Location: 1003 Upper Fort Street, Millers Point, Sydney.
Country: Gadigal
LGA: City of Sydney
Region: The Rocks
Website: powerhouse.com.au/visit/sydney-observatory
Map: below
Sydney Observatory, on Gadigal Country in the IAT City of Sydney, New South Wales, is one of European Australia’s most significant astronomical heritage sites. Completed in 1858, it is now part of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and hosts regular programs exploring ‘human connections to Sky Country, astronomy, tradition and artistic practice to reveal enduring and new ways of seeing.’
Custodianship of Sky Country and Sydney Observatory, Powerhouse Museum
First Nations communities hold deep knowledges and connections to the skies which have developed over millennia. These observations and living records predate the oldest ‘Western’ observatory in Australia, the Sydney Observatory. It’s time for First Nations custodianship of Sky Country to guide the stories that Sydney Observatory tells.
Situated on Gadigal land, the Sydney Observatory has a strong documented history of its colonial beginning, detailing its historic astronomical and weather monitoring achievements by the men and women who contributed to its establishment in 1858 and its activities ever since.
Being the highest point in Sydney, it is more than probable that First Nations people have been observing and communing with Sky Country from this location for hundreds of generations.
Its precise traditional history has been concealed due to the interruption of colonisation, leaving mostly speculation as to the site’s original significance to Traditional Owners. It is possible the original cultural significance has been subject to deliberate colonial erasure, such as that of another cultural site just meters away documented at Dawes Point, when rock carvings of a shark and man were destroyed during the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
You’ll find more on The Sydney Observatory’s history at Museums of History NSW.
Captions
Top feature photo: Sydney Observatory, by Merrill Findlay, 10 January 2024.
Bottom photo: Exterior of Sydney Observatory, as it was in 1872, by Charles Pickering, from original albumen print, State Library of New South Wales, PXD 524
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Post published 5 March 2024. Last revised 25 September, 2025.