The Harbour Read online

  Having arrived in Sydney in April 1888, Searle was on Parramatta River just six months later to compete against the world champion Peter Kemp. Searle had raced on the river just three times before, and he had won each race, pocketing £200. This time he was racing for £1000, and the world championship. An estimated 30,000 spectators had crammed onto and along the river.

  On that October Saturday, Searle carved through the water and the record books. He reached the Brothers in 22 minutes 44.5 seconds. Those statistics, in clinical digits and across the distance of time, may barely register. But often, while paddling along Parramatta River, I think of Henry Searle and those statistics. To row more than 5.1 kilometres in less than twenty-three minutes; I can only imagine the acidic burning in the muscles, the heart hammering against the chest, and the desperate gulping for breath. Actually, I can more than imagine. I only have to paddle a little harder, feeling the river take on the viscosity of molasses and my muscles melt to the density of water, to be in awe of what Searle achieved.

  While ordinary paddlers draw breath and rest, Henry Searle rowed on to more milestones. After defeating every other Australian sculler of note within a year, he travelled to Britain. The journey in itself would have been a challenge for Searle. This man who could crush all on the water was, in his own words, gripped with ‘fear travelling by sea’ and suffered motion sickness.

  In September 1889, Searle took on the Canadian champion William O’Connor on a 4¾-mile course along the River Thames. Searle won easily and as soon as the telegraph message reached Sydney, celebrations erupted.

  Henry Searle was run down on the voyage back to Australia by typhoid, which he presumably contracted in Europe. By the time he arrived on home soil, he was very ill. When the ship docked at Melbourne, he was taken to hospital. Henry Searle died of peritonitis on 10 December 1889. He was aged 23.

  A country that had been readying to welcome home a hero was now preparing for a funeral. The Sydney Morning Herald reported Searle’s death was met with ‘expressions of unfeigned sorrow and regret that the life of so promising a young man should have terminated in such a lamentable manner’. The newspaper’s editorial mourned the loss of a young man who personified what was good about Australia, declaring, ‘he did us honour, for he was of us, and had the strength of our soil, of our atmosphere, of ourselves to some degree, within him’.

  On the same page the Herald reported on Henry Searle, it printed an item about Sydney Harbour cradling hopes for a growing export trade: ‘At daylight today the largest cargo of wool ever loaded into one vessel at this port, it is believed, leaves for Europe’. The shipment of 10,428 bales ‘includes some of the best samples of wool ever exported from this colony’.

  Henry Searle’s body had not even been returned to Sydney when calls for a monument began. In a letter to the editor, one suggested ‘a monument be erected on the Brothers rocks . . . Surely no more appropriate spot could be found . . . The winning post was the beacon light that beckoned him to victory . . . Then in future struggles on the historic course, the goal to be reached by the victor will be the monument to Australia’s greatest aquatic champion, typical of honourable perseverance, courage and integrity. Henry Searle may justly, in disposition, action, and character be held up as an example of perfect manhood to the rising generation.’

  The funeral for Henry Searle was, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘one of the most imposing and remarkable events ever witnessed in New South Wales or, indeed, Australia’. An estimated 170,000 mourners lined the route to Circular Quay. The procession following the coffin was more than a kilometre long. The coffin was loaded onto the steamer Australian, with the sculling champion’s colours fluttering from the foremast. Henry Searle’s remains were to be sailed out the Heads and back to Clarence River. Even this service at the quay, at a time when the country was not yet a nation, was seen as a uniting force: ‘The coffin lying upon the deck of the steamer covered by wreaths from every one of the Australian colonies spoke that we were now an Australian nation, and federated as one people.’ That belief was not quite unanimous. An editorial in the Melbourne Age expressed concern the enormous outpouring of grief sent the wrong message to Australian youth that ‘the development of biceps, not brains, is most desirable . . . All that can be fairly claimed for him is that he was a good-natured but illiterate young man with a magnificent muscular development, who had proved that he could pull a wager-boat faster through the water than any other man in the world.’

