Once upon a time, long ago, the people of the harbour – the Eora – were led by the noble Barangaroo. They lived off the sea – fish in abundance. Barangaroo was a fearsome and respected leader, a superb sailor and an excellent fisher. Barangaroo’s tribe, the Cameragal, were the most influential and they controlled the waters. Importantly, for this story, the tribe – and Barangaroo herself – were from North Sydney and Manly.

When white men appeared in 1788, they brought deadly weaponry, including smallpox, and it wiped out many of the Eora people including Barangaroo’s first husband and child. She soon married Bennelong, a much younger man. The whites, not understanding that woman led here, befriended the men, including presenting large amounts of fish to them, to win their acquiescence and to drive a wedge between Bennelong and Barangaroo. The whites found Barangaroo fearsome. She must have cut a striking figure. Tall, naked except for a bone in her nose, uncompromising, aggressive and protective. The sort of woman no white man had ever met. 

Barangaroo gave birth to a baby but died mysteriously soon after after in 1790. The white man tamed the people and the environment. But Eora women could still be seen expertly skimming the harbour, fishing in their canoes, up until the 1820s when they were finally driven away. 

N tells me stories about Sydney politics and economics. The gist is everything is about development. Apartment blocks, offices, houses – and the waterfront is where the hot action is. There is loads of corruption, everyone after the development dollar. Alongside this, there is immense white guilt (at least amongst the metropolitan intelligentsia) about the sequestration of Aboriginal lands. 

By the south Sydney foreshore, Bennelong has long been established – it’s the area comprising the Bridge, Circular Quay and the Opera House. Now from here westwards there is a huge development on old industrial land, duly renamed – you guessed it – Barangaroo. 

N says Australians are the biggest myth makers, and here’s another one being fashioned before our eyes. Barangaroo covers a huge area of over 600,000 square metres from Miller’s Point (an old wharf area with workmen’s cottages now under serious threat) west to Darling Harbour. It comprises a revolting development of offices, museums and high rise that makes Canary Wharf look like a perfectly planned village and Bennelong Reserve, or as we would call it, ’Park’. The brochures and artists’ impressions are gorgeous of course.   

But this is a place where she might never have set foot. Where her struggle might never have been fought or lost. Where the Eola probably never lived. Gosh, how I hate this appropriation of someone else’s cultural heritage, as if naming something ancient or mythical could give it a patina of respectability, of reparation, of inclusivity. It’s actually all about money and marketing – you too can engage in our country’s deep history, respect our neighbours and their forebears. Put the cloak on, I’m sure it will fit. Sorry folks, it’s just more myth making, here in the service of a big quick buck.   

From the 1920s it was a huge flat area latterly operated as a container terminal. Now, it’s been blown up, dug down deep under the waterline to create a giant car park, on top of which the park has been built, all sinuous jogging routes, hilled recreation areas with views to the bridge and to other harbour headlands, and massive quarried sandstone blocks hewn from the car park. Whatever, the park and headland is ravishingly beautiful, made of the best materials, and in my humble opinion designed wonderfully. 

Trouble is, it’s all completely phoney. Its name has nothing to do with historic precedent, the place is not rooted in any real past or history, the people who do live there are being shunted out of the way – it’s all a sop to those who still have a voice, who care about the city’s fabric, providing an ‘amenity’ to balance the hideous desecration of a prime stretch of waterfront by avaricious developers. It’s an imaginary past feeding a fetid future. 

There’s a huge hotel to be built by James Packer (Mariah Carey’s new love) which is the worst of it all. Philip Drew at http://www.architectureau.com writes: 

‘Like a giant finger given to Sydney, everything about it is selfish and narcissistic: its excessive height, public exclusion, and monopolisation of harbour views for a wealthy few. It refuses to consider the harbour, the immediate city, and, most insulting of all, the one great monument and symbol Sydney boasts, its Opera House, as anything more than assets to be exploited.’ 

This whole thing has been driven by the vision of ex PM, Paul Keating. His passion and intent to unite the relationship between the various headlands west of the bridge is breathtaking and audacious. The newly constructed headland of the park itself is a masterstroke. But everything else about this whole enterprise is divisive and questionable. 

As Philip Drew writes, ‘Barangaroo opposed the theft of native land. Exploiting her posthumously in this way for commercial gain is unforgivable.’ And I thought it was the British who did understatement…. 

By the way, the Travelling Companion’s PhD is all about repurposed landscapes such as Barangaroo. We have visited others here by the harbour – at Waverton, a modest reworking of an old BP terminal; Ballast Point Park, a fabulous repurposing of a giant Texaco storage facility; and the infamous Cockatoo Island, a mixed layered history of harsh convict prison, correctional facility for wayward girls, and then a shipbuilding centre for the war effort – now a recreation area.

I am hoping TC’s PhD will be turned into a book, a spot at TED, and of course a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Samuel L Jackson. Guess who’s playing me.

Until then you have to put up with this diatribe.