Our Contribution to Australia’s Newest National Heritage Listing
Hyde Park from Hotel Australia, Castlereagh Street Sydney, 1890s
Source: City of Sydney
We are thrilled that the Governors’ Domain and Civic Precinct, Sydney is the newest addition to the National Heritage List.
We are proud to have contributed by delivering research and assessments. In 2014, GML Heritage produced ‘Sydney: Convict Colony to Civic Nation a national heritage values assessment’ for the Department of the Environment, and previously in 2011, Context produced a National Heritage Listing Assessment.
Through our work we demonstrated that the precinct has ‘outstanding heritage value to the nation for its capacity to connect people to the early history of Australia including interactions between Indigenous people and British colonisers’.
The precinct comprises an assemblage of nineteenth-century public buildings (primarily the buildings constructed of Sydney sandstone and/or brick on Macquarie Street and the slope of Bridge Street) and major public open spaces, such as the Royal Botanic Garden and The Domain, and Hyde Park.
The precinct is an Indigenous place of deep history. It was shaped by its role as a penal colony to one which developed its own character beyond its penal function to form a more independent settlement. The area diversified economically and demonstrates important milestones in Australia’s history of landscape design, town planning and architecture.
We are fortunate to also have worked extensively at many places within the precinct including Hyde Park, Hyde Park Barracks, The Mint, First Government House, and Royal Botanic Gardens offering heritage planning advice over many years.
