The Honeysuckle Precinct is the region’s foremost social gathering place, with a collection of restaurants, cafes, public space, live entertainment and cultural activity making it a vibrant destination where there is always something happening.

Harbour Square is a wide area of open space where a unique sculpture and interactive water feature invite small hands and feet to play, while Boardwalk just next to Harbour Square is an enticing option, with its assortment of restaurants and casual bars and cafes.

Now in construction is the Lee Wharf development, a mixture of lifestyle-retail shops, cafes, restaurants and residential opening to the foreshore promenade. Nearby, the heritage-listed railway workshops provide living history in the form of venues for community events.

Back in Time

Either side of Merewether Street

Honeysuckle Precinct is split into two sections by Merewether Street, the eastern section originally controlled by the Australian Agricultural Company and the western section by the Department of Railways.

As the AA Company acquired its land in 1830, that section was developed early. It was used for a variety of purposes, many of them associated with the Company’s coal mines and the railways that served them. These are described in some detail by PA Pemberton in Pure Merinos, the shipping Lists of the Australian Agricultural Company, Canberra, 1986.

In 1840 The Church of England acquired a large area of land at Honeysuckle Point for the establishment and support of a grammar school. The Bishop’s Settlement, as it was called, was considered to be unsuitable for a school but it was divided into leases and by 1855 when it was resumed for railway purposes, there were about 70 houses on it.

On the western side of the precinct the Railways established their Honeysuckle Workshops that opened about 1856 and were developed in stages, reaching a peak about 1890 but then undergoing further expansion after World War I.

The opening of the Cardiff Railway Workshops in 1926 caused the removal of certain function from the Honeysuckle site and the demolition of some of the buildings there but other departmental uses continued until 1990.

On the Western waterfrontage of Honeysuckle Precinct several local government or state government users managed to operate with the permission of the Railways Department. These included a council stone crushing works, a water police station and a horse ferry wharf.

Source: summary from Honeysuckle Historical study by Dr J W Turner, 1994.