As I mentioned in our last issue of UTR, I am starting this archive story with the extract of Sandra’s article on the history of our Club’s area on the Parramatta River and Ryde from the UTR of December, 1992.

But before I start into her article, I thought that I would delve a little into the history of the area before the First Fleet people visited the area. The Aboriginal people were in the area of what we now call the City of Ryde for thousands of years before white settlers came. The traditional owners were the Wallumedegal people and Captain Arthur Phillip, our first Governor of NSW, was told this by Woollarawarre Bennelong who was from the clan called the Wangai on the south side of the river. The Wallumedegal terrirtory went from the north bank of the Parramatta River from Turrumburra (Lane Cove River) in the east to Burramatta (Parramatta) at the head of the river in the west. So onto Sandra Donovan’s article.

A STEP INTO THE PAST.

“The Ryde Bicentenary year has placed a focus on the origins of European settlement in the area. Our Club is part of the more recent history of Ryde but the district now known as Ryde goes back to the earliest days of the British colony. The late Philip Geeves wrote a “A Place of Pioneers” in 1970 for the Ryde Municipal Council’s centenary and is a wonderful general historical read of the locality. Here are some of the interesting happenings recounted in this book on the area where our Club operates today to put you in the picture.

Only 10 days after the first fleet sailed through the heads of Port Jackson and lay at anchor in Sydney Cove, Captain John Hunter (who years later became the second Governor of NSW) and Lieutenant William Bradley led a survey group up the long tidal arm, which we now call the Parramatta River, as far as Homebush Bay. The area behind Homebush Bay and Duck River was examined in more detail in April by Governor Phillip. He was convinced that the soil thereabouts was much richer than the sandy loam soil near Sydney Cove and eventually established another settlement at a spot he named Rose Hill. However he decided that as from 4^th June, 1791 this second settlement should be called by its native name, Parramatta – “a place of eels”.

The rich alluvial soil there made Parramatta the main agricultural centre of the colony and in those early times it was more populous than Sydney itself! Thus the Parramatta River became the lifeline between Australia’s first two settlements. The familiar land marks along the waterway were given names as a matter of convenient reference.

History tells us of the difficulties those early arrivals faced particularly in feeding the colony. Until they learned to manage the soil of the new land, famine was always the threat. Therefore everyone was encouraged to cultivate a plot of land and thus relieved the drain on public stores. Consequently soldiers and marines were encouraged to dabble in agriculture, This was the stimulus that produced another little settlement – in the district which is now Ryde.

On 3^rd January, 1792 the first land grants in the Ryde District, of 80 acres each, were made to two marine privates, Isaac Archer and John Colethread. “Golfers on the Ryde Parramatta Links now traverse those marines’ estates in pursuit of leisure – and lost balls.” On 22^nd February, 1792, Governor Phillip placed another group of settlers, all convicts, on the wooded hillside between the present Ryde Bridge and St. Anne’s Church, (on the crest of the hill on Victoria Road). These allotments were known as the Eastern Farms and were only 30 acres in area, laid out in rectangles, ‘like cemetery plots’.

Governor Phillip named the district the “Field of Mars”. However, the small promontory of Kissing Point (where our Club is located) soon lent its name to the nearby settlement, then to an entire reach of the Parramatta as well as to the district thereabouts. The name Kissing Point was an official designation less than seven years after the colony of Sydney was founded. It was not until the 1840s did the name of “Ryde” start appearing.

There are many delightful romantic stories as to why this promontory was named Kissing Point however the more likely is the nautical explanation. It marked the limit of river navigation for seagoing vessels, the spot where their keel would “kiss” the shelving river bed. An 1866 directory noted that the river was navigable for vessels up to 600 tons only as far as Ryde. On modern hydrographic charts the river at Kissing Point is 230 yards wide and the channel averages about six fathoms in depth, but above that point the water shoals rapidly (as all CRSC sailors will readily attest).

The Eastern Farms eventually became the fruit and vegetable bowl of the colony. Industrious growers transported their produce by boat or made the long precarious journey by road across the punt from Bedlam Point down the Great North Road to the markets at Sydney.

The most notable early resident of Kissing Point was unquestionably James Squire. The SYDNEY GAZETTE even referred to him as the “Patriarch”. James Squire was sentenced to seven years transportation for highway robbery and came out with the First Fleet. On 27^th July, 1795 he was granted a 30 acres plot at the Eastern Farms. By 1798 he was the licensee of the Malting Shovel public house at Kissing Point, “strategically located to wet the whistles of passage boatmen shuttling between Sydney and Parramatta”. He grew the first hops in the colony on his farm at Kissing Point and built the first brewery. If we could transport our Sailing Club back to James Squire’s time, it would probably be on the Squire Estate. The brewery would have been next door, where the Naval facility now stands. When Lars Halvorsen & Sons Pty Ltd built their boatshed on the site in 1940, the brewery and wharf were still in evidence, Unfortunately the remnants of the brewery were demolished to make way for a sheet metal shop.

