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Observations made by Mr. Charles C. Brown, Pymble (formerly Councillor and Hon. Treasurer of the Sydney Branch now in Suspense having operating in Sydney from 1912 to 1962) at the gathering held at Wunderlich Ltd. (Modelling Dept.) Redfern on 8th December 1965, arranged by James, Douglas and Associates, Sydney, as to whether he was real or merely a myth.

The Royal Society of St. George, Headquarters, London, many years ago reported that they were quite satisfied there was real evidence for the historical existence of St. George. Legends tended to grow up around all heroes and the essential facts were not in dispute. Europe was full of churches where right down the centuries “St. George has been revered as the epitome of chivalry and as a defender of patriotism and freedom . . . . We are quite content and quite happy about our Saint”. In 1912, one Alice Brewster produced a book entitled George of England our Patron Saint and dedicated this to The Royal Society of St. George.

Quoting from that book, we read “Although George is our Patron Saint, he was not born in England but at Lydda in Palestine about 10 miles from Jaffa or Joppa as it was called in Biblical days, one of the principal seaports of the Holy Land, situated on the Plain of Sharon, so celebrated for its roses, and as this fragrant and lovely flower was George’s favourite, it has become the national emblem of England. He was born A.D. 270 and came of a noble and distinguished family. George’s grandfather was Governor of Cappadocia and his father Governor of Mitylene both of which were districts in Asia Minor under the control of the mighty Emperor of Rome. George entered the Roman Army and by the time he was 20 became known as one of its smartest officers. When only 22, Diocletian, the Emperor of Rome sent him on a mission to England or Britain as then called. It was then through his instrumentality that the Empress Helena the British born wife of Constantius Chlorus was converted to Christianity, and through her, her son, Constantine the Great who later became King of Britain and Emperor of Rome. As the result the course of the whole Roman world in matters of religion was changed and Christianity began to take the place of Paganism. Constantine was born at York and later had the very great distinction of becoming Emperor of Rome and a Christian. George’s stay was not long and his mission completed he returned to Lydda. Shortly after his arrival there the Emperor Diocletian decreed that all professing the Christian religion should be utterly destroyed. At first George determined to stay at Lydda to encourage and strengthen the weak-hearted and timid to stand firm and hold fast to their faith but later decided that as he was well known and liked by Diocletian he would go and see him and intercede with him for the Christians.

It was on this journey of love and devotion made for the sake of his friends and relations to the Court of the Emperor that he met with his celebrated adventure with the dragon and so rescued the maiden that the monster was about to devour. Legend and fairy tale have it that the good knight St. George killed a fabulous beast called a dragon. This could have been a gigantic lizard common in India and Egypt capable of devouring large animals also humans, or possibly a crocodile which could have drifted from New Guinea area (or possibly a Komodo dragon still in existence in the Java islands). Looking at it with our modern views in comparison with those days when there were no guns, it was terrible enough to fight such animals with only a lance and a short Roman sword.

By the town of Berytus (or Beirut as we know it today) is the lake where this animal had taken up its abode. It filled the people of the neighbourhood with terror and dismay as it carried off not only cattle and animals but also human beings. In their ignorance they looked upon it as having been sent by their heathen gods to devour them. Daily offerings of sheep and goats were made as sacrifices hoping to appease the anger of their gods but to no avail. The King of Berytus as headman of the area called the people together and suggested lots be drawn to see who should be given as a human sacrifice to the dragon. To his horror it fell to his daughter Princess Sadra. The people refused the King’s request that somebody else be offered up instead of his daughter as he had proposed the drawing of the lots and they thought, too, being heathens that it fell as it had done by the choice of the gods. The Princess was then dressed in her finest clothes, taken to the sand pit at the lake which was the haunt of the monster and left to her fate. It was whilst in this terrible plight that George rode up on his way to the Court of the Roman Emperor and was told the story. He said he would stay and fight the beast. As they were talking up it came expecting to have an easy prey as usual but George firmly sitting upon his white horse, made his sign of the Cross, charged and slew it. The father of the Princess Sadra wanted George to marry her and remain and live at Berytus but he refused, wanting to continue on to meet the Emperor Diocletian to plead the cause of the Christians. They built a church which they dedicated to Saint George after his martyrdom. George was received by Emperor Diocletian but he refused to spare the Christians and offered George every inducement to forsake his religion yet all in vain. George was put to the most dreadful torture to induce him to forsake his faith and as he refused to do so, he was put to death on 23rd April A.D. 303 at Nicomedeia. Friends and relations of George begged his body from Diocletian and took it back to Lydda for burial, as he had wished. In A.D. 306 Constantine became the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He put an end to the persecutions of the Christians, built a church at Lydda in memory of Saint George and named him patron saint of his own country, Britain, and thus it is that his red cross became a part of the English flag, and his favourite flower the rose, became the national emblem of Britain. Not only did he do this, but he erected over 20 churches to his memory. He also built the magnificent Cathedral of Saint Sophia (Hagia Sophia) at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), the finest stained window of which is dedicated to Saint George.

