Pyrmont on the edge of Sydney’s CBD is one of those inner-city suburbs which has undergone the dramatic effects of intensive urban renewal since the turn of this century – the traditional industries such as sugar refining, brewing, ship and boat-building, the old working class pubs, the modest workers” cottages have all given way to media and IT firms and high-rise apartments. One of the relatively few industry survivors in Pyrmont is the Sydney Fish Market on Blackwattle Bay.
Fish Market, Woolloomooloo (Photo: State Lib of NSW)
Rudimentary beginnings at Woolloomooloo
The city’s fish market has been a local Pyrmont landmark, a continuing presence since 1966, but the city fish market’s history extends back much further than that. It was originally located on the corner of Bourke and Plunkett Streets, Woolloomooloo, on the eastern fringe of the CBD…the selling of fish here in a methodical fashion of sorts commenced in 1871 (some references give the year as 1872).
Eastern Markets, Wolloomooloo: an absence of tables (Photo: SFM)
These Woolloomooloo “Eastern Markets”, according to newspaper reports of the time, show that it was much maligned for its deficiencies. The litany of complaints included its position, deemed far from central; the “barbarous nature of internal arrangements”, ie, the unsanitary practice of laying fish for sale on the uncovered market floor; logistics and transportation shortcomings, ‘transhipment’ was inordinately lengthy: hauls were transferred from catcher to small steamer to large steamer, dumped on the wharf at Botany port until carted to the market by wagon❈ and subjected to pilfering and deterioration on route; the whole process necessitating “maximum amount of handling (of) a peculiarly delicate commodity which suffered from unnecessary pulling and hauling” [‘City of Sydney Improvements’, Evening News (Sydney), 21-Nov-1891].
A developing fish market rivalry
With dissatisfaction with the Woolloomooloo markets palpable, a second fish market was established at Redfern in 1891 which came to be known as the “Southern Fish Markets”. The Redfern enterprise was a clear improvement on Woolloomooloo which had come came under the control of the City of Sydney Council circa 1907-1908. Redfern was conveniently situated adjacent to the railway station. Rail-transporting the fish eliminated the need to load and reload the goods several times, the process was more timely so the fish arrived fresher and in “marketable condition” (plus it meant lower freight charges by rail). Other advantages were new features like cool storage chambers and dedicated rooms for “smoke curing”. Redfern also had the bonus of being elevated, necessary to facilitate the draining of the seafood. Most crucially Redfern was a step up on hygienic fish presentation, placing them not on the floor but in specially constructed tables (around this time Darling Harbour was also mooted as a alternate venue for the fish markets but was considered not as good a site as Redfern)(‘Evening News’).
(Image: Dictionary of Sydney)
Redfern residents however were not enamoured of the fish market in their suburb, as a result of the uninvited 4am “wake-up calls” each morning: the approaching “rumble of fish carts and the vulgar ejaculations and rude raillery of the hawkers” [‘1872 First Sydney Fish Market’, Australian Food Timeline, www.australianfoodtimeline.com.au].
Fish market built in Haymarket, 1910 (Source: City of Sydney Archives)
Council market v private market
Sydney Lord Mayor, Alderman Taylor, in 1909 advocated relocation from Woolloomooloo to the Belmore Fruit and Vegetable Markets (where Capitol Theatre is situated today) [‘Sydney Fish Market. its Early History’, by Mary Salmon, Evening News, 02-Jul-1909]. This subsequently came to nought, instead in 1910 a new fish market was built a short distance from there at Quay Street, Thomas Street and Thomas Lane, Haymarket (today housing the Prince Centre), and run by the City Council Fish Market in direct competition with the privately-run Redfern operation.
Woolloomooloo continued for a time after Haymarket got going but in a much reduced form with some confusion about its status, as a contemporary article in the Sydney Sun pointed out, the Woolloomooloo manager in 1915, rejecting its description as a fish market, in a piece of double-speak referred to it as a “distribution centre”, adding that it was “merely a market incidentally. If there is any surplus of fish for sale it will be sold” [‘Not a Fish Market: Woolloomooloo Depot”, The Sun, 28-May-1922. In 1926 high profile businessman John Wren purchased the “old Fish Markets” premises at Woolloomooloo (Daily Telegraph, 04-Dec-1926) which was demolished in the 1960s, making way for the Astor Apartments.
