WHAT
Centennial Park
WHERE
Sydney, New South Wales
WHEN
Construction commenced 19 July 1887
Lachlan Swamps was the original name for the site in Eastern Sydney where Centennial Park stands today. The 198 hectares of
land was set aside as the second Sydney common land in 1811 by Governor Lachlan Macquarie.
Talk of turning the swamps into a park, which acted as a water source for the burgeoning Sydney colony, began in the 1880s as the water from the nepean system became available from 1886. The Woollahra and Paddington Councils identified the swamplands as an ideal site for parklands due to their proximity to the city centre and the growing population living in and around the area.
Their campaigning obviously worked, as in November 1886, English Civil Engineer Frederick Augustus Franklin visited the site with NSW Premier Sir Henry Parkes and Director of the Botanic Gardens Charles Moore to review the suitability of the location.
The Centennial Celebration Act was passed the following year in 1887 and work began on the park on 19 July 1887. The intention was to open the new park the following year to celebrate the centenary of the New South Wales colony in 1888.
Sydney was in the midst of a recession at the time and hundreds of local unemployed men were hired to turn the swampland into a park in the style of a great Victorian English park.
Professor of Public History at UTS, Paul Ashton is an expert on Centennial Park and is the author of
The People’s Park: Centennial Park – A History.
According to Ashton, the area where Centennial Park now lies was originally very swampy in certain areas and rocky and sandy in others.
“They blew up rock and carted in a lot of sand and brought in tons of soil to try and turn the landscape into something that was a lot more manicured,” says Ashton. “It was a massive amount of work.”
Officially, the design of Centennial Park is attributed to the English civil engineer Franklin, who had previously worked under Joseph Paxton on the relocated Crystal Palace at Sydenham in the 1850s. Moore is credited with the construction of the park, while James Jones, Head Gardener at the Botanic Gardens was overseer.
Both Moore and Jones had great credentials in terms of garden design, the former having trained at Regent’s Park and Kew Gardens in London and the latter having worked on the construction of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris.
However, according to Ashton, the design and landscape of Centennial Park should really be attributed to amateur landscape designer and gardener William Trickett, who spent a large part of his life claiming he was the park’s designer.
“I would bet a lot of money that [the designer] was William Trickett,” says Ashton of the politician and member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works.
Centennial Park was officially opened on Australia Day, 26 January 1888. A few years later in 1901, a group of 250,000 people gathered in the park to witness the Federal Constitution of Australia.
Last year was Centennial Park’s 125th anniversary and a number of events were held in the park to celebrate, including the creation of a light garden and a wish tree – the park today still fulfills its creator’s brief of being the people’s park.
Photo: courtesy of the National Library of Australia, Bib ID: 178690