Barangaroo brawling

One of the biggest building sites in the country right now is Barangaroo. Construction has recently slowed right down, thanks to a massive basement fire and contamination by asbestos and suchlike. But here's how it's expected to look when it's finished. Most of the left half of the model to the right is Barangaroo. I was shown the model, and a video explanation, by a very personable and helpful PR fellow at the site, who pounced on me when he saw my camera and my curiosity.

Barangaroo is going to be the redeveloped Sydney dockland area. As sometimes happens with these things, there was a competition to find the best design, and the winning one was a finely crafted, much admired mix of commercial buildings, public facilities and public open space. As also often happens, things subsequently changed rather, and the original architects were left wringing their hands in dismay. the buildings proposed got bigger and bigger, and a totally unexpected and unwanted-by-almost-everyone enormous 6-star casino-hotel got plonked in there too. Sometimes it's in the water and sometimes just out of it. One way and another, the commercial floor space has more than doubled since the plans were approved, and the public space has been shrinking rapidly. The process is what's been dubbed 'concession creep', and it's all such a very Sydney story.

The man behind the casino is one James Packer, the second or third richest person in Australia. In a democracy we'd decide whether we needed a second casino or not. If so, and if it fitted into the master plan, we'd advertise the fact, and we'd put the project out to tender. None of this happened of course. Things don't work like that in Australia. As it happens, James has been in the news quite a lot lately. He's had a bit of a rough patch in his private life. Then last week he got into a rather public street fight with an old friend. Media organisations dubbed him the "Bondi Brawler", and there have even been unkind calls to reconsider his gaming licence. For instance here: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/reconsider-bondi-brawlers-gaming-licence-20140506-zr5k6.html    The Northern Territory News, always outdoing itself for attention grabbing headlines, produced one about a Packer-Up-My-Clacker. See this and other coverage here, courtesy thenewdaily.com.au:  http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/05/06/media-cover-packergyngell-clash/

Back to my tour, I also took a look at the work going on in the northern part of the area. A new, artificial headland park is being built. It's meant to pretty well recreate the form of the headland as it was before European settlement. It was the brainchild of former prime minister Paul Keating, and though it too doesn't quite conform to the original plan, I think it will be rather good, just so long as we are still able to get to it with all the offices and casinos blocking the walkways.

Barangaroo, by the way, was the wife of Bennelong, the local 'cross cultural envoy' in the early settlement days. She was a powerful Cammeragal figure in her own right, and opposed her husband's co-operation with the developers of the day. She exhibited displays of anger and was deliberately difficult. Maybe she's still exerting her influence in the area? Maybe there's more she can do still?