Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a resident of the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont hanging out washing from the balcony of her flat while she describes the past benefits of living in the area in a voice-over. Another resident comments on his initial complacency about the local 'park’. Footage of children playing in a disused quarry, called 'the park’ by locals, accompanies the comments made by the two residents. A photograph of a row of houses demolished in 1989 and footage from a local barbeque accompany the views of an urban planner, who discusses the importance of working with local communities when planning urban development.

Educational value points

• The clip shows a segment from the documentary Concrete City. Directed by Fablo Cavadini, Concrete City (1994) documents the struggle of the residents from the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont to preserve the character and community of their suburb in the face of large-scale residential and commercial development in the early 1990s.

• The Sydney suburb of Pyrmont is featured. Pyrmont is an inner western suburb of Sydney, located on a peninsula adjacent to Darling Harbour. historically, Pyrmont was a working-class district and port community, and the location of a number of now defunct major industrial works, such as the CSR sugar refining plant. The locality underwent major residential and business redevelopment during the 1990s and is now a wealthy inner-city suburb that is home to large businesses such as the Ten and Seven commercial television networks.

• Pyrmont is perceived differently by various interest groups. The Indigenous Cadigal people called the area Pirramaa and used it for fishing. It was also perceived as an ideal location for numerous industrial works because of its close proximity to the harbour; these works included flour mills, iron works, the CSR sugar refinery and power stations. After the industrial decline of the 1950s, Pyrmont was viewed by some as a wasteland, but the locals saw it as a community. Following large-scale redevelopment, it is now seen as a sought-after inner-city residential suburb. Reportedly, John Macarthur, who purchased the peninsula for £10 of rum, named Pyrmont after the idyllic spa town in Germany called Bad Pyrmont.

• Links to the past can be seen in the barren landscape and sandstone shelves, evidence of past quarrying and now used as a playground for the local children. Ships exported local products manufactured in the area, such as wool, flour, milk, sugar and other foodstuffs from the wharf. Some of the original sites at Pyrmont have been converted, including two power stations that have been transformed into the Powerhouse Museum and Star City casino, and a number of wharves that have become luxury apartment and office complexes.

• The disused land (probably a former quarry) that residents adopted as their local park was considered worthless by developers for more than 20 years. The land became highly valuable under the redevelopment scheme overseen by the City West Development Corporation. Residents of Pyrmont feared losing their open spaces; however, Pyrmont now has a number of small maintained parklands as a result of the development.

• An urban planner talks about the need to work with local residents when developing medium-density housing and making use of their local knowledge and community requirements. City West Development Corporation aimed to recreate the density that existed in the early 20th century in Pyrmont while preserving its cultural heritage and maintaining a sense of community.

• The rocky landscape in the clip is probably one of Pyrmont’s three historic sandstone quarries – Paradise, Purgatory and Hellhole were named on the basis of how difficult the sandstone was to quarry. Paradise provided golden sandstone that was relatively easy to quarry. The golden sandstone was used to build significant Sydney landmarks, including St Mary’s Cathedral, the Town Hall and Sydney University. Hellhole quarry yielded poor quality sandstone and, as the name suggests, was the most difficult of the three to work.

This clip starts approximately 20 minutes into the documentary.

A woman hangs washing from her balcony. An interview with her plays as voice-over, with sad piano music in the background.
Woman 1 It was great, living in Pyrmont. There were lots of people and lots of kids. Yeah, we had the, the shops down the road. There were about four fruit shops and a supermarket and chemist – we had everything and, um, it’s slowly just been taken away.

A man is interviewed.
Man One day Karen came up and she put a sign up on the fence, ‘Save Our Park’, course I was very complacent. I thought we’d never lose this park, you know, and uh, my God, when I seen that well I said I’d better start looking in to see what’s going on. And that was the start of it. Of course, uh, we thought that no-one could touch this park but, by God, they did. They absolutely destroyed it.

Children climb down to play in a disused quarry. The interview with the woman begins to play again.
Woman 1 It’s just a sense of loss, it’s – it’s like we’re being robbed of everything we ever knew. You know, just to think that a place has been purposely let run down since 1971, you know they’ve destroyed it – a community – just for money. It’s just unbelievable. Because nobody wanted to live here once and now they don’t want us here.

Another woman is interviewed. Footage of a community barbecue plays.
Woman 2 One of the things that we should be listening to very hard in Pyrmont is the experience of urban consolidation and the experience of living in a medium-density environment. Pyrmont used to be a community of 30,000 people.

And we’re in a situation now where we’re trying to recreate urban consolidation. I mean that’s a lot of what planning is all about and I feel that we’ve been very dismissive of the inner-city communities that are experts on that way of living in cities. I thought it was really good because quite a few of the community – we got together and we all had the same feeling. It was really encouraging to, sort of, meet up with these different people that we didn’t really know and to think that we weren’t the only ones that felt, you know, about Pyrmont the way we did.