Hors d'Oeuvre: This House Was Once On A Farm

Title: Stone Farm Cottage.
Status: Private Dwelling. (Please don't disturb the resident. The interior is NOT open to the public)
Distance: 9 Minutes Walk.
Location: 59 Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo.
Cost: Free.
This simple stone cottage is unique in the area. No one knows when it was built exactly, but in 1859 it was recorded as being on a dairy farm. Presumably this was the 9 acres granted to Alexander MacDuff Baxter in 1831.

Around this time the city did not come this far, although on the ridge behind, then called Woolloomooloo Hill, now called Kings Cross, stood 2 large windmills that produced a substantial part of the colony's flour. In the mid 1830's the hill was subdivided into large estates for the wealthy. Elizabeth Bay House is a surviving example. A painting by George Peacock done in 1849 shows this area was quite  rural, large scale development of this area didn't occur until the 1850's and 1860's.  The oldest house in Woolloomooloo that can prove it's age was built in 1853.

Meanwhile we know this house was here in 1859, and was on a dairy. I have often wondered if  it is actually the little house down the hill seen in Peacock's painting. No one will ever know, but every time I walk past this little treasure the romantic inner me wants to believe that this is really the oldest house in Woolloomooloo, and in my minds eye I see a cow or two in the shadows out back.