Barangaroo Reserve has 10,000 sandstone blocks quarried from the site. Photo / supplied
Barangaroo Reserve has 10,000 sandstone blocks quarried from the site. Photo / supplied
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
Barangaroo, originally, was the companion of Benelong and she did not like him hobnobbing with the white devils, who were only there to steal the land and make their cursed money.
And so it goes. Barangaroo the place, southwest of the harbour bridge, was the site of Sydney's container terminal,until the city moved the port away and left the place a concrete wasteland. Then the politicians and developers set about creating a new economic wonderland for the city.
There was lots of public space, but it kept shrinking. James Packer built a towering hotel and casino, although last year his company was ruled unfit to hold a casino licence, because money laundering is a crime.
Before: The site of Sydney's former container terminal. Photo / supplied
After: Barangaroo Reserve recreates the pre-colonial shoreline. Photo / supplied
"Barangaroo is a demonstration of everything that is wrong in contemporary Australian city-making," said Philip Thalis, the architect who won the original competition for the site but then had it stripped from him by powerful people with bolder visions/more greed: take your pick.
Thalis blamed "rampant privatisation, the weaknesses of the planning system [and] the failure of public authorities, our governments, to clearly understand what the public interest is". There's something in that for all of us.
And yet there is great beauty at Barangaroo, if you head north from the casino into the headland park designed by PWP Landscape Architecture, the American firm famous for the World Trade Centre memorial in New York. Over six hectares, the pre-colonial contours of the land have been restored, with rock quarried from the area and formed into 10,000 sandstone blocks, and 75,000 native trees and other plants, mostly native to the Sydney Harbour foreshore.
75,000 plants, almost all of them species local to the Sydney Harbour foreshore. Photo / supplied
Barangaroo Reserve has winding paths for walking and cycling, grassed areas of all sizes, tidal pools, an amphitheatre in a sheltered cove and a performance space called the Cutaway: an underground hall large enough for 5500 people. Indigenous and industrial histories are acknowledged throughout.
You can do great things in the public space of a city's waterfront. Auckland will get the chance downtown, one day, when the containers and cars are moved away. And right now, the council agency Eke Panuku is asking the question in relation to Wynyard Point.
The small amphitheatre at Barangaroo Reserve. Photo / supplied
The Cutaway: An underground performance space at Barangaroo Reserve. Photo / supplied
"The transformation of this area from industrial to mixed-use has already begun with the removal of the tank farms," says the agency, "and we are working closely with mana whenua to plan this new park, the largest to be created in 100 years since the completion of Victoria Park."
They want to make "something special" and they're "looking for the best designers [and] design partners" to do it with. There'll be commercial and residential development here too, which will pay for the whole project.
Barangaroo happened – the good and the bad – because a powerful former politician, Paul Keating, relentlessly drove the process. We don't have a Keating bossing everyone around here. Is that a good thing or not? Fingers crossed for a fabulous headland park.
Barangaroo Reserve has 10,000 sandstone blocks, quarried from the site. Photo / supplied
Design for Living appears every week in Canvas magazine.
