Barangaroo

Barangaroo is an area of central Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Barangaroo is an area of central Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located on the north-western edge of the Sydney central business district and the southern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. The area was used for fishing and hunting by Indigenous Australians prior to colonial settlement. The area is inclusive of The Hungry Mile, the name harbourside workers gave to the docklands area of Darling Harbour East during The Great Depression, where workers would walk from wharf to wharf in search of a job, often failing to find one.

In 2003, the Government of New South Wales determined that the precinct would be redeveloped from shipping and stevedoring facilities to provide more commercial office space and recreational areas. This redevelopment has moved from design contest to concept plan from 2005 to 2012. In the interim, stevedoring facilities have been relocated, some of the site remediated, and temporary alternate uses such as major events implemented, pending major development. The site is managed by an agency of the NSW Government, called the Barangaroo Delivery Authority.Redevelopment commenced in 2012 and is expected to be entirely completed by 2023. The redevelopment involves parkland with several new apartment buildings, as well as a metro station, hotel, "cultural space" and casino.

This area was of importance to Aboriginal Cadigal people as ahunting and fishing region. Large shell middens and numerous rock engravings close to the site indicate indigenous occupation dating back around 6,000 years, while radiocarbon dates from other parts of Sydney indicate that the wider area was occupied for at least 14,500 years prior to non-indigenous settlement, from 1788. It is not clear what mobility indigenous people had during seasons.Following a public competition in 2006, the East Darling Harbour area was renamed in October 2007 in honour of Barangaroo, a Kamaraygal woman who was the second wife of Bennelong, an interlocutor between the Aboriginal people and the early British colonists in New South Wales. She did not, however agree with Bennelong working with the colonial government. Watkin Tench, a marine from the First Fleet, in his first-hand account called A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, describes one such encounter with Barangaroo:

"Not seeing Barangaroo of the party, I asked for her, and was informed that she had violently opposed Bennelong's departure. When she found persuasion vain, she had recourse to tears, scolding, and threats, stamping the ground, and tearing her hair. But Baneelon continuing determined, she snatched up in her rage one of his fish-gigs, and dashed it with such fury on the rocks, that it broke. To quiet her apprehensions on the score of her husband's safety, Mr. Johnson, attended by Abaroo, agreed to remain as a hostage until [Bennelong] should return".

The suburb now known as Barangaroo was for 200 years the community of Millers Point and known by that name as "Millers Point". Briefly the point at its northern end was named Barangaroo Point until this was determined to be inaccurate by the Geographical Names Board, and the name historic Millers Point was reinstated. It appears Millers Point may have been known in the local Aboriginal language as Ilkan maladul. There is one record that this phrase was recorded by a linguist marine Lieutenant William Dawes on a sketch map inside the front cover of his first language notebook, dated to 1790.

At the time of European and indigenous contact, Governor Phillip estimated that there were about 1500 Aboriginal people inhabiting the coastal area of Botany Bay, Port Jackson and Broken Bay. The population reduced dramatically with the introduction of smallpox into Sydney's Aboriginal community in the first years of European settlement. More than half of Sydney's indigenous population is believed to have died in the smallpox epidemic of 1789. Originally known as Cockle Bay Point during the early years of the Sydney colony, little activity or settlement took place in the area. Then in the 1820s windmills were built out on what was to become known as Millers Point and European settlers started constructing houses and building a small village. In the 1830s the first wharf was constructed in the area immediately bringing more people to the nascent villages around two public houses. In 1843 the Australian Gas Light Company finished building and began operating a gas works in East Darling Harbour. This was the beginning of major residential and dockland development in the area as employees needed to be housed near the works. The works also brought more commercial shipping into the harbour as the coal for the works had to be delivered by boat.In 1859 a direct route from The Rocks to Millers Point was created, called the Argyle Cut. This made the journey back and forth from the main colony much safer and quicker. The route was a major catalyst for development in east Darling Harbour and Millers Point.

