‘The Dig Site’, located in The Rocks between Cumberland and Gloucester Streets, is a parcel of land containing remains from the late 18th century, the time of Australia’s first European settlement.

The site was discovered in 1994, attracting enormous media and public attention. Some 400 volunteers and a team of 20 archaeologists were involved in the excavation of the site, which uncovered the foundations of 30 homes and shops (the earliest of which was built prior to 1795) and some 750,000 artefacts.

The site’s remains have provided a rare insight into early urban life in Sydney.

The Pre-European Landscape and the Cadigal People

The Rocks, as its name suggests, forms a rocky peninsula jutting out into Sydney Harbour. The people who lived on the shores of the harbour, prior to the Europeans’ arrival in the late 18th century, were the Cadigal (part of the Eora people). No remains of the Cadigal’s presence were found on the site — the ruggedness of the sandstone no doubt made it a fairly hostile and exposed place. However, not too far away on Cumberland Street, a campfire (dated almost 300 years before the arrival of the Europeans) was uncovered during the construction of the ANA Hotel (now Shangri-La Hotel). Among the ashes of the fire were found the bones of bream, snapper, oysters and other seafood.

Arrival of the Europeans

The Rocks quickly became home to many of the convicts of the First Fleet who arrived in 1788. The ridges, known as “the lines”, were named after the lines of tents and huts that housed the new arrivals. It was these people that set about transforming the rugged area – cutting, terracing and draining the landscape. Tracks leading from Sydney Cove were cut into the rocks; one of these was Cribbs Lane, the dig site’s first lane-way.

Early Residents of The Rocks

The names of the earliest European occupants of the area are unknown. In 1795, Ann Armsden and her First Fleet husband, George Legg, built a house on the site. Following George’s death in a boating accident on the harbour in 1807, Ann married her neighbour, George Talbot (a baker).

Irish rebel, Richard Byrne, lived on the site from around 1805. Byrne was a stonemason and may have been responsible for some of the quarrying of the site for his neighbours. It is likely that many of the houses on the site were constructed from materials from the nearby quarry in Cumberland Street.

A number of wells were cut into the rock for fresh water. The Byrnes’ well has a few steps cut into the stone leading to it. It was here, or perhaps a similar well in Cumberland Street, that a small child fell and drowned in 1810. The Byrne family lived on the site until the 1850s; their descendants can still be found living in The Rocks and Millers Point.

From 1809 to the late 1820s, convict George Cribb, also lived on the site. His house was located on the southeast side of Cribbs Lane (later named Cumberland Place). George was typical of many of the early convicts who prospered from the opportunities of the new colony. Though working for the government as part of his 14-year sentence, he also worked as a butcher — slaughtering cattle, sheep and pigs that he sold as meat to the colony and to ships leaving Sydney. His slaughterhouse was in the centre of his property, which took up the majority of land on the southern end of the site, and it was here that he buried the discarded skulls, horns and limbs of the slaughtered animals.

As Cribb’s fortune grew, he built a row of four tenements, which he rented out to other convicts and settlers. In 1817, following his marriage to widowed publican Sophia Lett, he built a butcher shop and a hotel — the Turk’s Head. Around this time, household items were discarded down the well on George’s property, including fine hand-painted Chinese porcelain and a butcher’s filleting knife. Why this occurred is uncertain, but it is documented that for some time before this, George had been under surveillance by the authorities for suspicion of dealing in illegally produced alcohol. George was arrested, but no evidence could be found to convict him; however, among the items found in the well was a small alcohol still.

By the late 1820s, George found himself in financial difficulties. His property was purchased by land speculators ‘Raine & Ramsay’, who subdivided it in the 1830s and sold off the parcels of land. They also created Carahers Lane to provide access between Cribbs Lane and Longs Lane to the south. In 1830 Cribbs’ house was renovated to become a two-storey, stone building with stables — it became the Whalers Arms pub.

Albert Nicholas bought the land on Cumberland Street and built five cottages over the former quarry. On Carahers Lane, six two-storey terraces were built, and by 1850 three more were built on Cribbs Lane. Over the next 70 years, these and other houses on the site were occupied by immigrant families from Ireland, England, Scandinavia, Portugal and other parts of Europe.

In many of these houses, rubbish was disposed of under the floorboards and it is this rubbish (40 centimeters built up over 50-80 years) that tells us much about the daily lives of the early inhabitants of this site. They ate well; lamb (not mutton), oysters, fish, chicken and duck, applied salad oils to salad and vegetables, ate pickles and chutneys as side dishes and often ate off the finest, bone china. Their houses were decorated with figurines, vases of flowers and often cowry shells and coral. They wore fashionable jewellery, sewed their own clothes and smoked from clay pipes. Their children played with dolls, miniature tea sets, marbles, toy soldiers, chess and dominoes.

The Byrne family sold off their land bit by bit in the 1840s and 50s. At the top of Cribbs Lane, Robert Berry established his bakery in 1844. Families of The Rocks often took their Sunday roasts to Berry’s bakery to be cooked in the ovens. On the other side of the lane, Robert’s sister, Jane, and her husband, Thomas Share, operated a pub called the ‘Plymouth Inn’, later called ‘The Australian’. When it was demolished in 1913, a new ‘Australian’ was built nearby, and remains there today.

The Plague: 1900

When the bubonic plague arrived in Sydney in 1900, it was thought that the densely occupied Rocks area would be hard hit. After the 1850s, Sydney was spreading out into the suburbs and many people no longer considered the old part of the city to be healthy and The Rocks became known as a “slum”. While piped water and sewerage had been connected to the site since the 1850s, negligent landlords had allowed the systems to fall into disrepair and some of the houses were 70-100 years old and poorly maintained.

As it turned out, only three people in The Rocks died from the bubonic plague. One of those who died was a 15-year-old paperboy named James Foy. He lived in a terrace in Cribbs Lane, but most likely contracted the disease on the waterfront. The total number of deaths in NSW was just over 100, mostly in other parts of Sydney.

Despite this, The Rocks was condemned to demolition and after being bought out by the State Government in 1901, the site was cleared. Of the people who lived here, some moved to the suburbs, others stayed nearby.

1901 to 1994

Apart from an engineering shed (on-site from 1917 to the 1930s) no other substantial buildings were built on the site. In the 1950s the site was used as a parking yard for buses and in the 1970s as a car-park. The concrete paving protected the archaeological remains, providing the opportunity to examine this record of the past when the site was discovered and excavated in 1994.

1994 to Now

The site has been closed to the general public since 1994.  Further archaeological excavations have been undertaken on sections of the site in 2005, 2006 and 2008.  Sydney Learning Adventures, the Historic Houses Trust, the University of Sydney and other organisations use the site for educational purposes. The site is also viewable by the public, with interpretation panels to assist understanding of the site.

More information

Inside The Rocks by Grace Karskens provides a detailed account of the history of The Dig Site. The book can be purchased from Sydney Harbour YHA Reception, from The Rocks Discovery Museum and the Sydney Visitors Information Centre.