Walkabout with Ruth Darlinghurst to East Sydney (Part 1)

I begin my walk at St Vincent's Hospital, established in 1857 by five Irish Sisters of Charity, who had migrated to Sydney in 1838 with a mission to help the poor and disadvantaged. Some of their early work included helping victims of the 1853 influenza outbreak and families of prisoners in the nearby Darlinghurst Gaol. They established a hospital that was free for all people but founded especially for the poor, on a nonsectarian basis.

Opposite the hospital is the Sydney Jewish Museum on Darlinghurst Rd.

It is housed in the historic Maccabean Hall, which was built to commemorate Jewish men and women from NSW who served in WWI. This building, formally opened on Armistice Day 1923 by Sir John Monash, has long been a hub of Jewish life in Sydney and was judged an appropriate site for the Sydney Jewish Museum.

26 years since its inception, the Museum continues to give a voice to the victims of the Holocaust so their stories can start conversations and inspire change. The Sydney Jewish Museum’s tagline, "Where history has a voice", distills the origins of the Museum and its mission that continues to carry it forward into the future. The objects within the collection and on display in the Museum’s exhibitions tell the stories of their owners and contribute to the narratives that the Museum tells within its walls.

Originally, it began as an off-shoot of the nearby Woolloomooloo Baptist Church, formed in 1872 with the Reverend Frederick Hibberd as its pastor. Parishioner and architect John Stone, designed the new, purpose-built church the Burton Street Tabernacle which was completed in 1887 and was the focus of local Baptist worship for over 100 years. In 2004, the building was acquired by the City of Sydney who transformed it into a theatre. Work began in 2008, and the building was reopened as a state-ofthe-art venue known as the Eternity Playhouse in 2013. The name Eternity Playhouse came about back when the building was the Burton Street Tabernacle, Reverend John Ridley reportedly told the congregation that he wished he could ‘shout eternity through the streets of Sydney’.