Dogged enterprise and the rich soil of Kissing Point made James Squire a wealthy man. His capital grew as he acquired many of the nearby farms. At the time of his death in 1822 he had acquired 1,000 acres of choice land with his dwelling, brewer house and cellar on the point. “His enterprise and his product attracted to Kissing Point men of every station – Exclusives and Emancipists, Sterling and Currency. They came to Squire’s jetty on the Parramatta River not merely to bandy words, but to sample his brown ale, for James Squire (or Squires as many called him) put his faith in Englishmen’s thirsts and prospered accordingly. Sailors of many nations who were vague about the locations of Nineveh or Babylon, could find their way to Squire’s in a thick fog.”

Squire’s Brewery, Kissing Point / watercolour by unknown artist. https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nV2qryJn/rDoqrZv0LOLMN#viewer

James Squire was held in very high esteem in the colony. He helped the less fortunate in the settlement and demonstrated a warm sympathy for Australia’s Aborigines, a trait lacking in many of his contemporaries. He had a native cemetery in his grounds. A press notice of 1828 mentioned “the garden of the late proprietor of the Colonial Brewery is celebrated for containing the remains of Bennelong, the native chief who accompanied Governor Phillip to England. He lies between his wife and another chief, amidst the orange trees of the garden. Bidgee Bidgee, the present representative of the Kissing Point tribe is a frequent visitor at these premises and expresses a wish, after his death, to be buried by the side of his friend Bennelong”. A plaque to this effect can be seen in the park adjacent to the Sailing Club.

Kissing Point took its first plunge into organised aquatic sport by staging a regatta on Easter Monday, 5^th April, 1847. From the very early times the broad waters of Sydney Harbour had been the locale for many regattas, but this was the first regatta held up river. The spot selected for this regatta was known locally as “Levy’s Folly”….”all who have ever voyaged up or down the Parramatta River must have noticed nearly opposite Kissing Point, on the brow of a small promontory, an unfinished building called Levy’s Folly from its late eccentric owner never completing his villa residence.” This residence stood just about where the old Thomas Walker Convalescent Hospital, that majestic building on the opposite shore to the Sailing Club, is today.

Attractive prize money was offered for the various events. The Sydney press was very complimentary. However, one journalist was captivated by the scenery more than the regatta. Of the vista from St. Anne’s Church at the top of the hill on Victoria Road he wrote lyrically …. “whoever planned that Church had a good, plain simple taste, and an unexceptional eye to nature. In the distant west the blue mountains, in the south the range at Razorback, and to the south east those mountains which divide Illawarra from the rest of Camden. In the amphitheatre formed and shut in by these, a various country; in the immediate foreground the windings, points and bays of the Parramatta River, indescribably beautiful, with the undulating pasture of Homebush on the other side of the water, dotted with cattle.” The view from Ryde in 1847!

Spurred on by the success of their first regatta, the citizens of Kissing Point held another the following year. However, it was not until the Golden Era of the 1850’s, when the gold rush brought unprecedented wealth to the colony, did individual rowing events for the local and national championships for high stakes, become the craze in Sydney.

The first championship sculling races on the Parramatta River began in 1858 with a contest between Sydney born Richard Green and James Candlish of England for a purse of 400 pounds. The championship course was between Charity Point (near the old Ryde Railway bridge) to The Brothers (which I assume is somewhere near Searle’s Monument at Henley, erected “at the championship finish line” in memory of Harry Searle who died from fever contracted in Colombo on his way home by ship from a triumphant tour of England).

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, oarsmen were accorded extravagant hero worship. The Parramatta River, often called the Thames of the Antipodes, was early recognised as an ideal venue for rowing and sculling contests and when Australia began to produce aquatic champions of world class, the buoyant nationalism of Sydney crowds soon developed into a contagious fever. People from all walks of life followed their heroes about. The ladies also were no less enthusiastic, trimming their parasols or bonnets with their hero’s racing colours.

One contest between the World Champion, a cocky Canadian Edward Hanlan and the local lad William Beach for the championship in 1884 was destined to be remembered long afterwards. “It was estimated that 60,000 spectators viewed the struggle. Every pier, wharf and headland, was black with people and multitudes crowded the boats and steamers on the river. The betting in the Ryde was 2 to 1 on Beach, but there were few takers. Hanlan was bursting with conceit before the race and clapped on the pace for the first mile yet Bill Beach, a muscular giant devoid of temperament, overhauled him to win in 20 minutes 28 ½ seconds. The Canadian ex-champion took his defeat with bad grace, but the cast concourses of spectators were delirious with joy.”

