1901 because of the plague, it was described as "in an extremely dilapidated condition and absolutely beyond repair. Sanitary conveniences very defective, there being only two WCs [toilets] for 11 houses."
As a result, it was demolished shortly afterwards, and was replaced a few years later by the Bushell's Tea Building that survives to this day. Many buildings in The Rocks were demolished for the same reason.
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