Sydney in the 1860s

In 1867 somebody drew the proposed site of the Sydney Town Hall, and what the drawing largely shows is a burial ground. The land at the top of George Street had been the town's first proper cemetery — something on the order of two thousand burials between 1792 and 1820 — and the city put its town hall on top of it. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, laid the foundation stone in 1868, during the Australian visit on which he was shot in the back at a Clontarf picnic and survived.

Otherwise the decade is the harbour, drawn from whichever hill the artist could reach: from the height above Vaucluse in 1860, from Mr Blacket's house at Glebe, from the Balmain foreshore with Goat Island lying in the middle distance, and from the heights of Pyrmont looking down into the head of Darling Harbour with the University on the ridge beyond. These are topographical views in the old sense, made to record the shape of a place — the city sits in them as a low grey line under a great deal of sky, which is a fair account of how much of it there was.

At water level the working harbour is already in place. The first Pyrmont Bridge, a timber swing bridge built across Cockle Bay in 1857 and opened the following March as a private toll crossing, is the crossing throughout these years. It came down in 1899, and the swing bridge that stands there now did not open until 1902.

Out at Randwick the Australian Jockey Club had just arrived. It left Homebush in 1860, raised money to re-turf the old sandy course and to put up a timber grandstand seating seven hundred, and held its first meeting there over three days at the end of May, with more than six thousand people through the gate on the opening day. Two more stands followed, in 1865 and 1867. By 1863, when the course was drawn with its stands and its crowd, it was already recognisably the thing it still is.

Watch how much open ground there is between the buildings.