These murals honour Sydney’s hero of heritage. Will they be preserved themselves?

“What would Jack do? Where’s Jack Mundey when you need him?”

Late Builders Labourers Federation chief Jack Mundey is often cited when public housing, homes for the working poor, heritage or green spaces are threatened by development.

A larger-than-life character who died in 2020, Mundey led the green ban movement, which is depicted in eight increasingly fading 40-year-old murals on pylons of the eastern suburbs railway line across Woolloomooloo.

Judy Mundey at a mural that shows her late husban, Jack Mundey, with a loudhailer addressing members of the Builders Labourers Federation and green ban supporters.Credit: Sam Mooy

Without him and the green bans, Woolloomooloo would have been a forest of high rise, said Jim Colman, an architect and urban planner who wrote The House That Jack Built: Jack Mundey Green Bans Hero.

Colman and Judy Mundey, a former barrister and Mundey’s widow, want the murals protected before they perish.

They’re also planning a documentary about Mundey and met filmmaker Tom Zubrycki at the site last week.

Judy Mundey says the murals are a reminder of the history of the area. Credit: Sam Mooy

Colman said the murals were the result of thousands of hours of work by poorly paid artists, trying to capture the spirit of Woolloomooloo as it was then.

“There’s nothing like it,” he said. “It is just a unique piece of community art. Let’s keep it. At least until they disappear, they will be a reminder that special things happened here.”

Eight of the 16 murals, commissioned by the Woolloomooloo Residents Action Group in 1982, were reinstated in 2009 after being removed because of their poor condition, a City of Sydney spokesperson said.

“Originally intended to last 10 years, they have now been on display for more than 40,” she said.

Designed and painted by local artists Michiel Dolk and Merilyn Fairskye, the murals on the railway pylons celebrate the suburb’s unique history.

Some of the works have been secured to the pylons with massive straps to prevent them from falling off, and structural checks are expected to take place in coming weeks. The city conducts necessary repair works, cleaning and routine stabilisation works by a skilled conservator.

But the council spokesperson said they won’t be repainted.

“The artworks document a moment in time, and as a result the artists requested that the works are not repainted,” she said.

The murals tell the story of how residents came together with unions to save homes and get more public housing for low-income people, defeating the then Askin government’s plan to raze the area to make way for 45-storey developments.

Judy Mundey said the green bans solved the housing crisis in the past, and they could today too.

“It’s a pity governments have forgotten their history,” she said, “because they used to build public housing, and that would go a long way to overcoming the housing crisis we’ve got.”

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