The official name of the waterway here at Darling Harbour is Cockle Bay and for most of its history
of European settlement was part of a working harbour with cargo cranes, steamships, freight rail,
tug boats etc. A relic of those early times is this 1909 vintage wooden bridge which carried the
lion's share of westerly flowing traffic from inner Sdney across to Pyrmont and beyond, all the way
into the early 1980s. Today it is basically a pedestrian walkway and plaza but in earlier times it
had an oft used swivel opening section for the passage of cargo ships, which of course stopped
vehicular traffic completely. From today's perspective, it is quite staggering that such inadequate
infrastructure remained in use as long as it did.