The Lumber Yard and Free Overseers Quarters
'the labour of all hands on the island'
Cockatoo Island is formed of sandstone, 'said to be of an excellent description'.
As well as building the prison, convicts in their iron shackles began to provide
stone for Sydney, most notably for transforming Sydney Cove into a 'semi-circular'
quay.
Quarrying at Cockatoo lasted for sixty years.
The men working in the Lumberyard were supervised by overseers. The overseers lived in three little cottages, two of these buildings still survive on Cockatoo today. Later these were known as Matrons cottages.
'There is the quarryman, he has to jump it and quarry it; the hand-cart mob
have to drag it from the quarry to the stone-cutter's gang; then there is
the man a day or two or three cutting this stone; there is the blacksmith
sharpening picks, jumpers [drills] and crowbars...'
Lawrence Cowan