The turning of the sod ceremony in 1923 started the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Public works often begin with a ceremony involving dignitaries and politicians. Trees are planted, a brick laid, foundation stones unveiled, or a sod of earth turned.
On Saturday 28 July, 1923, the New South Wales Minister for Public Works RT Ball took hold of a spade and uttered: ‘I understand it is my duty now to start the job’. He turned the first sod – or dug up a bit of earth – and thereby symbolically began one of the largest construction projects in Australian history: the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
A band struck up as the soil was lifted and the large crowd cheered. It was a cold wet winter’s afternoon which made Ball’s ceremonial spade work a little easier. Interestingly, but not uniquely, the spot was marked by a Union Jack rather than the Australian blue ensign with its distinctive stars. For it was not until the passage of the Flags Act of 1953 that the Australian flag was formally adopted by legislation. Britain’s flag flew proudly at Australian events for half a century after Federation.
The long-awaited Bridge was an astonishingly complex piece of transport infrastructure, for it would accommodate trains, trams, and automobiles – all of which, of course, required approaches. Accordingly, the sod was not turned on the site of one of the proposed pylons or approach roads. Rather, Ball wielded his spade in Blue Street, North Sydney, where a new train station would be built on a new link to Waverton which would render the 1890s-era single line that curled around Lavender Bay obsolete.
Minister Ball was accompanied by the Premier, Sir George Fuller, chief engineer for the project John Bradfield, and the North Sydney Mayor GT Clarke. Although tenders for the design and construction of the bridge had not yet been decided, Mayor Clarke gave Premier Fuller a silver model of the structure all imagined would span the Harbour. It was a beautiful bridge of suspended cables and towering pylons; but it did not resemble at all the grand arch that was ultimately built.
It is unlikely that many in the cheering crowd properly appreciated the cost that would be borne by the local community. In the following eight years, hundreds of houses and shops were demolished in Alfred, Broughton and Willoughby Streets to make way for the immediate Bridge approach. Another pathway was driven through the working-class precinct behind North Sydney station for the new train line, destroying houses in Bank, Ancrum and Euroka Streets. As many as 2,000 people were displaced. Most were renters, shopkeepers and householders, who were moved on without compensation. But as the Premier said, the work was ‘not only in the interest of North Sydney, but in the interest of the people at large’.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council.