Alexander Berry

Alexander Berry (1781 – 1873) started his working life as a ship’s surgeon’s mate but soon became attracted to the commercial potential in shipping. So, he purchased a ship, renamed it the City of Edinburgh, and used it as a trading vessel that sailed the world – its first voyage actually delivering provisions to Hobart and Sydney.

In Cadiz, Spain, he met Edward Wollstonecraft who first became Berry’s London agent and then his partner in a new Sydney business. Later in life, Berry was also to marry Wollstonecraft’s sister, Elizabeth.

Wollstonecraft set up their business in George Street Sydney, then obtained a land grant from Governor Macquarie on Sydney’s North Shore where he built a house that he named Crow’s Nest.

In 1821 Berry chartered a ship named the Royal George that transported an ‘extensive assortment of merchandise’ to their George Street store…and the Governor of New South Wales, Thomas Brisbane, to his new post in Sydney.

In 1822 Governor Brisbane granted Berry and Wollstonecraft 10,000 acres along the banks of the Shoalhaven River. This area was chosen because, as Berry wrote, 'Everybody was flocking to the Hunter River, Bathurst and other places…and all were elbowing one another. But we neither wished to elbow any one nor to be elbowed.'

Governor Brisbane also assigned 100 convicts to Berry and Wollstonecraft’s care, enabling them to build the first European settlement on the South Coast. This was the Coolangatta Estate which developed into what is now the town of Berry, named after Alexander and his brother David.

Later purchases of land from the crown and other landholders increased the size of Berry’s holdings to around 32,000 acres by 1840 and 40,000 acres by 1863. Much of this acquisition was undertaken to secure the valuable supplies of cedar that were then being taken from the area.

Berry and Wollstonecraft successfully integrated their mercantile and pastoral interests, with Berry’s Shoalhaven estate providing much of the produce that was sold in their George Street store.

Wollstonecraft died in December 1832 and, after this, Berry seemed to lose interest in his South Coast estate, writing in 1846 that he ‘would gladly part with it upon any terms’. Labour shortages that were caused by the cessation of convict transportation in 1842, the subsequent end of the convict era in 1855, and the gold rushes in the 1850s, prompted Berry to start leasing land to tenant farmers. Then more widespread development of the Shoalhaven area commenced.

Like other prominent merchants and landowners at that time, Berry became active in colonial affairs. In 1822 he became a Justice of the Peace and, from 1828 to 1861, was a Member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. He strongly opposed the introduction of local government and, after the Shoalhaven Municipality was established, he refused to pay council rates on his property – a stance that was supported by the Supreme Court and the Privy Council after the Council initiated legal action against Berry.

Today the township of Berry is testimony to Alexander Berry having developed the area. Berry Island, near the present-day suburb of Wollstonecraft in Sydney, Berry Street in North Sydney, and Alexander Street in Crows Nest are also named after him. And so is the little-known Berry’s Canal, a small canal that he had constructed to link the Shoalhaven and Crookhaven Rivers that has now become the main Shoalhaven estuary, because the former entrance to the Shoalhaven River at Shoalhaven Heads is closed by a sand bar to the ocean, except when the River is in flood.