Shipping Cattle at Darling Island

Sydney Harbour is full of Islands. Among the most famous are Clarke Island, Garden Island and Fort Denison, yet there are many other islands which many who visit might wonder about the names of. This postcard, from circa 1910, shows Darling Island, which today is not an island at all!

Once Darling Island (now the area of land between Pymont Bay and Jones Bay) was a tiny, rocky island, but reclamation projects in the 1800s soon joined it to the mainland. In 1851 the Australasian Steam Navigation Company used the area as a shipyard, but in 1899 the New South Wales Government purchased the area for use as railway yards and wharves. As this postcard shows, all sorts of goods from wool to livestock passed through the wharves. Today the railway, industrial activity, cranes and noises of the busy working wharves are a distant memory.