Horse 3009 - Operation Blue Line - The Station That Never Was

Over a very long period of time, I have visited every single station on the Sydney Trains network. I have also visited the locations of stations which used to exist and have long since been abandoned such as Ropes Creek, Dunheved, Sandown, Goodyear, Hardees, and Pipita. On ANZAC Day, I visited a station which was not abandoned but one that was never completed. It sort of asks the existential question of whether or not you can have a ghost station if the station never was a station.

Woollahra Station sits in the Avaricic Republic of Woollahra and just like the Insanic Republic of Mosman on the other side of the harbour, its avarice and hubris yells into the world and especially on railway maps by being completely and stubbornly absent. 

The only clue that there ever were plans for a railway station around here is a park on Edgecliff Road; which has a sorry looking bench with multi-million views of a railway line way way way down at the bottom of a very big hole. This curiously exactly station sized hole is what remains of the abandoned and never was, Woollahra Station.

The Eastern Suburbs Railway Line is just one tale among many in this city, which tells the story of the true nature of Sydney. Every since 1788, Sydney has been ruled by a small select group of people who can manipulate the power of the state to get exactly what they want, at the expense of the scum class who they walk over the heads of. 

Plans for the Eastern Suburbs Railway Line had been suggested decades before by John Bradfield but a war, a worldwide pandemic, the Depression, and another war, gave successive governments successive excuses to do exactly nothing. The Cahill Government in its blundering ineptitude managed to destroy the legacy and heritage of the world's largest tram network and the Heffron Government which followed, faced massive amounts of opposition from an organised group of very rich and well-connected NIMBYs who simply couldn't bear the thought of a low-class railway station in their high-class neighbourhood. They took their NIMBY case all the way to the High Court of Australia and lost; which meant that the people who now live there should have won but they too, lost.

In 1963, the Heffron Government announced that the Eastern Suburbs Railway Line would be completed in sections; with the first section to Bondi Junction being finished in 1974 and the rest of the project extending through Randwick and then presumably making use of the Botany Goods Line in 1976. The total cost of the project was to be £29m.

Over the next decade, construction work on the Eastern Suburbs Railway line stalled for a number of reasons including industrial action, imposed restrictions on working hours because of NIMBY groups, and massive cost blow-outs of the project due to the physical problem of cutting through so much rock. Edgecliff Station and the formwork for its buildings and station entrances was finish in 1969 and work moved to Woolarha; which is when the project faced the loudest voices of opposition.

Woollahra Station probably would have had the lowest patronage on the line because it is so close to both Edgecliff and Bondi Junction, but even though the NIMBY groups took their case against the NSW Government to the High Court of Australia to oppose the opening of the station, and even though considerable construction work took place and what is very obviously basic railway station infrastructure having been completed, ultimately the NSW Government decided that abandoning this particular station would be a good cost cutting measure and so it remains to this day as one glorious hole in the ground.

This photograph shows that some formwork which describes where the platforms would have gone, was laid down. The station is very clearly meant for normal 8-car suburban stock and indeed, that is what passes through the station which never was. I imagine that access down to the platforms that deep would have been by escalator and elevator; which means that it would have been step-free and fully accessible to people with mobility difficulties. 

This end of the station shows not only the other set of tunnel exits but also kind of hints at a possible layout of the station. Probably the park would have continued right over the top of the station and that would have quietened the station even further, with possibly a sunken concourse below the park and then the station proper below that. I can imagine three levels.

Probably the station would have been dressed in that strange sad tiled neo-brutalist style which the rest of the Eastern Suburbs Railway line all received; with Woollahra appearing in sets of three times on the walls and supporting barrels. 

I wonder if the people of 2022 would like to thank the NIMBYs of fifty years ago. If there was a proposed railway line that was coming through your suburb, can you honestly say now that you would protest against having a local station? This was one of the hardest to get to stations that I have visited; not only because it is on the other side of Sydney and because the terrain would have made it unpleasant to walk to but because I drove there and found that on a quiet day which was a public holiday, the roads are narrow and congested. If this was the legacy that the NIMBYs wanted to give future people of Woollahra, then they have achieved it.

Maybe there's something about the character of the people of Woollahra that I just do not understand. Having worked in Mosman for not quite two decades, I have seen (but not experienced) open racism on the streets. There could be something about the demographics of Woollahra which in spite of a railway station being really desirable, still makes it non-viable. It could be that just like the people of Cherrybrook and Castle Hill who objected to the North West Metro being connected to the Richmond Line at Schofields, that the small select group of people who can manipulate the power of the state to get exactly what they want, at the expense of the scum class who they walk over the heads of, still exist here. 

Maybe I've got it wrong and the idea of installing Woollahra Station as a finished project is an idea worth revisiting? I don't know. I hope that it would be dressed in that same strange sad tiled neo-brutalist style and that it would get a 1970s echo trim. 

As it currently stands though, I now have no reason to come back here. Having ticked Woollahra Station off the list, there is literally no need to go to a station which never was and doesn't exist.