SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE

Hokitika Guardian, 18 November 1929, Page 2

SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE

UNDERGROUND RAIL WA Y

PROGRESS OF GREAT WORK

SYDNEY, November 7

Whether the great underground railway which is to circle tlie city will be completed in time to synchronise with the operation of the Sydney Harbour Bridge now seem doubtful. Part of the underground has of course, been in full swing for a long time, while work in connection with it is being actively proceeded with down m the bowel ,of the earth in other parts of the city. The .stumbling block is likely to he the station at Circular Quay, on the water front—the only station of the whole of the underground system which will he above ground—because of the impossibility of burrowing below the earth in what is only reclaimed ground at the Quay. Althought the spirited battle of station sites for the underground at the Quay has at last ended, Til a triumph for Dr. Bradfiehl’s original scheme and after delays and political vaeilint’ons which threatened to make the whole business one of Sydney's standing jokes, it has now been revealed that there nre no funds with which to get a move on with the job. A vast engineering work, because giant piles to cany the railway at this point will have to he driven into the water, the building of the station will involve almost topsy-turvy chaos at the Quay,

For the information of “other siders” who know Sydney, it may he explained that the underground railway will emerge from a tunnel beneath Macquarie street; make a lapid ascent over what are now the ferry wharves cut through the existing site of the Harbour Trust and Fire Brigade Buildings, and link up with both the underground and bridge railway systems at .W'uuvard Square. With the elevated railway tracks and a superimposed ' roadway, the whole face of Circular Quay will he changed. Sydney will be amply justified in proudly sticking out its chest when the underground and the Harbour Bridge are complete. Sydney is, of course proud of its harbour to-day hut to see the city’s great waterway in all its beauty one has to view it, as the writer has done, from the dizzy eminence of the roadway of the bridge as far as it has progressed over the water. The man or the woman who in a year or two crosses the bridge, by foot or by train or by car, and does not go in 4 ' rhapsodies over the view from it will be unnatural.

From the bridge one sees the harbour and all its scalloped bays nd islets as lie can never- hope to take in that glorious picture from any other perspective or even from an aeroplane This view, from the bridge even in its incomplete st*iße to-day, is one of the finest things on Nature’s wonderful canyas. Think of it, when one can leisurely stop in the middle of the bridge and look out over- the harbour as far a-s the Heads and beyond it, from even better viewpoints than at present. The picture itself especially at night with the ferries giving it a Venetian effect, will be worth a visit to Sydney.