I was sitting at the window of a building high over Macquarie Street the other night, looking over Sydney Harbour. It was one of those Spring nights when we had had a torrential downpour during the afternoon. The Botanical Gardens were verdant green, sparkling from the cleansing rains. The sky was piled with black clouds, piling one on top of another. The late evening sun plied soft gold colours into the black clouds. The light drizzle glistened in the setting sun, as if diamonds were falling. Between the mountains of black clouds, there were a few blue patches giving the promise of a new day tomorrow.
In the centre of this picture, the light of old Pinchgut was blinking on and off warning all shipping of its impregnable rock. Behind was a Jetcat roaring past leaving a plume of spray over its wake. It�s huge diesel engines were generating hundreds of horse power and diesel fumes were being pumped out of the two vents at the rear. Behind that again was an old Manly Ferry slowly chugging its way leaving only a small wake, like an old lady who had entered the City to Surf.
The traffic lights reflected their coloured glow on the wet signposts and footpaths. Then a shaft of golden sunlight broke through the black clouds and shone directly upon Pinchgut, illuminating the sandstone with a soft glow. It was like a shaft of spotlight in a dark theatre shining down upon a ballerina on the stage, giving a promise of something spectacular to come. Never has the island of convicts looked more beautiful.
Old Pinchgut - correctly known as Fort Denison - is a former penal site and defensive facility occupying a small island located north of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Before European settlement, the island had the Aboriginal name Mat-te-wan-ye or sea-rock. After the First Fleet arrived in 1788, Governor Phillip and his Advocate-General used the name Rock Island. In 1788 a convict named Thomas Hill was sentenced to a week on bread and water in irons and the island came to be known as Pinchgut.
It was once a 15 metre (49 ft) high sandstone rock, but the island was flattened as prisoners under the command of Captain George Barney, the civil engineer for the colony, quarried it for sandstone to construct nearby Circular Quay.
By 1796 the government had installed a gibbet on Pinchgut. The first convict to be hanged from the gibbet may have been Francis Morgan. In 1793 the British transported him to New South Wales for life as punishment for a murder. The authorities in NSW executed Morgan for bashing another man to death, this time in Sydney, on 18 October 1796.
In 1839, two American warships entered the harbour at night and circled Pinchgut Island. Concern with the threat of foreign attack caused the government to review the harbour's inner defences. Barney, who had earlier reported that Sydney�s defences were inadequate, recommended that the government establish a fort on Pinchgut Island to help protect Sydney Harbour from attack by foreign vessels.
Fortification of the island began in 1841 but was not completed. Construction resumed in 1855 because of fear of a Russian naval attack during the Crimean War, and was completed on 14 November 1857. The newly-built fort then took its current name from Sir William Thomas Denison, the Governor of New South Wales from 1855 to 1861.
The fortress features a distinctive Martello tower, the only one ever built in Australia and the last one ever constructed in the British Empire. Construction used 8,000 tonnes of sandstone from nearby Kurraba Point, Neutral Bay. The tower's walls are between 3.3 meters and 6.7 meters thick at the base and 2.7 meters thick at the top. However, developments in artillery rendered the fort largely obsolete by the time it was completed.
The tower itself had quarters for a garrison of 24 soldiers and one officer. Fort Denison's armament included three 8-inch (200 mm) muzzle loaders in the tower, two 10-inch (25-cm) guns, one on a 360-degree traverse on the top of the tower and one in a bastion at the other end of the island, and twelve 32-pounder (15-kg) cannons in a battery between the base of the tower and the flanking bastion.
Eventually all the guns were removed, except for the three muzzle loading cannons in the gun room in the tower, which were installed before construction was complete. The width of passages within the tower are too narrow to permit these to be removed. However, from the beginning the three cannons were of limited utility, for three reasons:
The embrasures for the cannons were too small to use the guns effectively. By the time the cannon was loaded the ship would have sailed past, and the recoil was too powerful for the small room.
In 1906, a saluting gun was transferred from Dawes Point to Fort Denison. In 1913 a lighthouse beacon built in Birmingham, England, and shipped to Sydney, replaced the gun on the roof of the tower. In 2004 the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, which manages the site, restored the lighthouse beacon, which is still in use. The fort also has a still-functioning foghorn and a tide gauge room, which was established in the mid-1800s.
In May 1942, three Japanese two-man midget-submarines attacked Sydney Harbour. When the cruiser USS Chicago fired on the Japanese, some of its 5-inch (130 mm) shells hit Fort Denison, causing the tower minor damage that one can still see today.
Since 1992, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which manages the site, has spent around A$2m conserving and upgrading the facilities. Origin Energy too made a significant contribution for the work.
Increased harbour traffic, coupled with the rising sea levels, has already destroyed the slipway. Furthermore, the porous sandstone drinks in the salt right down to the fort's foundations. In 2007 the government announced a $1.5 million rescue package.
The golden spotlight transported me back through two centuries of recorded history. It was a magic moment brought about by the lights of spring.
That is how it was two thousand years ago for the people of Palestine. The dark clouds surrounded them. They believed they were the Promised people but the promise seemed bleak. They had been defeated by their enemies. Most of their people had been carried off as slaves to Babylon. They had returned, but then there were other conquerors, and the last lot, the Romans, were incredibly cruel. They were hungry from oppressive tax, their leaders had been removed. Their great Temple was under threat. Within their lifetime the Temple would be destroyed � the work of decades and of thousands of men would be in ruins. Not one stone standing upon another. If only a Messiah would come to free them from the Romans. It seemed that God would not hear their prayers.
For within their lifetime three million people would be murdered. It was a holocaust that prefigured another two millennia later. The massive force of Rome was piling the darkness upon them all. The people sat in darkness. Then a great light shone. A golden shaft from heaven pierced the blackness and illuminated a sheep field and the manger where a child lay. One understood and said, �In Him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not been able to extinguish it.� (John 1:4-5). The lights of a new Spring.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
Email Gordon - gordon.moyes@parliament.nsw.gov.au
