A container terminal turned back into a sandstone headland, named for a Cammeraygal woman who refused to wear English clothes.
Until 2010 this was East Darling Harbour, a concrete container terminal built out over the water in the 1960s. Before that it was a working wharf. Before that it was a sandstone headland.
The reserve, opened in 2015, removed the concrete and rebuilt the headland — recontouring six hectares to the shoreline shown on an 1836 survey, using around 10,000 blocks of sandstone cut from the site’s own excavation, and planting 75,000 native trees and shrubs of species that grew here.
It is not a restoration in any strict sense; it is a designed reconstruction. It is also one of the more ambitious pieces of urban landscape work anywhere, and it works.
Barangaroo
She was a Cammeraygal woman, of the Eora, and the second wife of Bennelong — the Wangal man whom Governor Phillip captured, then befriended, and who gave his name to the point where the Opera House stands.
Barangaroo was a fisherwoman of some standing, and she is recorded as consistently refusing the accommodations that Bennelong made. She would not wear English clothes at the Governor’s table, objected to the colonists’ fishing methods, which she regarded as ruinous, and opposed Bennelong’s engagement with them.
She died in 1791, shortly after childbirth, and Phillip permitted her cremation according to her own people’s practice.
Naming this headland for her, rather than for a governor, was a deliberate choice.
What is there
The headland park — winding paths through native planting to a high point with views west up the harbour.
The Cutaway, an enormous excavated hall beneath the park with raw rock walls, used for exhibitions, installations and events. It is free when something is on and worth checking.
Nawi Cove, a small inlet at the northern end, named for the bark canoes Eora women fished from.
South of the reserve is Barangaroo South, which is a different proposition entirely — Crown Sydney’s tower, offices, apartments and restaurants. The commercial development funded the park, and the trade-off has been argued over at length.
The walk
The Wulugul Walk runs along the water from the reserve south past Barangaroo South towards Darling Harbour, and north it joins the foreshore path to The Rocks and under the Bridge.
Doing the whole thing from the Opera House round to Darling Harbour takes about an hour and is the best free walk in central Sydney.
Practicalities
Free, open at all hours, well lit. There is a café at the reserve and a great many restaurants in Barangaroo South.
Aboriginal-led cultural tours of the reserve run regularly and are the best way to understand the planting and the naming.
More History
Hyde Park Barracks
A convict dormitory of 1819 that became an immigration depot and an asylum, and is now the best museum of any of it.
Cockatoo Island
A convict prison and then Australia's biggest shipyard, on an island in the harbour where you can camp overnight.