Sydney will be nice when it's finished
The construction site immediately became a constant in my life.
Image credit: State Archives and Records Authority of NSW
At 5:59pm on August 3 last year, I receive an Instagram message from my friend Laurie a few minutes before we’re due to meet up at Wayward Brewing Co. in Camperdown.
“I’ll chill opposite the pile.”
I reply with several messages in rapid succession: “Excellente”, “V fair”, “Catch ye there”.
Five minutes later I message again.
“My arrival at the big pile is imminent.”
He replies straight away.
“I’ve been admiring it.”
Moments later we’re standing on Pyrmont Bridge Road across from the Big Pile, a ten-or-so-metres-high mountain of miscellaneous excavated material housed inside of a hangar-esque navy coloured shed within one of several dive sites for the latest extension of the infamous WestConnex tunnel.
We ruminate on the Pile briefly before heading off for drinks, but emerge again later for further observation. With our wits sharpened by overpriced beer, we approach with wonderment.
The Pile is a sight to behold, but only for the keen observer. The shed it exists in is an acoustic enclosure built to reduce noise emanating from the excavation that was occurring within. Hidden away, the Pile scarcely makes itself known to the regular passerby. In fact, you have to stop and squint to be able to make out its silhouette in the distance.
A steel fence is the first obstacle, through which the Pile may only be viewed if the veritable rocks align:
The work day is done and there are no vehicles coming and going to obscure the Pile.
No machinery has been parked in front of the Pile.
The guard-post at Pyrmont Bridge Road is manned and the large sliding doors of the shed have been left open — exposing the Pile; a phenomenon that cannot be relied upon.
On this particular Wednesday, we’re in luck.
“It’s bigger than you think” Laurie says, as we enter a spirited tangent on the origins of the Pile’s name.
As the story goes, he and a mutual friend of ours were on a digestive walk when they came across the Pile.
“We used to do a thing where we get cooked, sort of pick a direction, and then just walk to explore,” Laurie says.
The Pile was introduced to me in conversation several weeks later, and as a resident of the area, my interest piqued and a visit was planned with haste.
Builder by day and Pile enthusiast by night, Laurie claims to be something of an expert. In an incisive moment of observation, he tells me that the Pile appears different to the last time he saw it; bigger, Pile-er.
“I see a lot of these kinds of piles at work, and [the Pile] looks like it’s been put there recently. As you can see, next to it is a smaller pile with a different colour,” he says.
“They’re setting up. I think they’re making something out of the pile, and they're just laying down their ingredients.”
As I would discover several months later, this wasn’t entirely untrue, but in that moment, the Pile remained confounding.
“Do you want to go look at the Big Pipes?” Laurie says, in reference to the large ventilation tubesat the opposite corner of the site.
We proceed to circumnavigate the dive site to the Parramatta Road side, observing the offices that adjoin the shed along this path. A small complex of demountable rooms — stacked about four high and six deep — soar into the sky, we observe another entry gate and guard post, some vending machines, and a few parking spots, before finally arriving at the Big Pipes.
“I never take the time to really observe these areas, even though they’re a block from my place,” I say.
“I so rarely explore these areas that when I do go out of the house, I almost have to,” Laurie agrees.
***
Although my relationship with the Big Pile was still nascent, my existence in the locale predated it by several years. Relocating to the area from Forest Lodge in early 2019, my Mum, brother, and I settled in across the road when the dive site was merely a hole in the ground.
The construction site immediately became a constant in my life. I would see it every morning when walking to the bus stop and it would be exactly the same when I came home at night. Work notification documents from as far back as May 2019 show that work was conducted 24/7.
The site serviced the first of three stages of the mammoth motorway project, which was first known as the ‘M4-M5 Link’. It later became known as ‘M4-M8 Extension’; eight kilometres of tunnel connecting Haberfield and St Peters, which finally opened on January 20.
