Sydney’s long-debated second international airport is slated to be completed—in so far as anything can be asserted with any confidence in the post-coronavirus age—by 31st December 2025❋. The site selected and given final approval by the Commonwealth government in 2014, Badgerys Creek, is on 1,780 hectares of land in greater western Sydney in indigenous Darug country.
(Source: SMH)
The saga begins in 1946. Towra Point (in Sydney’s south) is mooted by the NSW state government as a likely site for the second airport◲…over the next 40 years at least 20 sites are put forward as prospective locations for another airport to ease congestion at the existing Kingsford Smith Airport. Successive federal governments of differing political hues cast the net far and wide—to the north, south and west of Sydney—in the hope of finding a site that best meets the needs. When the government flags that it favours Somersby (Central Coast) and Galston (northwest) in the early 1970s, outbreaks of NIMBY-ism (vocal grass-roots protests from the locals) leads Canberra to back down. Another candidate, Holsworthy (southwest), is rejected because of an unknown number of unexploded military projectiles littering the site from a nearby army base and its proximity to a nuclear facility, only to be unfathomably resurrected as a prospect in the mid-1990s by the Howard government and then quickly dropped again on grounds of “environmental unsuitability”. Goulburn, 200km southwest of Sydney, too gets shelved – because of the high capital costs involved [‘Second Sydney Airport – A Chronology’, Parliament of Australia, www.aph.gov.au/].
(Source: www.aph.gov.au/)
Frustrated at the ongoing failure to resolve a viable site for the second airport, the Commonwealth toys with the idea of ditching the whole project and looks at an alternative plan sans second airport – the construction of a third runway at Kingsford Smith Airport and complimenting it with a VFT (very fast train) connecting Sydney and Canberra (the VFT never materialises). By the mid-1980s only two sites remain in the running – Wilton and Badgerys Creek⊞. By 1986 Badgerys Creek is ”last man standing” and the Crown purchases land there.
Even after settling on the location, progress on the second airport mimics the more inane capers of TV’s Yes Minister – a stop-start pattern of self-limiting actions, deferment of decisions, vacillations. Feasibility and EIS studies come and go, budgetary problems always loom, the Commonwealth and the state government bickers over what form the airport should take, engaging in political points-scoring, etc. The achievement of anything tangible, actual progress, is grotesquely underwhelming. One example will suffice: 1988, the incumbent government proposes to fast track the construction of Badgerys Creek, but no action follows the words. In 1991 another study contradicts this, finding there’s “no pressing need” to rush the second airport. Three more years on and fast tracking is back on the agenda, the new urgency is the 2000 Olympics. But in 1995 it is reported there “has been little or no development at Badgerys Creek” (“token construction works to date”) and later that year the Commonwealth announces that “the airport won’t be ready for the Sydney Olympics”… and so it goes (‘Second Sydney Airport’).
⌂ Blue Mountains anti-airport bumper sticker
Consistent with the past fraught nature of the second airport issue, the choice of Badgerys Creek is far from consensual. Opposition from Blue Mountains Council and its residents’ groups is particularly vocal – the litany of objections include its likely impact on the national park’s ecology, the threat to its UNESCO World Heritage site status, health hazards, air and noise pollution, [‘Council study finds airport noise on natural areas overlooked’, WSROC, 08-Dec-2017, www.wsroc.com.au]. Some have again raised the question of whether a second airport is really necessary, arguing that existing airport capacity at Bankstown and Richmond airports could be expanded to lighten the domestic passenger and cargo transport burden on Kingsford Smith [‘Is a new airport at Badgerys Creek really needed?’, (Peter Martin), Sydney Morning Herald, 15-Apr-2014, www.smh.com.au].
⌂ Future aerotropolis?
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Sorting out the nomenclature
Once the Commonwealth red-inks the Badgerys Creek site in 2014, a media debate ensues over whose name the new airport should bear. The early favourite is Sydney Harbour Bridge engineer John JC Bradfield, strongly lobbied for by politicians from both sides (LNP prime minister and premier, Labor state opposition leader, etc) [‘Bradfield Airport has universal approval’, (Danile Meers), Daily Telegraph, 06-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au]. Others including Wollongong councillors and the Royal Aeronautical Society plump for Lawrence Hargrave, a seminal figure associated with advances in the field of aeronautical pioneering (unlike Bradfield). From a western Sydney viewpoint, a Penrith City councillor makes a pitch for William ‘Billy’ Hart, who flew a box-kite plane (based on Hargrave’s earlier breakthrough invention) from Penrith to Parramatta in 1911 [‘Penrith Council defer naming of Western Sydney Airport site’, (Krystyna Pollard), Liverpool City Champion, 02-Mar-2017, www.liverpoolcitychampion.com.au].
Badgery of Badgerys Creek
The most intriguing candidate, is one with both pioneering credentials like Hargrave and Hart, and real geographical “skin in the game”…(Andrew) Delfosse Badgery, whose family gives its name to the suburb encompassing the airport site—great-grandfather James Badgery settled the area in 1799—was the first person to fly a plane of his own construction in Australia. Badgery flew from Sutton Forest to Goulburn, a distance of less than 50 miles, in 1914)❂. The case for “Delfosse Badgery Airport” is supported by the aviator’s family and the St Marys Historical Society [‘Pilot’s claims has wings: Aviation pioneer Andrew Delfosse Badgery built the first plane in Australia at Badgery’s Creek…and Flew It!’, (Ian Walker), Daily Telegraph, 12-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au].
