Mrs Macquaries Chair, Sydney, 28.05.2011.

From Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden, we walked back to Milson’s Point, had an ethnic lunch at the Kirribilli upmarket Markets then caught the train to the Sydney Art Gallery where we saw the Archibald Prize winners.  To be honest, I had a greater thrill from seeing the familiar colonial Australian paintings by John Glover, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and my favourite, Elioth Gruner’s Spring Frost. 

 

Mrs Macquaries Chair (also incorrectly called Lady Macquarie's Chair) is an exposed sandstone rock cut into the shape of a bench, on a peninsula in Sydney Harbour, hand carved by convicts from sandstone in 1810 for Governor Macquarie's wife Elizabeth. The peninsula itself is named Mrs Macquaries Point. It is part of the Royal Botanic Gardens, at the end of Mrs Macquaries Road.

Mrs Macquarie was the wife of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. Folklore has it that she used to sit on the rock and watch for ships from Great Britain sailing into the harbour. She was known to visit the area and sit enjoying the panoramic views of the harbour.

While Mrs Macquarie enjoyed visiting her chair by carriage, we had to walk (from the Art Gallery).

For those mystified by the apparent lack of apostrophes in certain Australian place names, this is the style adopted by the Australian Geographic Names Board.

 

The views from Mrs Macquaries Chair are still enjoyed today, over 150 years later, by hundreds of locals and tourists each day.  There were also five brides and their freezing attendants.

 

 

 

Mrs Macquarie would have seen rolling hills and much more greenery, but she wouldn’t have had this stunning view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House which was presumably what the brides were shivering for.

 

 

 

We then walked beside the water around the curve of the bay to the Opera House, and settled ourselves into the Opera Bar.