Ninety years earlier the governor for whom the street was named had ordered Sydney’s first hospital built, had provided the convict labour to build it, and had pulled off a clever trick with rum duties to pay for it. The resulting building was so shoddily constructed it had been declared unfit for purpose before it was even completed. When the gentlemen of the Legislative Assembly had finally moved in, the chamber’s acoustics were so poor parliamentary sessions were routinely interrupted whenever troops from the nearby barracks used the Domain as a firing range. A competition to design a magnificent new Parliament House was held and a foundation stone for the new building laid amid great pomp and festivity, but afterwards, when someone actually sat down and calculated the cost of it all, the entire endeavour was quietly shelved, and a year or two later the foundation stone discreetly dug up and removed.

Such an inauspicious start to its sovereignty might have hampered other dominions, but the colony of New South Wales wore its unorthodox beginnings as a badge of honour. And as the men who had filled its legislative chambers ever since had brokered cabinet posts as favours, and made fortunes rerouting railway lines across their own land and passing legislation that lined their own pockets, all in the name of the public good, perhaps it was fitting that the parliament start its life this way.

On this particular evening Parliament House was brilliantly lit and the line of carriages, one of which contained Eleanor Dunlevy, led all the way back to Hyde Park. As each carriage drew up in the driving rain it sent water cascading in great arcs and created great puddles through which the footmen dashed. Gentlemen in top hats and ladies in elegant gowns and extravagant headwear climbed hurriedly down, shielded beneath vast umbrellas, and chose, according to their affiliation, to enter the house via one flight of stairs or via a second, the one leading to the Legislative Assembly foyer, the other to the Legislative Council foyer. It did not seem to matter that beyond both foyers the rather modest building converged into a single lobby area, this demarcation must be, and was, observed by one and all. The clerks of the house understood it, so did the grooms and the footmen, and so did the wives who accompanied the gentlemen. And lest one should be in any doubt, the Council foyer was red (plush red carpet, red wallpaper, red upholstery) and the Assembly foyer was green (green-patterned carpet, green wallpaper, green upholstery). Where these two areas converged the carpet was red, the upholstery green, the columns papered half in red, half in green. It was enough to bring on a bilious attack, so it was as well that the hospital was right next door.