Squatters turned the old shop on the corner of Harris and Scott Streets into a speak-easy that operated under the radar, illegally selling alcohol – mostly on Sundays – that continued a time-honoured practice with a twist. It now houses a restaurant and a café. Much of Pyrmont’s older housing was in a similar condition in the 1980s.
Photograph courtesy of Linda Snook, c. 1985.
Others squatted in the disused Caledonian Hotel on the corner of Point and Bowman Streets, which is today a fine, private residence. And some attempted to move into the Terminus. The people living in Mount Street knew where to look when the power failed in the early nineties. Arthur Dignum recalled that ‘when the lights went out all up and down the street we knew it would be the kids in the Terminus Hotel trying to illegally tap into the power supply.’243
The Wakils had the squatters removed and security increased. In 2002 Mickie Quick got inside the hotel and changed the locks.
We were in there three weeks; six or seven squatters, there were plenty of rooms. I was squatting a lot around those times and that was the closest I got to feeling like it was an aggressive eviction. Two fellows almost looked like they were bulldogs, they could have even been twins. They were comin’ in. We were very good at barricading but they found the weakest point and they were coming through with their sledgehammers. So just looking at the physique of them we decided to get out onto the street … It wasn’t so brutal that we were hit or anything like that. It was daytime, early. They know people like us like to sleep in.244
This rendition of the event is a little less dramatic than the report in the Herald that said it was ‘one of the scariest evictions I had ever had. Two hired guns came in with sledgehammers in the night.’245 As Quick remembers, it was all over quickly and ‘we even cooked a breakfast out on the street once we were out. We had a little portable gas stove.’
Quick, a co-founder of SquatSpace,246 has an established philosophy of squatting that is based on the conviciction that leaving buildings vacant is not socially responsible. This group attempted to establish the idea of a ‘caretakers lease’ in exchange for looking after a building. ‘We were always seeking to be allowed to stay and look after the places, repair them and occupy them until they were really needed.’ From experience, he knew that empty buildings were targets for graffiti, something his group never did and he recalled that there was no damage and no graffiti in the Terminus. ‘Our style was to fix the places up.’ There was some graffiti on the walls by the time the hotel was eventually sold, so perhaps there were other clandestine squatters in there as well.
MEMORIES OF A SQUATTER
I love the Terminus Hotel. We explored a lot of old buildings around that time but my standout memory was the first time we broke in there to explore. I don’t know if I have romanticised it in my memory, but I remember coming in between the Terminus and the school next door, and it was completely overgrown with ivy. And then I noticed what looked like hundreds of balls. You could be forgiven for thinking it was an installation at the MCA; it had that right amount of scale. A strange amount of balls, foot balls, plastic balls, kids’ balls. Seventeen years of kids losing balls over the wall and not being allowed to get them. It just created a fantastical beautiful scene. Mickie Quick, 2017.
Apart from these minor intrusions, the Terminus was left to a clutch of cats that sunned themselves on the footpath where drinkers once gathered. For over thirty years the old boozer slowly decayed, its ‘Tooths and Reschs beer on tap’ advertising signs became faded and ivy grew thickly over its walls, slowly softening and rounding its sharp edges. The upstairs, recessed balcony facing John Street where politicians had long ago spruiked their slogans to whoever gathered in the street below became a dark hole fringed in green. Several commentators observed that it was like the mouth of a living thing. Artists began to paint the old building and photographers arrived to capture it on film.
Urban renewal did eventually come to Pyrmont. In 1994 City West Development Corporation was established to facilitate development. New apartments and commercial premises were built and some of the old obsolete buildings were restored and given new life. The City Council bought the old John Street school next to the Terminus, restored it and made it available as a community space for the slowly growing local population. Barker’s old Royal Pacific across the road on the opposite corner got a trendy makeover and a new name as the Pyrmont Point Hotel. CSR finally closed its gates and the site at the end of Harris street was bought by Lend Lease in 1997 for a major residential development. Over the next decade apartments multiplied all over Pyrmont and prestige office space began to house hi-tech companies, served by smart restaurants and cafes. Pyrmont’s population increased to almost 8000 by 2001 and it was 11,631 by 2011, with well over 6000 dwellings. At the most recent census in 2016 there were 12,813 people living in Pyrmont, which regularly makes it into lists of the most densely populated areas in Sydney.
