Chapters → An anchor, a bridge Alistair Sisson
On a concrete block in the heart of the inner-south Sydney neighbourhood of Waterloo sits a ship’s anchor. On all sides, the anchor is surrounded by the lawns, gardens and modernist concrete apartment towers of the Waterloo estate. Nearly four kilometres from the nearest body of water, the anchor alone is hardly self-explanatory, but a short walk in any direction begins to reveal what it represents. Buildings named Marton, Banks, Solander and Cook, and Matavai and Turanga; the interiors of these latter, tallest two decorated with fading scenes of the ocean voyages, island expeditions, and colonial encounters between white sailors and native peoples the world over.[13] The ‘Endeavor Estate’ – a name which has long since fallen from use – pays homage to the colonial voyage of James Cook. Leaving his Yorkshire home of Marton, with botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander in tow, he visited the Tahitian harbour of Matavai, Turanga – or t ranga (landing place) – in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and “discovered” so-called Australia and other lands.
The Waterloo estate, as it is now more commonly known, is in some way a monument to British colonialism in Australia and the Pacific. Like much mid-century public housing in Australia, it was envisaged as a part of the great ‘nation building’ project that began with Cook dropping anchor in Kamay/Botany Bay. The construction of public housing in Waterloo, in the 1960s and 1970s, was portrayed as something of a civilising mission. Tens of hectares of ‘slums’ were cleared away for supposedly modern and safe housing for lower-income settlers. The opening of the Endeavor estate, in 1976, was such an occasion that it was attended by Queen Elizabeth II. For its planners and designers, the Waterloo estate told a story of progressive modernisation, another chapter in a short history of Australian nation. It might have been even bigger, were it not for the organised opposition of residents and unionists, whose actions prevented the expansion of slum clearance and, in so doing, reveal that the civilising impulse behind the project was neither neutral nor benevolent but embedded in an emergent stigmatisation of this diverse working class neighbourhood.
While the Waterloo estate was being built, and while neighbouring residents were contesting its expansion, communities in the next- door neighbourhood of Redfern were fighting their own struggles, struggles which yet further disproved the mythical benevolence and egalitarianism of Australian nation-building. It is a place where the ongoing violence of settler colonialism has been stark but also fiercely resisted.
Over the course of the 20th century, Redfern attracted thousands or even tens of thousands of Aboriginal people from around NSW and Australia. While Redfern is Gadigal Country, many other First Nations people moved to this part of the city for work, education, family reunion, and political organising, particularly after the end of the system of rural reserves and missions. Redfern became a centre of Aboriginal rights activism – as Gary Foley put it, the ‘crucible’ of the movement for self-determination.[14] A swathe of community-controlled organisations were established here, including the Aboriginal Medical Service, Aboriginal Legal Service, Black Theatre, and Murawina women’s centre. Another was the Aboriginal Housing Company, which, after a protracted struggle against governments, developers, and settler neighbours, gained ownership of 70 terrace houses between Eveleigh, Louis, Caroline and Vine streets – or what became known as the Block.
Over the rest of the 20th century, Redfern and Waterloo gradually gentrified. Public housing and the Block became the last footholds for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal working-class communities in the area. These sites became intensely stigmatised as their contrast with middle-class incomers grew and government support dwindled.
The stigmatisation of Redfern and Waterloo is also evidenced by the police, who have long been seen to target and harass Aboriginal people in Redfern and Waterloo. In 2004, one especially tragic and pivotal incident occurred, when an Aboriginal teenager named TJ Hickey was killed after coming off his bicycle following a police pursuit. Many allege that the police were responsible for knocking TJ off his bike. The incident sparked protest and unrest which led to clashes with police, and became dubbed the ‘Redfern Riots’. These ‘riots’, much more than the death of an Aboriginal teenager, provoked panic and outrage among politicians and media commentators [15]. The first actions of the NSW Government were to fund more police officers and a 24- hour riot squad; the second were to plan the state-led gentrification of Redfern and Waterloo through the creation of government agency named the Redfern-Waterloo Authority. Through upzoning, land privatisation and direct investment, the Redfern Waterloo Authority facilitated the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of new luxury apartments and the conversion of former industrial sites into technology and creative sector precincts. It also rezoned the Block so that it could be demolished and redeveloped as a mix of privately-run accommodation for five hundred students and affordable housing for sixty-two Aboriginal families.
House prices and rents have risen dramatically. As has the cost of living, with fashionable bars, restaurants and shops proliferating along the high streets. The result has been further displacement, exclusion and dilution of Aboriginal people and low-income people generally. In short, the NSW Government capitalised on the ‘Redfern riots’ to increase land values and make the area whiter and more middle class. At the time of writing, government attention has turned to the Waterloo estate, which is marked for demolition and replacement with six to seven thousand private apartments alongside 2100 or so managed by not-for-profits.
Waterloo’s anchor provides a bridge across time, through which we can connect multiple histories in the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. It memorialises an immeasurably significant period in the history of this continent but without speaking of the invasion, dispossession and subjection that followed. It was erected in a moment in which this historical erasure, dispossession and subjection was being fiercely contested by movements for self- determination, and nowhere more fiercely than right next-door in Redfern. And its proposed demolition reminds us that these processes continue, reconstituted into something we may also call capitalist or neoliberal, but which are still fundamentally colonial.
13 Haua, I. (2023). Unwanted endeavours and the reconstruction of Cook’s world. In B. Carlson & T. Farrely (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations, 173–191.
14 Foley, G. (2001). Black Power in Redfern 1968-1972. The Koori History Website.
15 Birch, T. (2004). “Who gives a fuck about white society any- more”: A response to the Redfern riot. Overland, 175, 18–21.