The Tank Stream

Here in Sydney there is a similar story.  The Tank Stream was a flowing freshwater channel beginning about one kilometer inland of where it meets the harbor in Sydney Cove, the landing site of the first fleet of colonizers from England.  The first fleet colonialists saw the stream as an opportunity.  Convicts were located to the west of the stream bounded by the harbor on one side and the stream on the other.  East of the stream, the land has a gentler slope and more amenable to setting up estates and farmland.  As the Sydney colony matured, the west side of the stream, the present day neighborhoods of the Rocks and Miller’s Point became overcrowded slums.  With the growth of the industrial age, warehouses and the shipping industry moved in pushing local residents into even more squalid and congested conditions.  Then in the 20^th century as the shipping and industrial boom continued, the area survived a dose of the Bubonic plague only to emerge as a derelict wharf and harborfront in the 21^st century.  In 1988 with the planned opening of Darling Harbour, the area west of the Tank Stream has seen major infrastructural improvements and commercial rejuvenation, blurring what was once a strict divide between the land to the west and east of the Tank Stream. 

East of the Tank Stream the story is very different.  Soldiers and officers were the first to settle the area.  Enjoying wider flat areas and harbor views, the government, merchants and wealthy colonists built Sydney’s first Town Hall, custom’s house, banks, and cultural institutions.  Throughout the 19^th and 20^th century the area grew with large Georgian and Victorian mansions and sprawling gardens.  Today, the area features the city’s most prestigious cultural institutions and some of its most expensive commercial real estate. 

Image: The Council of the City of Sydney.  

And what has become of the Tank Stream?  Like many examples around the world, the Choqueyapu River in La Paz, Bolivia for instance, it is sunken under the streets and buildings carrying waste out of the city.  Evidence of the stream surfaces in the names of bars, restaurants, and shops that follow its underground course.  An art installation buried in the pavement marks 5 distinct points of the stream and a guided tour of the sewer system allows urban explorers to walk its current day path.  The name, Tank Stream, is derived from the colonist’s attempts to catch water in holding tanks in order to better supply the growing population.  The city may have outgrown the Tank Stream’s water supply, but its memory lives on.