The area around what is now Pyrmont Point Park used to hold working wharves, dating back to the previous century and indeed the one before that. Some of those wharves are now just remnants, including this one. For some odd reason, this one always seemed to have one or two pairs of shoes hanging from it. (Not always these ones either.) Not old shoes, not shoes that had been there for ages... and how they got there isn't clear since there's no connection from the land to this wharf. Someone would have had to climb onto the remains from the water.

Just recently all of the shoes have been removed and signs have been erected warning that the wharf is in a "distressed state" and shouldn't be climbed on. Will they reappear?

Time will tell.
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Edit September 2023: A lot of these decayed wharves were removed in the subsequent decade. Off the top of my head I don't recall when that happened, and I don't recall how long I kept seeing shoes hanging from the wharves. As I start to go through older images from my "Photo A Day" galleries of the early 2010s I may find more shots of them but that is going to be a verrrry long process.