Platforms 26 & 27, Central Station – Sydney, NSW
Sunday Mirror, 17 May 1959.
The story of Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs railway is a long one, and we won’t be going down that tunnel today. Instead, we’ll be going down this one.
The escalator to platforms 24 & 25, Central Station, 2012.
The reason this set of escalators down to the Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line trains at Central Station is so long is because it’s actually going down two levels, not one. When the Eastern Suburbs platforms were being built throughout the 1960s and 1970s, construction crews made concessions for four extra platforms, not just the two that exist today. 26 & 27 lie above 24 & 25.
The doors leading to platforms 26 & 27, Central Station, 2012.
The plan was that platforms 24 and 25 would service the Illawarra and the Eastern Suburbs lines, and above them, platforms 26 & 27 would someday cater to an airport line. The platforms were built, but the planned airport line never materialised, and since 1979 the platforms have sat derelict. In fact, even when an airport line was built in the leadup to the Olympics in 2000, the platforms weren’t used – the reason being that modern trains were too heavy for the loadbearing capabilities of the platforms. Many photos exist online of these platforms, but since 26 & 27 are not accessible to the general public (with terrorism fears cited as the reason, because terrorists want to blow up empty train platforms), they won’t be appearing here. What’s interesting is the evidence of the platforms’ existence that is readily available, such as this:
Control panel in the lift for platforms 24 & 25, Central Station, 2012.
But shhh! Don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret!
ANNUAL UPDATE: One year doesn’t seem to have made a difference to the future of these dead platforms.
Belfield Hotel/Nothing – Belfield, NSW
Belfield Hotel, 2012.
Built in 1931, the Belfield Hotel has seen better days. Specifically, open ones. For many years now, this pub has sat closed. Eerily, the front bar still has all the chairs, pool tables and stools set up. Glasses still sit on the bar. It’s like the patrons and Lloyd the bartender just vanished one night when the clock struck twelve.
Belfield Hotel, 1999. Photo by Jon Graham, Gdaypubs.com.au.
Around the back of the Belfield is the pub’s former gaming room, ‘Lasseter’s Lounge’, which now serves as Belfield’s watering hole. It’s more like a pokie room that also serves beer. The Canterbury Council is proposing that the building be heritage listed, and I’m presuming the proposal involves sending a copy of The Shining to the powers that be with a note attached reading ‘SEE?’
Keith Lord Furniture Electrical/Brescia Furniture Showroom/derelict – Ashfield, NSW
I remember when I was a child, I was taken on yet another tedious day trip to Brescia Furniture, on Parramatta Road at Ashfield. When we attempted to sit on one of the lounges to see how it felt, we were rudely told to get off by one of the staff. We left empty handed.
Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it, Brescia?
The showroom was built in 1975 for Keith Lord Furniture, replacing their old site:
Keith Lord Furniture and Electrical, Ashfield NSW, April 1965. Image courtesy Library of NSW.
Lord died in 1978, and by 1994 his chain was dead. Along the way, this showroom was sold to Brescia, for whom it became a model store. But in 2005 it went up in one of the worst and most intense fires in Sydney’s history. It was said that the combination of leather, varnish, wood and other flammable materials all stockpiled together in a 30-year-old building didn’t help over 900 firefighters put out the blaze over three days. I guess that’s why they didn’t want us on the lounges.
Bedlam Point Wharf/Scrub – Gladesville NSW
Hewn into the shores of the Parramatta River by teams of felons and convict, this scrubby tract of Great Northern Road is a relic revisited by an overgrown walking path. Nestled between the restored 19th century cottage of Banjo Patterson (itself becoming the churning engine room of a 1950’s industrial site – but that’s another story) and the haunted grounds of the Gladesville Asylum (another long story) this rocky outcrop has since been as forgotten as the aboriginal campsite it was built upon.
The path down to the derelict Bedlam Wharf 2012, Parramatta River, Gladesville NSW.
A ship berthed at the Bedlam Point Wharf around 1890. Image by Sydney photographer Henry King.
The first mention of a Wharf at Bedlam Point was around 1834. The ferry was operated by convict labour and could carry one horse and cart with a few passengers. It was at Bedlam that the Parramatta River is at its narrowest – which lead surveyors chart the Great North Road through this point.
The abandoned wharf at Bedlam Point.
Engineering at the time dictated a chain be fastened at either side to wind the punt across by hand. Today’s Rivercat is known to be – generally – more dependable. Unless you want it to stop here. Which it won’t.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser
Saturday 27 February 1841
“The ferryman is not to be depended upon, for no later than Thursday last he lay dead drunk on the South Shore of the River,
within less than his own length of the water’s edge, in consequence of which several person lost their package to Sydney, and two of them, a lady and gentleman, were, we believe, compelled to remain all night at the “Red House” public house of Bedlam Point.”
Past/Lives of the Near Future 
