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Archibald Bell Jr. was an early settler in Sydney, Australia, who found a way across the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

Life and explorations

Bell was the second son of Lieutenant Archibald Bell, who arrived in Sydney with his family in 1807.

Bruce's Walk is a bush track in the Blue Mountains area of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 100 kilometres west of Sydney, the capital of New South Wales.

Description and history

Bruce's Walk originally began as a maintenance track in 1931. The Railway Department had agreed to supply electricity to the Blue Mountains Shire Council from the power station at Lithgow and a transmission line was put through from Blackheath to Lawson, with a track to provide maintenance access. The line went from Blackheath through the bush west of Medlow Bath, across the ridges north of Katoomba, Leura and Wentworth Falls, across the gullies on the fringes of Bullaburra and into Lawson. The authorities then decided to promote the maintenance track as a walking trail, which was duly opened on 21st November, 1931. The surveyor who planned the track was A.Bruce, as a result of which the track eventually became known as Bruce's Walk.

A pamphlet was published to publicise the walk, which passed through a variety of scenery, including glens and ridges. However, from World War II onwards, the track was forgotten and neglected. Parts of the track were also blocked off when the council constructed Lake Greaves in 1942 as a local water supply. Much later, however, a local walker named Dick Rushton found a copy of the pamphlet published in 1931 and set out to clear and mark the track. In 1980 he led a party of walkers along the section of track between Bullaburra and Wentworth Falls, and in 1983 he created a written guide to the track.

By 1986, Bruce's Walk had come to the attention of two other walkers, Jim Smith and Wilf Hilder, who organised a group of volunteers to clear the track between Bullaburra and Wentworth Falls. In the process, they found many artefacts and features, including signs, shelter caves, seats and picnic tables. This part of the track was officially opened on 24th May, 1986, by Alderman David Lawton. The opening was attended by 118 people, including Dick Rushton, who was by then eighty years old. (This opening was condemned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Mayor of the Blue Mountains City Council.) Other stretches of the track, from Wentworth Falls to Medlow Bath, were also cleared by the volunteers and opened later in 1986. The track, however, is still patchy and largely without signposts, and is not shown on the topographic map for the area.

See also

• List of Blue Mountains articles

References

The Sugar Syndrome is a play written by British writer Lucy Prebble. It has won several awards and as of 2009 has been sold in seven languages.

Synopsis

The play has four main characters: Dani, Tim, Lewis and Jan. At the beginning, Dani (short for Danielle), a girl of seventeen, has just come home after spending some time in a clinic for eating disorders. Her mother, Jan, is trying to cope with the problems of looking after Dani after separating from her husband. Dani starts talking to people in an internet chat room and gets to know Tim, a man in his thirties. Dani pretends to be an eleven year-old boy, which Tim believes. Tim is a man in his thirties who has a taste for young boys and has spent some time in prison. He and Dani agree to meet in a park and subsequently become friends.

Dani also meets a lonely young man called Lewis in the chat room. Lewis eventually becomes jealous of the friendship between Dani and Tim and threatens to expose Tim as a pedophile. Tim, anticipating a visit from the police, lends his laptop to Dani for safekeeping. Dani then finds a video on the laptop which appears to depict the rape of a young boy. The play climaxes with the harrowing sound of the boy being raped.

First performance

The play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, from 16th October to 15th November, 2003.

• Director: Marianne Elliott, associate director at Royal Court Theatre

• Dani: Stephanie Leonidas

• Tim: Andrew Woodall

• Lewis: Will Ash

• Jan: Kate Duchene

Extracts from reviews

• "Prebble's play is excellently wrought, and courageous in its engagement with taboo." (Elizabeth Shenton)

• "Ms Prebble weaves her plot with originality and an excellent ear for dialogue... This is an outstanding first play..." (Lizzie Loveridge)

• "Some of the motivations are a little awry and Lucy Prebble tries to put too many complications into her first play. Despite this, she writes well, with great humour and compassion and creates interesting characters about whom it is easy to care." (Philip Fisher)

• "The Sugar Syndrome, a remarkably assured, funny and perceptive debut play by twenty-two year-old Lucy Prebble." (Paul Taylor)

Awards

• Critics Circle Award, 2004

• George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, 2004

• TMA Award for Best New Play, 2004

The writer

Lucy Prebble comes from a "middle class" family in Haslemere, Surrey. The Sugar Syndrome was her first full-length play. Before that she had written a short play. She was only twenty-two when she wrote The Sugar Syndrome and had left university a year before. Since The Sugar Syndrome she has worked on other plays and TV shows, including Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

References

Lucy Prebble is a British writer born in 1981 and known as the author of The Sugar Syndrome and Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Life and career

Lucy Prebble was born into a "middle class, corporate family" in Haslemere, Surrey, England. Her father worked in software and her siblings were management consultants. She describes herself as the black sheep of the family. She wrote plays and stories as a child and had a tendency to live in a world of her own. She also had worked part-time from the age of fourteen.