Squeezing out the private market
The Council was determined to end the fish market rivalry with Redfern. The state government did its part to assist by refusing to renew the licenses of fish agents at the Southern Markets. Despite a view that the Quay Street fish market was not a paying concern (it was claimed that it handled only 20% of the consigned fish coming to Sydney), a bill was passed in state parliament in 1922 which allowed the City Council Market to acquire the assets of the Redfern fish exchange, which forced its closure the following year [‘Fish Fight: Council v. Redfern Markets’, The Sun, 03-May-1922. Woolloomooloo continued for a time but in a much reduced form with some confusion about its status, as a contemporary article in the Sydney Sun pointed out, the Woolloomooloo manager in 1915, rejecting its description as a fish market, in a piece of double-speak referred to it as a “distribution centre”, adding that it was “merely a market incidentally. If there is any surplus of fish for sale it will be sold” [‘Not a Fish Market: Woolloomooloo Depot”, The Sun, 28-May-1922].
FMA fish monopoly
The Haymarket fish market continued as the sole conduit for fish trading in Sydney until 1945 when their monopoly was expanded…the government transfered the marketing and selling of fish to the NSW Chief Secretary’s Department (hitherto unlicensed operators could sell fish outside of Sydney) which established a regulated and centralised market for the entire state. The central fish market’s control was consolidated in 1964 with the creation of the Fish Marketing Authority, a NSW statutory authority under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture¶ (‘Market History’, Sydney Fish Market, www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au]. The FMA’s role was to bring the seller’s fish and the buyer together, charging a percentage fee for this service.
(Photo: sydneyfishmarkets.com.au)
“Next up, same boat mullet!”
Relocated to Pyrmont in 1966, the fish market management employed a ‘voice’ auction system, buyers would position themselves around the selling bay and as the auctioneer’s called each lot’s sale, they would verbally bid. Disputes among buyers were not uncommon given the din of noise present and with such a capricious arrangement.
Dutch auction system (Photo: flowercompanies.com)
Dutch flower market auction
In 1989 the FMA introduced a computerised Dutch auction system used in Amsterdam to sell tulips, replacing the old manual system. It works by setting the start price approximately $3 higher than the anticipated selling price and then lowering it until a registered bidder electronically lodges a bid [‘Sydney Fish Market’, www.pyrmonthistorygroup.net.au]. This innovation has made the auction process more efficient and quicker.
Privatisation and de-regulation
The state-run markets were privatised in 1994 and renamed Sydney Fish Market P/L. In 1999 full de-regulation meant catchers in NSW could now sell directly to any buyer with a Fish Receiver’s Permit, bringing to an end the Pyrmont market’s long monopoly over the sale of seafood in Sydney (private ownership of the market made the continuation of monopoly untenable) (‘SFM’).
The SFM at Pyrmont in 2021 is the largest seafood market in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the biggest in the world. Every hour of it’s commercial operation about 1,000 crates or 20,000 km of seafood gets sold (‘SFM’).
End-note: An intriguing sidelight to the operation of the fish market at Pyrmont during the 1980s (and I suspect before then as well) was the existence of a black market. As well as bona fide fish buyers, other individuals would frequent the daily markets with a view to unloading ‘hot’ merchandise or goods of a distinctly un-piscine nature for a ‘special’ price. Such shady transactions would often occur concurrently and even alongside the auction bay itself. It was that sort of place which drew all sorts of dodgy characters looking to make a quick buck, no questions asked.
Postscript: Future plans
(Image: The Bays Precinct Sydney)
The fish markets are moving again but this time staying on Blackwattle Bay, the new site will be 15,500 sq m in size, more than two-and-half times the present market, with a scheduled finish date of 2024. The new SFM promises to make the auction area more visible and accessible (off-limits to the public since the change to the computerised system).
↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬
❈ a long six mile-plus haul to Woolloomooloo
¶ the FMA took over the marketing of fish outside Sydney which had prior to 1964 been the purview of individual fishermen’s co-operatives in coastal regions
I went to the ‘Student Prince’ in the 1970s, only the once I think. The pub was pretty well packed with students from across the road, befitting its reputation as the unofficial watering hole of Sydney University students in those days (I was probably one of the few people there who were not actually going to USyd).
The interior was dimly-lit, the furniture well-used and the place definitely not decorated in the fashion of Old Heidelberg. I recall music playing however it was not a Mario Lanza record but a scrawny-looking band out the back playing something that wasn’t the “Drinking Song’ from the 1954 movie bearing the hotel’s name.
(Source: G’day Pubs)
The public house changed hands several times in the years before 2001 when it closed its doors for good, having been the perennial refuge for countless undergrads after a day spent in the mental grind of lecture halls and swotting up in Fisher Library. While many former patrons of the pub no doubt fondly recall their time drinking and waxing lyrically about some newly-acquired parcel of esoteric knowledge, other habitués associate the Student Prince with other memories – Russell Crowe for instance confessed to the Twitterati in 2010 that the roof of the pub was where his ten-year-old self first got his nicotine addiction!
The Student Prince after loitering on the market for a protracted period of time was bought by what the Sydney Morning Herald called “a mysterious consortium of Asian businessmen” who spent two years and $11 million turning the old uni student watering hole into an upmarket brothel (‘Sexclusively yours’, SMH, February 17, 2003).
‘Stiletto’ (the name it trades under) was described on the DA (development application) as an “adult entertainment facility”, or translated into street parlance, a “very high class knocking shop”. In 2011 plans to expand Stiletto into a “42-room megaplex” (the “largest short-stay bordello in the world”) ran into a hitch when Westpac the principal financier got cold feet. The establishment went ahead with the new development, but after a moral backlash (‘Sydney sinking into sin’, Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2010), the eventual expansion was appreciably more limited in size than initially proposed by the developers.
(Photo: ANU Open Research)
Footnote: There was an earlier pub dating from the 1880’s on the site at 82 Parramatta Road, Camperdown, called the ‘Captain Cook Hotel’ (‘Former Student Prince Hotel in Camperdown (NSW)’, www.gdaypubs.com.au).
One of the more novel art genres to emerge in the first third of last century was the “Pitman Painters” phenomenon in northern England. Known as the Ashington Group✱, these were a small collective of unionised mine workers in county Northumberland who approached their local Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) seeking out tuition in new areas of education. Initially the pitmen were hoping WEA could find a economics professor to tutor them in the “dismal science”. When none could be arranged, their interest switched to learning painting and drawing.
⇡ ‘Coal Face’, Jimmy Floyd (1947) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
Artist and WEA teacher Robert Lyon took on the task of teaching the miners—mainly from the Woodhorn and Ellington collieries—all of whom had no formal art training. The workers however didn’t take to dry lectures on the Classical and Renaissance art, so Lyon adopted a more pragmatic approach of teaching the miners the basics of drawing and painting. Lyon advised the miners to simply “paint what they knew” ‘Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters’, Artist Biographies, www.artblogs.co.uk.
⇡‘Coal-Face Drawers’, Oliver Kilbourn (1950) (Image: TUC150.tuc.org.uk)
In 1934 the workers formed themselves into a small society of miner-artists who met weekly to paint and discuss their work. Most of the small group were adherents of the political platform of the Independent Labour Party) (‘Ashington Group’, Wikipedia). The Ashington men even wrote their own constitution, setting out the regulations each of the members had to abide by, including a commitment to the establishment of a permanent collection of their work (” ‘An Experiment in Art Appreciation’: The WEA and the Ashington Art Group”, Marie-Therese Maybe, North East History, Vol 37 2006, www nelh.net).
