A small triangle of land at Narrabeen has hosted a lot of history over the years
Blink and you could miss it but a small triangle of land at Narrabeen has hosted a fire station, an ambulance station, a war trophy and now hosts a war memorial.
Manly
Don't miss out on the headlines from Manly. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Blink and you could miss it but a small triangle of land at Narrabeen has hosted a fire station, an ambulance station, a war trophy and now hosts a war memorial.
The triangle of land, just 58m long and barely 20m wide at its widest point is at the intersection of Pittwater Rd, Ocean St and Devitt St and was created in 1881 when John Wetherill subdivided the massive Mt Ramsay Estate comprising 925 lots between Alexander St at Collaroy in the south and the mouth of Narrabeen Lagoon in the north.
The subdivision was part of a grant of 410 acres in 1818 to John Ramsay.
The following year the land was in the hands of the Bank of NSW and in 1823 in the hands of James Jenkins, whose family ended up owning the entire coastline from Mona Vale Hospital to Dee Why rock pool by 1825.
In 1876, Ramsay’s grant passed by transmission to Jenkins’ grandson, Philip Jenkins jnr, who sold it the following year to Wetherill.
Warringah Council was incorporated in 1906 and in 1908 one of the councillors asked the town clerk who owned the triangle of land.
The answer was the Lands Department, which in 1915 asked the council if it would take control of the triangle for the use of the public.
The council agreed and in 1916 the triangular reserve was formally dedicated to the council.
After World War, Warringah Council began urging the Fire Brigades Board for fire stations to be established at Brookvale, Dee Why and Narrabeen, with Narrabeen in particular favoured because it was more central to the shire than Brookvale or Dee Why.
In November 1919, the Fire Brigades Board asked the council if it could put a portable fire station on the triangular reserve.
Grateful that some progress was being made, the council said the portable fire station could remain on the triangular reserve for four years
The fire station was erected by February 1920.
By the end of 1921, the triangular reserve was also home to a war trophy – a captured German heavy machine gun.
By the end of World War I, more than 4000 weapons captured by Australian troops in Europe had been shipped home and were being distributed among Australian cities and towns by each state’s trophy committee.
But not everyone was enamoured of war trophies or the placing of them in public places.
For some returned soldiers, the war trophies served as reminders of the horrors of the war and merely served as monuments to man’s savagery.
Sydney City Count point-blank refused to display any of the war trophies, which fell into three categories – field guns, trench mortars and machine guns.
Manly was allocated a field gun and Warringah a heavy machine gun, which was placed in the triangular reserve – opposite Narrabeen public school – and unveiled on October 22, 1921.
The Manly gun was unveiled outside Manly Town Hall on November 13, 1921.
In November 1925, the Fire Brigades Board asked Warringah Council if it could leave the portable fire station in the triangular reserve for longer than the four years originally intended, to which the council agreed, as it did in December 1927 when the Fire Brigades Board asked for another extension of its permissive occupancy of the triangular reserve.
In 1928 the Fire Brigades Board again asked for an extension of the permissive occupancy, as it did again in 1929.
By late 1929 the Fire Brigades Board was finalising the purchase of the land on which Narrabeen fire station now stands but it was not until 1931 that the new fire station opened.
The old fire station on the triangular reserve was handed to the NSW Ambulance Service and became a substation of the Manly and Warringah Ambulance service and opened its doors on February 20, 1932 – four months after it had ceased being used as a fire station.
In 1925 the Warringah Shire Branch of Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, now known as the RSL, asked Warringah Council if it could erect a memorial hall on the triangular reserve but the council refused.
By 1930, the triangular reserve was being referred to as the Narrabeen War Memorial Reserve, centred on the German machine gun, the pedestal on which it was placed, a flagpole and seats that had been placed there.
In 1938 the Narrabeen Ex-Servicemen’s Club asked the council if it could use the triangular reserve for an Anzac Day memorial service, to which the council agreed, as it did every year thereafter.
Interestingly, in 1939 the Narrabeen Ex-Servicemen’s Club told the council that the time for the exhibition of war trophies has long since passed and suggested that the machine gun gun on the triangular reserve be removed and be replaced by a simple plaque.
In February 1942, Eastern Command of the Australian Military Forces asked Warringah Council if it could have the machine gun at Narrabeen for training purposes at the Liverpool army camp and the council complied.
The machine gun was never returned.
The ambulance station remained on the triangular reserve until 1949, when it was moved from the triangular reserve to a site in the caravan park on the northern side of Narrabeen Lagoon.
The triangular reserve is now home a simple stone memorial to Australian servicemen who served in all wars.
Aussie quartet make sailing history with win in women’s America’s Cup
For the first time in 174 years Australian women have set sail in an America’s Cup. How the quartet on Andoo Australia are faring as the Pool B Racing begins.
Future Olympians! Try-fectas, close calls in Next Gen 7s battles
There were blowouts, close calls, a hot boot and multiple try-fectas in the opening round of the Next Gen Sevens rugby series in Sydney. Stars, great photos and Rd 1 result wrap.