In the first photo construction cranes are still on the bridge and the bridge fabrication workshops are still at Milson's Point. In the second photo a number of the attractive steel tramway span poles are visible with their cast finials, collars and bases. A number of these have been preserved at the Sydney Tramway Museum. These contrast to the massive, overdesigned current version on the L1 & L2 lines.
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From:tramsdownunder@... tramsdownunder@...> on behalf of TP historyworks@...>
Sent: Monday, 19 April 2021 12:55 AM
To: TramsDownUnder tramsdownunder@...>
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Spot the tram
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
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