Cnr Elizabeth & Arden Streets, Surry Hills

Gday, Charles Touma here, and today I’m on the corner of Elizabeth and Albion Streets in the magnificent Surry Hills to talk about a major local landmark that spawned a household name. Samuel Terry was a labourer in Manchester, England, when he was convicted of stealing 400 pairs of stockings from a local factory in 1800. He was sentenced to transportation to Australia. As a result, he arrived in Sydney in 1801. For several years, he worked as a stonemason and gradually found opportunities. By 1809, he had bought a farm on the Hawkesbury River and started to receive highly-valued government cattle. He then built a pub, invested in another farm, and started to supply enormous quantities of flour and meat to the government, and from the cashflow, he grew a massive portfolio of land and property. In fact, at one point, he was claimed to own 20% of the total value of mortgages in New South Wales. He became one of Sydney’s major landowners and was known as the “Botany Bay Rothschild”. 

In 1826, he built the Albion Brewery right here on this corner. At the time, it was the largest brewery in Sydney. The location was chosen due to the streams flowing west in the area which they dammed to enable easy access to the water. The Brewery was very, very successful, but Terry died in 1838 and his nephew who inherited it, turned it into a disaster, eventually folding in 1851. At the time, Terry Lane was named after Samuel Terry but it later changed to the current O’Loughlin Street. Terry Street, also named after him, kept it’s name. The Brewery was turned into a flour mill, then the Albion Soap and Paper works, but in the 1860s the whole place burnt down. The site was then vacant for decades, when in 1875, brothers John and James Toohey used part of the site to develop their Standard Brewery, which again became the largest brewery in New South Wales with 10,000 feet of floor space, mainly producing their Tooheys Black Old Ale. At the time this was all the rage in the Surry Hills Pub Scene. 

Tooheys became a public company in 1902, and the site’s name was changed to the Tooheys Brewery. It flourished for several decades here, but eventually, it was sold and demolished, and turned into commercial office space in 1955, though the Tooheys brand continued to thrive to this day. Now, I’ve been selling real estate in the Surry Hills and Redfern area for over 20 years, and I’ve sold many properties in this vicinity including 33/33 Reservoir Street, a three bedroom apartment, which I sold for $2.3 million a few months ago. I hope you enjoyed the story of this corner that saw the rise of Samuel Terry and the establishment of the Tooheys brand. I’m passionate about this area, and I’m determined to keep stories like this alive. My name’s Charles Touma, and my office on Thurlow Street is always open for you to come in and have a chat.