12. Quiet Corner and Fishermen's Hut

Skilled workmen, in the mid-1800s, cut blocks of stone from the rocky shore in the Quiet Corner area in order to construct the famous castellated wall of Charles Hotson Ebden’s Black Rock House. Local identity Harry McGain recalled that as a little boy in the early 1900s he would walk in the old tracks made by the bullock wagons as they toiled up the hill to Black Rock House (now in Ebden Avenue).

Natural forces have also changed the shore. A long promontory that existed until the early 1930s was eroded into rock stacks which were diminished by wave attack. Severe storms cut the cliff back in the mid-1930s, so a gentler slope was created and planted with grasses, and a sea wall built. Within the shore platforms of Black Rock Sandstone, fossil banksia has been preserved in ironstone.

For many years fishermen hauled their boats up above the tide line and congregated in the hut. In the 1990s plans were made to demolish the old structure. However, members of the Sandringham and District Historical Society, and other men and women concerned to keep alive the memory of the fishermen, persuaded Bayside City Council to repair the Fishermen’s Hut which remains as a useful shelter and a landmark.