Mosman real estate: postcode, population and history

The Borogegal tribe originally inhabited the land that became Mosman. Bungaree, who was born around 1775, joined British explorers on their voyages. When he was 26 he sailed around Australia with Matthew Flinders.

Bungaree later led his tribe and received a grant of land at Georges Head. He had the patronage of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and met the newcomers arriving through Port Jackson, coming to know explorers from Russia and France. He was painted often, and those portraits were displayed in London, Paris and Moscow. He died about 1830.

The suburb takes its name from Archibald Mosman (1799 to 1863) and his twin brother George, who took up a four acre land grant here in 1831. The brothers worked in shipping and ran a whaling station on the bay that took the name Mosman's Bay. George later turned to grazing, while Archibald stayed with whaling. By 1838 he held 108 acres of the Mosman waterfront.

In the late 1820s American whaling ships used Chowder Bay as an anchorage when they called. Grants of land in Mosman Bay were allotted to Archibald Mosman and John Bell in 1831, so that a whaling station could be established. The Barn on Avenue Road is the one building left from that station. It served as a store and a sail-drying house and is now home to a Scout group. Mosman Council maintains Archibald's grave at St Jude's Church cemetery in Randwick.

In 1789 the First Fleet's flagship, HMS Sirius, entered the water now called Mosman Bay, or Great Sirius Cove. Since 1801 the area has carried maritime and defence installations of importance to Sydney. As Sydney's harbour defences grew, Middle Head Fort, Georges Head Battery and the Bradleys Head Fortification Complex were built. The Beehive Casemate was cut into the cliff beside Obelisk Bay in 1871.

In the 1880s a depot for submarine miners was built at Chowder Bay, at Georges Head, and the site was adapted in 1888 for the newest harbour defences. Between 1876 and 1922 mines were laid underwater across Port Jackson's main shipping channels. From Georges Head, miners kept watch for ships coming into the harbour. Their task was to set off the mine nearest an approaching enemy ship, each mine joined by an electric cable running up the cliff to the firing post. A demonstration in 1891 drew a crowd of several thousand, who watched a fatal accident that killed four miners and injured eight more.

In the 1880s and 1890s painters set up camps around the harbour, mainly in the Mosman area, and these were known as the Sydney artists' camps. Painting outdoors, en plein air, was in fashion, encouraged by the Barbizon and Impressionist movements in France. Mosman gained the description 'Australia's most painted suburb'. Among the painters in that community were Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, John Mather and Julian Ashton. Curlew Camp stood at Little Sirius Cove, and a rock on the cove's eastern shore still carries an inscription reading 'Curlew 1890'.

In the 1840s a track on foot ran from North Sydney to Middle Head. Avenue Road, between Mosman Bay and Mosman Junction, was built in 1860. Bradleys Head Road, Middle Head Road and Military Road came ten years later. Development spread east from Milson's Point during the 1870s and reached the Mosman area. The Mosman area was boosted by a regular ferry service around the same time.

Richard Harnett Senior bought Archibald Mosman's 108 acres in 1859 and set up a sandstone quarry at Mosman Bay in 1878. He put up a wharf in 1871 and helped fund a ferry route linking Circular Quay, Mosman Bay and Neutral Bay. He promoted a development called the Mosman Bay Estate. Once the land sold, the ferry service stopped, which annoyed the new landowners.

Richard Harnett Junior, his son, became the first Mayor when Mosman broke away from the North Sydney municipality and became a municipality in its own right in 1893, with 1,600 residents. Mosman Public School had opened in 1880. Between them the Harnetts built many roads and started a horse-drawn bus service, as well as ferries linking Mosman to the city.

Rows of shops and Federation style homes went up around the start of the 20th century. Mosman Council has named the early 20th century strip of shops along Military Road a conservation area. Taronga Zoo opened in 1916, moving from Moore Park, where a zoo had been in use since 1884. The name Taronga is an Aboriginal word meaning 'beautiful view'.

In 1942 a boom net was built on Georges Head to stop enemy submarines entering Sydney Harbour. Three Japanese midget submarines tried to enter the harbour on 31 May that year. One became caught in the boom net; after the crew failed to free it, they detonated charges inside, killing themselves and destroying the submarine. In the late 1950s multi-storey flats began to appear, and public concern about them brought in controls and restrictions. Mosman Town Hall was the setting, on 21 June 1966, for an attempted assassination of the federal opposition leader. In 2006 a six-inch naval gun was installed at the Lower Georges Heights Battery, standing in for one of the guns that guarded the harbour in the early 1900s.