Gracious Elizabeth Bay and
Darlinghurst were a far cry from “Woolloomoolewd
and Woolloomooloolethal”, as the waterfront
district was dubbed by the Bulletin of 1905. Just
down the hill from the gracious villas, Woolloomooloo
was a working class stronghold where settlers and
freed convicts made a living as best they could,
living in makeshift cottages.
By the time the transportation
of convicts ended in 1840, there were about thirty
thousand people living in Sydney and a more complex
society was emerging as convicts were freed, and
free settlers arrived, attracted by the burgeoning
wool and whaling trades. Sydney became a city in
1842. But the population was about to explode, with
Goldrush fever. The city’s population expanded
eight-fold in only ten years as people poured in
from Europe, California and China. It led to a flurry
of building and property development, then, as now,
a surer way to make money than digging for gold.
Evidence of the bonanza can
be seen all around in the great Victorian edifices
of the late nineteenth century such as the Town
Hall, the General Post Office, and the civil service
offices in the “official” eastern side
of town, built in the mellow Sydney sandstone.
But not everyone found their
fortunes. Thousands of failed prospectors and their
families drifted back to Sydney poverty-stricken,
and found there was nowhere for them to live.
Speculators cashed in on their
plight and built cheap, sub-standard homes, where
the basic requirements of sanitation, drainage,
light and ventilation were often not met, resulting
in some of the most appalling slums in Australia’s
history and ironically, the worst housing was always
by the water. Views were not an issue then. After
the construction of Cowper Wharf Road across the
Woolloomooloo mangroves in 1860s the area became
virtually a second Circular Quay. It was a depot
for coastal shipping, timber and coal, for the arrival
of warships and travelers, fishermen and sailors,
and where they went, prostitutes followed. Woolloomooloo
police lock-up was opened in 1879, to try to impose
some order on the rowdy district which by then had
its own ‘Push’ or gang of young larrikins
who fought pitched battles with rival youngsters
from the Rocks.
