Wireless promotion from the '70s

Viewed from Sussex Street, this mural is on a building which fronts Dixon Street in Chinatown. Installed in the 1970s, it is an advertisement for Radio Station 2KY. Before it faded, it read: "2KY Wireless radio, a country smile in the middle of your dial".

Land Banking

This is 82 Sussex Street. It last traded in 2003 for about $3 million. Today it is valued at between $11 million and $13 million. But it sits there. Empty. Abandoned. Prey to the elements. Prey to graffitists. Prey to squatters. Who would do this? Why would they do this?

Who would do this is not the point. Not really. They are an elderly couple who own about $100 million of property like this, all over the city. But WHY they do it is instructive. Properties - usually land, but often commercial properties - are left vacant, while the value increases year upon year. Take 82 Sussex Street: from $3m to $13m in 12 years. That's about $830,000 pa. And the downside is the council rates. Speculation.

Sussex Street Pubs - 2 - The Dundee arms

The Dundee Arms started life adjacent to the Corn Exchange in Sussex Street North. It backed onto the Market Street Wharf, which was by far the biggest wharf in Darling Harbour of that time. It is now a part of the Sheraton Four Points hotel, which refurbished it in 1991. Prior to that and for most of the 20th century it was in a very poor state. In 1907 it was converted into office space, and the first floor verandah removed. Between 1927 and the early 1970s (when the wrecking ball for the Western Distributor started to swing), it was known as Kermac House.

The Dundee Arms was built by John Robertson in 1860, who hailed from Scotland. A timber merchant, he had purchased the plot in 1847 for just over ₤212. Where the deck is now (along the southern wall) which is a quasi beer-garden, was Wharf Lane which joined to the currently non-existing Wharf Street which disappeared with the creation of Day Street in 1906, as a consequence of the massive demolitions caused by the bubonic plague. The left 1860 image shows the Robertson family posing with their newly-built hotel. John is sitting on the stoop. Note the steep fall-away of Wharf Lane, as it then was. The right 1983 image shows Wharf Lane, and the nearly unrecognisable "Dundee Arms" dressed in its very sad guise as KERMAC House. Wharf Lane is still there behind the cyclone fencing. Wharf Lane is still there today, just beneath some decking, otherwise the lower cellars are inaccessible.

Sussex Street Pubs - 1 - The Bristol Arms

"The Bristol Arms Hotel" has been at 81 Sussex Street since 1898. The area along the western side of Sussex Street was occupied from an early date with houses. The Sands Directory records the site of the Bristol Arms occupied by Henry Ash (carpenter) in 1860. "The Bristol Arms Hotel" first appeared in 1865-66 at No. 69 Sussex Street. The area immediately behind the hotel was the Darling Harbour waterfront occupied by the Patent Slip Wharf since c.1833. Sussex Street was the main thoroughfare between the wharves and the town.

The Sands Directory lists John Booth as licensee (1865-66), then James Blair (1867-69). Francis Blair succeeded him between 1870-1886. The hotel was operated by a succession of publicans between 1887 to 1905. In 1906-08 the hotel was run by Ellen Keyes and named "Keyes Hotel", but reverted to the name Bristol Arms in 1907. The building continued to function as a hotel until 1969, when the property was resumed by the Department of Main Roads as part of the realignment of Day Street. From this point it became known as the Welcome Inn Hotel. The property was put up for sale after 1984 and once again, renamed "The Bristol Arms Hotel".

Text sourced from NSW Office of Environment and Heritage Next post: "The Dundee Arms"

The Phoenix of Frying Pan Flat

A frying-pan has a handle, and a large flat cooking surface. Sydney's "Frying Pan Flat" had roughly that shape: with the handle being the alley; and, the cooking surface being the flat. It disappeared not long after the adverse Health Department assessment at the end of 1875. The "alley" ran down the slope, close to the current intersection of Erskine Street, and Sussex Street. The "flat" fanned out - roughly NW - encompassing reclaimed mud-flats. What you are looking at here, is the "flat". To make this image, I stood on the intersection of Erskine Strret and Shelley Street, looking North into Shelley. On the left, the building with the white diagonals is Macquarie Bank. On the right, starting up close, is the Hotel Ibis, the orange American Express building, and finally, the corporate head-quarters, in Australia, of the accounting services firm, KPMG. Across the far end of Shelley Street, rises the behemoth that is the "Barangaroo development. This is, essentially, a high-rollers casino, with all the other aspects of the development accreted, to increase its attractiveness to a state government. Even as late as 1890, according to the Higinbotham & Robinson 1890 Atlas of Sydney Suburbs, the far end of Shelley Street was washed by the mud-flats of Darling Harbour.

To read more about the Sussex Street North area of Sydney, see "Death in Frying Pan Alley".

Death in Frying Pan Alley

Coffee shop in Sussex Lane, backing onto Erskine St, running between Kent and Sussex Streets

Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board : Eleventh progress report ... visit Frying-pan Flat, Sussex-street. Here there is a large piece of open ground, one part of which extends to the foreshore of Darling Harbour ... Turning down Erskine-street we inspected four wooden houses at the bottom of the place ... badly ventilated and very close ... Adjoining this was another wooden shanty, 9 x 10 feet and 6 feet high, offering accommodation of an inferior character, inasmuch as the room contained no ceiling, and rented at the reduced price of 3s. 6d. ... The same description will apply to all the miserable hovels which we have noticed in this locality ; they are in a tumble-down dilapidated state ; the walls are crumbling to pieces and the roofs patched up with pieces of tin, iron, old bags, and any other materials at hand, which have the effect of keeping out the rain and confining the foul air ... To appreciate the wretched state of ruin and discomfort which these buildings present, it is necessary to visit the place ; no description can convey a true impression of their utter unfitness for human habitation.

Frying Pan Flat and Alley, between Erskine Street and Margaret Place, December 1875. Halliday Engineering was at 30 Erskine Street

Ellen Barry, aged 9 months, died at 12 Sussex Street on 9th August, 1875, having suffered from congestion of the lungs for over 36 hours. Her mother was 21 year old Louisa, the daughter of William and Charlotte, both emanciapted convicts. Louisa is my paternal great-grandmother. She died in 1919, in Gosford at the home of her next born child, Will, my grandfather.

Sussex Lane was built c. 1916, after all the demolitions as a result of the bubonic plague.