Having a dekka at the Goods Line

Opened in the past few months, the Goods Line is obviously still a work in progress. We ascended to it from Ultimo Road via a very narrow staircase that quickly gets congested with all the people wanting to get up and down. And once you get up there there are not many places to go.

You can walk north past the Chau Chak Wing Building of UTS - which Frank Gehry, the designing architect, likened to a tree, but which I think looks like a sweet brown milch cow (all undulating, soft, slow curves) - and eventually reach the Powerhouse Museum. Or you can walk south and enter underneath the TAFE Building on Broadway to pass through to the tunnel that goes under that thoroughfare toward Central, the Devonshire Street Tunnel.

There is an awkward bridge constructed near this underpass that leads students up into the bowels of UTS, as well as some corporate entrances on the Goods Line such as the one coming out the back of the ABC Building (which however has its main entrance on busy, unpleasant Harris Street). But that's about it. You can easily get through to Quay Street now from the Devonshire St Tunnel, for example, but the access for the Goods Line to street level generally is pretty poor where it counts. Adding to the confusion is a simply massive quantity of construction happening at the moment around Darling Harbour as the Darling Square apartment building and the new Convention Centre get built.

All in all it's a bit confusing, but for keeps is the cafe inside the Chau Chak Wing Building on the level of the Goods Line where you can meet up with someone for a friendly coffee if you want to get away from the rush of cars and pedestrians that characterises most of Chinatown.

Chau Chak Wing Building, UTS.

Chau Chak Wing Building from the Goods Line, looking north.

Bridge over Ultimo Road, Goods Line, looking south.

Good Line looking north (outside Chau Chak Wing Building).