Friday 4 December
Built on Sandstone
Heather, Keith, Ned and I drove over to Camperdown, a suburb
of Sydney where Gillian and Nigel live. We then caught the bus to Central from
where we started our Sydney walk via Goods Line – the route Gillian had scouted
out on foot, researched and mapped the week prior to our arrival.
Goods Line
was part of the first railway that opened in NSW in 1855, and is modeled after the High Line in NYC. Used to
transpsort goods from Darling Harbour to the rail yards near Redfern, it wasn’t
until the 1870s when the Darling Harbour Goods Yard was built on reclaimed mud
flats in Cockle Bay. At this time, Darling Harbour became an
international transport and manufacturing hub, and the Goods Line became vital to the movement of coal, shale, timber, wheat, and produce.
The Goods Line prospered until the 1960s when plans for a
new seaport in Port Botany were realized, and due to the increasing use of road
transportation, the use of the rail line declined. In 1984, the last goods train
left Darling Harbour Goods Yard.
En route we passed the recently completed Frank O. Gheary
building that is part of UTS (University of Technology, Sydney).
At Paddy’s Market Keith said g’day and hopped on the train
for Bondi Beach.
We went on to walk through the construction site of the
future downtown convention and arts center of Sydney, the Chinese Gardens, then
Darling Harbour before Bangaroo Reserve. This is the future dock area. The park
is built of Sydney sandstone with impressive displays of Australian native
plants. Bangaroo is named for the woman who used to negotiate between the
Aboriginal Peoples and the British.
We had lunch at the restaurant at the end of the wharf of
Sydney Theatre at Walsh Bay before heading off to Bondi Beach to pick up Keith
and Garry. Then, we hit horrendous Friday afternoon traffic en route home to
Avalon (Northern Beaches).
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| View from Restaurant |
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| Bondi Beach |
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| Garry Smailes (Spider) and Ned |
