Peat Island

In order to provide fresh water to both Peat and Milson Islands, a 24 feet (7.3 m) high concrete dam holding 7,000,000 gallons was constructed across a gully on the northern bank of the Hawkesbury River, a few kilometres upstream and above the cliffs overlooking the wreck of HMAS Parramatta.

Rock and sand for the dam were obtained on site, but cement and other materials had to be hauled 275 feet (84 m) up the cliff face from the river using old Sydney tram cables.

[5] The only access to the reservoir was via a series of five, near vertical timber and iron ladders that were pinned into the face of the cliff adjacent to the waterfall.

The vertical ladders in the cliff face were barely trafficable, with missing rungs and rusted anchorages, until their destruction in the January 1994 bushfires.

To back-country men, the title was certainly suggestive, and proved the subject of joking, but the levity became pronounced when inquiry elicited the information that the buildings nearing completion on the island were for an inebriate's home.

Sir William Lyne at luncheon caused much laughter by expressing his surprise at the Minister for Works bringing them to such a place to give it baptism, but not with water".

[9] However, by 1907 the government had lost interest in the project, deciding instead to set aside space in Darlinghurst gaol for the treatment of inebriates,[10] and in 1908 the facility was handed over to the Lunacy Department for use as a hospital for the insane.

Press reports document drownings and unexplained deaths of young men and boys,[13][14][15] with at least 300 patients died during their time there who were interred in unmarked paupers' graves at the nearby Brooklyn cemetery.

[19] In late 2010, local press reported rumours that the island was being considered as a detention centre for asylum seekers, a claim denied by the state and federal governments,[20] and currently the facility is boarded up and empty, awaiting a decision about its future from the N.S.W.