Another harbourside photo attached, Circular Quay in 1932, as the Harbour
Bridge was nearing completion. A P class tram in the 1920s colour scheme is
visible and the overhead portal stanchions for the soon-to-be-opened
Wynyard extension of the North Sydney tram system can be seen on the
bridge. At the bottom of the photo, barely visible, is the roof of the
Federation-period tram waiting shed and starter's office in the middle of
Alfred St. There has been much discussion of how some Sydney tram lines
were set in concrete in the 1950s when the system was in its dying years.
Well, they also started building modern tram platforms so that people
didn't have to board from the street. This was one such and I remember
seeing the new starter's office and platform being built in the 50s, then
using it. We also had nice shiny new R1 class trams and then it was all
gone by 1961.

The 1812 Commissariat Store at left was demolished in the 1940s and the
Maritime Services Board building (now the Museum of Contemporary Art),
which I remember seeing under construction, was built on the site. All of
the old Federation ferry wharves were replaced in the 1940s by light and
airy Art Deco structures, bar the shoreside wharf on the left where I
remember waiting for a ferry home. Pulling into the wharf at right is the
gigantic trainload-swallowing Koompartoo, which, with Kuttabul, was the
backbone of the North Sydney shuttle prior to the opening of the bridge.
The hull of Koompartoo is still extant in the Tamar River at Launceston,
next to Kings Wharf Road. A car ferry is also visible in the background in
this photo. Made redundant by the bridge, a lot of these larger
steel-hulled ferries ran cruises in the 1930s before being requisitioned by
the navy and converted to support vessels during WW2 where they went as far
as New Guinea and islands to the north. My guess for the liner at what is
now the newer Overseas Terminal is P&O's brand new Strathnaver.

Tony P
(who likes identifying the details of old photos)
On Saturday, 17 April 2021 at 21:46:13 UTC+10 TP wrote:

> One of my favourite Sydney photos - that I've posted previously - because

> it brings back so many memories. Man O'War Steps on Farm Cove, the stone

> jetty that was built by Governor Macquarie in the 1810s below the

> government domain, now occupied by the NSW Government House. This photo is

> most likely taken in 1954.

>

> https://www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/files/Australia%20at%20buoy.jpg

>

> Best viewed by clicking the magnifier, you can see at the bottom left the

> overhead wires and tracks exiting the loop around the Fort Macquarie tram

> depot and the nose of an O Class tram about to depart for George St.

>

> Man O'War Steps, as the wharf is called, was variously used as a Vice

> Regal wharf, naval wharf (as its name suggests), occasional ferry wharf and

> for miscellaneous commercial purposes - for most of which the tram stop

> provided a convenient link to the city. In what must be a record for

> Australian bureaucracy, the NSW Government and, first the Royal Navy, then

> the Commonwealth of Australia were in dispute for over 120 years about

> whose responsibility it was to maintain the wharf, resolved only when

> construction of the Sydney Opera House in the 1970s obliterated the whole

> of Bennelong Point excepting the historic stone pier. Then it was clearly

> in the hands of the NSW Government.

>

> Out on the beautiful blue harbour, where I spent a lot of my youth

> sailing, are the two lead ships of Australia's naval war in the Pacific in

> the 1940s: HMAS Australia at the buoy and in the far background, HMAS

> Shropshire at the dolphins in Athol Bay. This location is also where we

> went out on a ferry to welcome the Queen in February 1954 and I wonder if

> this in fact dates the photo, because Australia was one of the naval escort

> for the royal yacht. This is the time that Noel Reed would have taken his

> photo of one of the "royal trams" at Man O'War Steps.

>

> I grew up on the interface of land and water, using ferries, trams,

> private and government buses (only missing out on electric trains till I

> was a teenager!). It was the best time.

>

> Tony P

>

>

>

>

>