Stories from Sydney: History of the Harbour City

For just over a year now I’ve been producing a history podcast alongside my good mate Alistair Taylor. Stories from Sydney: History of the Harbour City was Alistair’s brainchild, born from that perfect combination of a brilliant idea and the covid-lockdown-induced time to accomplish it. I was brought onboard to give it a much needed infrastructure bent and keep him on task.

The premise is simple. Each episode one of us, the host, dives into the history of something in (or around) Sydney we’ve oft wondered about. The listener gets to sit back, learn about something new and chime in with questions, comments and distracting tangents along the way.

First and foremost, we made the podcasts for ourselves. The history of Sydney as taught in school felt so two dimensional. First Nations tribes, penal colony, growing city, global metropolis. The broad strokes were there, but it felt like the detail was missing. We both studied history in high school but came away knowing more about Persepolis, the capital of the ancient Persian empire, than the city we lived in.

We knew there was so much more to find out about the places that were so familiar and that only our ignorance was standing in the way. This isn’t the work of professional historians. We are 100% amateurs when it comes to history (although I will point out Alistair topped our Ancient class in year 12 with perfect marks) so mistakes are made and we’re often going off a single source. Stories from Sydney is about getting an overview of a fascinating tale and hopefully building up a broader understanding of the complex ecological, indigenous, colonial and contemporary stories of our city.

I should add that the name is something of a misnomer. Being based in regional NSW, my tales are prone to wandering well outside the Sydney Basin to explore the history of the land on which so much of Sydney’s wealth has come.

We’ve made 12 episodes in the last 12 months, not bad considering that for the first 6 months Alistair was based in California and we were coordinating recording sessions across a particularly challenging time difference. I should also mention that each episode ends with a clue from host to listener for the topic of the subsequent episode, so best to listen in order!

Stories from Sydney can be found on all the usual podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.) and in your browser at https://storiesfromsydney.podbean.com/.

Here’s a quick recap of the ground we covered across the 8 episodes of Season 1 in 2020.

1: Sydney Stadium and The World Championship Fight at Rushcutters Bay

Alistair launched our podcast with this absolutely cracker of an episode about the title fight between Jack Johnson and Tommy Burns and the role Sydney played in an important moment in the racial desegregation of the sport of boxing.

2: The Saga of Sydney’s First Railway

My first turn to host and I chose something very on brand; the story of Sydney’s First Railway! The line from Cleveland Fields (Central) to Parramatta Junction (Granville) took a few wrong turns before it finally opened in 1855, quite a few years after the global rail boom had kicked off.

3: The Sydney Language and the Missing Notebooks of William Dawes

Here Alistair tells us about how we came to know a little of the Eora language through the relationship between the English Dawes and Cammeraygal Patyegarang.

4: Celebrating a new Beginning Across the Blue Mountains

In this tale we learn about some of the early expeditions from the colony across the Blue Mountains and a little pub that opened on the other side, in Hartley.

5: The Last Woman Hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol

Louisa Collins was the last female judicially hanged in New  South Wales. This episode we discuss a little bit of the working history and geography of southern Sydney and the beginnings of the feminist movement in the town.

6: From the Valley to the Gully

While the early colonists were in awe of the inaccessible Blue Mountains, the people of the Dharug, Wiradjuri and Gundangara Nations used the Mountains as a summer camp and a place for meeting and exchange. This episode explores the history of Indigenous use and displacement in the mountains and how contemporary development on the Cumberland Plain is threatening sacred sites much farther upstream.

7: The Hospital that Rum Built

Lachlan Macquarie turned a glorified penal camp in Sydney Cove into an outpost of empire and a worthy town in its own right. The Hospital on Macquarie Street is one of Sydney’s oldest buildings and its story gives an great insight into the functioning of the colony at the time and the role of rum in those early years.

8: Overengineered and Underdelivered (The Story of the Great North Road)

Our concluding episode for Season 1 explores the first attempt to build a road north from Sydney to the growing settlements on the Hunter River. The road was the Colony’s greatest engineering endeavour at the time but came to irrelevance quite quickly, leaving it as a picturesque and accessible spot to see some 200 year old infrastructure today.

We’re currently on a mid-season hiatus from Season 2, but there are 4 episodes from this year uploaded to enjoy as well. If you’d like to keep up with the podcast you can follow us at facebook or instagram and of course subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.