The Mint in Macquarie Street, Sydney was once the south wing of the Rum Hospital. The hospital was Governor of New South Wales Lachlan Macquarie’s first public works project. The Government refused him the finances to build it, so he did a deal with merchants Alexander Riley and Garnham Blaxcell, and a colonial surgeon D’Arcy Wentworth. In exchange for a monopoly on the importation of 45,000 gallons of rum to the colony of Australia, these contractors built the hospital, which was finished in 1816 and became known as the ‘Rum Hospital’. The hospital’s south wing is now The Mint.