The Gadigal people’s traditional territory is where the area that is now Darlinghurst is located. Up until the 1840s, they kept coming and going to the location.

Despite being near Sydney, the area was not developed by Europeans until the nearly 19th century because to its rocky ridges and shallow soil, which turned off early settlers in favor of other more profitable, agricultural places. There, sandstone was first mined employing convict labor, and it was subsequently harvested using inmates from the neighboring Darlinghurst Gaol during the second part of the nineteenth century.