Although it’s an ambitious infrastructure project, WestConnex has been equally known for ardent community opposition. Despite bi-partisan party support at the state level, Sydney’s independent local government and various community organisations have opposed its various stages on multiple grounds.
Since 2017, local outlets like City Hub have reported on a lack of transparency and consultation surrounding the placement of the dive site. Last year, law firm Dentons and dispute financier Omni Bridgeway began exploring the potential for a class action lawsuit against the NSW Government and its contractors on behalf of residents across the Inner West, who claim that tunnelling vibrations and changes in soil moisture have resulted in property damage.
While I grew strangely fond of the Big Pile, the Pipes, and this ecosystem of a dive site, I always wondered what would come after it. Would it become an oddly placed park? Would the government sell it off to property developers? Would the secret underground legions of derelict Parramatta road shop owners transform it into a bead and/or wedding dress superstore? Would Merivale buy it?
In Sydney, construction often leads to further construction. When houses are acquired and demolished, a multi-year building process commences.The eventual ending is just the first step towards another beginning, and to undertake a comprehensive account of Sydney’s multivariate construction projects is maddening at best.
For every WestConnex stage that is completed, a Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice is razed in the name of a ‘We’re Building Tomorrow’s Sydney’ marquee and an eventual Metro Station. An apt amount of NIMBY-ish Sydney Morning Herald pieces are published, tech giant Atlassian begins a $1.4 billion construction project at Central station, and the cycle repeats itself.
***
Such was my fascination with the Big Pile; enough to attend a ‘Construction Site Bump Out Info Drop-In Session’ on October 13 last year, accompanied by my Mum and a friend, to hear about the impending end of the project.
At 3pm on a Thursday, we made our way to Malt Shovel Brewery — adjacent to the dive site — eager to hear about how the much-anticipated deconstruction of the dive site would progress over the coming months. After trying two entrances and waiting several minutes, we were met by a member of staff from the Construction and Trading arm of Samsung, one of the current contractors on the project. The three of us were the only community members who had come to the consultation.
Surrounded by large stainless steel vats of beer and with the smell of hops lingering in the moist air, we were seated across from two contractors and one of the current head engineers. We were encouraged to ask anything and everything about this final critical stage of the project.
My friend probed, “Were there any funny or memorable moments from the project that could speak to the overall tone of the experience?”
One of the head engineers on the backfilling phase of the project obligingly told us that no particular memories sprung to mind, but that the Krispy Kreme doughnuts offered at the nearby 7-Eleven petrol station were a favourite among the workers.
Buoyed by fond memories of the Big Pile, I asked what would become of the excavated material. With a glint in his eye, the engineer told me that tens of thousands of material, would be used in the construction of the new Western Sydney International Airport in Badgerys Creek, a practice common in the field of civil engineering.
We left the session somewhat satisfied; the tunnel would be backfilled and the entire site levelled — weather permitting — ideally by early 2023, but with one question left unanswered: What would become of the land?
We were told it was yet to be determined; even as to whether the land would be retained in public ownership. Though the NSW government is yet to announce any plans, Inner West Council minutes from June 2022 indicate a unanimous desire among local councillors for the land to be “secured for biotechnology and advanced manufacturing uses in the innovation sector to contribute to the economic outputs of the Camperdown health and education innovation precinct of Tech Central”.
In mid-December, the same friend who accompanied me to the community drop-in was one of 2000 people to attend a ‘walk-through’ of the new tunnel section — I had sadly missed out on tickets. However, he recounted the day trip: Attendees were mini-bussed into the tunnel from St Peters, given a tour, and offered WestConnex merchandise and snacks including pizza, gelato, and cookies with dumptrucks on them. A story about my grandmother came to mind.
After having moved from New York to Sydney in the early 1960s for my grandfather’s work as a civil engineer installing air conditioning in the then-brand new AMP Building in Circular Quay, she observed the skyline, Dotted with construction scaffolding, and said to no one in particular:
“Sydney will be nice when it’s finished.”
In the absence of Big Piles, at least there’ll be cookies in the meantime.