⌂ Del Badgery & his 1914 bi-plane
(Picture: Liverpool City Council)
And the winner is? With one eye on gender-inclusiveness and PC “brownie points”, and a nod perhaps to North American precedents◗, the Morrison government in 2019 opts to name Sydney’s second international airport after Nancy Bird-Walton, a pioneer aviatrix icon of Australia – for a brief summary of Bird-Walton’s achievements in flight see my blog dated 27-May-2017, ‘Equality at 10,000 Feet: The Pioneer Aviatrix in the Golden Age of Aviation – Part I’.
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❋ no bets on the chances of this being a lay down misère, given the vicissitudes of the second airport story
◲ after opposition from the Sutherland Shire local government over concern about noise levels, the Gorton government kills off the scheme in 1969, citing “environmental difficulties”
⊞ indicative of government indecisiveness, Badgerys Creek is on and off the short list of candidates several times over a span of 45 years before the final take-up by the Abbott government
❂ it is a matter of uncertainty whether Badgery built the plane (a Cauldron bi-plane) on the family farm at Badgerys Creek or at Sutton Forest in the Southern Highlands (Pollard)
◗ airports in Niagara-Ontario and Kansas named (respectively) after pioneering aviatrixesDorothy Rungeling and Amelia Earhart
After several timber bridges came and went, they eventually put up a more substantial (supposedly ‘permanent’) stone bridge in its place (near the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets), which also had to be replaced owing to it being considerably less substantial than first thought and not permanent at all◵. Bridge Street at that time was called Governors Row as it housed the colony’s first seat of government and the governor’s residence (on the corner of Phillip Street). A commemorative stone on the site (now housing the Museum of Sydney) marks the historic location.
Treasury and Audit Office building (1849-51)
Chief Secretary‘s Office⍟ (1869)
Department of Education (1914) and Lands Department (1877-90) buildings
Commercial buildings dominate the lower end of Bridge St. The Royal Exchange Building (1967) at № 21 Bridge St stands on the original site of the Royal Exchange building (1857) – the first home of the Sydney Stock Exchange. Numerically next to the REB (at № 17-19) is the Singapore Airlines House (1925), an elegant example of the Commercial Palazzo style of architecture.
Perhaps the standout architectural piece of the lower commercial sector is the old Burns Philip and Co head office building (1898-1901) close to George Street, with its elaborate sandstone and brick Neo-Romanesque facade. Architect: Arthur Anderson. Burns Philip were big players in the Australian shipping and trading business. Originally, a convict lumber yard sat on this site.
The pick of the rest of the commercial buildings for compact elegance are probably the brace of adjoining buildings, № 4 Cliveden and № 6, (across the road from BP&Co). The street’s first commercial high-rise building, constructed 1913 in the Federation Free Classical style. Next door to the left of Cliveden is Anchor House (1960), for many years the HQs of the NSW Liberal Party. The site in the early Colonial period contained a female orphan’s asylum which later relocated to a site in Parramatta (now part of a Western Sydney University campus).
Macquarie Place as it was in the early colonial period, unrecognisable today (Source: 
The early British colonists in Sydney were quick to appreciate the value that Observatory Hill held in the formative days of the New South Wales colony. This hill, no more than moderately sized, situated between The Rocks and Barangaroo in the old part of the town, is a rich part of Sydney’s history. Not long after the founding of Port Jackson in 1788, Sydneysiders started putting the well-positioned bluff and its natural endowment to greater or lesser productive use in a variety of ways.
Sydney Observatory, 1874 
Part of Fort Philip was given over in 1825 for the housing of a signal station…it’s construction by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis was prompted by the growth in shipping at the time. From here, flags and semaphore was used to communicate with ships in the harbour below. The presence of signal flags gave rise to a new name for the Hill, Flagstaff Hill (this name remained in currency into the 20th century with some locals referring to as “The Flaggie”). In 1847, with maritime activity in Sydney Town on the rise, a two-storey Telegraph House was added to Flagstaff Hill
Fort Street High – on a 1920 cigarette card! 
The next and most important use made of Flagstaff Hill was the enterprise which gives the hill the name is by known by today, the construction of (Sydney) Observatory. Astronomical observations in the Southern Hemisphere were considered of particular importance and the handily-situated bluff was thought an ideal location to observe the stars. Built from 1857-1859 by architects William Weaver and Alexander Dawson, it originally comprised the observatory and the astronomer’s residence.
There was also a time ball on the observatory tower serving two functions. Each day at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon the time ball would drop, sending a signal (accompanying by a cannon blast) to alert people in the city and more importantly shipping on the seas to the time.
Formal gardens were created around the Observatory, circa 1875, The next decade, under the Flagstaff planting scheme, a grove of palm trees were planted. In the 20th century a tennis court was added. Observatory Park, which surrounds the Observatory itself, with its sloping lawns and great, sprawling old Moreton Bay figs is a popular lunch spot for city workers. The park also houses a Boer War memorial with an antique mounted gun and a bandstand rotunda which is a favourite for wedding photo shoots.
Observatory Park, 1941 
Increasing city light and air pollution since the Seventies saw the Sydney Observatory close in 1982…the complex has since functioned as a scientific museum. Visitors today can take a tour of the Observatory, observe the stars at night through one of the facility’s powerful, modern telescopes, or look at the historic equipment, such as the 29cm refractor telescope, dating from 1874.