Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf: Centenary celebrations as gateway to Sydney turns 100
IT was a symbol of the confidence of early 20th century Sydney and has survived declining fortunes and the wrecking ball to become one of the city’s most famous landmarks.
Today in History
Don't miss out on the headlines from Today in History. Followed categories will be added to My News.
ONCE said to have been listed in the Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s largest wooden-piled structure, Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf turned 100 this year.
It has had an eventful life. Built at a boom time for Sydney’s maritime and wool industries, it stuck out across the Harbour as a monument to our confidence.
Over its life thousands of ships drew alongside it to load up the wool that drove our economy or to collect soldiers on their way to war.
Returning ships offloaded war-weary veterans or migrants fleeing old lands for a new one full of promise.
The wharf fell on hard times in the 1960s and ’70s as it aged and the maritime industry changed. It was saved from oblivion by those who saw its value and its potential.
The wharf was built out from a valley once known as Woollamoola or Walla-bah-mulla to the indigenous inhabitants, the Cadigal.
The marshy valley was both an important indigenous hunting site and gathering place. Even after 1788, when it saw its first non-indigenous residents, the Cadigal still gathered there, tolerated by colonists such as John Palmer, who planted an orchard and tried growing tobacco.
Palmer’s home, Woolloomooloo House, became a landmark.
In 1826 Governor Ralph Darling subdivided Woolloomooloo to turn it into an exclusive area for the rich and influential. It was soon transformed into a vista of mansions, villas and gardens. Palmer’s house was demolished in the 1850s to make way for smaller homes and many of the mansions became boarding houses, changing the character of the area.
The growth of wharves on the waterfront also attracted a different class of resident. By the end of the 1800s it was home to many waterside workers and also gangs of toughs known as the Plunkett Street Push.
The haphazard growth of wharves and jetties along stretches of the Harbour foreshore resulted in a major public works program at the beginning of the 20th century to improve Sydney’s shipping facilities.
Irish born engineer-in-chief of the Sydney Harbour Trust Henry Deane Walsh, after whom Walsh Bay would later be named, designed a huge wooden wharf for Woolloomooloo Bay. Construction began in 1911 and was largely completed by mid-1915, when it was needed to transport wool supplies for the war effort along with soldiers for the front.
Some of the earliest passengers to pass through the wharf were Gallipoli wounded. At the end of the war the wharf was used by boatloads of battle-scarred warriors on their way home.
Whenever soldiers left or arrived there were always crowds of friends, family and volunteers to say goodbye, welcome them home or convey the wounded to hospitals.
In the 1920s and ’30s tons of goods were loaded up or unloaded at the Woolloomooloo wharves.
In the ’30s, while the nation rode on the sheep’s back from a boom in exports, wool shipments rode on ships leaving the wharf.
In 1938 an entrepreneurial fast food vendor Harry Edwards opened a pie cart near the wharves at Woolloomooloo to capitalise on the flow of people. It would later become Harry’s Cafe de Wheels.
After WWII parts of the wharf were converted to a passenger terminal to deal with the huge number of migrants being brought to our shores to help us populate rather than perish.
For many people the wharf was where they first set foot in Australia. By the ’60s changes in cargo handling, the growth of ports outside Sydney, as well as the rise in the number of people using air transport, resulted in less work coming into Sydney via the ageing Finger Wharf.
Through the ’70s and ’80s the government considered demolishing the wharf but protests that it was an important part of Australia’s heritage prevented it being razed.
A 1990 inquiry into the state of the wharf and whether it had heritage value decided the cost of restoring the dilapidated wooden structure could not be justified. Not long after the government announced it would be demolished to make way for a $25 million development, with a Harbourside restaurant and recreational facilities.
People protested against the plan and even prevented workers entering the site to demolish the wharf. A 1991 fire almost decided the issue but the wharf survived. Construction began in 1999 on a redevelopment that transformed the wharf into residential apartments, a hotel and restaurants.
This weekend’s Finger Wharf festivities include a gala ball tomorrow (tickets stickytickets.com.au) and a family day on Sunday, November 8 to raise money for the Centre for Volunteering.
Originally published as Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf: Centenary celebrations as gateway to Sydney turns 100
Gallipoli to D-Day: Aussie’s epic war story
George Dixon went ashore with the original Anzacs at Gallipoli, aged just 15 – and was shot. Three decades later he was fighting again, at history’s other most famous wartime landing.
Love story behind escape tragedy
An Australian murdered in the infamous wartime Great Escape died after swapping places with another man. And his story is still unfolding, 80 years on.