The head of North Harbour was filled in to create park
These days North Harbour Reserve at Balgowlah is a popular park but a century ago the area was a popular beach.
Manly
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These days North Harbour Reserve at Balgowlah is a popular park but a century ago the area was a popular beach.
What happened between then and now is that Manly Council reclaimed the head of North Harbour by building a seawall, pumping out the water and filling it with sand dredged from the harbour bed.
But not everyone agreed with the council’s actions.
The first proposal to reclaim the head of North Harbour was made in 1925 and the man behind the proposal was Manly mayor Arthur Keirle.
Initially there was no plan to build a seawall – just to dredge sand from the harbour and spread it across the broad sand flat east of Condamine St.
It was estimated that 30,000 cubic metres of sand would need to be dredged from the harbour bed to fill the area reclaimed from the head of North Harbour and that it would cost about £3500.
The Sydney Harbour Trust, the forerunner of the Maritime Services Board, would undertake the work and the council would pay for it over time.
The scheme would have also involved the resumption of some water frontages.
But many disagreed with the council’s plan.
At a public meeting in the Balgowlah Hall in November 1926, the mayor told the gathering that the council wanted to turn an objectionable mud flat into a beautiful recreation ground.
But throughout his address, the mayor was repeatedly interrupted by members of the public, the majority of whom bitterly opposed any interference in their beach.
They said the broad expanse of sand was a sandy playground at low tide and a safe area for children to wade at high tide because the water was too shallow for sharks.
At a second meeting the following month, feelings were again high.
Those who advocated the reclamation said the broad expanse of sand was polluted and a hotbed for mosquitoes and diseases.
Those who opposed the reclamation said it would be an act of environmental vandalism and cited a letter from the Australian Museum that said the presence of myriad soldier crabs on the sand flat was proof the area was not polluted.
The reclamation proposal led to the formation of the Society for the Preservation of the Natural Beauty of North Harbour and more than 700 residents of North Harbour, Balgowlah and Manly signed a petition that was 5m long.
The Town Planning Association also opposed the scheme.
Eventually the council backed down – but only for a while.
In 1928 the council discussed the reclamation scheme, by which time the cost had increased to £5000, but no action was taken.
In 1933 the council discussed the reclamation scheme again and the council’s works committee met members of the Balgowlah Progress Association to discuss the possible reclamation but nothing came of the discussion.
But Manly Council wouldn’t let go of the idea of reclaiming the head of North Harbour, discussing it repeatedly in 1935 and 1936, by which time the estimated cost had risen to £10,000, and in late 1936 the council finally voted in favour of a modified reclamation scheme that would result in a park comprising 2.13ha, some of which would be privately-owned land that would be resumed.
Unlike 10 years earlier, there appears to have been public opposition to the scheme.
In February 1938, the council sought tenders for the construction of twin 1.5m drains so water from a small waterfall on the western side of Condamine St and stormwater could flow to the harbour.
The successful tender was for £3696 and the tenderer had to ensure that 90 per cent of the workforce be council employees.
A seawall was built across the head of North Harbour but the reports prepared by the council’s engineer no longer exist, so the precise cost of building the seawall is unknown.
But in June 1938, an injunction restraining any further work on the reclamation was granted to Walter Verrall, a local resident who owned four blocks of land in the area, on one of which he operated a boatshed.
Members of the Verrall family had been building boats and operating boatsheds at North Harbour since 1890.
Part of Verrall’s land had been resumed to make way for the reclamation but Verrall argued that all of his land should be resumed, instead of only those portions on the waterfront, or that the council should return that part of his land that the government had already resumed and vested in Manly Council.
Verrall told the Equity Court that the council had dumped soil on his land and that as a result he was unable to launch a boat he had built.
Eventually the Court found in favour of Verrall and the council was forced to resume two of his blocks of land and pay his legal costs.
Once the seawall was built, the area was drained in preparation for sand to be dredged from the harbour bed and pumped into the space behind the seawall.
The successful tender for the sand pumping was for £1985.
As part of the reclamation scheme, and once the drains were operational, an old timber bridge on Condamine St was demolished in 1939.
When asked what they wanted the new park to be called, the public’s preference was for North Harbour Reserve, rather than Governor Phillip Park.
North Harbour Reserve was gazetted as Reserve 69541 in the Government Gazette in September 1940.