Barangaroo is being overdeveloped

Yesterday I took a walk around Darling Harbour toward the top end of the CBD in an effort to visit Barangaroo Headland Park but I found that it takes an absolute age to get there. You find yourself in a set of new streets just up past the Macquarie Bank building, and then the fresh black macadam takes you to the right back to Hickson Road (what was once called "the Hungry Mile" during the Depression because this is where hopeful workers would congregate in the mornings in an effort to get employment at the docks during those terrible years).

Once you arrive at Hickson Road you have to turn left and walk for a good half kilometre past a series of fabric hoardings and chain-link fences. Behind these structures is empty land that in future is going to be filled with construction sites as the next phases of Barangaroo are built. At the present moment only the three office buildings for the south part of the overall site are being built. To come are buildings that include a new casino, which Sydney needs like a jogger needs hemorrhoids.

After walking for a good twenty minutes from your stating point in Darling Harbour you get to the park. All the good land to the south of the park is taken up with just more ugly development to come. It is a real letdown. The state government should be ashamed of itself to allow good useful parkland to be taken up by useless developments like the new Packer casino. Noone wants it and it should be scrapped. It's a complete joke. The people of Sydney deserve more, but their short-sighted politicians only see the dollar sign when it comes to the use of public land near the city. I came away from my little walk disappointed and angry at the scale of this lost opportunity.