  Still, the eulogies and paeans to what those muscles achieved were created, including this verse, written by ‘O.S.W.’ and published in The Sydney Mail.

  Past are his glories on harbour and river,

  Never again will a people acclaim

  With wild cries of triumph his prowess, who never

  Will uphold again fair Australia’s fame.

  The broken column, a symbol of a life cut short, was unveiled on the second anniversary of Searle’s death.

  As I paddle around the memorial, I read the plaques eulogising the birth and death of Henry Searle. Yet it is the panel above the plaque proclaiming Searle as ‘Champion Sculler of the World 1888-89’ that speaks so much. It is a pair of oars crossed and bound with a ribbon.

  A north-easterly gust skitters across the water, and the strengthening tidal flow is pushing me upriver, away from the monument. It is as though time and tide, or perhaps the memory of Henry Searle, are willing me to put the blades in the water and get paddling.

  HENRY WOULD be disappointed. I paddle only fifty or so metres before I guide Pulbah Raider onto a beach strung along the Henley shoreline.

  Above the sandy bank, looking over Searle’s monument, is a row of large homes. One, in particular, stands out. The historic pile has Gothic windows that look as though they have been plucked from a cathedral in Europe, and a tower on its eastern side. The tower looks fortress-like, giving the impression it was built as much to protect those within as it was to provide a platform from which to look out. The Victorian-era mansion has a slightly spooky look about it, like an imperious old spinster peering disdainfully at the deserted shoreline.

  Below the house is a pontoon, listing on the sand and holding a rusting crane. I trudge along the beach and onto Henley Point for another look at Searle’s monument. A man in his sixties walks his Jack Russell dog onto the gently sloping point. While the dog, Spot, follows his nose through the grass, I yarn with his owner, Henry Hart. I wonder if this point used to be an approach for a car ferry or punt. No, Henry replies, there used to be a ferry wharf here; he remembers it from when he was a kid.

  ‘There used to be the little boats going down to the Quay and back,’ says Henry.

  Henry points to the old mansion and says he lived there as a child and young adult. It was the family home. He calls it ‘The Castle’. The house’s name is Burnham, but it is commonly known as Burnham Castle. As a teenager, Henry set up his bedroom in the tower.

  ‘You could see the [Harbour] Bridge from there,’ recalls Henry, ‘and you could actually see the tower from the top of the Gladesville Bridge.’

  The Castle, he says, was built in the 1880s and had been home to diplomats, and a sea captain whose ships ploughed up and down the river, carrying coal from Hexham on Hunter River to fuel the gasworks at Mortlake. Henry remembers seeing the colliers gliding past until the late 1960s.

  ‘There were many more industries along here, when I was a kid,’ he says as he scans the opposite shore at Chiswick and Abbotsford, with its cluster of new apartments. The Nestlé factory was over there, he says, pointing. A little further downriver was the Lysaght wire works.

  ‘There used to be a low frequency hum, but it didn’t worry me,’ Henry recalls.

  A RiverCat whizzes by, rolling a set of small waves to the bank. Henry says the RiverCats’ wake has pushed the sand up the bank over the years, all but burying a low stone wall on The Castle’s property line. Henry’s son used to body surf the RiverCats’ waves, which can curl up to mor
e than half a metre at low tide. But it was surfing dictated by the ferries’ timetable.

  ‘There was a long wait between waves,’ he chuckles.

  Henry comments how much cleaner the water is compared with when he was a boy. He used to swim at nearby tidal baths, long since gone.

  ‘You’d come out with black stuff sticking to your hair and skin from all the rubbish in the river,’ he says. ‘I’d swim in there now. But I don’t.’

  PADDLING AROUND the point at Henley and into a bay, I slalom through a motley fleet of moored cruisers and yachts, some glistening and expensive, a few having seen better days. I notice an older man with a grizzled beard sitting in a rowboat that is tethered to a restored former navy fast auxiliary boat. Not having my map handy, I ask the man the name of the bay.

