| Historical notes: | Early development of locality:
This site forms part of the land of the Gadigal people, the traditional custodians of land within the City of Sydney council boundaries. For information about the Aboriginal history of the local area see the City’s Barani website: http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/
The suburb derives its name from emancipated convict William Redfern who was sent to Sydney as a convict in 1801 after the 1797 revolt known as the Mutiny of the Nore. Redfern received his pardon in 1803. In 1808 he was examined in medicine and surgery and appointed assistant surgeon at the Sydney Hospital in 1816. In 1817 Redfern received a grant of 100 acres in the area bounded by present-day Cleveland, Regent, Redfern and Elizabeth Streets. In 1818, Redfern was granted a further 11,300 acres at Airds, Campbell Fields.
Other early occupants of the area were Captain Cleveland, an officer of the 73rd regiment who built Cleveland House and John Baptist who ran a nursery.
The first railway in NSW ran from Redfern to Parramatta in 1855. This station was known as Eveleigh but was later renamed in honour of William Redfern.
The last sections of the Redfern Estate, bounded by Chalmers and Elizabeth Street, were advertised for sale in 1882. By 1884 Section 4 had been subdivided into regular allotments for auction sale and Section 5 had been purchased by the Governor for a public park.
The intensified expansion of Sydney in the early twentieth century led to the development of terrace houses, industrial buildings and shops within Redfern.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, many Indigenous Australians relocated to the inner city, attracted by opportunities for work in local factories. Redfern became a well known centre for Sydney’s Aboriginal community. Australia’s first Aboriginal-run health, legal and children’s services were established in the suburb during the 1970s.
The suburb underwent significant changes with the decline of secondary industries from the 1970s onwards.
Industrial history:
As one of only two major centres for historic Australian industry during the period when industry was centred in cities, Sydney’s industrial development is part of the national history of industrialisation. Australia’s industrialisation formed part of the ‘second industrial revolution’ which began during the mid-nineteenth century. This second revolution was driven by major technological innovations including the invention of the internal combustion engine and the assembly line, development of electricity, the construction of canals, railways and electric-power lines.
Sydney's twentieth century industrial development records when and how Sydney became one of the largest industrialised cities in the South Pacific and the diversification of Australia's economy beyond primary industry. Together with Melbourne, Sydney’s twentieth century industrial boom expanded Australia’s economy from the ‘sheep’s back’ to the ‘industry stack’ or from primary production to manufacturing. By 1947 more Australians were working in city industries than in farms or mines.
Sydney’s industrial development not only impacted on the national economy. Twentieth-century industry in Sydney also played a major role in developing Australia’s self-sufficiency, growth, urbanisation, society and its contribution to the war effort for World War II. Whether through the number of workers employed, goods and technology produced, the prosperity it engendered, social change and urban environments it generated, Sydney’s industrial development has affected the lives of many Australians.
Substations history:
One of the major innovations in industry during the nineteenth century was the development of electricity as a power and lighting source, which rivalled and then replaced water and steam power. The mills and workshops of the earlier Industrial Revolution in Britain and North America were mainly water and steam powered, whereas Australia's twentieth century industrial buildings were powered by electricity.
As part of supplying electricity to Sydney's houses and industries for the first time, Sydney Council built Sydney's first power stations and substations during the first half of the twentieth century. Sydney Council, then known as Sydney Municipal Council or the Municipal Council of Sydney, was charged with supplying electricity to Sydney city and surrounding areas in 1896 through the law named the Municipal Council of Sydney Electric Lighting Bill passed on 16th October 1896. Electricity supply was managed through the council's department known by a number of names: the Electric Lighting Committee, the Electric Light Department and the Electricity Department from 1920 to 1935. From 1936 the electricity undertaking was named Sydney County Council when it was reformed as a separate authority as a result of the Gas & Electricity Act of 1935. The various names for the council and subsequent electrical authority are recorded in the initials and building names inscribed in substation facades.
Sydney's first power station at Pyrmont began operating in 1904. The large network of substations were constructed in strategic locations to supply power from these power stations to individual customers and other electricity networks. Their specific purpose was to house machinery to convert high voltage electricity for industrial or domestic use. Substations were often erected in close proximity to factories to service their high energy demands. Consequently the number, concentration and location of substations provide markers of twentieth-century factories and industrial centres in the way that chimney stacks marked factories pre-dating electricity.
Redfern's Renwick Street included a number of industries in close proximity to the substation which, by 1951, included Fletcher Springs immediately adjacent to the Electricity Substation No. 112 at 44 Turner Street (since demolished in circa 1998), Nizer Refrigeration and Peters Ice Cream to the south.
The period and location of surviving substations record the progressive extension of Sydney's electrical network from the centre of Sydney to surrounding areas, the scale and importance of this network, and the fundamental changes electricity brought for Sydney's growth, development and society. Sydney Municipal Council built its first substations at Town Hall, Taylor Square, Woolloomooloo and Ultimo, followed by Glebe, Newtown, Camperdown and surrounding areas. From 1904 to 1935, Sydney Council built more than 360 substations and almost 400 pole transformers throughout Sydney and surrounding suburbs. More continued to be built in the following decades. The Energy Australia (AusGrid) heritage and conservation register records that 33 of the surviving substations are located within the City of Sydney. This number excludes those no longer owned or operated by the electricity supplier.
Each substation has its own number inscribed on the building facade, which reflects its role in the broader electrical network and generally the total number, sequence and period of construction, with some exceptions where disused numbers were reallocated. Most substations were constructed in established urban areas on a small portion of land acquired or subdivided specifically for this purpose. These buildings, while modest in scale and different in function to surrounding buildings, were designed and constructed to a good standard, in a style designed to harmonise with surrounding architecture, in order to reduce community fears or resistance to the incursion of this new technology and impacts on the appearance of streets.
The rise of electricity during the late nineteenth century, and in particular small motors for driving machinery and electrical lights, changed the configuration of industrial buildings and machinery. Electricity meant that factories could be designed with a more flexible layout because small electric motors eliminated the need for belt and shaft drives from the steam plant. Factory building design became less reliant on windows for natural light and gas lighting ventilation because of the advent of electric lighting. Electricity also created a new market for factories to produce the new consumer goods reliant on electric power, such as fridges, washing machines, telephones, stoves, ice cream, and the engineering for electric lights, trains and trams
Site history:
In 1920 the land for this substation was acquired by Sydney Municipal Council. The allotment appears to be a subdivision of the rear garden of the corner land parcel fronting Redfern Street.
The present substation was constructed during 1921 as the permanent building which replaced the previous temporary substation in this location. The remaining vacant portion of the site was sold in 1924.
The arrangement of the original switchgear in Substation No.112 proved to be insufficient and dangerous due to the narrow passageway between the high-voltage and low-voltage switchboards. In 1955 it was observed that “...with any of the switch handles on the high-voltage panels in the off position, danger exists in anyone bumping against a handle being thrown onto the front of the low-voltage panels”. As a result, plywood boxes were fabricated to cover the exposed conductors on the front of the low-voltage switchboard with the original high-voltage and low-voltage switchboard structures remaining in use until the substation was re-equipped during 2006.
The substation has not been significantly altered since its construction.
(Pennington, 2012, pp. 52-53, 293-294) |