While studying English at Sheffield University, she wrote a short play called Liquid, which won a student award. She then left university in 2002 and worked as a secretary at the National Theatre. Her career as a writer got underway when she wrote her first full-length play, The Sugar Syndrome, which was produced at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 2003. The play dealt with the relationship between a teenage girl (played by Stephanie Leonidas) and Tim (played by Andrew Woodall), who is a pedophile. It won a number of awards and gave Prebble a reputation for being able to write convincingly about the sex lives of young women. She soon found herself in demand as a writer. The most prominent work she produced at this stage was the short TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which was based on a blog by an upmarket London call girl known as Belle du Jour. It was originally written for Channel 4, but they lost interest and it was then taken up by ITV2.

By 2009, Prebble was writing a stage play for Headlong Theatre Company, inspired by the Enron scandal in the United States. She was also adapting the Jane Austen novella Lady Susan for Celador Films and BBC4. She was under commission to the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre, and was being represented by the Rod Hall Agency of London.

References

Gladesville Mental Hospital was a psychiatric hospital established in 1838 in the suburb of Gladesville, Sydney, Australia.

Description and history

Prior to 1838, people with mental or emotional problems in the Sydney area were housed in a "lunatic asylum" in Liverpool, a suburb on the south-east fringes of Sydney, or at the Female Factory in Parramatta, twenty-four kilometres west of Sydney. In the 1830s, construction of a purpose-built asylum began on the banks of the Parramatta River, in the area now known as Gladesville. The original sandstone complex was designed by the Colonial Architect, Mortimer Lewis, between 1836 and 1838. Patients were then transferred from Liverpool and the Female Factory.

The first supervisor was John Thomas Digby, who sought to improve the treatment of the mentally ill, as did his successor, Frederick Norton Manning. The complex was known as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum from 1838 to 1868, but this was changed to Gladesville Hospital for the Insane in 1869. In 1915, the designation was changed again when the complex became known as the Gladesville Mental Hospital. In 1993, the Gladesville hospital was amalgamated with the Macquarie Hospital at North Ryde to create Gladesville Macquarie Hospital. In 1997, all inpatient services were consolidated at the Macquarie, North Ryde site.

Heritage

The following buildings and structures are listed on the Register of the National Estate.

• Original Quadrangle Complex of 1838
• Gatekeeper's Cottage near Punt Road gates
• Punt Road gates
• Doctor's Residence, south side of Punt Road gates
• Group of Service Buildings between 1838 buildings and Punt Road gates
• Workshop (former Male Ward 9)
• All Sandstone Walling within hospital

References

Mortimer William Lewis (1796-1879), was an English architect who migrated to Australia and became Colonial Architect in the state of New South Wales. He was responsible for designing many heritage buildings.

Early life

Lewis was born in London in 1796. At the age of nineteen he was appointed as a surveyor and draughtsman in the London office of the Inspector General of Fortifications. After this he went into private practice and spent eight years in surveying and building. In 1819 he married Elizabeth Clements, who bore him three sons and a daughter. Another son was to be born later in Sydney, Australia. After his eight years in surveying and building, he received an appointment as Assistant Surveyor in the office of Surveyor General of New South Wales. He set sail with his family in 1829 and arrived in Sydney in March, 1830.

Career in Australia

In Sydney, Lewis worked under Sir Thomas Mitchell, who gave him the job of surveying and mapping the Great Dividing Range, 130 kilometres west of Sydney. (The Great Dividing Range goes roughly parallel to the east coast of Australia and divides the east-flowing watercourses from the west-flowing.) Mitchell then made Lewis the Town Surveyor; in 1835 he was further promoted to the position of Colonial Architect.

Lewis's first job in the latter position was the design of the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, the first purpose-built asylum for the mentally ill in New South Wales. Lewis created a sandstone complex in the Georgian style, located on a stretch of land between Tarban Creek and the Parramatta River. The hospital was built between 1836 and 1838, and was later to be known as Gladesville Mental Hospital.

