Allan Cunningham Obelisk

The next part of our public art walk took us past The Allan Cunningham Obelisk set in a pond near the Botanic Garden Restaurant.

It is in honour of Allan Cunningham who was an explorer and botanist. He worked for sir Joseph Banks in London and travelled with Phillip Parker King on four journeys to survey the Australian coastline. He was also a Superintendent of the Botanic Garden for a short time "resigning when, as a newspaper put it he 'would no longer consent to be a mere cultivator of cabbages and turnips'.

 

He died in 1839 and was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery but his remains were moved in 1901 to the memorial obelisk above. His tombstone is mounted on the wall of the National Herbarium of NSW.

 

The plants in the garden beds around the obelisk pond are examples of plants collected by Allan Cunningham from the Illawarra between 1818 and 1822.

 

This monument is difficult to photograph because it is always in shade. 

 

More on Macquarie Place

This small piece of land on the corner of Bridge and Loftus Streets has a number of significant remnants of the past a couple of which are in previous posts.

Macquarie Place was the first planned town square in colonial Sydney. It was formalised by Governor Lachlan Macquarie when he erected an obelisk in 1818 to mark the place from which all public roads in the colony were measured. The obelisk was designed by Francis Greenway and built by Edward Cureton a convict stonemason, from sandstone quarried around Sydney Cove.

It is the oldest surviving public monument in Australia.

This obelisk still remains as a marker and starting point for The Great North Walk.