On measures of individual wealth and education levels, Pyrmont's current population stands in stark contrast to an earlier working-class Pyrmont where poverty had been a regular visitor for many of its decades and education had often been rudimentary.
JACKSONS LANDING – A SIGN OF THE TIMES
In the remaking of the site at the foot of Harris Street, some of the old CSR sugar factory buildings were preserved and some heritage relics were kept. At the same time overall associations with the down-and-out place called Pyrmont were minimised by inventing a new name for the area that became known as Jacksons Landing. Not all the locals approved. In 1999 when food writer David Dale took restaurateur Jennice Kersh for a walk down the memory lane of her Pyrmont childhood, he recorded that:
We round the corner into John Street and reach the now-derelict Terminus hotel. This was Abe Kersh’s local … Outside the pub is a sign pointing to Jacksons Landing, the new name for the old CSR sugar factory that used to stink up the neighbourhood … Kersh is furious. ‘I think it’s tragic that a name like Pyrmont with such tradition, is discarded for fashionable reasons, apparently because somebody doesn’t like the working-class connotations. There’s a sense of history and belonging. You don’t just change the name of a suburb because it’s going to make it easier to sell expensive apartments.’247
It is only now, twenty years on, that new residents are embracing the idea of ‘Pyrmont’ as their own.
People would stop and wonder how the Terminus, becoming ever more shrouded in ivy, could remain neglected for so long. Of all the vacant buildings tied up by the Wakils, this one – more than any other – became a symbol of their unpopular ‘land banking’ practices.
The Wakils were well known as arts patrons and generous donors to charities, but by the time they bought the Terminus they were becoming less involved in the social world of Sydney. They eventually came to be described as reclusive. Through the lens of Pyrmont they were ‘Eastern suburbs’ – code for ‘not us’. While a request to interview the Wakils for this book was politely refused, their considerable real estate holdings have always attracted interest and press coverage, despite their wishes.
A worker at one of the few businesses that operated from the woolstore at 100 Harris Street recalled that Isaac Wakil drove his cream Mercedes into Pyrmont on most days but that he never engaged in any conversation. Anne Abicht, who owned 63 and 65 Harris Street next to the Terminus, recalled that Wakil always parked his Bentley in the garage next to her houses. Others recall that Susan Wakil was occasionally seen driving her Rolls Royce through the area, possibly checking that nothing in their property portfolio had fallen down or gone up in flames. Mercedes, Bentley, Rolls Royce – whatever they drove, it was a measure of their social distance from down-and-out Pyrmont. They never connected to the area where gossip about them was rife, albeit starved of any real information. With one important exception.
In the early 1990s there were protests when the old ‘schoolmaster’s house’ behind the school was demolished in the middle of the night, but the thing that really go
t people going was the Wakils’ refusal to sell off some of their land fronting Mount Street behind the new Community Centre for tennis courts.248 The locals wrote letters, signed petitions of support and attended meetings. The Council made several offers to buy the land, and there were also extended discussions with the state planning authorities concerning the possibility of rezoning it as ‘recreational’ or of compulsorily acquiring it. Mrs. Wakil even attended a meeting to discuss the issue, but only to put her position that the property was not for sale to Council or at any price. She said that if there was any move to resume it, there would be a legal fight. As the Wakil’s used one of the heaviest hitting legal firms in town, no-one doubted her.