Queen Helena built a church at Glastonbury, in Somerset, which she named after Saint George. Twenty-three years after his martyrdom in A.D. 326, she went to Jerusalem in search of the Holy Cross. Whilst there she caused another church to be erected, and called it also after Saint George, quite close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is supposed that she succeeded in her quest of the True Cross, and brought a portion of it to England, as a fragment of it is said to be encased in the sceptre of King Edward the Confessor, which our Kings and Queens still use when they are crowned, and which is preserved with the rest of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

This article was first published in the February 1966 edition of our magazine.

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An extract from Rising Damp: Sydney 1870-90 by Shirley Fitzgerald

To the south of the city, the Illawarra line, opened in 1884, generated a second set of new suburbs. Marrickville, south of Petersham did not lie on the railway line, but benefited from its position between the two lines. Its population, which rose from 3500 in 1881 to 13,500 in 1891 participated in the suburban boom both as consumers of new housing and makers of bricks. By 1890 some mechanised kilns were in operation, but had you gone there on one of the trams which had serviced this suburb from 1881, you would still have seen many brickmakers making bricks by hand in the time-honoured fashion.

Beyond this, in Rockdale, Hurstville and Kogarah, lived 10,000 people in 1891. Back in 1870, the Sands Sydney and Suburban Directory did not recognise the region as being suburban to Sydney, and as late as 1881 Kogarah was still recorded in its Country Directory. Before the coming of the railway, land communications were not always assured, as the crossing of the Cook’s River sometimes became difficult and the river flats around Canterbury and Marrickville could quickly turn to quagmire. An old dam at Tempe helped to prevent tidal flushing of the river and increased flooding problems upstream, while the clearing and settling of the land, especially in Marrickville, encouraged runoff. Most residential development was around the railway stations, and by far the most common form of construction was the small detached cottage, although there were some elegant houses and a few mansions in the elevated part of Hurstville, which was coming to be known as Bexley.

Many of the cottages were built of timber, although brick became more usual as settlement spread, and following the establishment of the Hurstville Steam Brick Company in 1884. The old wooden St George’s Church at Hurstville was replaced by brick in 1889, after a white ant problem had caused the disappearance of the clergyman through the floor of the pulpit, so the folklore goes, immediately after delivering a sermon on the text “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall”. Many investors and would-be land developers in this area were often uncertain as to whether their fortunes would rise or fall.

The railway had brought suburbs to Kogarah and Hurstville, but much of the intensification of land use in the area was for rural-urban purposes- orchards, poultry farms and the like. Development was not nearly as extensive as on the western line, and land prices did not go so high. Partly this was a result of timing, because although the opening of the Illawarra line in 1884 coincided with the height of the suburban boom, it had run its course within a few more years.

Partly though, the slower growth of this area was the result of an ambivalent relationship between this region and industrial Botany, to the north. Nowhere was this more evident than in West Botany. Some residents possessed a vision of the area as a major seaside resort, like Thomas Saywell, who constructed a private tramway at a cost of 15,000 pounds from Rockdale Station to Lady Robinson’s Beach, where seabaths, picnic grounds, an onion-domed pavilion and a grand 60-room hotel named “New Brighton” were all subsequently built although surrounding roads were unmade and houses few in number.

Other speculators persuaded the government to build a tramway to Sans Souci in 1887, and in that year the municipality changed its name to Rockdale, no doubt because it was felt that a would-be resort, or even an ordinary suburb could only be hindered by a name like West Botany, so firmly associated with industrial development.

On the other hand, some residents did want to develop Rockdale as an extension of Botany, and by 1890 there was a limited amount of noxious activity, especially around Arncliffe, on the Cook’s River estuary in the vicinity of Wolli Creek. Nearby on the spit of land jutting out from the head of Lady Robinson’s Beach into the river was the government sewage farm, which began taking the outfall of the southern sewerage line in 1889. The location of these activities in the north of Rockdale around the extensive mud flats and mangrove swamps at the mouth of the Cook’s River was crucial in discouraging Sydney’s residents from using the land beyond, either for residential or recreational purposes. Predictably, local council elections were often fought over the question of noxious trades, with the security of the local manufacturers waxing and waning with the changing factions in power.”

