More than a century before COVID-19, the Bubonic plague threatened North Sydney
Sydney’s first quarantine station was established in 1832 at North Head, well away from the growing town. By the end of the century, the Port of Sydney was one of the busiest in the British Empire and existing quarantine measures were not completely effective. Bubonic plague broke out in Sydney in early 1900, carried by fleas on ship-borne rats. There were annual epidemics in Sydney until 1909, and 12 outbreaks nationally to 1925.
One response was the upgrading of Sydney’s waterfronts, with new finger wharves built extending from Woolloomooloo to Pyrmont between 1910 and 1920. Another was the creation of a national Quarantine Service in 1908, made possible by the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.
The new service faced a huge problem finding a foreshore site for a depot to manage the ‘disinfection, fumigation and the sanitary supervision of overseas vessels from infected ports’ in the heart of the working harbour. Dr W Perrin Norris, director of the Quarantine Service, described the situation as ‘impossible’ in a memo to the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs on 12 April, 1911.
After a location at Woolloomooloo was rejected, the service settled for state-owned land in Berrys Bay, which had only been returned to public ownership in 1906. The process that followed was protracted, despite the ‘urgency’ of the situation. A lease was offered by New South Wales in 1913, but not signed by the Commonwealth until 1916. Construction was finalised in 1917.
Two steam-powered launches, named ‘Jenner’ and ‘Pasteur,’ after pioneering scientists in the field of contagious disease (Edward Jenner from England and Louis Pasteur from France), were used to transport staff and equipment out to waiting ships. Doctors inspected crew and passengers, while other staff fumigated to control rats.
As aircraft replaced ships as the means of travel from the 1960s and Sydney’s overseas maritime trade declined, the need for port-based quarantine decreased. The North Head facility closed in 1983, while the Berrys Bay Depot operated until 1988. The site was used by the Australian National Maritime Museum for a period in the 1990s. Ownership of the land above the high-water mark was transferred to North Sydney Council in 2022. The site survives as an intact example of the built heritage of Sydney Harbour’s working waterfront.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council