Welcome MeAndDe to the Sutherland Shire, come and have a chat, we can grab a coffee nearby. Meet at Australia's oldest public clock, manufacture in 1770.
Sunday 2nd June 2024 at 10.00am in Cronulla Plaza.
History of the clock.
Cronulla Plaza is home to the oldest public clock in Australia but only because the National Parks and Wildlife Service would not allow it to be installed at the Captain Cook Landing Place Historic Site, Kurnell.
The clock's Australian odyssey is the story of the friendship of two men. Harry Babbage and Norm Davis who met as students at Canterbury Boys High School. It was boxed up and shipped to Australia in 1976
The Caltex Refining Company presented the 1770 built clock to Sutherland Shire as a bicentennial gift in 1988. For more than 200 years it had occupied the stable turret of an ancient English estate, Stanwell Place, in the Thames Valley near Heathrow Airport. The Stanwell estate dated from the Norman conquest and had a colourful history of ownership which included Henry VIII and King Faisal II of Iraq. The clock, which was housed in a turret above the stables, was built by a Clock Maker or his son, who were in business in the nearby village of Brentford from 1730 to 1792.