When John Macarthur died and his Pyrmont estate was subdivided, the Chowne shipyards set up in 1840, followed by iron foundries and tin smiths. Stone was being quarried, especially in O’Brien¹s quarry which was selling stone as ballast for sailing ships. The land now occupied by Cadi Park was flattened, creating an escarpment.
A bridge linking Glebe Island to Pyrmont and Ultimo (1857) allowed cattle and carcasses to cross the peninsula from Island abattoirs. Fyfes iron foundry and City Iron Works added atmosphere. Our shoreline was already polluted when CSR arrived and built a refinery, which opened in 1878. This was larger than earlier refineries, and ­ as world prices collapsed in the 1880s – CSR harnessed science and technology to ensure survival, then South Pacific dominance.
The Tablet House site would become vital to the scientific elements of CSR’s operations, but at first the flattened land, partly enclosed by the escarpment, merely formed part of the raw sugar store.