The Pyrmont Bridge runs from the western CBD (off Market Street) to Pyrmont. Built in 1902, it was intended to handle traffic to and from the shipping wharves in the Darling Harbour area, as well as serving as a gateway to and from the western suburbs of Sydney. The former became irrelevant when containerisation closed down the Darling Harbour and Pyrmont wharves in the early '80's, and the latter role was taken over by the Western Distributor and the Anzac Bridge, which appears in many other places in my galleries.
Pyrmont Bridge is an electrically powered swing span bridge which still opens regularly to allow larger vessels access to Darling Harbour. The bridge opening and closing is controlled from this tower.
In this shot, we're looking west towards Pyrmont.
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Edit September 2023: As I've noted elsewhere I'm going through my older images, gathering the descriptions that I wrote on PBase and updating the watermarks and keywords in anticipation of making a PBase departure. However... what I didn't expect is the reaction that I'd have to seeing these oldies again.
15 years hence I would be mostly concentrating on a more photo-journalistic style; I would take a shot and try to tell the story behind it, especially if it's a story of a place or time that might eventually vanish. But with a lot of these early ones, I note that I was just out looking to create images that were nice on the eye, without necessarily concerning myself with the story, despite me telling one above.
And indeed there is also a story here. Down the right we can see the Sydney Monorail which did a loop around the southern and central CBD and out to Darling Harbour. It was created in 1988 to provide a rapid link from the CBD across Darling Harbour itself out to the Harbourside area on the other side of the water, over the Pyrmont Bridge. The only other option was a long and circular bus route.
The problem is that as with most monorails... it was more of a Shelbyville idea. The carriages were relatively small, so they couldn't transport that many people at a time. The prices were relatively high. The trip wasn't all that fast. If a monorail car broke down the whole loop came to a halt. And the cars were already 20 years old by the time this shot was taken and weren't getting any cheaper to run.
There was already talk of putting a bullet to it, and that would happen in 2013, 5 years and a month after this shot was taken.
I quite enjoyed the monorail on the rare occasion that I rode it, and at least the rail itself provided some shade on scorchingly hot days and a break from the rain on wet ones. Of course the government authority that runs the bridge won't put up any shelter because "it would not be in keeping with the heritage character of the bridge". (Translation: "can't be bothered and don't want to spend the money".) In short, you will never see a shot exactly like this again. The monorail is gone, and the character and feel of the bridge is very different to this shot.
Back in the day I liked to wander through cities in the early morning looking for that pre-dawn light that suggests the dawn of a new day and new possibilities. That is still my favourite time of the day to do it, but I rarely do any more because most days I'm working from home and most mornings I'm out exercising.
I hesitate to say that the late 2000s were a more interesting time, much less a more innocent one... but I note a distinct difference between my photography now and my photography then. And it makes me think that I should try to regain a bit of the spontaneity and curiosity that I think my shooting has lost over the years, albeit with the gain of technical knowledge.
(Like writing description metadata into my shots and not putting all of my eggs in someone else's (eg PBase's) basket. Boy, do I wish I knew that back then. That, and the Powerball numbers for every draw for the following year.)
