Enjoy a walk or ride along the Cooks River Cycleway (or pick it off as a park-and-grab) and learn about its long history along the way. Watch for muggles as they appear quickly coming along the pathway.
The Cooks River is a 23km long river that stretches from Yagoona in the south west of Sydney to Botany Bay in the east. Since European settlement, it has undergone many transformations and alterations, not all in the best interests of the river. Changes in the past few years are starting to bring the river back to a healthy state.
This part of the river was the home to the Wangal clan of the Dharug nation and as such we pay our respects to the elders past and present for allowing us to travel through this land.
From GZ, you'll see the Sugarworks building.
One of the oldest factory complexes in Australia, this Georgian stone building is the historic Canterbury Sugarworks which operated as a sugar refinery. In the 1840s and early 1850s, raw sugar was imported from the Philippines and processed here into refined sugar. Before 1840, all sugar for the Australian colonies was imported.
Construction of the Sugarworks, built by David MacBeath and his team of Scottish stonemasons on the banks of the Cooks River, began late in 1840. The wages of many of the labourers were paid in allotments of land in the new village of Canterbury. Sandstone was quarried on the site, just north of the building, and the ironbark timber was cut from the forests of today’s Earlwood, across the Cooks River.
Sugar refining ended in August 1854 with operations moved to Chippendale after company restructures. The building remained vacant until 1884, when it was converted by Arthur Blacket into a heavy engineering factory. The government planned to build a new railway line from St Peters to Liverpool, and the factory building was very close to the route. When the decision on the railway took longer than anticipated, the company went bankrupt, and the building was vacant once more.
In 1900, the Sugarworks building was sold to Edward Denham for a refrigeration works. It was renamed the Canterbury Bacon Factory, and the interior was redesigned as a meat processing works. The site was used by J C Hutton Pty Ltd from 1908 to 1982, first as a bacon factory and later for smallgoods manufacture. In the late 1970s, the building was refurbished as a staff amenities centre.
The Sugarworks building was vacant from 1983 until it was gutted by fire early in February 1996. The roof of the Sugarworks was destroyed and much of the interior was damaged. Although the interior had been altered over the years, the original hardwood posts and beams and other internal timber work were still in place, and so the damage to the fabric of heritage value was considerable.
A Permanent Conservation Order was placed on the building in 1985 and in 1997, the Heritage Office allowed a developer to create additional window and door openings in the sandstone walls of the Sugarworks building to allow for 20 residential units, with flats and townhouses constructed on the surrounding land, to be created. These were occupied in 2004.
For a number of reasons, the Sugarworks building is of national significance. It is one of only two privately built pre-gold rush industrial buildings left in Sydney, it is the earliest surviving element of the Australian sugar industry, and it is the foundation of one of Australia’s major companies, CSR (Colonial Sugar Refining) Co Ltd.
The building is also important to the history and heritage of Canterbury city. It was the impetus for the establishment of the village of Canterbury, and it has dominated the Cooks River landscape since it was constructed. It has been a landmark loved by generations of residents.
Information sourced from Madden, Brian, Muir, Lesley, Canterbury Sugarworks, Dictionary of Sydney, 2013, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/canterbury_sugarworks
This cache replaces the archived GC7E0H9.
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About the cache:
There will be muggles coming from all angles - bike riders, pedestrians, doggos - so do time your approach well. For those who have been caching for a while, it is very similar to one that was in the area some time ago. Do take care with your footing and please don't trample on the good work undertaken by the bush regen folks, the Mud Crabs (i.e. you're on the wrong side).