  ‘Bedlam Bay, so you have to be a bit mad to be here,’ he says, in a deadpan tone, before grinning.

  Ahead the bay slaps into a sandstone wall and small wharf. Beyond the seawall, the land sweeps up to a collection of buildings that had been part of the Gladesville Hospital for psychiatric patients.

  The man in the boat introduces himself as Lloyd and says he is the secretary and caretaker for the Bedlam Bay Boat Club. I ask him where the clubhouse is. ‘Burnt down’, he says glumly.

  In August 2015, fire tore through the 19th century boathouse at the wharf. Lloyd says the flames consumed more than a piece of history by the bay; most of his possessions had been stored in the boathouse. With what he has left, Lloyd sometimes stays on a yacht in the bay. He’s been living around Bedlam Bay since 1994.

  ‘It hasn’t changed much in that time,’ mutters Lloyd. ‘It’s very quiet here.’

  So this bay, it seems, is a rarity in Sydney. It is a backwater.

  These waters also cradle big dreams and high hopes in the shape of small boats. Lloyd’s mate and fellow Bedlam Bay Boat Club member, Colin Campbell, is restoring a cruiser, Elenka. One look at the cruiser tied up at the hospital jetty tells me Colin is either an optimist or very patient – or both.

  ‘I’m stupid!’ he declares. ‘These projects come up, and I can’t say no.’

  The waters of Bedlam Bay have flowed through more than half a century of Colin’s life. He worked at Gladesville Hospital for almost twenty years, starting as a nurse in 1963. He would sail sabots across the bay. The little sailboats were built by a colleague in the old boathouse, with the aid of patients.

  Back then, Colin recalls, it was possible to sail freely on the bay, for there were very few boats moored in it. He used to swim in the bay, but he wouldn’t now. Too many bull sharks around, he explains. Not that he’s seen any, but he’s heard plenty of stories of recent sightings in the waters around here. He eyes my kayak then looks at me with a mild expression of warning.

  ‘A kayak got bitten four, five years ago in Morrisons Bay [a couple of bays upriver].’

  It’s more than twenty years since Colin worked at Gladesville Hospital. But his boat restoration passion (and he has bought another cruiser to do up, once Elenka is finished) keeps him anchored to the bay, and to his past.

  ‘I’ve never left this place, because of the bay,’ he says, looking up the hill to where he used to work. He smiles and pats Elenka. ‘And I’ve still got my office here!’

  FROM BEDLAM Bay, the grounds of the former Gladesville Hospital are a picture of restfulness. Old buildings, in burnished brick and sandstone, huddle along the ridge line behind clumps of trees. The land forms an amphitheatre as it tumbles down to the water. Before it reaches the bay, it flattens onto a cricket oval. The terrain bending around the oval, the trees, the buildings, they combine to create a good feeling. And that would please Doctor Frederick Manning.

  In 1868, Frederick Manning was appointed Medical Superintendent of what was then known as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum.

  The institution had been on the site for thirty years. Until it was built, the growing issue of mental illness in the colony was being literally moved around and hidden away, wherever patients could be put. What facilities did exist were overcrowded.

  The colony’s Governor, Richard Bourke, wanted a solution. A slice of land between Parramatta River and a tributary, Tarban Creek, was surveyed in 1835. The site for the asylum was chosen, in part, because of the river. It provided access to the facility from both Sydney and Parramatta. What’s more, it helped provide a serene environment. As Manning’s predecessor, Francis Campbell, noted, the patients would ‘derive eternal benefit’ from the views. Not that patients were given the full opportunity to respond to that environment; many were languishing in cells, passing through dark, tunnel-like passages, and behind high walls.

