What happened to Sydney's grand plans for a canal from Botany Bay to Sydney Harbour?

Updated

If you've ever flown over Sydney you've probably noticed the Alexandra canal running beside the airport — but you may not know it was part of a grand plan to create a European system of canals across the city.

Planners had a vision of boats running up and down the murky waters delivering goods from Botany Bay to Sydney Harbour in the late 1800s as a cheap and easy form of transport.

So why didn't the plan become a reality?

Alex Hartmann came across some of the canals when he was planning routes for his walking group and asked Curious Sydney to investigate the story behind them.

Mr Hartmann works in the construction sector and is interested in how large civil engineering projects, like the canal, were a product of the technology of the time — water transport.

"[Water transport] was overtaken by new rail and road technology and simply abandoned," he said.

"Large amounts of wasted money on infrastructure projects are not just a current-day problem.

"They make a good juxtaposition of the rather sad current-day reality against the optimistic proposals when they were planned."

These days the canals function as large stormwater drains and most people remain largely unaware of how different their Sydney could have been.

A smelly, toxic problem

Alexandra Canal was first known as Sheas Creek — a tributary of Cooks River running through the Cooks River Valley.

A narrow winding creek, it was part tidal and part free-flowing, running through suburbs like St Peters and Mascot before discharging into Botany Bay.

Daniel Cunningham, lead planner at Sydney Water, said the creek would likely have been lined by mangroves and been a "completely natural and fantastic habitat".

"[It would have had] lots of turns and wiggles before eventually widening out as it came down to meet the Cooks River where there would have been fairly vast mudflats," he said.

"As we understand, it was really rich in resources, so the local Aboriginal tribes used to live around it."

However, once Europeans arrived and began to build and settle around the area, the creek was transformed by sewage running down from Redfern, Surry Hills and Erskineville and into the valley.

Sheas Creek was also severely affected by the increase of industries who set up factories along its banks after being kicked out of inner Sydney suburbs in 1848.

In an effort to improve inner city waterways the NSW Government introduced the Slaughterhouses Act, banning "noxious industries" from inner Sydney boundaries.

Canal facts: Dredging commenced in 1887 to adapt Sheas Creek to a canal, completed in 1890

Major changes occurred when Sydney airport was expanded from 1947 to 1970

Alexandra canal is a rare example of 19th-century navigational canal construction in Australia

It is one of only two navigable canals in NSW

Excavation provided understanding of eastern seaboard changing sea levels

Provided information about the Aboriginal presence in the area

the Aboriginal presence in the area Dugong bones were found during the excavation of Alexandra canal

Wharves were demolished in 1940s when navigational use of the canal severely declined

But that simply pushed those industries further downstream, where they continued to dump their waste by-products — like blood, offal and chemicals — into Sheas Creek.

So authorities decided to dredge both the creek and Cooks River, which they said would dilute the sewage by sending it into the bay.

By now, many residents were complaining regularly about the smell of the water systems, and expressing concern about the state of the river and creek.

In 1896 an engineer, H B Henson, proposed removing the Cooks River dam and weir, which prevented tidal flushing from the bay and caused silt build-up.

From there he wanted to construct a canal and tunnel from Parramatta River via Long Cove, Ashfield, Dulwich Hill and Cooks River.

Henson's plan was ignored. But years later a canal with wharves along it was proposed so barges could pick up and carry goods from Botany Bay to Sydney Harbour — transforming Sheas Creek into an industrial hub.

So what went wrong?

Ian Tyrell, historian and author of River Dreams, said the canal was built only six feet deep — far too shallow to allow any sort of ship through.

"And then of course it silted up so eventually it became not even possible for light ships coming up," he said.

Mr Tyrell said the reason behind this obvious problem was "like everything else they did on this project and every other project in Sydney — it cost money".

"It was always kind of like they were partly committed to it — 'we'll do it a bit at a time'.

"It was all very piecemeal."

Mr Tyrell said the proponents of the Alexandra Canal and the Cooks River came together and wanted the canal to go up as far as the Eveleigh railway yards.

"So they'd be able to get the coal and also bring coal up to the trains, because all the trains were coal-fired, steam engines.

"So that was the original aim in the 1890s — but they never built it that far."

Siltation also caused never-ending grief to users of the canal, making it difficult to move boats up and down the waterway.

In the end, there was no real need to continue the construction — extra railway lines had been built that went all the way to Botany, erasing the need for water transport, Mr Tyrell said.

"[The whole thing] was just a real white elephant," he said.

From canal to drain

Alexandra Canal was not the only creek concreted over by European settlers — Sydney is littered with smaller versions cutting through different suburbs, often invisible to many Sydneysiders.

Long Cove Creek was a tributary that flows into Iron Cove then into the Parramatta River before connecting with Port Jackson.

It was turned into a canal named Hawthorne Canal after it became "putrid" with the run-off sewage from surrounding neighbourhoods.

Mark Sabolch, author of the History of Long Cove Creek, said noxious industries also sent their waste into the creek.

"The water would stagnate and become incredibly smelly," he said.

After a typhoid outbreak, residents went to their local member, and the Minister for Public Works, demanding the creek be cleaned up.

The creek was widened and concreted to allow the flow to quicken and flush the water out to Iron Cove.

A ferry service did run briefly, between 1903-1904, but in the end, the issue of siltation became too much of a problem, Mr Sabolch said.

Eventually the canal was narrowed, becoming a simple drainage system.

Revitalising the waterways

Though the European vision for Sydney's waterway system never made it to reality, new projects are underway to transform the canals into recreational areas for locals.

The City of Sydney and Campbelltown City Council have environmental initiatives like shared bicycle and pedestrian walkways and parklands running along parts of their canals.

Mr Cunningham said Sydney Water plans to spend over $40 million on naturalisation and waterway health projects through to 2020, aiming to restore some of the waterways to their former state.

"So you're getting a sort of semi-natural waterway back in place of the concrete channel," Mr Cunningham said.

Because Alexandra Canal is heritage listed, Sydney Water won't take out the existing concrete, but will restore much of the canal that has aged over time.

Who asked the question? Photo: Alex Hartmann discovered the canals via his walking group. (Supplied) Alex Hartmann has lived in Sydney for over 30 years, with 18 years in Melbourne and London. His years away from Sydney gave him a new appreciation of the Sydney environment (natural and urban) and its history. "I was always aware of the Alexandra Canal but was curious that the Hawthorn Canal (which looks like a big stormwater drain) was actually called a canal," he said. "They are largely unknown and invisible to Sydney residents, who would be surprised to think that their city even had canals."

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Topics: water-management, industry, history, sydney-2000

First posted