The oldest European quarter in Australia, saved from demolition by a builders' union in the 1970s.
The Rocks is where the First Fleet’s convicts and marines were put ashore in January 1788, on the sandstone slope on the western side of Sydney Cove. It is the oldest European-settled area in Australia, and for most of the nineteenth century it was a rough waterfront district of sailors, warehouses and slums.
Before that it was Gadigal land, and had been for tens of thousands of years.
The plague, and the demolitions
Bubonic plague broke out in 1900, and the government used it as grounds to resume and demolish large parts of the district. More was cleared for the Harbour Bridge approaches in the 1920s.
In the late 1960s the state planned to demolish the rest and build office towers.
The Green Bans
What saved it was the Builders Labourers Federation under Jack Mundey, which from 1971 imposed “green bans” — refusing to work on developments that residents opposed. The Rocks Resident Action Group asked for one, and got it.
The bans held for years, several unionists were jailed, and the demolition did not happen. The tactic spread across Sydney and saved Centennial Park, Kelly’s Bush and a good deal else, and the term “green ban” was later borrowed by the German Greens.
It is a genuinely unusual piece of urban history: a working-class union striking to preserve historic housing it did not live in.
What to see
Cadman’s Cottage, from 1816, the oldest surviving residential building in central Sydney, built when the waterline was at its door.
Susannah Place, four terrace houses of 1844 lived in continuously until 1990 and now a museum presenting them as they were at four different dates. It is small, ticketed, on limited tours, and much the best thing here.
The Argyle Cut, a passage hacked through the sandstone ridge by convicts with hand tools from 1843. The Nurses Walk and Suez Canal — narrow lanes between buildings, the latter named for what ran down it.
The Hero of Waterloo (1843) and the Lord Nelson (1841) both claim to be the oldest pub in Sydney and both have a case depending on how you define it. The Lord Nelson brews its own.
Museum of Contemporary Art is at Circular Quay on the edge of the district, free, and good.
The markets
Friday, Saturday and Sunday in George Street and Playfair Street — crafts, food, jewellery. Pleasant, busy, entirely aimed at visitors.
Practicalities
Free to walk. Ticketed: Susannah Place, and The Rocks Discovery Museum is free.
Aboriginal-led walking tours of the area operate from Circular Quay and are the best way to understand what the ground was before 1788.
More Landmarks
Sydney Opera House
A building that took sixteen years, ten times its budget and its architect's career, and is worth every part of that.
Sydney Harbour Bridge
Fifty-three thousand tonnes of steel, six million rivets, and three quite different ways to get on top of it.
Bondi Beach
A kilometre of sand, a surf club that invented lifesaving, and a coastal walk that is better than the beach.