Merriment will return
Barracks was once the centre of recreation in Sydney
Three months of a pandemic the likes the world has not seen in 100 years, is enough time for anyone to pause and consider the recreational and sporting activities you did with your family and friends.
Recreational activities are loosening up now but many things people did pre-pandemic were organized activities with set times, rules and referees. That wasn’t always the case though.
Prior to 1854, Sydney was a British garrisoned town with a defined space of several acres situated north of Desbarres Street and bounded on the east by George Street (known then as the race course) and the west by the harbour shore.
Called the Barracks, the area contained numerous buildings, a square and a parade ground.
In 1854, the British troops stationed in Sydney left to join forces in the Crimean War and the Barracks soon became a recreational destination for Sydney residents.
At first people would come and swim along the shore and enjoy picnics. A playground was built. Within a few years games and races became an annual thing to happen at the Barracks. A cricket pitch was laid out and public gatherings and large meetings were held there.
For many years training camps for the 94th Battalion Argyle Highlanders and the Sydney Company of Volunteers, including a company of 40 cadets, were held at the Barracks. When the British soldiers left, the top mast went missing from a rather high flagpole on the grounds and the young cadets would demonstrate their climbing ability by trying to reach the top.
On the eastern side of Sydney extending towards the then named Muggah’s Creek, was a parcel of land called Louisa Gardens, though in 1854 there were no actual “gardens” there. At the time it consisted of a large pond emptying into the harbour through an opening in a small beach at the northern end and a large amount of swamp and bog at the southern reaches.
In his memoirs, Dr. William Mckenzie Macleod describes Louisa Gardens as “practically a waste land.”
Notwithstanding this description literally “every boy in town had intimate and endearing knowledge” of a narrow and deep section of water connected to the creek they called Swimming Brook, where they would swim “au natural” at every opportunity they got. Bird hunting abounded in Louisa Gardens as well with no shortage of snipe, curlew, plover and various types of wild duck.
In the early winter, a somewhat oval and shallow pond adjacent to Swimming Brook would freeze over turning it into a skating rink. Kentuck Pond became an icy magnet for the area children as soon as school closed. When the colder weather came, deeper ponds and creeks would freeze and the skaters would change locations. Eventually the entire harbour would freeze solid and skaters would make their way from the north end Barracks to the Sydney River bridge and all along the Westmount shore on the other side of the harbour.
A gentleman by the name of Alonzo White owned a large ice boat and when conditions were right anyone in town with a horse would bring it to the harbour at the Barrack Grounds to help pull the ice boat loaded down with children and adults alike. White would then steer the ice boat all the way up the harbour offering views as far down to Sydney River and back.
Young boys and girls would come out in numbers to go for the ice boat rides and Macleod wrote, “multiply this by a score, nay by a hundred, and you have a ‘scene’ — an event ... which was repeated in this town daily and nightly when roads and weather proved favourable. This was in no sense a procession — it was independent ... What fun and what merriment were there. And the middle-aged with older ones were not absent either.”
In time the pandemic will be wrestled to the ground by good science, reliable tests, treatments, a vaccine, the medical community and everyone who helped in one way or another. Then in time we will be able to have a “scene” that becomes an “event” that will be repeated with “fun and merriment” for young and old alike. No doubt.