Sydney’s finest marble staircase, 1904

The elaborate staircase which leads down from the domed room at the end of Court 13 is made entirely of marbles quarried in New South Wales and was opened to the public in 1904. The construction of the staircase was controversial at the time, because it had been done with prison labour from the Bathurst Gaol, ‘executed under the shade of the gallows’, as one paper dramatically described it. Its inclusion in a ‘shrine of art’, the same article continued, had turned the Gallery ‘into a Chamber of Horrors’. The real issue was the competition that prison workers posed to unionised labour. The Marble and Slate Workers’ Union protested to the attorney-general. He replied that marble had been worked at the Bathurst Goal since 1891, 14 men were currently employed and that he did not believe that these were competing with skilled workmen. William Ferrier, who was trades overseer in the gaol, supervised work on the Gallery’s staircase. Everybody was satisfied with the final product, the attorney-general noted, as the Gallery’s choice had been between ‘a wooden staircase made by free labour and a marble one made in Bathurst Gaol’.

The red-and-pink tinged steps are of marble quarried at Borenore, 13 kilometres west of Orange. Around 1898, while on a picnic there, Frank Rusconi, a monumental stonemason from Italy, recognised the rich quality of the marble. It was mined for around 30 years from the turn of the 20th century and was considered to be some of the best marble in the world. Many varieties were produced, but the most widely utilised were red and blue marbles. The red, which is a breccia of red and buff coloration, is to be found in numerous important Australian buildings, including Central Railway in Sydney and Melbourne’s Council Chambers. The wide handrail is of Fernbrook marble. A wide variety of marbles was also produced in this region of northern New South Wales and the Gallery’s staircase uses over five different colourations. The posts supporting the handrail, or the balusters, are of Molong marble. Molong is north-west of Orange and was one of the most extensive areas of marble in the state. Finally, the newel shafts, or the posts at the foot of the staircase, and the central supporting pillar around which the staircase winds, are of Rockley marble. This is a beautiful black-and-white crinoidal marble, mined at Rockley, south of Bathurst.