The upshot was that in late 1993, after two years of negotiations, the State Minister for Planning rezoned the land as ‘residential’, allowing heights of up to 21 metres – that is, seven or eight stories. Earlier, the Minister had indicated to the Wakils that he was ‘inclined to support the City Council’ in its desire for tennis courts, but in the final analysis he decided otherwise. This apparent backflip was greeted with mild protest from the City Council and residents scratched their heads when they received a letter informing them of this new zoning. No-one could work out what had just happened, but it seemed that the Wakils had won a victory. They said at the time that they intended to develop this land themselves, but nothing ever happened and, like the Terminus next door, this land remained unused for decades.249
WHY THE TERMINUS CLOSED – THE FALSE VERSION
During the decades when the hotel was closed, rumours were bound to grow. Ignoring a rumour because it is not true could be interpreted as an omission of fact, not as a rejection of its truth. So, in the interests of accuracy …
There are stories about murders. One story has it that the son of the last manager of the hotel was killed. ‘They just walked away and the Wakils never re-let it.’ There was never any manager in the hotel after the Wakils bought it and they never let it to anyone.
Another story is that Wakils had a son who was killed in the pub, and that is why they bought it and sealed it up. A variation of this story is that the Wakils bought up multiple hotels and closed them down for the same reason – grief over the loss of a son. Or, alternatively, that the son was allegedly an alcoholic.
The Wakils property portfolio did not include other hotels and, as far as it is known, they did not have any children. They probably decided to purchase the Terminus because it adjoined a larger block of land they also purchased, which stretched from Harris to Mount Street.
A BREATH OF NEW LIFE FOR THE TERMINUS
Over the last decade, when there were a lot of discussions in the media about the problems created by high vacancy rates in Sydney’s housing market, and proposals for taxing vacant buildings were on the cards, the Wakils began divesting themselves of their properties.
The old moss-covered woolstore across the street was sold and it has been beautifully restored for offices and a cafe without enlarging its footprint. In April 2016 the Terminus was sold for $4,750,000. The year before it had been bought by developers Auswin TWT, as part of a parcel including all of the adjacent land on Harris Street through to Mount Street, for $23,290,000.250
In 2017 all structures on this land were removed and an archaeological dig was undertaken prior to the construction of apartments. This is one of Pyrmont’s oldest European sites and the dig turned up a rich cache of house foundations, artefacts and evidence of early topography. In other areas of the inner city, more notice would have been taken. Here, the work was done quickly without the developers allowing any public viewings of the site. That zoning, which the Wakils obtained back in the 1990s that permitted buildings to be constructed up to 21 metres high, will result in large-scale development of apartments in the next few years. Many people think this will be out of scale with the Terminus and the buildings in John Street, including the fine old school that is now Pyrmont Community Centre.
Isaac and Susan Wakil were both awarded an Order of Australia in 2017 for ‘distinguished service to the community through a range of philanthropic endeavours and support of charities’.251 The governor of NSW went to their home in Vaucluse for a private investiture ceremony. While their philanthropic generosity is undoubted, out west in Pyrmont some thought they could have done without their input.
When the Terminus was placed on the open market in early 2016, there was a lot of interest in the sale. According to the selling agents, over 60 private inspections were made, including some of them made by interested locals who at last had a chance to sticky beak inside this building described as ‘mysterious … a rare time capsule … a slice of life from a bygone era’.252 Predictions varied of what any new buyers would do with the Terminus.
During the decades that the Terminus was locked up, a lot had changed in the world of pubs. Several inquiries into crime in NSW in the 1990s exposed the links between criminal activity and inner-city hotels, but the Terminus was no longer a pub so it avoided this exposure.253 The hydra-headed Tooth & Co. that had dominated so much of the hotel industry for such a long time was no more. The notion of ‘tied’ hotels where only approved brews could be sold became a dim memory as the market was flooded with imported and boutique beers.
The ivy-covered Terminus for sale.
Photograph courtesy of Pyrmont History Group.
In 2003 even the venerable old Kent Brewery in nearby Chippendale, having forever supplied the hotel with its beer, was sold off by its new owners, the Carlton & United Breweries, to make way for residential development.
