I know we are familiar with our local area, but there will always be historic surprises and areas we haven’t been to before.
Such was the case for this first week of learning a bit about Sydney’s history.
We know the Artarmon and St Leonards area, on Sydney’s lower north shore, really well… or did we?
We covered a walk found here. What did we learn? Among other things, over the course of about 2 hours we learnt that…
- the Pacific Highway only got its name when the Harbour Bridge was opened in 1932.
- the narrow strip of land at the front of Artarmon station was a vegetable garden for the community in the 1930s depression.
| St Mary Mackillop was one of more than 14000 people buried at Gore Hill cemetery. |  |
| Tunks Park at Northbridge/Cammeray was named after William Tunks (if the Geographic Names Board still allowed the use of apostrophes in names of places I would have at least known his surname.) |  |
| Artarmon was the biggest brick making area in NSW in 1890s – 1900s. It’s where the shopping centre near Bunnings is… it later became the Willoughby Council depot.
360,000 bricks manufactured each month. |
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| Gough Whitlam went to school at Mowbray House before going to Knox Grammar School. The original Mowbray House building is still there, opposite the water tanks near the Great Northern Hotel, where the dive site for the new Metro is. |  |
| Artarmon Railway Station used to be 1/2 km north of where it now is. |  |
Lots of other interesting stuff too. A good walk.
So, this weekend, we... 