Transport Minister Andrew Constance has blamed an “overheated” contractor market and apologised for the $3 billion blowout on Australia’s biggest public transport project. He faces a grilling at estimates this Wednesday. The politics swirling around the $15 billion Metro doesn’t bother Abdalah El Sayed, the project manager for the Barangaroo section, where a 30-metre drop into the ground is hidden behind an innocuous shed near Hotel Palisade. The cavernous Barangaroo Crossover beneath Sydney. Credit:Nick Moir “I’m a Sydneysider, I know my kids will use this,” he says, after we’re lowered into the cavernous expanse of the Barangaroo Crossover construction pit. “I’m proud of what we’re doing down here, this is world class. We don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

The crossover, where trucks, forklifts and cement mixers move around beneath dripping rock walls, is massive. The imposing chamber gives way to two small, round tunnels at its northern and southern sides. The bright, symmetrical passages are encased by sections of smooth cement. Each piece weighs three tonnes and connects perfectly with the next, forming a cylindrical jigsaw puzzle stretching hundreds of metres beneath Sydney Harbour towards Blues Point. Abdalah El Sayed and engineer Jaime Cheuk walk down the Sydney metro tunnel. Credit:Nick Moir The first tunnel was completed in October. The boring machine was disassembled, placed on a barge and sent back to the southern side, where it started tunnelling again earlier this year. We follow Mr El Sayed, known as Abs, down the second machine-made burrow, which is yet to be completed. A few hundred metres down, we’re met by a forklift driver.

Engineer Jaime Cheuk sits in the 'manrider' vehicle as it travels towards the end of the metro tunnel. Credit:Nick Moir “Abs, it’s all flooded,” the driver says, pointing to his vehicle, which is covered up to its halfway mark in water and sludge. The tunnel bends slightly and then straightens out to reveal a small, brown lake stretching 100 metres or so across. Workers at the face of the tunnel half a kilometre away have opened the pipes that funnel a clay-like, watery mix into the face of the boring machine. Thousands of litres have filled up the lowest point of the tunnel, so we need a truck to get to the other side. Sitting in the “man rider” vehicle as it bumps and lurches down the Metro tunnel, engineer Jaime Cheuk says she would work deep underground all the time if she could.

Dallas Bell, the tunnelling machine operator. Credit:Nick Moir “Tunnellers are like family,” she says, before muddy water washes through the doors of the vehicle and over our feet. “Not many people can say they go under the harbour for work every day.” Reaching the end of the tunnel, we’re met by a giant steel structure that takes up the entire width of the cavity: Kathleen, the boring machine. The 957-tonne machine is only 100 metres away from reaching the northern side of the harbour. Clay-covered workers clamber over thin gantries and spaces in the 130 metre-long piece of equipment as it cuts through the earth and slides sections of the tunnel jigsaw into place on its slow journey north. It feels less like a tunnelling site down here and more like a submarine or an oil rig, with strange pumping noises and clinking of metal equipment echoing through the small tunnel.