History
Excavations around Tank Stream have uncovered aboriginal flake stone artifacts made from water-worn pebbles. The stream gave the aborigines fresh water, fish and other resources. The area was chosen by First Fleet Captain Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788 as the location for the New South Wales colony for similar reasons.
The colony had originally been planned for Botany Bay, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks who had visited the area with Captain James Cook 17 years earlier, but when no fresh water was found there, Phillip sought a better site, and found it in the previously unvisited Port Jackson. Sydney Cove was chosen for settlement as it "was at the head of the cove, near the run of fresh water which stole silently along through a very thick wood". On 26 January 1788 the new colony was inaugurated.
During a drought in 1790 three storage tanks were constructed in the sandstone beside the Tank Stream and it is from these that the stream gets its name. The Tank Stream could not meet the needs of the growing colony. It was abandoned in 1826, though it had been little more than an open sewer for the preceding two decades. Sydney's next supply of water was Busby's Bore, in 1830.
In 1850 the swamp feeding the Tank Stream was drained. Starting in 1860, the Tank Stream was progressively covered and is now a storm water channel which is controlled by Sydney Water. Recently there have been calls from some to see it run above ground again to create a central feature in the city.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
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