ANNUAL ADDRESS. III. 



that the allotments should be granted with the condition that 

 only one house should be erected on each block. Had these liberal 

 views with regard to Sydney been adhered to, the city would not 

 have been disfigured as it now is by such numbers of narrow and 

 irregular streets. What was in many respects, one of the best 

 sites in the world for a model city, has for more than a century 

 been the field of narrow and disjointed enterprises put forward 

 by individual and opposing interests. Authority that should have 

 made itself felt in the improvement of the city and the welfare of 

 the citizens, seems to have either lain dormant through ignorance 

 or otherwise to have been kept down by the heel of private interest, 

 until at length, when the fair fame of Sydney was nearly prostrate 

 in the slough of neglect and abuse, but before it became quite a 

 byeword and reproach among the nations, the strong arm of 

 Government has been raised to rescue it. 



In the first survey of the foreshores of the town of Sydney, 

 Surveyor Alt was materially assisted by Captain Hunter, Lieu- 

 tenant Bradley, and Lieutenant W. Dawes. He had nothing to 

 do with the marine survey of Port Jackson, or of any of the 

 coast, bays, and harbours. Governor Hunter, who seems from his 

 plans as printed, to have been a good draughtsman, apparently 

 did a great deal of this work personally ; the land surveys how- 

 ever, were performed by Mr. Alt, with some assistance from 

 Lieutenant Dawes, who had a taste for engineering, although his 

 special work was astronomy. Dawes might have been of valuable 

 service to the State had he stayed longer, but in 1791 he had a 

 quarrel with Governor Phillip which led to his returning to 

 England. (He appears to have had some humane objections to 

 the military being sent out to destroy the natives, which Phillip 

 resented). Dawes commenced the erection of an observatory on 

 the point still known by his name, but he left the State before 

 there was any thought of erecting the battery called after him. 

 The only battery with which Dawes as an artillery officer was 

 associated was an earth work around the Flagstaff, erected on a 

 point in Sydney Cove, somewhere near where the Paragon hotel 

 now stands. 



