Waipa, Hawea and Arawa.

I've always walked past 33-37 Cambridge Street and wondered what the inspiration behind the names was.  Speaking to one of the residents I had heard they were New Zealand lakes.  Let's see if we can confirm that.

I first decided to google the three names at once to see if anything came up.  One hit was the Journal of the Polynesian Society, which confirmed the NZ connection.  Some interesting findings but nothing that really links them all together:

• Waipa is a river in the Waikato area, and also does have some wetlands and a peat lake.  It was also an electorate in NZ which existed for various periods from 1876 to 1996.  
• Hawea were considered the earliest inhabitants of the South Island, but it is also a lake near Wanaka; and 
• Arawa is, according to Maori tradition, the name of one of the great canoes that was used in the migrations to Aotearoa (aka NZ).  

The second link was more promising.  This was an old newspaper from the NZ national library.  It was the shipping news from the port of Lyttelton on 19 January 1885.  Turns out that those were also names of steam ships running the inter-colonial trade back in the day (& maybe not so coincidentally, when these houses were constructed).

Now given the prominence of shipping matters back in Sydney in the 1880s/90s (and the couple of Ships Captains living on the street) I think it is quite likely that the builder / owner / developer of 33-37 just might have taken some inspiration from the Shipping News in the local press.  Anyway, that is my theory.  Now let's look at some pictures of old boats ...

Above is an old photo of the clipper-type steamship Arawa.  This photo is from 1885 and was taken in Otago harbour.   This was a pretty big boat for the day (over 5,000 tons) and worked the UK - NZ run.  Here is a link with some more info.

Next off the rank is the Waipa.  Originally constructed as a fully rigged vessel but then converted to a barque (not that I really know what any of that means).  Apologies for the grainy image but this is the best the internet I could find.  This 1,000 ton vessel was built in 1875 by Palmer's Iron Shipbuilding Company at Newcastle upon Tyne for the New Zealand Shipping Company (the same company that ran the Arawa).  This ship also ran the UK - NZ run.  More on this ship in this link.

Finally we have the Hawea.   The top photo dates from the 1880s so was certainly the ship getting around when Cambridge Street was built.  It was built in about 1875 and was 720 tons.  Small compared to the Arawa but apparently still big for the time, especially for the coastal trade.  It was part of the Union Steam Ship Co. which had the most of the Trans-Tasman trade.  The bottom image is from 1908 when this ship (or its successor) had the unfortunate circumstance to run ashore at the entrance to the Grey River in Greymouth.

More house names

As a follow-up to the house name post we have sleuthed a couple more to add to the list.  A birth announcement from the SMH on 13 July 1895 listed Peter Carter's wife giving birth to a son at "Arcadia", Cambridge Street Paddington. 

We checked the Sands Directory to see if we could see which house Peter Carter was living in and according to the 1896 edition he was at 81 Cambridge street.  Arcardia seems a pretty apt name for this house given that in the 1890s it would've commanded a vision of pastoralism in the form of the nearby dairy and the chinese market gardens!

The house was still referred to as "Arcadia" into the 1920s.  The funeral notice for August Danker from the 4 October 1922 SMH says that it "will leave his late residence, Arcadia, 81 Cambridge street, Paddington, this day (Wednesday) at 2.00pm for the Waverley Cemetary.  Masonic and other friends please accept this invitation."

The only trouble is that 81 Cambridge is now known as "Elgin".  Looks like the etched glass above the door isn't original (I never really trust a name that isn't set in the render, although "Langlo" shows that you can tamper with that as well). 

Another name to add to the list is for 48 Cambridge street, which was apparently known as "Perim" back in the day.  Given that 46 - 52 were all on the same title, and built by the same builder, it made sense that 48 would've had a name although I don't know why it wasn't listed with the others in the Sands Directory.  This name was sourced from the Paddington council rate books which also referenced the name occasionally.  For the record, the north west end of Cambridge street ran "Candelo" (46); "Perim" (48); "Golspie" (50) and "Kibworth" (52).  That is quite an international line up: Candelo is a municipality in Piedmont in Italy, 60 kms from Turin (okay, its also on the South Coast as we revealed earlier); Perim is an island at the entrance into the Red Sea; Golspie is a town in Scotland; and Kibworth is in Leicestershire, England.

Aberdeen Villas - 61 to 69 Cambridge Street

The group of terraces from 61 to 69 Cambridge Street were built by James Dillon c1887 as part of his growing property portfolio.  They were named "Aberdeen Villas".  It is not uncommon for groups of terraces to be jointly named and you can see plenty of examples walking around Paddington where they have memorialised the name in render. This is the only example of a group name I know of on Cambridge Street, and when you don't put the name in concrete it does make it easier for the original name to fall out of use.

Here are some advertisements from the SMH for the Villas back in the day.  The top one is from 24 October 1887 and the below from 23 January 1888.

In a typical Paddington terrace development an owner may buy two blocks from a subdivision and build three or more houses.  So one issue for being the first to build on the street was that you wouldn't definitively know your actual house number until the whole street had been built out (which for the east side of Cambridge Street was by 1890).  In that sense, it helped to have a house name to identify your residence. For the residents of Aberdeen Villas they actually had 'sub-numbers' as this advertisement from May of 1888 shows. I would guess that No. 2 Aberdeen Villas would now be known as 63 Cambridge Street.

The name Aberdeen Villas gradually fell from use, the latest reference I found was from a funeral notice from December 1902. In it, the late resident of 65 Cambridge Street refers to his house as 'Aberdeen Villa'. 

State Election 1894.

