White Bay | The Dictionary of Sydney

Balmain and White Bay 2004

White Bay

Long a centre of waterfront industry, including a saw mill, a power station, an oil terminal, and a container wharf, White Bay is now a more peaceful place, with Birrung Park preserving some industrial heritage.

Reynolds, Peter

Peter Reynolds OAM is an architectural historian and author in Balmain, Sydney

(View of the) North Shore, Sydney Harbour 1854

Birds eye view of general wharfage scheme west of Dawes Point as it will appear when completed, published 1913

Glebe Island 2005

Looking northeast from White Bay in Rozelle 2006

Glebe Island

From abattoir to shipping terminal, Glebe Island has been an intrinsic part of the development of industrial Sydney.

Millers Point

Called Ta-Ra by its first inhabitants, the Cadigal, Millers Point was named for the windmills that were built on its heights, and their owner, John Leighton, known as Jack the Miller. By the 1850s Millers Point was a maritime enclave, with almost all residents and employers focused on the wharves and the trade they brought. Through plague, depression and war, the community at Millers Point retained its cohesion, but the changes brought by gentrification are harder to predict.

Mort Bay

First called Grose Bay, the area became known as Waterview Bay after a house built there in 1830. With the building of a dry dock in the bay in 1855, industry took over, and for a century Mort's Dock dominated the bay. When the dock closed in 1958, it passed through a number of hands, but was eventually redeveloped as housing and parkland.

White Bay power station

In operation from 1917 to 1984, the White Bay Power Station helped to power Sydney for most of the twentieth century. The site is now the last remaining example of a coal-dependent, harbourside, industrial complex, once common in Sydney.

Rozelle

Late to be subdivided, Rozelle became a suburb of workers' cottages, allowing inhabitants to live near their work in the various industries along the harbour shore. During the twentieth century, rapid deindustrialisation, and the growing value of proximity to the city and the harbour changed the suburb and its people greatly.

Sydney Harbour: A Cultural Landscape

Known worldwide for its beauty, Sydney Harbour has been a source of inspiration for thousands of years. First Aboriginal, then European peoples settled the shores, naming and renaming the coves, headlands and points. Artists and writers have explored the harbour's people, landscape, animals and plants. As Sydney has grown and changed, the harbour surrounding the city has evolved from a working waterway into a one of leisure and entertainment. Parts of the old working waterfront, once dismissed as redundant, have become case studies of adaptive reuse with vibrant cultural precincts emerging along the harbour foreshore.

The Railways of Sydney: Shaping the City and its Commerce

Across the world, steam railways and electric tramways facilitated the expansion of the small cities of pre-industrial times into vast metropolises. This essay explores the role of railways in shaping the Sydney metropolis we know today.

Sydney's Metropolitan Goods Lines

The Metropolitan Goods Lines, which spread throughout the Sydney suburbs from 1916 onwards, have played a key role in the industrialization of the city and the development of many suburbs. While some of these lines have become disused, others have been repurposed as light rail for the contemporary city.