A long series of public buildings followed, including court houses, police stations and governmental buildings. He also supervised the construction of buildings designed by other architects, notable examples being Government House and St John's Church at Camden, both of which were designed in England by Robert Blore. Lewis became the leading proponent in Australia of the Classical Revival style, and especially the Doric variation, which he used for the court houses in Darlinghurst, Hartley and Berrima.

On first arriving in Sydney, Lewis lived on the premises of the Colonial Architect office, but later acquired land in what was to become the beachside suburb of Bronte. Here he began designing a sandstone bungalow that came to be known as Bronte House, which he sold to Robert Lowe before it was finished. He then moved his family to the prestigious suburb of Darling Point, east of the city centre. Bronte House would later be listed on the Register of the National Estate.

Unfortunately, Lewis's career as Colonial Architect would eventually encounter serious problems in spite of his contributions to the development of the state. In the late 1840s he began designing Sydney's first museum, which would later be absorbed into the present Australian Museum. The project experienced substantial cost overruns as time went by, and Lewis was criticised by both the press and politicians. The museum was eventually finished, but an official enquiry blamed Lewis squarely for the problems, and he was forced to resign as Colonial Architect in 1849.

However, Lewis remained active. In 1850, he built a new home, known as Richmond Villa, which faced the Sydney parkland known as The Domain. It was later to be absorbed into the Parliament House of New South Wales as it developed in Macquarie Street. In 1853 he designed Nugal Hall, a two-storey Gothic mansion in Milford Street, Randwick, for Alexander Arthur; the house would later be added to the Register of the National Estate. In 1872 he designed the Wentworth family mausoleum, in Chapel Road, Vaucluse. It was originally designed as the tomb for William Charles Wentworth, one of the explorers who crossed the Blue Mountains; other family members were also buried there.

Early in 1879, Lewis became ill from a kidney complaint and died on 9th March. He was buried in South Head Cemetery, Vaucluse.

BLUE MOUNTAINS

B

• Bell, New South Wales
• Bells Line of Road
• Berambing, New South Wales
• Bilpin, New South Wales
• Blackheath, New South Wales
• Blaxland, New South Wales
• Blue Mountains (Australia)
• Blue Mountains National Park
• Blue Mountains railway line, New South Wales
• Bruce's Walk
• Bullaburra, New South Wales

C

• City of Blue Mountains
• Clarence, New South Wales
• Clarence Tunnel
• Coxs River

E

• Electoral district of Blue Mountains

F

• Faulconbridge, New South Wales
• Francis Barrallier

G

• Gardens of Stone National Park
• George Caley
• George Evans (explorer)
• Glenbrook, New South Wales
• Glen Davis, New South Wales
• Glenbrook Tunnel (1892)
• Greater Blue Mountains Area
• Gregory Blaxland
• Grose Valley

H

• Hartley, New South Wales
• Hartley Vale, New South Wales
• Hawkesbury Heights, New South Wales
• Hazelbrook, New South Wales
• Henry Parkes (lived in Blue Mountains)

J

• Jamison Valley
• Jenolan Caves

K

• Kanangra-Boyd National Park
• Katoomba, New South Wales
• Katoomba to Mittagong Trail
• Kurrajong, New South Wales
• Kurrajong Heights, New South Wales

L

• Lake Burragorang
• Lapstone, New South Wales
• Lawson, New South Wales
• Leura, New South Wales
• Linden, New South Wales
• List of mountain peaks of the Blue Mountains (New South Wales)
• Lithgow, New South Wales
• Little Hartley, New South Wales

M

• Medlow Bath, New South Wales
• Megalong Valley
• Mount Banks
• Mount Bindo
• Mount Boyce
• Mount Hay
• Mount Piddington
• Mount Riverview, New South Wales
• Mount Solitary
• Mount Trickett (New South Wales)
• Mount Victoria, New South Wales
• Mount Wilson, New South Wales
• Mount York

N

• Narrow Neck Plateau
• Newnes, New South Wales
• Newnes Glow Worm Tunnel
• Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum (in Blue Mountains)

S

• Six Foot Track
• Springwood, New South Wales

T

• The Blue Mountains (Elgar)

V

• Valley Heights, New South Wales

W

• Warrimoo, New South Wales
• Wentworth Falls, New South Wales
• William Charles Wentworth
• William Cox
• William Lawson
• Winmalee, New South Wales
• Wolgan Valley
• Wollemi National Park
• Woodford, New South Wales

Y

• Yellow Rock
• Yerranderie, New South Wales

Blue Mountains

BEGA

The Bega region was used by the Yuin-Monaro tribal grouping of Aborigines for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the area. The first European to come near the area was George Bass, who explored the coastline in 1797 as part of his broader explorations of the Australian coast. William Tarlinton was the first European to explore the area on foot, arriving in 1829. He returned in the early 1830s and settled there, starting a cattle farm. Others who arrived in the area around the same time were the Imlay brothers, who also began farming there. Their name has since been preserved in the form of Mount Imlay National Park. Live cattle were transported to Sydney for a time, to be supplemented by tallow and hides in the early 1840s.

