Luke Kupka 530619934

DAAE2001 Assignment 2

Figure 1: Horsedrawn omnibuses, corner Parramatta Road and Bay Street with Sydney University on the skyline c. 1870

By American & Australasian Photographic Company From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales
[a2825373 / ON 4 Box 74 No 279] (Mitchell Library)

Flanked by City and Parramatta Road, Victoria Park had its origins as unused land of the then
Grose Farm on which the University of Sydney was built. Construction had begun in 1855
and the nascent Great Hall had only been finished in 1862 when it was decided that the
university was in need of a more formal entrance that would announce the Great Hall at the
summit of the hill. The farmland was landscaped and an avenue for pedestrians and
carriages was laid, lined with fig trees and two lodges astride an entrance gate. Therefore,
the park began as a procession and merely a bridging structure between City Road and the
buildings of the university proper; that is, it acted as a formal division between the
commercial and educational spaces of the city and university respectively.

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Figure 2: Fishing in Victoria Park 1930s

By Sam Hood From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales (Mitchell Library)

Prior to European settlement, Lake Northam was a densely vegetated area into which a
spring drained, and then into a swamp near Blackwattle Bay; it also served as a meeting
place and food gathering site for Indigenous Peoples. This creek was known as Blackwattle
creek initially. But with the moving of the Sydney Horse Market to nearby, the pool of water
at the base of the creek was given the nickname ‘Horse Pond’. With the establishment of the
university and the formal entrance way which passed alongside the waterway, it was then
called the ‘University Waterhole’. It now owes its current name, Lake Northam, to the
alderman of the City of Sydney in the early 1960s, Sir William Herbert Northam. The lake has
undergone many transformations: a bridge was built over it in the 1880s, which was
demolished and rebuilt in the 1950s with the reinforcement and downsizing of the lake;
However, the spirit of gathering endured as the lake has been a site for resting livestock,
fishing, socialising, and celebration.

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Figure 3: Women's attended convenience, Victoria Park Camperdown, 1934 City of Sydney Archives, 1929, Cleansing
Department Photographs Collection

As the park attained its formal status as such, it was deemed that it required facilities to
allow it to function more independently of the university. As such, the Gardener’s Lodge was
built in 1888 across from a mirror image Messenger’s Lodge that fronted the gate to Victoria
Park and thereby the University. They were designed by architect, James Barnet, in the Neo-
gothic style to assimilate with the Great Hall. It is ornate, Hawkesbury sandstone
construction that emulated the revered gothic architecture of England that had been built in
the 13th and 14th centuries. The lodge served numerous functions in its lifetime until its
demolition in 1940: it housed gardeners and their families, then becoming an attendant’s
office to keep ‘undesirables out of the park, and finally becoming a woman’s lavatory in the
thirties.

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Figure 4: Victoria Park New Learners' Pool, City of Sydney Archives, 1964, Development and Building Collection

The now iconic Victoria Park Swimming Pool was the first in a boom in in-ground public
swimming pools built in Sydney after World War II, as demand had exponentially increased.
As of 1944, it was compulsory in New South Wales for primary school aged children to learn
how to swim, with a threefold increase in the number of school children requiring lessons
between 1944 and 1955. From 1951, it was a responsibility of local government to meet
these demands and hence the Victoria Park Swimming Pool was constructed on its current
site in 1953. The Swimming Pool had always neighboured the Victoria Park Bowling Club,
established in 1892. But, as interest waned in lawn bowls in the 1960s, the site was annexed
by the swimming pool complex. The Victoria Park Swimming Pool is a long-standing
testament to the importance of swimming as a skill and outlet for recreation that the park
has fostered in its history.

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Figure 5: Fair Day crowd, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG), Victoria Park, Victoria Park, Camperdown

Photographer [Link] Hardy, courtesy City of Sydney Archives.

The park has always been a site for the community to gather. In the 1870s, it was host to the
Balloon Ascent of Thomas Gale and horse races; Fair days with temporary Ferris wheels and
festival stalls erected in the 1980s; the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras from 1989; in the
early 2000s, it was the site of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy; and since 2002, Yabun, a festival
for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture. Currently, the park’s status as a festival
ground has been threatened by the discovery of bonded asbestos in the mulch of the
flowerbeds. The 2024 Mardi Gras was not held in the park and the number of active users of
the park since has drastically reduced due to fear of asbestos inhalation. The park’s place in
the community is therefore in jeopardy as people have been conducting activities, they
normally would in Victoria Park elsewhere.

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A History of Australian Architecture

Victoria Park is one of the first and enduring examples of public recreational architecture in
Sydney, and despite its many transformations in form and function over the centuries, it still
fulfils the need for a greenspace in the heart of the city and as a communal celebration
space. Charles Moore and James Jones, landscape architects, designed the park in the
picturesque Victorian style – this was further complimented by James Barnet’s addition of
the Messenger and Gardener’s Lodges in the Neo-Gothic style to be cohesive with the newly
built Great Hall of The University of Sydney at the summit of the park. Initially the park
solely ‘announced’ one’s arrival at the University grounds, but with the changing
expectations of parks and cultural attitudes towards public architecture, it necessitated
permanent structures, and facilities that would make the park more self-sufficient: lodges
for staffers, which eventually become public bathrooms; the lawn bowls club, which became
the Victoria Park Pool; the installation of the playground, and the changing uses of the lake
with it finally becoming a pond for wildlife. Although the park barely resembles its original
iteration, its spirit of community, recreation and celebration has endured from its
conception to this day.

References:
1: Britton, Geoffrey. "Sydney University's early landscape: ET Blacket's brush with
Cambridge?." Australian Garden History 27, no. 1 (2015): 11-14.
2: Rashid, Mamun, and Dilshad Rahat Ara. "Breathing Spaces in Inner Urban
Neighbourhoods in Sydney: The Impact of Sustainable Open Spaces." The International
Journal of Environmental Sustainability 10, no. 2 (2015): 1.
3: Roberts, Alex. The most modern pools in Sydney: The development of suburban public
swimming pools and their culture in the 1950s and 1960s. University of Sydney, Department
of History, 2001.
4: Proudfoot, Helen. Victoria Park, Chippendale: history and conservation plan.
Environmental Partnership Pty Ltd, 1990.
5: Ryan, Desmond. " The Governor Bourke. An Ancient Hostelry. Early days in
Camperdown." Evening News, 6, no. 2 (1912): 63-78.
6: Moran, Mark, Penelope Edmonds, and Billy Griffiths. "Anita Heiss (ed.)." Aboriginal
Studies 2 (2018): 77.
Images Cited in Respective Captions.

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