Our guest speaker for May was raconteur extraordinaire, Jim Haynes, who entertained us with many little-known facts about ‘Sydney’s Amazing History’ since the First Fleet arrived here.
We may have already known that the surf life-saving reel was invented here is Sydney, but it was extraordinary to hear that the first life saved using this device was none other than 9-year-old Charles Kingsford-Smith!
We heard that Sydney had the world’s first consumable currency – rum – for the best part of 2 decades until the Holey Dollar and Dump were introduced. These were struck from 40,000 silver Spanish 8 reale coins imported for the purpose – the 8 reale coins also known as Pieces of Eight – Aarh, Jim-lad! But what were they really worth? Governor Macquarie set the value of the Holey Dollar at 5 British shillings, and the dump at 15 pence.
We heard about a prefabricated hospital that came to Sydney in the Second Fleet, but which was later replaced with a much-improved hospital funded by entrepreneurs who built it in exchange for the rum franchise for the colony – that became known as the Rum Hospital. Its three main buildings still stand today, as Sydney Hospital, The Mint and Parliament House in Macquarie Street and we heard of the pivotal work of unsung hero, Nurse Lucy Osburn and her four Nightingale nurses in that hospital.
We heard that Sydney-siders of the day, embarrassed that Prince Albert had been shot on their patch at Clontarf, then raised a lot of money, intending to build a monument to the Prince, but Albert himself asked for this money instead to be put to better use than a monument, and that this was the genesis of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA).
And then there were tales of old cemeteries becoming the sites of now famous Sydney places such as Town Hall and Central Station, the Zig Zag railway being a world first in tackling mountain crossings, how the National Park came into being after the insider land speculation of the pollies of the time failed when the railway did not pass through that area, and so the pollies sold the now “useless” land to the government, who made it a national park. And we heard about “The Spook”, the undertaker who was the only one with a return ticket on the Funeral Train from Sydney to Rookwood Cemetery, and how the church at Rookwood, which accommodated the funeral train, was sold, dismantled and rebuilt (albeit with the bell tower moved to the opposite side) in the ACT and is now the All Saints Anglican Church, Ainslie.
And there were many more fascinating anecdotes and details in Jim’s talk, but suffice to say that it was a very entertaining session for us all. Grahame Reinthal
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