North Sydney property

Room 1

The first people and the first names

The Indigenous people of the southern shore of Port Jackson, the harbour that is also called Sydney Harbour, called the north side warung. The word meant the other side. People living on the northern shore used the same word for the southern side of the water. The two shores named each other across the harbour.

The first name European settlers used for the area was Hunterhill. It came from a property owned by Thomas Muir of Huntershill, a Scottish political reformer who lived from 1765 to 1799. Muir bought land in 1794 close to where the north pylon of the Harbour Bridge now stands, and built a house that he named after the home of his childhood. The area north of Gore Hill took the name St Leonards.

Room 2

A township and a council

St Leonards was laid out as a township in 1836, on land that is now North Sydney. The roads now named Miller, Walker, Lavender and Berry streets marked its edges. The township held 106 houses by 1846, and by 1859 the commercial centre stretched from Milsons Point to Miller Street.

A bus service run by Jeremiah Wall carried passengers between Milsons Point and North Sydney Shops, and the suburb developed an identity of its own. In 1890 the municipality of North Sydney was incorporated, and after disputes over the name, North Sydney was the name settled upon. The post office opened in 1854 as St Leonards and took the North Sydney name in 1890, and the first public school, which opened as St Leonards in 1874, took the North Sydney name in 1910.

Room 3

Trams and the harbour crossing

The North Sydney tramway system opened in 1886. Its first line was a double-track cable tramway that began at the original Milsons Point ferry wharf, close to where the north pylon of the Harbour Bridge now stands. The line ran along Blue Street and Miller Street as far as the depot on Ridge Street. The cars were cable grip cars known as "dummies", and unpowered trailer cars ran behind them.

The history of the system falls into three periods. The first ran from the 1886 opening to 1909, the year the McMahons Point line opened. The second lasted until the Wynyard line opened over the harbour bridge in 1932. The third ended when the Cahill Expressway was built on the eastern side of the bridge and the wider system closed in 1962.

One feature of the network was the underground tram terminus beneath Wynyard railway station, the only one of its kind in Australia, which trams reached by tracks over the harbour bridge. Trams left Blue Street over a steel arch bridge that has since been demolished, then along the eastern lanes of the harbour bridge, past a platform at Milsons Point railway station, and down into platforms 1 and 2 at Wynyard.

Room 4

Towers and heritage sites

North Sydney changed into a commercial hub in 1971-72, and in that period no fewer than 27 skyscrapers were built in the suburb. The suburb also has a number of heritage-listed sites.

The New South Wales State Heritage Register lists several of them, including the former North Sydney Technical High School on Blue Street, now the Greenwood Hotel, Graythwaite on Edward Street, Don Bank on Napier Street, and the North Sydney Post Office on the Pacific Highway.

Other registers list Christ Church at Walker and Lavender streets, the houses numbered 11 to 37 and 20 to 30 on Walker Street, and St Peter's Presbyterian church and manse on Blues Point Road.

Room 5

Living in North Sydney

North Sydney is a suburb and a commercial district, and it serves as the administrative centre for North Sydney Council. Among the landmarks here are North Sydney Oval, Stanton Library, Brett Whiteley Square and the North Sydney Post Office. The Independent Theatre and the MLC Building are also listed as landmarks, as are North Sydney railway station and Victoria Cross railway station.

The museum at Mary MacKillop Place is about Australia's first Catholic saint. The Don Bank Museum covers the history of the local area, and Greenwood Plaza is a shopping complex. The Walker Street Cinema has closed.