Plan to expand Sydney’s waterways to create urban billabongs

Making use of Sydney’s original waterways to create “urban billabongs”, similar in style to Brisbane’s Southbank, could be the way of the city’s future.

What the Barangaroo Headland Park project could look like.

Urban “billabongs” that follow the course of the city’s original waterways would offer communal swimming areas and beaches winding from the harbour to Sydney Park under a bold plan being championed by the first Indigenous candidate for lord mayor.

Yvonne Weldon is running against Clover Moore and said her opponent’s plans announced this week for harbour pools are elitist and won’t open up the city to everyone.

The pools, beaches and public spaces that form Weldon’s “ochre songline” would be accessible to the booming population south of the CBD, where more than 200,000 new apartments will add to the congestion in the inner city.

The Urban Billabong project proposal for Barangaroo.

Yvonne Weldon is pushing for urban billabongs. Picture: John Appleyard

Some potential locations for the urban billabongs.

Weldon enlisted landscape architect David Vago to design the billabongs.

“The harbour doesn’t need another harbour lap pool,” said Vago, from Habit8.

“It needs to work on activating some of the parks around the harbour.

“Importantly, urban billabongs need to service those who don’t have the multi-millions needed to live harbourside. Vago said the concept included five new urban billabongs “that reference the old City of Sydney creeks and waterways while providing much-needed cooling and meeting public spaces for the community.”

Weldon said the billabongs would be similar to Brisbane’s Southbank.

“I think that the way that we’re doing it is more inclusive but I also think that it’s a matter of building Sydney back to what it used to be,” she said.

“It’s died in so many ways and this would help attract people to Sydney but also for the people that are living here, they need to travel elsewhere to be able to enjoy being outside.

“When you look at the amount of apartments that have been built, where did they go to enjoy themselves?”

Barangaroo is a proposed location.

With parkland and restaurants and bars nearby, the plan also includes public spaces for concerts and festivals.

“It’s not just about the summertime fun, it’s about making sure that we can activate those places beyond summer, for concerts or special events where it can be that can be utilised because so many of the areas that are under-utilised and we just don’t have the vibrancy we’ve had before,” she said.

A map of the proposal shows that it winds along “ancient waterways, wetlands and creeks that ran through the City of Sydney”.

It would also be accessible to “existing public transport and cycle lane infrastructure as well as parking opportunities”, according to the proposal.

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