Beach successfully defended his title 3 times on the Parramatta River and when he returned after his triumphant visit to England where he beat all comers he was showered with a series of overwhelming welcomes.  ”Adelaide mobbed him, Melbourne banqueted him for three days and in Sydney, the shops closed their doors on their busiest trading day because a hundred thousand people insisted on paying personal homage to their modest Champion of Champions. Ships in the harbour and city buildings were festooned with black and yellow bunting – Beach’s racing colours.” Unbeaten in seven races for the World Championship, “Sweet William” Beach announced his retirement at the peak of his fame. A monument honouring his memory is in Cabarita Park.

During the halcyon days of professional sculling, the champions were part of the Ryde scene. These oarsmen were household names and when some settled in the Ryde District, the locals claimed them as their own. Their training schedules, course times were common gossip. Sporting writers “held court” at the Royal Hotel or the Steamboat Inn, watching every aspect of race preparations and then telegraphing their stories from the local post office. These contests gave widespread publicity to some of the locality names along the river. London journals were often at pains to assure their readers that Putney, Mortlake, Henley and Chiswick had as much meaning for Sydneysiders as for Londoners. “Fanatical devotees armed themselves with charts of the river and studied them in detail. The fact that sculling fans in England and Canada could recite the river depths and tidal conditions between Kissing Point and Uhr’s Point helped to invest these spots with global recognition …. which would probably have astonished the humble pioneers of Kissing Point, as well as George Richard Uhr, Sheriff of New South Wales, for whom the point across the stream was named.”

In addition to championship sculling contests, the Parramatta River course had a long association with Australia’s intercontinental and intervarsity rowing races, as well as the annual G.P.S. regattas which were rowed on the river from 1893 to 1935, before moving to the Nepean course.

Next time you are sailing on the Club’s course, spare a thought for those generations of Australians who came to associate Ryde’s riverfront with some treasured moment or another when ecstatic with excitement and hoarse from shouting they could still find enough voice to cheer an idolised hero or favourite crew on to victory.”

There is no more room for anything further in this article that was so well put together by Sandra Donovan some 30 years ago. So our thanks to you Sandra for this great article which has been worthwhile repeating for all - to our more recent members for them to read about our area’s history and for those who read it years ago to re-live the story.

We are now up to the February, 1993 issue of UTR which contained many follow up articles on THE BIG STORM which I covered in my last article. These were written by many members and most make interesting reading. One of these was written by Sandra Donovan young crew, Adam Brown, who headed his report. “A GREAT STORY TO TELL THE GRANDCHILDREN”. Probably by now he has some in his family and I wonder if he remembers this article and has done what he said he would do!

In his Spiral report in this issue, Class Captain, Chris Loring gave congratulations to one of our younger Spiral sailors, Naomi Wiedemann, who had just become the new Spiral National Champion on handicap. Chris also advised that CRSC had the biggest Spiral fleet in any Club in Australia. Probably it still holds this position with our big current fleet.

Moving on to the Presentation Day issue of UTR Chris followed up by writing that Naomi was also third in the Ladies Division of the Spiral Nationals. Then in the State Championship Elizabeth Wiedemann, Naomi’s mother, took out first on handicap and third in the master’s division with Naomi winning the visitor’s trophy. So a good season for that family!

Bob Simpson from the Cat Class took out 2^nd place in the Nationals and then beat that with a win for the Maricat State Title.

This issue also had many further comments about the THE BIG STORM almost 6 months earlier. This shows what a big impression it had made on our sailors.

Just reverting back to my Commodore’s report in the February UTR where I was commenting on sailing rules and included a quote from a book on the rules of sailing by Ross Telfer called “Sailing”. This section read “The first rule is safety first, regardless who has right of way, avoid a collision with a power boat at all costs.” After he discussed several other rules, he then added “As skipper, you have the responsibility of always avoiding a collision at all costs. There will be discourteous or ignorant skippers who will refuse to acknowledge your call, or barge down on you when they have no right of way. Don’t let them spoil your day.”

These comments are also very pertinent today but back then they must have resonated with one of our Cat sailors of that time, Bern Leslie, who wrote a letter which was published in the May, 1993 UTR and he quoted some comments from another book. One of these I will repeat here as I feel that it covers what sailing as a sport is all about. “The art of racing is not in winning, but in winning so the rest of the fleet are comfortable with your win and the only way this will be achieved is if you have shown better helmsmanship than they, combined with sportsmanship”. This is only a small part of what Bern wrote but I think that it is worthwhile following to make our sport worthwhile and enjoyable.

On this note I will finish for this time and more next issue.

Good Sailing!!!!

Ron Burwood