The White Bay Power Station in Sydney is a gargantuan relic of our dirty energy past.
Its physical legacy is a thing of wonder and possibilities, but its toxic legacy has loomed more threateningly over the citizens of the inner west, concerned about the quality of their soil or the dust in their attic. Lead, paint dust and asbestos were just some of the costs of the cheap easy energy that powered our modern world.
Three other power stations have already been redeveloped – one for a casino at Pyrmont and two others for housing at Balmain and Botany.
White Bay was the last one standing, or looming, so there was a lot hanging on this cathedral to our industrial past. The Fifth Estate was clearly not the only one captivated by the secrets it might contain – the ambitious engineering and trade skills that might be on display, and the vastness of its internal spaces.
On Sunday hundreds of people lined up to see all this for themselves.
It was Sydney Open run by the Museum of History NSW. And on the event’s theme of embodied carbon and embodied culture this hulking defunct power station had it all.
The culture side was poignant.
If you listened to the audio guide near the control room you heard that when the curators of this adaptive reuse beast tracked down workers from the plant to gather their memories, they could only find white collar workers – those who worked in the control room behind sealed glass panels that protected the sensitive equipment from the coal dust. Those who worked out on the plant floor or around the asbestos clad pipes were “no longer here”.
“We were all dressed up in hazardous material…the place was dark. We had water coming in from all sorts of directions. We had dangers at every at every corner.”
On Sunday it was the rebirth of the power plant as something spectacular that enthralled the visitors.
A panel session moderated by Michelle Tabet of consultancy Left Bank, with Craig Donarski, manager of arts, culture and creative industries, White Bay Power Station; Robert Gasparini, senior associate, Design 5 Architects; Wayne Johnson, archaeologist, Placemaking NSW; and Annette Pitman, the new chief executive of Museums of History NSW, revealed the thinking and some of the challenges that transformed the building in preparation for its new life.
Gasparini recalled the early days of the job that he’s worked on since early in his professional life.
“We were all dressed up in hazardous material…the place was dark. We had water coming in from all sorts of directions. We had dangers at every at every corner. So there were hatches and floors, which were just unprotected, so you could disappear down a hatch if you weren’t careful enough. We were walking on some of the gantries and walkways up in high levels, and basically testing if they were safe, but with structural engineers on hand. It was an incredibly dangerous place, but it was also fascinating, because we could just see the vision.”
At one point in the mid 2000s he was summoned when bits started “falling off the chimneys”.
“We had to actually remove parts of the ladders to the chimneys, which are now being restored.
“We had something like 40 years of maintenance to catch up on. And we were constantly challenging ourselves about how to restore rather than replace parts.”
The strategy was to do what was needed but to minimise the interventions. Hazardous materials obviously had to be removed for safety and hatches in the floor closed up.
There was also an effort to identify new work – to make it in keeping with the old – but to not disguise it.
And it’s already been a hit with music events.
But Annette Pitman who took up her new role as head of the Museums of History in October, warned about another underlying risk inherent in this facility – and other creative renewal projects – this time from the real estate market.
She should know. Her background includes CEO of Create NSW and leading the revitalisation of the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct and other related projects.
Pitman mentioned that in Detroit in the US, it’s the artists that moved in first.
“They got the housing back online, and then the jobs and everything else.”
Before anyone was fully aware the real estate prices boomed and the creatives that led the revitalisation could no longer afford to live there.
It’s a pattern repeated in Austin in the US and internationally, and potentially the White Bay precinct.
Sydney was “just getting the message” that “taking a space, giving it life, putting creative people there who become a magnet [is great]” but that “this is a risk for this place.”
“We’ve seen that all over Sydney. Sydney has had an incredible drop across the city in creative space, because those spaces have then become too valuable for creative people to afford.”
We need to protect this space when everything else comes online.”
It’s one more risk this behemoth of a creative magnet will need to manage.