⇡ ‘Pithead Baths’, Oliver Kilbourn (1939) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
With guidance from Lyon and support from patrons, especially from celebrated collector Helen Sutherland, the group got to observe ‘professional’ art in galleries – Newcastle, London (Tate and National Galleries), etc. Absorbing the influences of professional art, the group of amateur artists increasingly focused on local subjects from their lives and their environs. They also experimented with art forms and styles…trying sculpture, dabbling in abstraction, but ultimately they stuck with social realism, painting mostly in a naive style. In the communal environment of the group hut members critically evaluated each other’s work.
⇡ L Brownrigg, ‘The Miner‘
The Ashington colliery was situated in what some called “the largest coal-mining village in the world”, (‘Celebrating 150 proud years of Ashington, in Northumberland – in 10 archive photos’, Chronicle Live, David Morton, 05-Oct-2017, www.chroniclelive.co.uk). The achievement collectively of the mine workers was to capture their lived experience accurately and truly on canvas, showing the severity of life in the pits. Devoid of sentimentality, the paintings depict the day-to-day reality of gruelling, dirty, backbreaking work, an experience that outsiders have no familiarity with, eg, Leslie Brownrigg’s ‘The Miner’ conveys the deprivations of the tunnel ‘hewer’, labouring away in ultra-cramped, severely restricted space, “crouching semi-naked within the tomb-like shafts” (Mayne). Painting their own lives, the pitmen “testified to a familiarity that no one else from trained art backgrounds could truly understand” (Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters).
⇡ ‘X’mas Tree 1950’, Harry Wilson
Pitmen Painters did not restrict themselves to the life of mine workers below the ground. The non-professional group of artists took on all aspects of home life, ordinary social activities, the pub, football matches, dog tracks, fish-and-chip shops, pigeon ‘crees’ (sheds), etc. What comes through in many of the paintings is just how unglamorous 1930s coal-dominated Ashington was – “dreary rows (of homes) a mile long…ashpits and mines down the middle of still unmade streets” (Mayne).
The group’s first exhibition at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1936, gave them new public exposure and even a critical nod from the likes of Julian Trevelyan and sculptor Henry Moore.
‘Pigeon crees’, Jimmy Floyd ⇡
After WWII interest in the Ashington Group waned but the men from the pits continued their painting. The early 1970s brought a renewal of interest in the Ashington Group due to the efforts of critic William Feaver After meeting what remained of the group including foundation member Oliver Kilbourn, Feaver “reconstructs their history, revives their work, curates exhibitions, culminating in a China tour in 1980, the first western exhibition in China after the Cultural Revolution✧ (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009), (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009) (http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com)⊞.
⇡ Norman Cornish, last of the group
Despite their late rediscovery the Ashington Group’s days were numbered. Coal mines in the Ashington area and the north were closing down in 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The trigger which brought the group to a sudden halt was a prosaic and trivial matter of 50p! In 1982 the annual ground rent on the pitmen’s hut in Ashington was increased by 50p to £14 (Mayne). This proved a straw too much for the ageing handful of members still active and the Ashington Group folded in 1983, just one year shy of its half-centenary. Today the Pitmen Painters are all gone and Ashington and like towns are bereft of traces of their coal-mining past, however the art of the pitmen (or most of it) remains as a visual reminder of that life. With Feaver and other admirers’ help, the permanent collection, a key article of the group’s constitution, exists today, housed within the Woodhorn Mining Museum.
Footnote: Mining art Japanese style Coal miner art is not the exclusive domain of Northumberland or even Britain. It also emerged in Japan in the art of Sakubei Yamamoto. Yamamoto’s entire work life from the age of seven or eight was in coal mines in the Fukuoka Prefecture. Only at age 57 did Yamamoto start painting seriously. Over the following years he produced over 700 paintings of his work milieu, providing “a visual record of the brutality of mining life, capturing the poverty of workers and their families, the personal lives, customs and superstitions, and their struggles for a better life. Like the Pitmen Painters’ permanent collection, Yamamoto’s ouevre found a home in a former mine site, the Tagawa History and Coal Museum (‘The Pitmen Painters of England and Japan’, Diana Cooper-Richet, The Conversation, 16-Jan-2018, www.theconversation.com).
