Guided Walk: The Hidden History of Blackwattle Bay

Starting near to Victoria Park, one of the headwaters of Blackwattle Bay, this walk will explore some of the less well-known parts of Glebe and its neighbours.

The walk will include the Bishopgate estate off Broadway (not to be confused with the better known Bishopthorpe estate to the west of Glebe Point Road); the site of the former Brisbane Distillery in nearby Chippendale, which was located on another of the bay's headwaters; St Benedict's Church, designed by Augustus Welby Pugin, the great luminary of the Gothic Revival; and the reclamation of the bay for Wentworth Park in the mid-19th- century. We will explore the beautiful late 19th-century gardenesque layout of the park, see its current state and consider opportunities for recovering it significance.

The walk will end at the Kauri Hotel in Bridge Road where we can all have a gin and tonic and drink a toast to the long vanished Brisbane Distillery -- it was replaced by a school. Is this really progress?

Ian Stephenson, our guide for this walk, will no doubt comment on this and other urban renewal issues as we traverse two parks and some of Chippendale’s and Glebe’s hidden spots.