1810

The first known white people to view Bondi and Sydney’s eastern beaches were crew aboard Captain James Cook's ship Endeavour in 1770. Eight years later, Britain’s great social and penal colony experiment in the great south land began with the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788.

With few geographical features to impede exploration of the area to the east of the fleet’s landing place at Sydney Cove, the first European association with what today are known as the eastern suburbs was the establishment of a signals station on South Head at the entrance to Sydney Harbour.

From January 1793, successive colonial governors granted land to military and government officials, civilians and emancipated convicts to help augment the colony's food supplies. The beaches, swamps and low-lying sandy scrub of Bondi, and Waverley, were of little interest to agriculturalists, but the forested areas in the eastern beaches soon attracted timber getters.

By 1809, a rough track existed out to the station at South Head, which was used to signal passing ships. Construction of a more formal road (now known as Old South Head Road and Oxford Street) was overseen and completed by Bondi’s first land-owner William Roberts in 1811.

That road 'allowed the colonists a view of the district and its possibilities’. The Sydney Gazette of 1812 described the journey along the South Head Road from Sydney Town as a 'pleasant ride, or promenade' for those possessing a carriage. So began Waverley’s long association as a place for recreation.

Roads proved vital to Waverley’s development. The first land grant was signed off by Governor Lachlan Macquarie 1810 to Roberts, a former convict, publican and noted Sydney road builder. Roberts, like other earlier Bondi land-owners, did not reside in Waverley, but leased his land out for cattle grazing. His 200-acre grant at Bondi effectively cut off public access to the beach for nearly a century.

Images courtesy the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection and the State Library of New South Wales.