The Hungry Mile is the name harbourside workers gave to the docklands area of

Darling Harbour Darling Harbour is a harbour and neighborhood adjacent to the city centre of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, that is made up of a large recreational and pedestrian precinct that is situated on western outskirts of the Sydney central busines ...

East, in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. Workers would walk from wharf to wharf in search of a job, often failing to find one. The system of day labour gave rise to similar conditions on many port areas, such as Melbourne's Wailing Wall. As stevedoring operations moved to ports at

Port Botany Port Botany is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Port Botany is located 12 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Randwick. Port ...

and Port Kembla, the

Government of New South Wales The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the executive state government of New South Wales, Australia. The government comprises 11 portfolios, led by a ministerial department and supported by several agencies. Th ...

determined that this site should be renewed as an extension of the

Sydney CBD The Sydney central business district (CBD) is the historical and main Central business district, commercial centre of Sydney. The CBD is Sydney's city centre, or Sydney City, and the two terms are used interchangeably. Colloquially, the CBD or ...

with a significant new foreshore park providing recreational areas for a growing Sydney

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

. This area is being redeveloped into a recreational, business and shopping precinct. The area was officially part of

Millers Point Millers Point is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is on the north-western edge of the Sydney central business district, adjacent to The Rocks and is part of the local government area of the City o ...

. In 2006, as part of the urban renewal plans, the State Government held a competition for the site's name. The Maritime Union of Australia campaigned to renew the "Hungry Mile" name, as an acknowledgement of the site's historical significance to waterside workers. The State Government named the area Barangaroo. The name honours

Barangaroo Barangaroo ( – ) was an Aboriginal Australian woman best known for her interactions with the British colony of New South Wales during the first years of the European colonisation of Australia. A member of the Cammeraygal clan, she was the wi ...

, an important

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

woman from Sydney's early history who was a powerful and colourful figure in the colonisation of Australia. She was also the wife of

Bennelong Woollarawarre Bennelong ( 1764 – 3 January 1813) was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal Australian people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia. Bennelong served as an interlocutor between ...

, another important indigenous figure after whom Bennelong Point is named, the site of the

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue Performing arts center, performing arts centre in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive b ...

. A section of Barangaroo, Hickson Road between the Munn Street overbridge and the Napoleon Street intersection, was officially designated the Hungry Mile in 2009.

Popular culture

In 1930, ''The Hungry Mile'' was the title of wharfie poet Ernest Antony's most famous poem, in a published collection titled ''The Hungry Mile and other poems''. Memories of the Hungry Mile and Antony's poem became the inspiration for the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit 1950s film of the same name.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hungry Mile History of Sydney Sydney localities