Garrison Church (Holy Trinity)

The first military church built in colonial Australia is sitting one block from the pub with the kidnapping tunnel. That is The Rocks for you -- everything is layered on top of everything else, and you cannot walk ten metres without tripping over another piece of Australian history.

Holy Trinity Church, known as the Garrison Church, was the official place of worship for British imperial troops stationed at the nearby Dawes Point Battery. The foundation stone was laid by Bishop Broughton on the twenty-third of June, eighteen forty. The architect Henry Ginn drew up the original design, and Edmund Blacket -- who also designed the University of Sydney's Great Hall -- later expanded it.

Originally the church held two hundred and fifty people, which tells you how small the military garrison was in the early colony. By eighteen fifty-five, the growing military presence required an expansion to six hundred seats. British imperial troops were finally withdrawn from Sydney in eighteen-seventy, but the church kept serving the community.

The interior is worth stepping inside for. The memorials and plaques on the walls read like a timeline of every conflict Australia has been involved in. You will find tributes to soldiers from the Maori Wars, the Sudan, the Boer War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Each plaque represents a congregation that sent its young people to war and, in many cases, did not get them all back.

The sandstone exterior has the warm golden tone that is characteristic of Sydney's oldest buildings. In the late afternoon light, with the Harbour Bridge towering behind it, the church looks almost absurdly picturesque. It is a quiet building in a noisy neighbourhood, and it has been watching soldiers come and go for nearly two hundred years.