Greg Barila: The demolition of Shed 26 may represent progress but at what cost?

The demolition this week of an historic house in North Plympton and Shed 26 may look like progress to some - but at what cost? And what will the bulldozers swing their wrecking ball through next?

• Greg Barila - Why do we keep failing our Port?
• Council unsure why historic North Plympton home wasn’t protected

It’s been a busy week for bulldozer drivers.

This week, wrecking crews tore through 150 years of history in just hours, razing the historic former home of one of SA’s settler families, The Bagshaws, to make way for a subdivision.

To their everlasting shame, we learned this week that the local council, my local council, West Torrens, overlooked the home for heritage-listing during an audit in the 1990s and couldn’t explain how such a stupid, unforgivable oversight could ever have been made.

“The most recent local heritage survey for West Torrens was conducted in the late 1990s and the consultants engaged to undertake the survey never identified this property for listing,” a spokeswoman told The Messenger.

“There is nothing in our records to indicate why.”

However, the spokeswoman said, there was nothing to stop a member of the public from calling up the council or the planning minister to recommend the house be protected.

As if, driving past the place, we were supposed to know the home was sitting there on borrowed time. Right, good, thanks for letting us know.

The former site of Shed 26, which was demolished on Thursday. Photo Caleb Bond/The Messenger.

Rarely can I remember such a public outpouring of shock, disgust and dismay that such a thing could be allowed to happen, with our authorities seemingly powerless to prevent it.

The Advertiser’s Facebook page was inundated with comments from angry readers.

“Makes me incredibly angry that this beautiful home is no more,” Suzanne Hendry wrote.

“Disgusting and mindless decision!!” Stan added.

Meanwhile, this week, the bulldozers finally moved in on Shed 26 putting paid to a concerted campaign to save it.

“Good!”, reader Lynda Hayes wrote. “Bloody ugly structure”.

“About bloody time….looks better already!” Daniel said.

Those cheering on the demise of Shed 26, I think, have failed to see that what’s actually at stake in this debate is much bigger and more important than a row of old sheds.

The razing of the sheds, and properties like Moorfield, represents the seemingly unstoppable power of private developers now to get their own way, even if it means wiping away the story of our city.

It represents our lack of imagination in how we might integrate the best examples of our heritage in future projects and our lack of courage in fighting for a more thoughtful approach to new development.

The debate has also highlighted a level of ignorance among some of those who have been barracking for the sheds to be scrapped while knowing nothing about their history or even what the site’s new owner proposes to erect in their place – yet more residential apartments.

As I wrote in May, we should be taking a Hippocratic approach to new development, an approach that ensures that if we do anything at all we should “first, do no harm”.

If someone can explain to me how tearing down a stately and beautifully preserved 150 year old home is not a retrograde step you can find me on Twitter.

And if a piece of history so obviously worthy of protection can be flattened in an afternoon, what’s next?

The Port’s fabulous old brick wool warehouses?

The Marine Terraces at Grange, the only three-storey Victorian-style terraces ever built on a coastline anywhere in Australia?

Recently, I spent a week in Hobart and experienced the incredible annual winter arts festival Dark Mofo, a festival that was spun out of the remarkable modern art museum MONA and which utilises old and new building spaces across the city.

Hobart is a shining example of how a city can use bold, exciting new attractions like MONA to showcase the remarkable heritage and history of the place.

Turning the last vestiges of our working port into just another housing estate is shortsighted, it is uninspired and, I think, sooner rather than later, we’ll be asking ourselves, ‘what the hell have we done?’