Beef and dairy farming were carried on in the area through the 1840s, and many towns were surveyed in the 1850s. Dairy farming expanded quickly throughout the 1860s, overtaking cattle farming as the predominant industry. In 1858, Tathra was used as a port for the transport of products to Sydney, and the Illawarra Steam Company was established. In 1860, Tathra Wharf was constructed, which allowed for the further growth and expansion of the dairy industry.

The region received a further boost in the late 1870s when gold was discovered in the Bermagui area. The Bermagui gold rush followed quickly in 1880. Two years later, in 1882, the Municipality of Bega was created. The Bega Dairy Cooperative Limited was set up in the late 1890s

Phillip Bay is one of the smallest suburbs in Randwick Municipality, in spite of including Yarra Bay and Bicentennial Park. It is a low-density residential area with a large variety of housing types, including villas, cottages, blocks of flats up to three storeys and townhouses. It has an extremely high percentage of detached homes: 80%, compared to the average of 28% in the Randwick Municipality. Semidetached homes are relatively few as a percentage of total housing: 6.4% compared to an average of 15% in the municipality. Catholic and Baptist churches can be found in Yarra Road and an Aboriginal Evangelical Church in Adina Avenue, although it was disused as of 2009. La Perouse Primary School is situated in Yarra Road, Phillip Bay.

The Abbey is a heritage home in the suburb of Annandale, Sydney, Australia.

Description and history

The Abbey was built by John Young, a builder who had migrated from England to Australia. After working for some time as a builder in the state of Victoria, young moved to Sydney and continued a successful career. In 1877 he bought land in what is now the suburb of Annandale, where he had visions of creating a garden suburb that would rival exclusive harbourside suburbs like Darling Point. He proceeded by building an extraordinary group of eight homes along a ridge near Rozelle Bay. The Abbey was the most outstanding of these homes, an "imaginative, romantic house loosely modelled on a Scottish manor." It was designed in a variation of the Victorian Free Gothic style and incorporated stencil work, hand-painted panels, timber architraves, a Gothic vault and a tower with gargoyles. (Young was the principal builder on St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, and it was rumoured that he had stolen gargoyles from the cathedral to use on his Annandale homes.) It also used reinforced concrete, which was quite an innovation in those days. Since Young was a Freemason, the house was decorated with Masonic symbols. It was completed in 1882.

Young built an impressive home to please his wife, but ironically, they never lived in it. The Abbey was occupied only by housekeepers while Young and his wife lived in a house called Kentville, located close to Rozelle Bay; it has since been demolished. From 1887, the ballroom and stables of The Abbey were used as a boarding house for private schools.

In 1924, the house was subdivided and converted to flats, thus beginning a long period of decline, but in 1959 it was acquired by the Sydney surgeon Geoffrey Lancelot Davis for the sum of 4500 Pounds. Davis continued to lease out the flats while proceeding with a long-term attempt to restore the house.

The Davis family continued to occupy The Abbey for fifty years. Dr Davis died in 2008, but some of his children stayed on for the time being. In May 2009 the contents of the house were auctioned off by Lawson Auctioneers in anticipation of selling the house later that year.

The Davis family have gone on record as saying that the house is haunted. Various presences have been felt from time to time, and a lady in white has been seen occasionally. Ghost hunters with "ectoplasmic machines" investigated the house in the 1970s. The family maintained that their pet cat could sense the presence of spirits and his hackles would rise when such a presence came into the room.

The Abbey is listed on the Register of the National Estate and the New South Wales Heritage Register.

See Also

• Heritage homes of Sydney
• Annandale, New South Wales

Highroyd

Highroyd is a heritage home in the suburb of Annandale, Sydney, Australia.

