The residence of Edward Riley Esquire, Wooloomooloo, Near Sydney N. S. W.

Granted an absolute pardon by Governor Macquarie in November 1821, forger Joseph Lycett was able to depart for England with his two daughters in 1822. His collection of fifty Australian landscapes, titled Views in Australia, or New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land Delineated, was issued in parts in 1824 and 1825, and published in a single volume in 1825. This image depicts plate 4 from the volume.

Lycett’s accompanying letterpress describes the depicted scene stating that:

Wooloomooloo is situated about half a mile from the Town of Sydney, to the south-east of Government House. It was built, in 1800, by John Palmer, Esq. ... and was the most extensive private undertaking of that age. ... The … prospect of the adjacent country is rude and romantic, broken with large masses of rock, and some towering Eucalyptus. The Garden is very large and walled, containing every choice Fruit which that luxuriant climate produces or raises; and a considerable space of land has been cleared at the back, for the cultivation of English Grasses, &c. Wooloomooloo is an interesting object to Vessels in their passage up the Harbour, as they approach to their anchorage; and is also seen to advantage from several parts of the ride round the Government Domain. It is a native name; and this particular spot was, until the last ten years, always much frequented by the Natives, and a favourite resort for their Corrobborees, and other pastimes; and, to this day, large parties of them repose under the confines of the establishment during the night, while they visit Sydney and its vicinity.

Lycett’s commentary sounds like an estate agent’s copy, which to a certain extent it was. Its optimistic tone, together with the verdant, manicured charm of the landscapes themselves, casts him as an unofficial spruiker for emigration to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. The volulme Views in Australia, though, was essentially targeted at the ‘Home’ market for travel literature, and it is interesting to observe Lycett manipulating his images to make them more appealing to that audience. His 1819 watercolour of Wooloomooloo [sic] survives (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), and a comparison of it with this view shows dead trees replaced with thriving specimens, and the peopling of the later view with staffage figures – excursionists, a gathering of Aboriginal people, and boating parties. Woolloomooloo is now one of the most densely-populated pieces of land in Australia. Some of the landscape on the right of Lycett’s view, including the rock formation known as ‘Mrs Macquarie’s Chair’ (on which the excursionists stand), survives as part of the Domain.

Edited from text by Terence Lane from Nineteenth-Century Australian Art in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 22.