Fort Macquarie

A tramshed occupied Bennelong Point in the 1940s

Building the Sydney Opera House

Sandstone stairway cut into the Tarpeian Rock

Once a small island off what the First Fleet colonists called Cattle Point, Bennelong Point is today the site of one of the world's most well known 20th century buildings - The Sydney Opera House

When the first fleet arrived, cattle were brought ashore via a small island which once existed beyond the tip of Bennelong Point. The herd was allowed to graze on the headland which gave rise to it being known as Cattle Point. Within a year of the colony's founding, its middens or piles of discarded oysters left by generations of aborigines feasting on the shellfish of the harbour began to be burnt and ground down by groups of convicts to make the lime needed for mortar in brick construction. Because of this, it soon became known as Limeburner's Point.
It was on Limeburner's Point that Gov. Phillip built a hut for Bennelong, an aborigine whom he befriended and who was used as a guide and interpreter by the colonists. Limeburner's Point was the site of one of Sydney's first fortifications when, in March 1788, Lieut. Dawes built a small redoubt there which housed two brass 6 pounders and four iron 12 pounders. Gov. Lachlan Macquarie's major contribution towards the defense of Sydney was the construction of Fort Macquarie on the point, at which time the island was joined to the headland.
Completed in January 1821, the fort, which was designed by colonial architect Francis Greenway, was a large structure built of stone hewn from an outcrop of rock near the site. The sheer rock face left at the quarry site after the extraction of rock was completed became known as the Tarpeian Rock, a classical allusion to the precipitous Capitoline Hill in Rome from which, in the time of the Caesars, criminals were hurled to their deaths. At the turn of the 20th century, Fort Macquarie had outlived its usefulness and was torn down. In 1902, it was replaced by the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot, a terminus and workshops for the Belmore to Circular Quay electric tram service which came down Castlereagh and Bligh Streets.
The tram depot operated until 1955 when it was demolished to make way for the building which presently occupies Bennelong Point - the Sydney Opera House.
UBD Map 1 Ref N 7