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Chapters → Bay Street Depot Elizabeth Duncan

Bay Street Depot Elizabeth Duncan

We are, all of us whether we desire it or not, in relation to Sanitation, implicated, dependent-if we want the City, and ourselves, to last more than a few days. I am-along with every other citizen who lives, works, visits or passes through this space-a co-producer of Sanitation’s work-product, as well as a customer of Sanitation’s work.

-        Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Sanitation Manifesto! (1984)

Attending to the present moment implies, necessarily, understanding that the present we move through…is reliquary of the past, holding traces of everything that has happened and everything that has been erased.

-        Alexis Shotwell, Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times (2016)

I go around and I feel how it fades. I walk around and I see how it fades. Walk around and you’ll see what fades.

-        Bradford Cox, Death in Midsummer (2019)

A small steel-bolted ring is visible in the picture above. It is not the focus of the picture, as indeed at the time it was not the focus of my attention. I was not responsive to it, though its presence persists, signifying a past function. How is it that we might be rendered capable[1] of translating material signatures after their context, and therefore their significance, has long since faded? Focusing on the site of the Bay Street Depot, we can think with our waste places, waste infrastructure and those that labour with our waste (and their memories over time).

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The Bay Street Depot has been owned and run by the City of Sydney since the early 1900’s. Since this time, the site has been used to manage waste, allowing for the city to function without blockage by its own debris. The depot has also long been a site of shelter and storage for the plant that enables and extends the capacities of human labour to pick up and collect the city’s debris. This is not just the excess discarded by people, but also the excess that is discarded by the plant and animal life that inhabits the city. Leaves, bark and pollen (depending on the season) all form a major part of the waste stream cleared and managed by the cleansing staff. The Bay Street Depot was originally built as a stable to house the city’s horses, then utilised as the first mechanised assemblage; the horse and cart enabled the city’s waste collection. To this day, the stables remain as a key structure on this site, repurposed and retrofitted as offices, storerooms and a breakroom.

The city has become in relation to the Bay Street Depot. During fieldwork with the ‘Cleansing Services’ staff at the Bay Street Depot, the significance and layered history of the Bay Street Depot became clear. While the majority of staff members are relatively new to the job, there remain a few long-term employees that remember and offer a living memory of the history of the site. As part of my fieldwork, I spent some time riding along in a Link Truck[1] with John, a cleansing services officer who has worked for the city since he was 20 years old. John was based at the Bay Street Depot when he first started working for the city in 1978.[2]

John’s vision of the city is overlaid with detailed knowledge and understanding of our waste places. On a Link Truck run to tip street sweepings at the Botany Transfer Station, he points out the Botany Golf Course. ‘This used to be a tip,’ he explains, ‘…as did the Cronulla Oval.’ Just before we reach the transfer station, John draws my attention to the site of an old tip, now a horse paddock sitting inconspicuously on the corner of Bunnerrong Road and Botany Road. On the way back to the depot, we pass the Green Square developments and John indicates the space, where years earlier, the ‘Zetland Monster’ (an incinerator) once stood. Sites of waste and waste management are spread out across the city, living on in the memories of labourers and residents, but also in the memories of grounds, soils, and waters. Bodies, human and more-than-human, are engaged with the process of making, keeping, and maintaining the city. While the historical materialities and biographies of waste may become invisible over time, escaping the present moment of vision, they remain caught up in these bodies in externally imperceivable ways.

John was also able to shed some light on what was introduced to me as the ‘Opera House’ when I was given a site induction at the Bay Street Depot.  The car park at Bay Street, a rectangular structure walled by netted concrete[3] and held up by impressive concert pylons is nicknamed the ‘Opera House’. Until I met John, none of the other workers could tell me why this was the case. But when I asked, he said the Bay Street Opera House got its name because it was built at the same time as the Sydney Opera House and took just as long to be built. In 1978, this Opera House would have been newly built; now the second level carpark roof is in need of repair, as time and weather take their toll.

John’s knowledge of this space runs deep, his memory is place-based and embodied, gained through his participation in our city’s waste infrastructure over many years; he’s seen these places evolve and their histories forgotten. However, as Ukeles so aptly reminds us: ‘We are, all of us whether we desire it or not, in relation to Sanitation, implicated, dependent-if we want the City, and ourselves, to last more than a few days.’ Bay Street is the place that catches our debris before it ends up in our waterways; Bay Street is the site of labour and infrastructure that allows our city to drain and be clean. Indeed, our discards are what flow through this site and what are laboured upon by John and his co-workers as they clear the concrete drain that is the city.

These places matter because, in coming to know them, we can understand what it means to attend to the present in all its iterations. By looking at sites of response and responsibility that enable the city to function, such as the Bay Street Depot, we can come to appreciate the infrastructural effort of embodied labour required to respond to the city and keep it clean. This work and effort will never be erased as it is traced into sites of infrastructure and the bodies of the workers. The steel ring shows how processes of removal and forgetting are never complete, speaking to the ways in which a layered history of materials, labour and horse and human lives can be signified by such an object. Through his narration, John renders me responsible to the waste histories of our city. In turn, I hope that this article will share with you, the reader, the ability to recognise and respond to our ever-present waste places.  

[1]  The Link bins are essentially giant skip bins that are used to empty waste collection plant, like Footways and Roadways (Mini-Compacters commonly known as ‘garbage trucks’, are emptied directly at transfer stations). The Link Truck is then used to transport the Link bins to privately owned waste transfer stations located in Artarmon, Rockdale and Matraville.. 
[2] Just a short time after the February 1978 Hilton Bombing on Pitt Street, in which two waste services employees of the City of Sydney and a policeman were killed after a bomb placed in a garbage bin was collected and compacted, causing it to explode.
[3] Designed to allow airflow to distribute car emissions between the outside and inside.