Given today is the local government elections I thought it fitting to look at some past results.  Here are the results from the State Election of 1894 for the Division of Paddington (remember there were no Federal Elections back then):

Candidate (Party) - Votes

Byrne, Stephen Albyn (Labor Party) 309 

Cowper, William (Ind. Free Trade) 2 

Dillon, James (Ind. Free Trade) 77

Godfrey, Alfred (Ind. Free Trade) 4

Kirby, Roger Thomas (Ind. Protectionist) 38

Robinson, John (Ind. Protectionist) 7

Shipway, William Charles (Free Trade) 731

West, Thomas John (Ind. Free Trade) 390

White, John (Protectionist) 420

Whysall, Maitland Edwin Smedley (Ind. Free Trade) 15

Formal votes - 1,993

The first thing I noticed is that it didn't take much to be elected to Parliament back in the day.  But you need to remember that not everyone got to vote back then. Certainly not women, they were to get the vote in NSW in 1902. To get an "Elector's Right" (see photo above for an example) you had to be "qualified in respect of Manhood and in Residence of such Division". Qualifying for manhood was simple, you needed to be a bloke and over 21. Of course, you did need to be a natural born citizen or a naturalised person who had resided in NSW for three years. Residence is also fairly straightforward but the 1894 election was the first to happen without "plural voting", which was being able to vote anywhere you qualified, this meant if you were a landowner in multiple electorates you had a vote in each, from 1894 onwards it was only one vote per man (or from 1902 per person) where you lived. If you think this governance set-up was primitive remember that prior to the Electoral Reform Act of 1858 only landowners could vote (only an estimated 25% of the male population). The 1858 Act also brought in secret voting which was such a novelty it was referred to as the "Australian ballot" worldwide.

The second thing I noticed was that these elections were first past the post so Shipway was returned for Paddington with only just over 36% of the vote. Another thing is the proliferation of candidates nominally attached to one of the major parties.  Despite that, it appears Paddington was definitely a bastion of free trade back in the day with the Protectionists not doing so well (the Free Traders won the election of 1894 with Sir George Reid becoming Premier).

Eagle-eyed readers may recognise a name from the Sands Directory of 1893.  That is Cambridge Street's own Roger Kirby of "Candelo", 46 Cambridge Street.  He only garnered 38 votes but that placed him a respectable 6th place (out of ten).  Local landlord and alderman James Dillon fared only marginally better with his 77 votes securing 5th place.  I did a little more research on Roger as I figured he must have been fairly well known to throw his hat in the ring and I was right.

Turns out Roger was an Alderman on Paddington Council. The following extract from the SMH of 10 February 1886 has the electoral results. Roger Kirby remained on council until 1890.

In 1899 he attained a little notoriety from an incident when he appeared at the Water Police Court before Mr GH Smithers Stipendiary Magistrate, charged with drunkenness and "maliciously injuring the uniform cape" of Constable Linegar. He was ordered to pay a fine of 5s for the drunkenness and a fine of 10s, with 27s 4d amount of damage, or go to prison for 21 days for the uniform discretion. At the time he was 62 years old and described of independent means.

But it turns he was a bit of a political animal back in the day.  In the NSW election prior to 1894, held in 1891, Roger Kirby also threw his hat in the ring. Strangely not for the Paddington electorate but for the South Coast electorate of Eden (despite being a Sydney resident). At the time it was actually quite common to contest electorates as a non-resident but even today that 450km journey from Paddington is estimated by google maps as taking 6 hours.

A little more digging turns up that Roger had earlier set himself up down there. In a little southern NSW town called Candelo no less (which is in the Bega shire and would've been in the Eden electorate back then). The following is from the Australian Town and Country Journal from November 1877:

So it looks like you can take the boy out of Candelo but you can't take the Candelo out of the boy, and solves one question as to why 46 Cambridge Street was named "Candelo" in the first place.  

Cambridge street house names

One of the things I find interesting walking around Paddington is the old house names.  Cambridge street is no exception.  Walking down the eastern side of the street you will be able to pick out the following:
33 - "Waipa"
35 - "Hawea"
37 - "Arawa"
47 - "Westbury"
49 - "Sherbrooke" (pictured above, some great craftsmanship there)
53 - "Larkhall"
55 - "Langlo"
59 - "Frampton"
77 - "Oceana"
81 - "Elgin"

Those last two are brass plaques near the door so you have to be beady eyed.  I didn't think there were any names on the western side at first glance although a closer inspection reveals a date (1890) and name etched in the glass above the door on one terrace ...

30 - "Phoenix"

I had wondered if my terrace had a name so off I went to the Mitchell Library for a little research.  A great source is the Sands Directory.  This is like a phone book without the phone numbers.  It was published from the 1800s to 1933 and lists addresses by suburb and street and then gives the resident and occasionally their occupation and even a house name.  Unfortunately, it is not yet online but you soon get the gist of the microfiche.

East side Cambridge street house names found in the Sands Directory in 1890/1891:
7 - "Carlton"
9 - "Brunswick"
11 - "Eglington" (this place may have identity issues, changing names to "Olga" in 1896, and to "Meroo" by 1912)
13 - "Genoa"
19 - "Kanimbula"
45 - "Westbury" (maybe a spot of re-numbering at one point, or a misprint by Sands)
55 - "Glenelg" (which makes its current signage of Langlo a more recent addition)
59 - "Frampton"
Additionally, it appears that the group of terraces from 61-69 were originally known as the "Aberdeen Villas" in 1889.  There is also reference to a "Hiram" but the street number was not given, it was between 45 and 55.

On the west side we have the following names from 1890/1891:
44 - "Wallaroobee"
46 - "Candelo"
52 - "Kibworth"
Additionally, 50 was listed as "Golspie" by 1901.