Description and history

Highroyd was built by John Young, a builder who migrated from England in 1855 and worked in the state of Victoria for some time before settling in Sydney in 1866. Young was responsible for building a number of heritage buildings in Sydney, including St Mary's Cathedral and St Francis Xavier's War Memorial Church in North Sydney. In 1877 he bought a parcel of land near Rozelle Bay, in the area now known as Annandale. His dream was to create a prestige suburb that would rival other exclusive residential areas in Sydney. The main street in this new area, Johnston Street, was intended to be "the finest street in the colony." On the west side of Johnston Street he built a group of eight large, idiosyncratic houses. At the head of this group was The Abbey, a sandstone Gothic mansion loosely modelled on a Scottish manor. It has been described as being "among that special breed of Free Gothic landmark buildings which once seen are not easily forgotten." The Abbey was intended to be a home for Young and his wife, but in fact they never lived there. Their home was a house called Kentville, near Rozelle Bay, which has since been demolished.

Detail of gable

Gargoyles

Restored wrought iron balcony

Next in line after The Abbey was Oybin, then Rozelle, Greba, Hockindon, Highroyd, Kenilworth and lastly Claremont. Highroyd and Hockindon were built for Young's daughters. They are designed in an identical style, the only difference being that Highroyd has a spire but Hockindon does not. Along with Kenilworth, they are popularly known as the "witches houses" because the spires are thought to resemble witches' hats. Apart from their distinctive design, the houses were also notable for their use of reinforced concrete, which was an innovation at the time.

With the depression of the 1890s, Annandale was subdivided and its character began to change, putting paid to Young's dream of a prestige suburb. It was the beginning of a long period of decline for Young's distinctive houses. The witches houses were divided into flats; Rozelle and Claremont were demolished and replaced with blocks of home units.

Restoration

Highroyd's owners as of 2009 bought the house in 1988 for $700,000. Heritage architect David Springett began to work for them on the restoration of the house, which involved undoing a great deal of damage and defacement that had accumulated over the years. So-called "hippies" had painted murals on the walls and covered the cedar staircase with a thick coat of green paint. Scraping the paint off the stairs was in itself a major job which took six months. The wrought iron balconies at the front of the house had been enclosed by previous owners to create more room; wrought iron for their restoration had to be made especially for the purpose. Gargoyles had to be made to decorate the spire; sculptor Hugh Reedman was commissioned for the job and produced four gargoyles that had to be lowered into position by crane.

The restoration of Highroyd took twenty years and resulted in the house being entered in the heritage category of Australian Institute of Architects New South Wales awards for 2009. Highroyd is listed on the Heritage Register of New South Wales.

See Also

• Annandale, New South Wales

• The Abbey (Sydney)

Education Department, Bridge Street, Sydney

George McRae (1858-1923) was a Scottish architect who migrated to Australia and pursued his career in Sydney, where he became Government Architect of New South Wales.

Life and career

George McRae was born in Edinburgh in 1858. He arrived in Sydney in 1884 and was appointed Assistant Architect in the City Architect’s office. He became City Architect and City Building Surveyor in 1889, a position he held until 1897, when he was appointed Principal Assistant Architect to Walter Liberty Vernon in the Government Architect's Branch. He succeeded Vernon as Government Architect in 1911 and held the office until his death in 1923.

McRae was responsible for the design of many buildings in Sydney and other places, several of which still survive and are heritage-listed. Some of the extant buildings are:

• Education Department Building, Bridge Street, Sydney, 1912; a six-storey sandstone building listed on the Register of the National Estate.
• Parcels Post Office, Railway Square, Sydney, 1913; a brick and sandstone building in the Federation Free Classical style, described as "an ingeniously designed and monumental building."
• Taronga Zoo lower entrance, top entrance and Indian elephant house, Mosman, Sydney, 1916; replaced first zoo at Moore Park, has a Local Government Heritage listing.
• Corporation Building, Hay Street, Sydney, circa 1893; originally known as the Municipal Building, this building combined Queen Anne and Anglo-Dutch influences. It is listed on the Register of the National Estate
• Additions to the Colonial Treasury Building, Bridge Street, Sydney, originally built circa 1849, extensions circa 1896; listed on the Register of the National Estate
• Queen Victoria Building, George Street, Sydney, 1893-98; a sandstone masterpiece in Romanesque style, reopened in 1986 as a retail centre after major restoration, and now listed on the Register of the National Estate
• Court House, Maitland Street, Cessnock, New South Wales; the State Government set aside land in 1905 that established Cessnock as the administrative centre of the coal fields in that part of the Hunter Valley. This included the court house, which now has a Local Government Heritage listing.

• 
  Cessnock Court House
• 
  Queen Victoria Building