From the 1850s to the 1880s the docks and shipyards in East Darling Harbour multiplied tremendously, going from a coal and ferry drop off point to a hub of commercial shipping activity. During the gold rush, labour shortages plagued the docks as most poor labourers headed out to the gold fields in Victoria to strike it rich. The companies had to become more flexible in meeting worker demands so they offered better pay and working conditions to workers who stayed in Sydney. In the 1860s storage facilities and warehouses had to be built out on Millers Point to accommodate the massive number of bulk goods flowing through the port. By the 1870s the waterfront was covered in warehouses and storage depots, mostly holding the treasured export of the time, wool.From 1880 to 1900, specialisation of the area occurred. Shipyards closed down in favour of storage facilities and bigger wharfs to accommodate contemporary ships with larger cargo loads were built. The skilled ship builders were therefore out of a job and had to find work elsewhere, while more unskilled workers were needed to fill stevedoring positions. This shifted the demographics of the area significantly, turning it from a mix of skilled and unskilled workers to a working-class neighbourhood.

The arrival of the bubonic plague in Sydney in 1900 was cause for alarm on the docks. It also provided convenient grounds for mass resumptions of houses in preparation for reshaping the landscape of The Rocks, Dawes Point and Millers Point. Mass areas of Sydney were fenced off and people deported to North Head to be quarantined. Shipping operations were shut down for a period of time while Council decontaminated the area and exterminated disease ridden rats. During this time the ownership of the port was shifted from individually owned private wharfs to the Sydney Harbour Trust. The trust dismantled the inadequate and unsafe docks and built finger wharfs large enough to facilitate large modern ships. By the end of the 1930s construction was complete, the wharfs dominated the waterfront from Millers point down to Darling Harbour.

The Great Depression gave East Darling Harbour and dock areas surrounding it a poignant nickname, The Hungry Mile. During this period great masses of workers would line up down the mile long stretch of wharfs and wait for work. Clerks chose the workers based on the a system where the fitter men were chosen over the weaker, and where socialist troublemakers were sidelined in favour of willing workers. This brutal system made for a very adversarial environment which polarised the community at large. They erupted occasionally in protest, most famously refusing to load a boat with scrap metal bound for Japan on the eve of World War II.

By the 1950s ships had become too big for the now inadequately small finger wharfs of East Darling Harbour. Standardized shipping container sizes had eliminated the need for bulk offloading. One crane operator could now do the work of 50 men. The whole of what is known today as South Barangaroo was turned into a massive concrete apron, the northern end followed similarly in the 1970s. Flaws in the site's modern shipping capability started to show. The lack of a heavy rail link or a b-double capable road limited the port's capacity in processing in and outbound cargo. As container ships got bigger this problem only got worse. The ultimate demise of commercial shipping in Darling Harbour, and ultimately Sydney Harbour as a working harbour, was the construction of Port Botany in 1979 and the expansion of port facilities at Port Kembla and Newcastle. With excellent rail, road and air connections to the port, along with massive capacity for expansion and the ability to handle large container ships, it progressively became the main port of Sydney.

The wharfs had been unusually free of union activity from the beginning of World War II up until the mid-1990s, with high wages and a steady stream of jobs. In 1996 the Howard Government was elected into power promising industrial relations reform. In 1997 the Workplace Relations Act, 1996 limited the bargaining power of unions and sidelined the Australian Industrial Relations Commission's ability to mediate negotiations as well as introducing statutory employee contracts. In 1998 Patrick Stevedoring laid off all its workers and liquidated its assets after encountering backlash from the unions for the new workplace contracts taking advantage of the new legislation. But the very next day when work was expected to grind to a halt, everything was proceeding as if nothing happened. The employees were rehired by a new corporation with the same people who owned Patrick, just on a lower wage and with fewer concessions in their contracts.In 2003 with the stevedoring companies set to move out within three years, the Government of New South Wales designated the site for redevelopment into parklands and commercial space. An international design contest was launched in 2005 attracting 139 submissions from around the world. The winning design by Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, Paul Berkemeier Architects and Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture was announced in March 2006 together with a naming competition for the new precinct. In October 2006, the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, announced that the area will be renamed as Barangaroo. In late 2006 Patrick Corporation, who leased the site from the New South Wales Government, moved their stevedoring operations to Port Botany. This put an end to almost 130 years of cargo shipping operations in eastern Darling Harbour.

Prior to the precinct's redevelopment, Barangaroo was a World Youth Day 2008 site used for the opening mass for an estimated 150,000 people, concerts, a re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross and for the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to Sydney. A passenger terminal for cruise liners was temporarily located at Barangaroo, prior to construction of the White Bay Cruise Terminal. The Barangaroo Foreshore is also available for events during construction.