⇡ (L) O Kilbourn (Image: Bellcode Books)
Pitmen personnel: the Ashington Group’s founder members include Oliver Kilbourn (probably the best known of the Pitmen Painters)⌖, George Blessed, Jimmy Floyd, Harry Wilson, Lee Robinson, John Dobson and John F Harrison.
____________________________________
✱ the group initially met in a small hut in Longhorsley, but after WWII began, they were forced to relocate into Ashington proper, a small town in the coal-mining region of Northumberland
✧ on the China tour group members visited the mining province of Shansi
⊞ Feaver’s book on the group inspired a 2007 play by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall
⌖ prolific in output and broad in scope (including historical subjects among his artwork), Kilbourn exhibited his own series ‘My Life as a Pitman’ in Nottingham in 1977
Woodford is one of those sleepy little towns on the Great Western Highway about mid-way across the Blue Mountains range. Originally the village was called “20 Mile Hollow”, the nomenclature had a pattern to it, Bull’s Camp☸ just on the eastern side of Woodford was known as “19 Mile Hollow” and modern day Linden, further east was originally “18 Mile Hollow”, and so on.
(Image: Blue Mountains City Council)
Woodford’s main claim to fame is the historical landmark Woodford Academy, a property with a varied multi-functional past. Traditionally the custodians of this land are Darug and Gundungurra peoples, but after William Cox’ s convict labour built the Bathurst Road over the mountains, the first known European activity dates to the late 1820s/early 1830s when a convict and illegal squatter on the Woodford site, William James, operated a sly-grog shop.
The first significant structure here started off as an inn circa 1833-1834 on 20 hectares of land granted to Irish-born emancipist Thomas Michael Pembroke (the building of weatherboard construction was called the “Woodman’s Inn”☯). Licensee Pembroke’s facilities included nine rooms, stables for six horses, a store and stock and sheep yards. Woodman’s Inn provided food and lodgings for traveller, including soldiers and colonial officials, between Sydney and Bathurst. Pembroke however suffered some financial setbacks and was forced to sell the inn to Michael Hogan in 1839.
‘Woodman’s Inn’ (1842) (Mitchell Lib.)
Under Hogan’s ownership the weatherboard structure was replaced by a stone building in 1843. The inn licence for the now named “The King’s Arms Hotel” changed hands over the ensuing years – James Nairn, William Barton, Josiah Workman, John Cobcroft and Thomas James were some of the resident publicans. The 1851 discovery of gold put an end to the isolation of Woodford. In 1855 Hogan sold the inn to William Buss of Cowra for £1,040 and the hotel became better known as “Buss’ Inn”. The inn flourished with plentiful trade from passing gold diggers heading for Bathurst and soldiers. But in the mid 1860s business declined and Buss’s widow in turn sold the establishment to Alfred Fairfax (described at the time as a “wholesale grocer of Sydney) in 1868 for £450. Fairfax had an incentive to buy when he did…in 1867 a western rail line was constructed from Penrith to Weatherboard (later “Wentworth Falls”). In 1869 a railway platform (“Buss’ Platform”) was established at what was now called “Woodford House”, advertised as a “gentleman’s country guest house” and “mountain retreat”. At this time the Blue Mountains was becoming a fashionable spot to be…valued for its “fresh, healthy, cool mountain air, waterfalls and broad vistas”.
(Source: Blue Mountains Gazette)
Fairfax acquired extra acreage on the site, consolidated into a 26-hectare estate, using much of it for commercial orchard planting. He also created a network of walking tracks around the property, one of which was called the “Transit of Venus” track. Fairfax was something of an amateur astronomer, possessing a 4.75-inch Schroder telescope and had allowed Woodford House to be utilised for observing the 1874 Transit of Venus✴. Alas for Fairfax the orchard failed and finding himself in financial difficulties he was forced to mortgage Woodford House in 1877.
Woodford House 1889 (‘London Illustrated News’)
In the 1880s, under manager John Robert Place, the renovated and expanded Woodford House was being touted as providing “superior accommodation”, “a change of air and mountain scenery” and “a capital tennis court on the grounds”. The guest house was not a cheap stay, two weeks’ board was £4/4 (December 1890), equivalent to a fortnight’s pay for a skilled worker.
