To visualise change to the site fabric and shape of Cockatoo Island it may be useful to compare a modern satellite image to redrawn historical ground plans. Follow these steps and you may view one I've prepared earlier.
The file is available by following this link.
Five overlayed historical maps are available for viewing on Google Earth.You can toggle the ground map on and off by the options under "Places" located at the centre of the left pane.
Underground Silos: A Solution and a Curse
A group of silos carved underground at Cockatoo Island are considered to have outstanding national significance for being the only major group of convict-carved rock silos in Australia. Some of the original silos exist to this day in their original location, though some were lost during World War II to accommodate the construction of new workshops. Intentionally constructed to store grain during a period of precarious food supply due to a prolonged drought (lasting between 1837 to 1841), the silos could only be accessed from above through a narrow man hole. Workers would be lowered by rope to retrieve the grain from a depth of up to 23 feet for the largest silo. Like other structures on Cockatoo Island, the silos were painstakingly built by the convicts who were imprisoned on the island and who by day were obliged to work as labourers.
While at first the silos could store approximately 6, 000 bushels of grains, Governor Gipps expressed his wishes for enlarging the stores to accommodate up to 100, 000 bushels on 30 November 1840.
If the price of wheat continues as low as it now is in Sydney, I propose to increase the Government Store to any amount not exceeding 100,000 bushels.
This plan was never fully realised due to intervention by the British. In 1841, the Imperial Government in London put an end to Gipp's vision by declaring that the enlarged storage capacity would distort market prices and worsen the already fluctuating market for grain.
...instead of relieving future scarcities, [it] will, by introducing uncertainties into the operation of the Corn Trade, have a strong tendency to paralyse that Trade, and to discourage the growth of Corn, and the importation of it from other places; besides which Government undertakings of this nature are peculiarly liable to lead to waste, miscaculation and mismanagement.
A 1857 plan of the silos indicates that they were then in use for storing water. The silos were not ideally built for collecting rainwater and despite modifications a typhoid outbreak occurred in 1885, 1886, and 1887.
Industrial School for Girls- Taming the Untameable
Two years after the disbanding of Cockatoo Island as a penal establishment in July 1869, a Industrial School for Girls was established. The school had initially been based in Newcastle and moved to Cockatoo Island primarily for its heightened isolation from the wider society. The establishment was named Biloela to remove its assocation with the preceding convict period, however the bane of criminal activity was never far away.
At the time of the move of the Industrial school to Cockatoo Island, a reformatory for young women aged 16 and under who had previously committed a crime also became established. The Industrial School and the Girls' Reformatory had been associated previously at their original site in Newcastle. A high, corrugated iron fence was erected to separate the girls from other inhabitants of the island. In just three years after the establishment of the school and reformatory it became clear that their continued presence on the island was no longer tenable, however it would take until 1888 for the two institutions to be finally disbanded.
Vernon (1871-1890) and Sobraon (1891-1911)
As if the colonial administrators wanted to tempt faith a group of neglected youth were brought to the island, adding further fuel to the fire. Two ships anchored at the island, Vernon and Sobraon were used as training ships for up to 500 homeless and orphan boys. The types of trades that the boys were instructed in ranged from tailoring, carpentry, shoe and sail making, amongst others. The boys came onshore for recreation on land set aside for this purpose. They were also offered space for growing vegetables.
By October 1871 it became clear that the concentration of delinquent youth at the island was not working. The Superintendent of Vernon, in a letter addressed to the Principal Under-Secretary, provides a glimpse of how the situation had deteriorated,
..three girls came down abreast of the ship, in a semi-nude state, throwing stones at the windows of the workshops- blaspheming dreadfully and conducting themselves more like fiends than human beings. I was compelled to send all our boys onto the lower deck to prevent them viewing such a contaminatory exhibition.
The Return of a Prison
Before long, in June 1888, the island was returned to its past use as a prison to ameliorate the issue of overcrowding at the Darlinghurst gaol. The arrangement was only meant to be temporary and as such little modification of the site fabric was changed. In this period the prison at Cockatoo Island was home to petty criminals, vagrants, dunkards and prostitutes. Many of the prisoners were serial reoffenders. In the Annual Prison Report for 1900 the following admission was made,
At present these persons, for the most part, are committed to Biloela, and a more unsuitable, unhopeful place cannot well be imagined..Several of them have been sent to gaol a hundred times...one poor creature- a woman- has recently completed her 400th sentence.
With the completion of the Long Bay Gaol in 1908, the prison finally came to an end and the prisoners transported to their new place of incarceration.
The Chapter of Cockatoo Island as a Dockyard Begins
Starting with a clean slate in 1908, the whole island became earmarked for use as a dockyard. The group of buildings that had once been used for the prisons were transformed into office blocks for activities related to the dockyard. A 1908 report of this period of the island's history reveals a newfound optimism for the future use of the island and more importantly, the potential for naval triumph.
Most likely in a few years from now the historic Biloela will have given place to Government residences and offices on the spurs of the picturesque heights, and Cockatoo Island will one day become the hub of a great ship-repair centre second to none in the Southern Hemisphere.
Source of Quotations
Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. (2004). The Story of Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour Federation Trust: Sydney, ISBN: 097510943X
