Barangaroo: a tale of two Australia Days

The prize exhibit at Barangaroo this Australia Day was the very fine 'Always' sculpture (as in "Always was, always will be: Aboriginal land") So that was my primary focus yesterday morning.

If I'd been earlier out of bed, I'd have got to see the early morning smoking ceremony, and maybe the other indigenous entertainments that had been promised. The smoking ceremony chap was still in action though, and was in much demand for photographs still. His fellow participants and entertainers seemed to have taken an early mark?

My take on what the sculpture's about: I approached from the shiny side, and saw the back-to-front version, and the shiny illusory reflections of myself and the modern city. Then from the other side it's the way it should be: very solid, a little rusty, but timeless and sustainable, the real deal.

Meanwhile on the harbour just behind me, the usual red-white-blue Australia Day waterborne festivities were going on. A huge flotilla assembled to watch the end of the traditional ferry race under the Harbour Bridge, and it was all quite exciting!

Here's the end of the race, with the Port Authority's firefighting boat clearing a path through the crowd.






















The first, second, and third ferries, I think. (I couldn't find any sort of official race result report when I did a search just then. Only ads for passengers - let's keep our money-making priorities after all!)

In fact there's a lot of middle ground going on between the two Australia Days, despite the deliberately incendiary pronouncements of partisan activists like the current (very temporary) Prime Minister, and despite the media emphasis on conflict and division. I've a feeling we'll work out an appropriate solution to our big National Day conundrum before too long.

More Barangaroo - the Wynyard Walk

Ever eager to bring you the latest on what's new in Sydney, your fearless reporter despatched himself this morning down to Wynyard station. Then on through the new pedestrian tunnel to Barangaroo - the 'Wynyard Walk'.

I was slightly underwhelmed at first, because it seemed so short. But they've achieved some sort of wormhole space-warp or something, because you emerge seconds later at a spot it used to take ages to get to. And the squiggly lines and curvy path are quite attractive.

Meanwhile, Barangaroo's three main buildings all seem to be pretty much finished. No  sign of anything happening yet re any hotel cum casino cum 'punctuation mark'. Maybe that's good news.

Sea of hands

Looking across from Balmain the other morning, I could see an Aboriginal and a Torres Strait Islander flag spread out on the grass of Barangaroo Park.

It was ANTaR's  'Sea of Hands', sprung up once again to mark Reconciliation Week. I made my donation and planted a hand.





ANTaR, by the way, stands for Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. You can read about the fine work they're doing on their website:  https://antar.org.au/

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?