By Jenny Broe, Bulletin 2024/9, November

Guided Walk leader, Patricia Hale, and participants checking out the Goods Line in Ultimo (Photo: Jenny Broe)

On Sunday afternoon, 13 October, we met up with Patricia Hale, our walk leader, who led us on an interesting and wonderfully researched zigzag route past some of Ultimo’s historical and industrial sites, pointing out examples of urban regeneration and remarkable contemporary buildings.

We learned that Ultimo developed from the pristine site of First Nations’ habitation, through early dairy farms, to gradually increasing industry: quarries, factories, power stations and an extensive goods rail network. Later, massive woolstores were constructed to service a pastoral economy and exports from Pyrmont’s wharves. 

Over time, the population who served these enterprises was slowly crowded out, as the need for industrial land accelerated over the nineteenth century and later. Those who stayed lived in decrepit accommodation with few facilities, enduring pollution from industries in Ultimo and neighbouring breweries and abattoirs. 

As Patricia outlined to us, ‘While the Pyrmont–Ultimo peninsula was sacrificed to Sydney’s economic needs in the past 200 years’, one development in the late 1880s contributed significantly to Ultimo’s 21st century urban regeneration: the grand architecturally imposing Sydney Technical College. The former Sydney Technical College buildings are now surrounded by state-of-the-art award-winning architecture on the densely populated UTS campus, creating an attractive education precinct. At the same time, many of the vast woolstores have been repurposed for residential and commercial purposes.

The Frank Gehry UTS Business School building in Ultimo (source: https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-and-attractions/goods-line)

Among the places we passed were the site of Ultimo House, the (former) Technological Museum/Museum of Applied Sciences, the Benevolent Asylum, the Goods Line pedestrian walkway, the Frank Gehry-designed UTS Business School, former sandstone quarries over which woolstores and a school were constructed, and the Farmers and Graziers No 1 Woolstore, now Dalgety Square apartments. 

Our walk concluded at the Lord Wolseley Hotel, a small corner hotel with outside tables on the green. Our special thanks to Patricia, who was a most informative and energetic guide and was so very generous with her expert knowledge and time. As one participant wrote at the end of the day: 

Thank you very much for today’s walk – it was most enjoyable and we learnt such a lot about Ultimo (of which we were quite ignorant)! It’s certainly given us some ideas for future discovery jaunts of our own.