Admiralty House, Sydney

Admiralty House is the Sydney official residence of the governor-general of Australia, on the northern foreshore of Sydney Harbour (adjacent to Kirribilli House, which is the Sydney official residence of the Australian Prime Minister). This large Victorian Regency and Italianate sandstone manor, completed in stages based on designs by James Barnet and Walter Liberty Vernon, occupies the tip of Kirribilli Point. Once known as "Wotonga", it has commanding views across Sydney Harbour to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House.

Its current name originates in the fact that it served as the residence for the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy's Australia Squadron from 1885 to 1913.

The original building on the site was completed, as a private dwelling, in mid-to-late 1843, by John George Nathaniel Gibbes, the then Collector of Customs for New South Wales and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. A portrait of Gibbes, painted in 1808, hangs in the house.

On 22 June 2004 Admiralty House was placed on the Commonwealth Heritage List.

History

Early history

Before the arrival of British settlers in Sydney Harbour, the Aboriginal Cammeraygal people lived along the Kirribilli and Milsons Point foreshores, and in the surrounding bushland. The area was a fertile fishing ground, and thus the name Kirribilli is derived from the Aboriginal word ''kiarabilli'', which means "good fishing spot". The name Cammeraygal is displayed on the North Sydney Municipal Council emblem, and also gave name to the suburb of Cammeray.

Kirribilli was settled early in the history of the Colony. One of the first records of land being granted on the North Shore was on the ''North side of the Harbour of Port Jackson opposite Sydney Cove'' on 20 February 1794 to an expired convict, Samuel Lightfoot.Land grants 1788–1809, page 18-19, Grant No. 151 (believed to be a reproduction of AO reel 2560) Lightfoot was a former convict, born in about 1763 and transported to Australia for seven years for stealing clothing. He arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 on the ''Charlotte''.

In 1794 Thomas Muir, a Scottish constitutional reformer, was sentenced to transportation for sedition. Thomas Muir purchased Lightfoot's farm. Muir also had a cottage on what is now Circular Quay. It is likely that the farm was located at the Jeffrey Street end of Kirribilli (not near Admiralty house) and was named "Huntershill" by Thomas Muir, after his father's home in Scotland. Thomas Muir escaped from the colony in 1796 aboard an American brig, the ''Otter''.

Four years later the Colonial Secretary recorded that the land grant to Lightfoot was cancelled and given to Robert Ryan in 1800 with no mention of the intermediate (private) sale to Muir. Ryan had worked in Norfolk Island, both as a soldier and also a settler. The of Lightfoot's Grant was cancelled and included in a grant to Ryan for his service in the Royal Marines and the NSW Corps. The corresponding entry in the Register of Land Grants states '' Cancelled, and a New Grant given to Robert Ryan for 90 acres in addition to this Allotment, by Governor Hunter. See the third Register, Folio 37.'' This grant to Ryan included almost all Kirribilli and later maps referred. By 1801, the property had passed into the hands of Robert Campbell, a wealthy Sydney merchant. Campbell built Australia's first shipbuilding yards in 1807, at the site that is now occupied by the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, Kirribilli. Part of the land in Kirribilli was also briefly used for quarantine purposes in 1814 for the convict ship ''Surry''. Over 46 persons had died during the voyage of typhoid including 36 convicts.

Campbell's property in Kirribilli was used for grazing under lease to Campbell's friend James Milson, hence the name "Milson's Point". Milson's Point is the next point along from Kirribilli point, where the Sydney Harbour Bridge now crosses the harbour. A plan of sub-division was drawn up in the 1840s by Campbell. In 1842, the site where Admiralty House now sits was leased to the Collector of Customs for the Colony, Lieutenant-Colonel (later full Colonel) Gibbes, MLC. Gibbes intended to build a private home on the site. (Since his arrival in the colony in 1834, Gibbes and his family had been living in Henrietta Villa, also known as the Naval Villa, on Sydney's Point Piper, under a leasehold arrangement.)

Private residence

On the superb Kirribilli Point location, Gibbes erected, between 1842 and 1843, a graceful single-storey house with wide verandahs and elegant French doors. Gibbes designed the house, which he called "Wotonga" (or "Woottonga"), himself. The stone for the house's walls was quarried locally and the hardwood and cedar joinery came from George Coleson's timber-yard in George Street, Sydney. Gibbes engaged James Hume, a well-known builder who dabbled in ecclesiastical architecture, to supervise the construction of the building and its stables. Gibbes, however, hired his own masons, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and ironmongers to work on the project, paying each of them separately as work progressed. Gibbes used the Custom Department's cutter to commute to and from the building site. Once completed, Gibbes' L-shaped residence featured a plain, yet stylish, double façade to maximise the building's magnificent, sweeping views across Sydney Harbour. These views enabled Gibbes to monitor shipping traffic in and out of Darling Harbour and, more importantly, Circular Quay, where the Sydney Customs House was situated.

Today, Wotonga forms the core of Admiralty House and the building's 180-degree, east–west panoramic sight-lines are even more spectacular than they were in Gibbes' day, owing to the subsequent high-rise growth of Sydney's CBD.

Gibbes, incidentally, was said to be the illegitimate child of His Royal Highness Frederick, Duke of York, (King George III's second son). This reputed connection to the British monarchy adds spice to the house on Kirribilli Point's subsequent role as a vice-regal establishment.Gibbes, Stephen, "John Gibbes: Builder of Admiralty House", ''North Sydney Historical Journal'', Volume 37, Number 1, April 1997, pp. 8–12.

In 1849, Robert Campbell died and the executors of the estate sold the property, comprising the house and land, to Gibbes for about A£1,400. On 27 December 1851, Gibbes, who was contemplating a departure from the Customs Service at the age of 64, sold the property to James Lindsay Travers, a merchant of Macquarie Place, Sydney, for £1,533. (Gibbes subsequently changed his mind about leaving his position as head of the NSW Customs Department; instead, he leased Greycliffe House at Shark Beach, Vaucluse, from the Wentworth family and remained in Sydney for the better part of eight years, eventually retiring to Yarralumla homestead, now the official Canberra residence of the Governor-General of Australia

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