In 1897 Fairfax sold the Woodford House estate to David Flannery who increased his holdings by 90 acres. At this time the property was being described as a ‘sanatorium’ (cf. the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath, see the 31 April 2015 blog: Medlow Majestic in the Wilderness: Transforming a White Elephant into a White Palace?).
In 1907 Woodford House entered a new phase of utilisation when poet-cum-rector John Fraser McManamey initially leased the property৳ from Mary Jane Waterhouse (the new owner) and converted it into Woodford Academy, a small, exclusive school for boys of all ages✧. In the early 20th century a trend emerged where parents who could afford to were sending their children to small private boarding schools in the Blue Mountains which like Woodford Academy were converted grand estates. The appeal was the promise of “fresh mountain air and bracing climate” thought “beneficially to both children’s constitutions and academic performance”❂.
Woodford Academy c.1920 (Photo: RAHS)
From 1907 to 1925 when the school closed for four years—before reopening as a day school for girls and boys—over 300 students had been educated there. Woodford Academy closed for good in 1936, but McManamey stayed on tutoring private students. When he died, killed in a car accident outside Woodford Academy in 1946, the property was subdivided, some of the land was sold to the Department of Education and a portion of it donated to the Presbyterian Church. McManamey’s daughters took in long-term boarders, in 1979 the surviving daughter Gertrude bequeathed the house and grounds to the National Trust, continuing to live there until her death in 1988. After 1979 the National Trust undertook extensive repairs and improvements.
Today Woodford Academy is a museum of Blue Mountains colonial life, conducting educational tours and “ghost tours”. The 1870s dining room can be hired for dinners and the Academy hosts community events like the Mid-Mountains’ annual Harvest Festival.
Footnote: after establishing the Academy McManamey immersed himself into local community activities – Woodford Bush Fire Brigade, Woodford Progress Association, (president of) Woodford Tennis Club, as well as serving as a Blue Mountains shire councillor.
Woodford Academy, 90-92 Great Western Highway, Woodford 2778 NSW
𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷
☸ a camp for convict road gangs working for magistrate and assistant engineer Captain John Bull
☯ it was also possibly known at times as “The Sign of the Woodman”
✴ chosen as a site for its “clear and steady atmosphere“, (Fairfax’s house was) “a most promising station”
৳ in 1914 McManamey purchased 5.06 hectares of the Woodford estate including the house
✧ McManamey prior to Woodford was headmaster at Cooerwull Academy in Bowenfels (Lithgow area)
❂ English, History, Mathematics, Science, Latin plus one modern language
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Bibliography
‘Woodford Academy – History’, Blue Mountains Australia (BMPH), http://infobluemountains.net.au
‘Seriously “Old School” – Woodford Academy’, National Trust, www.nationaltrust.org.au
Goodlet, Ken, ‘Woodford Academy’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woodford_academy, viewed 20 May 2021 ‘Woodford Academy’,
A Rare Treasure’, Ken Goodlet, Blue Mountains History Journal, Issue 6, 2015, www.bluemountainsheritage.com.au
‘Woodford’s vital role in the 1874 Transit of Venus’, Robyne Ridge, Blue Mountains Gazette, 13-Jun-2018, www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au
Fish Market, Woolloomooloo (Photo: State Lib of NSW)
Eastern Markets, Wolloomooloo: an absence of tables (Photo: SFM)
(Image: Dictionary of Sydney)
Fish market built in Haymarket, 1910 (Source: City of Sydney Archives)
FMA fish monopoly
(Photo: sydneyfishmarkets.com.au)
Dutch auction system (Photo: flowercompanies.com)
Privatisation and de-regulation 
The SFM at Pyrmont in 2021 is the largest seafood market in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the biggest in the world. Every hour of it’s commercial operation about 1,000 crates or 20,000 km of seafood gets sold (‘SFM’).(Image: The Bays Precinct Sydney)