  When Dr Manning took up his appointment, he didn’t like the asylum’s gloomy prison-like atmosphere. Further, he felt the site was isolated, making it difficult and costly to supply the asylum. Frederick Manning set about turning isolation into self-sufficiency, in the process improving the facility and the lives of those placed there. New buildings, many of them fine sandstone structures, were erected. Extensive gardens were planted, additional land was bought, and agriculture practised, with patients helping out. A vineyard was planted on the slope leading to the bay. Dr Manning advocated the medicinal benefits of wine, and at one stage recommended the drop as part of a diet to combat scurvy at the facility. The vines flourished, and, as seen in photos from the late 19th century, helped give the asylum the look of a successful farming estate by the river.

  Manning was credited with making improvements not just in bricks and mortar and to the land, but also to flesh and blood, adopting a more humane approach in the treatment of those here, even at the most elemental level. He replaced the term ‘lunatic’ with ‘patient’, and the facility was to become known as a hospital.

  ‘Frederick Manning should be a household name,’ says Peter Colthorpe, the co-ordinator of the Friends of Gladesville Hospital community group. ‘He brought a dignity into the system, his approach changed the way New South Wales thought about mental health. That approach lived on, and it still does.’

  Peter is showing me around the site. The hospital’s long history, from colonial times and through most of the 20th century, can be seen in the different architectural styles. As a hospital, Gladesville was decommissioned in the mid-1990s. However, the site continues to house a range of health facilities, both public and private. The grounds themselves are an ongoing source of well-being, with the public welcome to walk around them.

  Peter, along with his Labrador, Chloe, meets me outside the thick perimeter stone walls. Heading through the open gate, we have glimpses of the river through the bush.

  ‘The water was the easiest way to transport people here,’ Peter explains. ‘The first patients came by river.’

  Those thirty-nine who stepped ashore here in 1838 were the first of many patients who arrived via the water. We follow roughly in their footsteps, along a straggly stone path up the hill. Along the way, Peter points out remnants of the gardens Manning had planted. The walk takes us past a fine two-storey home built for the Medical Superintendent. The path slides between two rows of casuarinas, which soften the fact that beyond the trees are stone walls leading to the asylum designed by the Colonial Architect, Mortimer Lewis. The walk is appealing, but the destination, a stern pile of stone dating back to the late 1830s, is imposing. As we inspect the building, Peter indicates the timelines set in bricks and stone, from the ground floor extensions in the mid-19th century to the first floor additions done in the early 1900s. Behind the original building are others constructed in the late 1800s and the early 20th century. In 1940, Peter says, there were up to 1700 patients here.

  We trace the lip of the hill towards the north-east. Not even the thick perimeter walls can keep out the ceaseless noise of road traffic. Near the entrance off Victoria Road are more buildings, including a hospital built in the late 1800s, and a string of brick buildings used as wards in the early 20th century. Peter says the collection of buildings close to the road reflected the shif
t in emphasis away from the river as the main link to the hospital. Yet the river played a role beyond being a highway.

  As part of their therapy, patients would immerse themselves in its waters, with baths built in the river. But whether it was hygienic is questionable, for the river had also long been a dumping ground for the hospital. When he was heading the facility, Francis Campbell praised the infrastructure built to sluice the waste to the water, calling it ‘a splendid piece of perfect drainage in itself; it is the finest in the colony’.

  The river was repeatedly encroached upon as demand for more land grew. A map from 1931 shows how part of Bedlam Bay had already been reclaimed, its original incision into the valley filled in to become more of a curve. According to Peter, ash from the power stations around the harbour was used for more reclamation, and, by 1950, where there was once water was the oval.

  As we stand at the top of the hill, looking down the slope that had been cloaked in grape vines and market gardens more than a century ago, we can see a cricket match being played on the oval. The bay is just beyond the boundary, with masts poking above the seawall. As the batsman sweeps the ball towards that boundary, a ferry glides by in the background.

  As for the future of the Gladesville Hospital site, Peter Colthorpe is hopeful. It may sit on a prime waterfront position, and, in the past, parcels of the land have been sheared off and sold for development. However, the land along the shore is part of Parramatta River Regional Park, and Peter believes the remainder of the site will be protected by growing community awareness of what is here.

  ‘I’d like to see it continue as a functioning part of the Health Department. The tradition is there.