Greater Sydney is now well into another warm and windy bushfire season. While bushfires are essential to the health and long-term sustainability of our bushland, they can have a devastating impact on people and property. Looking at the highly urbanised nature of North Sydney today, it is easy to forget that one of the most serious dangers faced by early colonial settlers on the North Shore was bushfire. The population density in the mid-nineteenth century was low; those homes that had been built were mostly surrounded by large estates, adjacent to native bushland.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of 29 November 1826 describes an ‘extensive and frightful conflagration’ that swept through largely untouched bushland the previous weekend: ‘Sydney was more like the mouth of Vesuvius than anything else’. The Neutral Bay home of agriculturalist and businessman James Milson, one of the earliest free settlers in the colony of NSW was destroyed. Mr Milson himself was not at home but his wife and five children were present and ‘with difficulty escaped with their lives, though Mrs M[ilson] was much burnt’.
The report adds that ‘Mr Wollstonecraft’s lovely retreat at the North Shore has shared in the ruin which many poor people have experienced’. In fact, it was the workers’ huts on the property that were consumed. The home of merchant and landowner Edward Wollstonecraft, Crows Nest Cottage, survived until 1905 when it was replaced by the Crows Nest Uniting Church which still stands on Shirley Road.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 November 1855 tells of another frightening incident that endangered homes on the north shore. Fire broke out in Greenwich and quickly spread east to North Sydney. The article reports that ‘Mr Berry’s new house was… for a time in some danger’. Crows Nest House, built by merchant and landowner Alexander Berry, stood until the early 1930s when it was demolished for the North Sydney Demonstration School. The original gates still remain.
The article continues that ‘Mr E.M. Sayers’ house was in great danger, the verandah and other portions of the outer woodwork caught fire… after some time the fire succumbed, without doing any serious injury’. Politician and merchant Edwin Mawney Sayers had recently moved to a villa which he named ‘Euroka’. The story of this house is a contentious one. The subsequent owner, banker Thomas Dibbs, added a new Italianate mansion and renamed the house ‘Graythwaite’. In 1915, Dibbs gave his home to the State as a hospital for soldiers injured in the Great War. The deed of gift stipulated that Graythwaite be used as ‘a Convalescent Home in perpetuity for distressed subjects of the British Empire regardless of Sect or Creed’. By the end of the 20th century, it was becoming increasingly difficult to fulfill this function in an old building not built for purpose. In 2009 the Supreme Court of New South Wales overturned the original deed of gift and Graythwaite was put on the market. Despite opposition from North Sydney Council and members of the local community, who argued that the property should remain publicly owned, the neighbouring Church of England Grammar School (Shore) bought the house and grounds. Graythwaite was restored and now functions as an administration building and museum.
The 1855 Sydney Morning Herald account concludes ‘the wind… carried burning fragments across the point of [Berry’s] Bay to the opposite side, Ball’s Head, and there the fire was raging unchecked when our reporter left the neighbourhood’.
Both Balls Head and Berry Island Reserves are still recognised as bushfire prone land, together with Badangi Reserve, Gore Cove Reserve, Smoothey Park and Tunks Park. While the risk of a bushfire damaging property or threatening life is relatively low in North Sydney, it is further reduced by the Bushland Management Team. North Sydney Council uses controlled burns to meet the ecological objectives of bush regeneration and to reduce the risk to adjoining residential properties.
North Sydney works with neighbouring councils Mosman and Willoughby on bushfire risk management strategies for assets identified as being at risk, including mechanical clearing or hazard reduction burns, community education and the establishment of Fire Management Access Zones.
Visit North Sydney Council website for tips on staying safe this summer, and the NSW Rural Fire Service for steps to make a bushfire survival plan.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council.
