Power for the People: A history of electricity in Sydney

In 1896 a Sydney Electrical Lighting Bill became law, giving the City Council the right to light up the CBD with electricity. Yet Sydney was to remain gas-lit for a further eight years.

Finally in 1900 a Major Cardew was brought in from England to begin planning public electric street lighting in Sydney.

Various sites were examined for the erection of the first power station. One of them was in the Rocks. You can still see its chimney today as you cross the Bridge, towering above what used to be the Mining Museum, which later housed the Julian Ashton Art School. But the city fathers scrapped the Rocks site when it was half-built, and in 1903 plumped for Pyrmont, which was much handier to unloading colliers.

And so, in early 1904, the council's Electricity Undertaking came into being.

By the end of 1904, although the street lighting was being extended to areas such as Kings Cross, the general population had no conception of the future uses of electricity. They still cooked on fuel stoves or with gas, they still lit gas lamps or candles in their homes, they still stoked their coppers with wood and coal, and manufacturers still used steam to drive their machinery.

The task of converting Sydney to electricity wasn't made any easier by the fierce competition from the Australian Gas Light Company (the AGL), which, in an effort to preserve its monopoly, began a smear campaign, hinting that electricity was dangerous and leaked through the ground, despite the fact that it was quite the opposite - gas was the one that leaked.

The First World War caused major supply problems due to non-delivery of equipment that had been purchased in Germany. But the Undertaking, by then headed by an able, dour Scot called Forbes Mackay - the true father of Sydney electricity - muddled through until new generators arrived in the early 1920s, and the power lines began to snake out into the suburbs.

In 1934 the SCC famous cookery demonstrations had begun, compered by "radio uncles" - the equivalent of John Laws and Alan Jones today. Ladies in hats and gloves were invited to these cookery demonstrations in church halls and other venues around Sydney where they watched scones being baked in electric ovens and partook of what the promoters described as a "cheery afternoon tea party."

Fleets of repair vans plied the suburbs, and door-knocking salesmen exhorted Mrs Sydney to show them her kitchen. Once in the kitchen, the salesman would pull out a plan of an ultra-modern "all-electric kitchen" and try to sign up the housewife.

In 1936 the Electricity Undertaking was abolished, and a new entity, called the Sydney County Council, elected by Sydney's councils, took over, moving into its new Headquarters in the Queen Victoria Building.

(It is of interest in passing that the fact that the SCC's headquarters was in the QVB later saved it from demolition, when the city council, abetted by Harry Seidler, wanted to replace it with an underground carpark).

The Second World War saw the SCC do its “bit”. But after the war, when demand rose but capacity did not there was a severe crisis and blackouts began to disrupt Sydney.