Birchgrove is located on the north-west slope of the Balmain peninsula, overlooking Sydney Harbour, and includes Yurulbin and Ballast Points.

The long waterfront provides views of the Parramatta River with Cockatoo Island dominating the foreground.

Until former Leichhardt Council extended its boundaries in the first decade of the twenty first century, Birchgrove was a much smaller suburb bounded by Grove and Cove Streets.

[3] He added 'grove' to his surname when naming the house because of the large number of orange trees growing on the original site.

Financial difficulties forced McLean to mortgage the estate and additional land, but the Supreme Court finally foreclosed on loans in April 1844.

From the 1860s, a number of waterfront businesses appeared in the area including coopers, boat builders and the Morrison & Sinclair shipyard.

By 1878, due to market pressure from prices in nearby Balmain estate, 82 lots of the original subdivision remained unsold.

A syndicate of businessmen purchased the remaining lots of the estate and commissioned architect Ferdinand Reuss to draw up a new plan for subdivision.

The tunnel was dug by the New South Wales Government Railways from Greenwich to provide a reliable way to get electricity from the Pyrmont Power Station to the tram network on the north shore.

Part of the tunnel is through the silt at the bottom of the river, so required constant pumping until it was allowed to flood in 1930 and abandoned from 1969.

[7] The tunnel was excavated almost entirely from the northern side, as the residents on Long Nose Point at Balmain (now Birchgrove) successfully objected to the noise of the compressor powering pneumatic drills.

Transit Systems operates a service from Birchgrove Park to the Art Gallery of New South Wales via the Queen Victoria Building (QVB).

[17] Birchgrove's population is typically wealthy, with a median weekly household income of $3,603, compared with $1,746 in Australia.