In April he was appointed Governor of New South Wales with instructions to restore order after a rebellion against the previous governor, William Bligh better remembered for being captain of HMS Bounty at the time of the famous mutiny. Macquarie served as Governor of New South Wales until and did much during his tenure to help shape Australia into the country it has since become.
He was also the first person to use the name "Australia" in an official document, which he did in This list excludes assorted parishes, streets and other minor features which also bear his name, including an Australian parliamentary constituency. Portrait of Lachlan Macquarie, , John Opie. The exhibition featured historical artefacts from the early days of the colony, including key documents issued by Lachlan Macquarie, a holey dollar, love tokens inscribed by convicts and breastplates presented to Aboriginal people.
He promptly annulled all laws and appointments made in the wake of a military coup that had deposed his predecessor, Governor William Bligh, in Re-establishing the rule of law was to be his first task in a year term that would transform the colony from a dumping ground for convicts to a prosperous settlement. Macquarie steered the colony towards economic independence. Despite the many improvements he instigated, Macquarie was undermined by disaffected settlers who resented his approach, and frustrated by the changing priorities of the British government.
The Rum Hospital Upon his arrival in the Colony of New South Wales at the end of , Governor Macquarie discovered that the town hospital was an affair of tents and temporary buildings established in the notorious "Rocks" area when the First Fleet arrived in He set aside land on the western edge of the Government Domain for a new Hospital, creating a new road, Macquarie Street, for it.
Plans were drawn up but the British Government refused to fund the project. So Macquarie entered into a contract with a consortium of businessmen: Messrs Blaxcell, Riley and Wentworth, to erect the new hospital. They were to receive convict labour and supplies and a monopoly on rum-imports from which they expected to recoup the cost of the building and gain considerable profits. The contract allowed them to import 45, later increased to 60, gallons of rum to sell to the thirsty colonists.
In the event, the Hospital did not turn out to be very profitable for the contractors. Upon the Hospital's completion, the now famous convict architect, Francis Greenway, was asked to report on the quality of the work. He condemned it, claiming that it "must soon fall into ruin". Short-cuts had been taken with the construction and there were weak joints in the structural beams, rotting stonework, feeble foundations, and dry rot in the timbers.
Macquarie ordered the contractors to remedy these defects but many remained hidden away until the extensive restoration of the s. The new hospital had a large central building, which was the main hospital, and two smaller wings which were quarters for the Surgeons. The central building was replaced in by the present Macquarie Street buildings of Sydney Hospital, but the smaller wings remain.
The southern section eventually became the Sydney Mint, and was, in recent times, a museum. The northern wing, built for the Principal Surgeon, remains today as the colonnaded Macquarie Street facade of a much enlarged Parliament House. The first Surgeon to reside in the building was D'Arcy Wentworth, who also had other connections with the building. First, he had been one of the three contractors who had built the Hospital under the "rum contract" with Macquarie, and secondly, his son, William Charles Wentworth, explorer and journalist, became one of the most important figures in the development of Parliamentary democracy in NSW, and is regarded as the "father of the constitution".
In , the first Legislative Council moved into part of the Surgeon's Quarters. The surgeons remained until , and other rooms were sometimes occupied by other government officials, such as the Principal Supervisor of Convicts, and even by Sydney's first museum. By the Legislature had taken over the entire building and was adding to it.
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