Sydney Fish Market is fantastic, if you can get to it

As a local, I have watched with great expectations the construction of a new Sydney Fish Market at Blackwattle Bay. At first blush, upon completion this establishment would seem to be a distinct improvement on its rusting, aromatic and unsightly predecessor.

Nonetheless, complaints many and various are already being given full vent.

And fair enough. In the long-standing tradition of this city, it would be remiss of us to not find fault with any project, mooted or made whole. We must declare our vociferous objections to it, be it a fish market, a freeway or a franchise.

The complaints in this instance include the glaring absence of a ferry wharf. A peculiar omission to be sure, given the years of planning, allegedly ensuring ease of access to a clearly aqueous destination.

There is no bus service, but you can get a tram, remembering that the old “Fish Market” stop has been renamed Bank Street, and that the closest one is the tiny and inconveniently located Wentworth Park, the promised $40 million upgrade of which will allegedly be almost complete by the time they start work on the ferry wharf.

It seems that there are no plans to usefully rename this stop “Fish Market”. We must assume that Transport for NSW believe that millions of tourists are aching to get to Wentworth Park and gaze upon the crumbling remains of the condemned greyhound grandstand.

Egress from said tram stop is followed by a 400-metre walk, crossing several lanes of traffic, then dodging overpowered electric bicycles ploughing holus-bolus through the throng.

Having survived running this gauntlet, visitors linger uncertainly upon a shared cycle path, devoid of shelter from rain or heat, before the looming edifice of a newly dubbed No.1 Bridge Road, Glebe.

These baffled visitors would have struggled to simply locate said road, let alone get across it. The carriageway in question changes its name four times between the Parramatta Road turn-off (as Pyrmont Bridge Road) and its alleged destination, Pyrmont Bridge – a structure that it never quite takes you to before changing its name a fifth time, to Union Street.

Ah! These are but a few of the vexing nuisances to have bedevilled visitors to Blackwattle Bay for more than two centuries.

Watching the new markets emerge from the slime, I’ve been engaged in fascinating research into the history of where I live (just up the hill on Pyrmont Bridge Road; the name we use here in Camperdown, before it crosses the Glebe border).

During the 1830s, slaughterhouses were established on the muddy shores of what was then appropriately known as Black Wattle Swamp, rancid abattoirs which supplied Sydney with much of its beef and mutton. John Tooth’s brewery was situated at the then-potable source of the creek (now a stormwater drain, but then a rain-flushed sewer).

By 1848, Glebe locals were getting sick (literally) of the stench, and according to the archives of this masthead, a parliamentary inquiry into the state of these reeking butcheries had insisted that they be removed.

In his damning report, the Inspector of Nuisances blamed the “defective state of the law”, and added that “no one should be allowed to breed, feed, or keep any swine at all within the city”.

Now, it is news to nobody that whatever gripes we may grumble, whether over fish marketing or e-waste recycling, they are as nought compared to the sheer ghastliness of inner-city harbourside living in the 1840s.

But to complain is an inevitable consequence of birth. We emerge from the womb screaming for a free lunch and a good lie down, and nothing has changed since the last Inspector of Nuisances made his final report to the lord mayor of Sydney at the turn of the 20th century.

And that, my friends, is what I am complaining about today.

Where is he or she? If ever we’ve needed an Inspector of Nuisances, it is now!

In the words of Gilbert and Sullivan, “I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list…”

Let’s start with the massive, unmuffled motorcycles, roaring past my bedroom window at 3am on Pyrmont Bridge Road. Oh, and while we’re on that subject…

Pat Sheil is a Sydney writer.

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