Detailed Plan of the Walsh Bay area of Sydney Harbor, published by the Syndey Harbour Trust.

Detailed plan of the area around Glebe Island, illustrating plans for the improvement of the facilities on the water front at Johnston's Bay, Rozelle Bay and White Bay. The view illustrates the redevelopment of Glebe Island toward the end of the 9 year period of intense improvement to its facilities, which created for extensively expanded and improved Wharfage and dock facilities.

Beginning in 1912, the Sydney Harbour Trust (later Maritime Services Board) planned broadside wharfage at Balmain East and along the southern shore of Balmain, including Glebe Island. Also in 1912 the Metropolitan Meat Industry Board resolved to abolish the abattoirs and build a new facility at Homebush. By 1915 Robert Saunders, the Pyrmont quarry master, had been commissioned to level the island to make it suitable for wharves. Saunders's firm dumped a great quantity of excavated ballast at the eastern end of the island for wharfage. Many cubic feet of quality dimension stone, however, were carefully cut away and almost certainly used for construction projects. Some 250 of Saunders's men were still working on the island in 1920.

Glebe Island was an early success for the Harbour Trust. Wharves were built on three sides of the levelled rocky outcrop from 1912. The reconstructed fourth side was attached to the Rozelle shoreline as part of the extensive reclamation of Rozelle Bay and White Bay which had begun in the 1890s.

Glebe Island became the site of a grain elevator and tall concrete silos, operated from 1921 by the Grain Elevators Board of NSW.

Sydney Harbour Trust

The Sydney Harbour Trust was formed by the New South Wales Parliament in 1900 to oversee for the Navigation Department and Marine Board of Sydney Harbour. The Trust consisted of three commissioners (including one titled as President - Walter Loveridge CMG ) appointed by the Governor of New South Wales. It was responsible for the improvement and preservation of Sydney's port.

The trust regulated the movement of vessels and the handling of cargo in the port through a Harbour Master, carried out dredging operations, removed wrecks, granted licences for the erection of piers, maintained wharf facilities, collected wharfage rates and maintained swimming baths. The trust also managed fire fighting and other safety equipment within the harbor. All foreshores, lighthouses and tugs within the harbor which belonged to the Government were vested in the Trust, as well as the power to reclaim land. The Trust was terminated in 1936, with its responsibilities assumed by the Maritime Services Board.