“The story of municipal government is a major study in itself, and varies from place to place, but from the newspapers and parliamentary reports of the period 1870-90, it is very difficult to concede that local government was for the good of the citizens of Sydney, and difficult to avoid concluding that the initial enthusiasm for forming municipalities was motivated by a desire to ensure that the incorporated areas were left to their own devices and developed in ways that most benefited the landholders, subdividers and manufacturers. The incorporation of Kogarah is a good case in point.

Kogarah was incorporated in 1886, after two years of protracted negotiations over the issue of whether it should be incorporated at all, and where the boundaries should be. There was no upsurge of civic pride in a well-defined area, but much toing and froing over which area would produce the greatest benefit to the interested parties. Incorporation was at the ‘will and initiation’ of the citizens, and the mechanics of becoming a municipality involved raising enough local interest, usually via public meetings, to put together a petition to the colonial government, which then considered the merits of the case, and normally granted incorporation if there was a strong local demand for it. Local interest was very freely defined, however. The population of semi-rural Kogarah in 1884 consisted of a few fishermen, a lot of market gardeners, several poultry farmers and nursery men and a number of tradesmen – stonemasons and a few labourers possibly associated with the small brickworks of Young and Cross on Hurstville Rd. There was also an Aboriginal settlement in Vista Street, off Rocky Point Road. Of the forty people who gathered at the Gardeners’ Arms, Montgomery Street, on Monday, 7th April 1884 to discuss a number of local issues, almost certainly none were women or Aborigines, and probably very few were gardeners, labourers or fishermen. People who spoke at this and subsequent meetings, however, included James Todd and John Whitehead of the city, and H.G. Swymy, of Randwick, all owners of freehold land in Kogarah.

This meeting was not specifically about incorporation, but at the end of it a committee was formed to “watch local matters and to take steps to ensure the progress of the district”. Motions were passed in favour of excluding noxious trades from the area, in protest over the disgraceful state of the main roads from the Cook’s River to George’s River and for a railway in the same area. The first issue, that of the noxious trades, was in response to the rumours that the Stuart government was possibly considering the George’s River area as a noxious trade site, while the interest in roads and the railway was summed up by Joseph Carruthers, one of the prime movers for incorporation, who observed at one meeting that, “they all knew that if they wished to induce people to build there they would require to show them roads and other conveniences of civilisation. They should not wait until there were two or three hundred houses in the district before taking any steps for the formation of a municipality.”

The motive for encouraging the rail to go all the way to the George’s River was to prod the government into keeping to schedule with the line, for there was widespread feeling that it had been too much delayed. When it was finally opened as far as Hurstville on 15 October, the Herald described the area as ‘a beautiful resort’, an ‘arcadia’, which would be of enormous benefit to the people of Sydney as a recreational area. Some men, however hoped that the railway would bring about the rapid metamorphosis of arcadia into suburbia. The first petition in favour of incorporation was followed by one against, and one meeting for an incorporated Kogarah was followed, within a fortnight, by another at Hurstville proposing a joint municipality with that area. Landholders (presumably with land in Kogarah), fearing that rates would be dissipated over the larger area, argued that small municipalities were always the most flourishing. Finally, when a petition for Kogarah, without Hurstville, was gazetted in July 1885, a dispute broke out over part of the boundary with West Botany (Rockdale) and after incorporation was finally granted, complicated and not very friendly negotiations continued with this municipality. for several years over boundaries. Clearly, suburbs were being made, not through the growth of ‘community’, but by individuals like Joseph Carruthers, who were angling for the deal most likely to benefit their own financial and landed interests. He was a young solicitor who ‘made investment in land a sideline’, and a few years later, in 1887, he went into parliament at the top of the poll for the seat of Canterbury. In his maiden speech he called for a tramway from Kogarah to Sans Souci, where he lived. In 1889, when he became Minister for Public Instruction, he immediately took steps to have a larger school built at Kogarah. Later, when he became Premier of New South Wales, he continued to be closely associated with the district – ‘he had a lot of sway, and could get anyone a job’, as one local resident recalled.

Carruthers worked for Kogarah and Kogarah worked for Carruthers. This story of incorporation could be repeated over and over for other districts and would-be districts of Sydney.”

This extract was from Rising Damp: Sydney 1870-90 by Shirley Fitzgerald, Oxford University Press, 1987. Purchase at AbeBooks.

(Images courtesy of Bayside Library Service Local History Collection)