The Terminus missed out on the introduction of PubTAB in the late eighties, when improvements in computer systems allowed the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB) to be decentralised. Now bets could be placed on the horses and the dogs inside hotels. Public bars became crowded with TV screens blaring out the horseraces and greyhound races. And the Terminus missed out on the pokies. Poker machines, which had been allowed in clubs for many years, finally arrived in the pubs in 1997. When they did parlours and dining rooms were often converted into gaming rooms. The increased investment required to acquire poker machines encouraged larger investors and larger pubs.254 None of these pubs could compete with The Star Casino that opened in 1995 as Sydney Harbour Casino in temporary premises on wharves 12/13. Then it moved to grand new premises that dominated the landscape of the Pyrmont waterfront in 1997, changing its name to Star City.
In 2009 when The Star Casino was refurbished, it held almost 1500 electronic gaming machines. It stands as a symbol of a very different society from the one that existed when the Terminus closed in 1984.
With none of these intrusions, the Terminus remained much as it had been for most of the twentieth century, with its semi-circular bar and its green Edwardian pub tiles surprisingly intact. In 2012 it had been listed as a heritage building as:
a good representative example of an early twentieth century working class hotel on a prominent corner site which makes a positive contribution to the streetscape … [and] demonstrates key characteristics of Federation Free Style architecture.255
This history has demonstrated that although the Terminus presents as an early twentieth-century Federation building, sections of it are much older. The featured medallions on the hotel’s parapet that are dated 1917 could equally record the year as 1863. While mystery surrounded its age, its actual condition was an unknown quality when it came up for sale in 2016. Rain damage had compromised some ceilings upstairs, and peeling paint was everywhere. Vera Dempsey would have felt right at home.
It was not bought by a large developer, but by the Mathlin and Katari families, Paul Harris and Camilla Drover, trading as the Terminus Hotel Pty Ltd. They had worked together on small restorations previously and part of what attracted them to the Terminus was its derelict state. David Mathlin, who had previously been employed on the rezoning and planning stages of the old CSR site down the road, knows the area well. As he put it, ‘I know building and I’m a sucker for this kind of place. It�
��s a building that deserves to be restored well.’ All the same, he said:
it was a huge gamble buying it because all the windows were blacked out, there was carpet on the floors, furniture everywhere, so you literally couldn’t get at the floors or beams to see how much damage there was … it was a big gamble and there was some moisture damage and some termites, but only modest amounts. Basically, structurally, it’s built on sandstone, it’s very intact … it was really well built back then, beautifully built.256
The renewed Terminus Hotel has new kitchen facilities that utilises the space where Ruby O’Brien’s garage once stood. There are new dining areas, including outdoor dining, but many of the older features remain. The ornate, pressed metal ceilings, the windows etched with the name Terminus Hotel and the original green pub tiles have all been retained, along with the old bar. Many of the wooden floors have been kept and the wooden bar floor has been reinstated. One heritage feature of the pub that has been jettisoned is that damp cellar. This has now been deepened and tanked to drain off excess water. Several months after this work had been done, the verdict was that the cellar had remained dry and the owners claimed to be confident that the problem had been solved at last. The ghosts of previous publicans must have cheered.
There are no gaming machines to strike a jarring tone. Many of the new innovations re-create older practices. In today’s parlance it can be described more as a restaurant/bar than as a pub, but in many ways this reinstates older ways of being a public house. The traditional lounges upstairs open out to the new deck. The owners hope that these areas will function as appealing, feminine spaces for women patrons, and these areas reinstate a long-lost function of hotels that succumbed to catering mainly for male patrons for much of the twentieth century. The bedrooms are retained as simple spaces without the addition of modern ensuite bathrooms. These rooms were once just the standard fare of a rough workers pub, but all this is now ‘heritage’. Who would have thought it? Today, the owners of many modernised hotels attempt to reinstate a heritage feel by displaying historical items such as old photographs and pub mirrors. This pub is the real thing. Whatever else might be said, the Wakil’s actions in locking the Terminus away for so long means it has survived as an authentic piece of old Pyrmont. If the hotel had been sold to anyone else in 1984, who knows what could have happened to it? Had it been sold to anyone else in 2016, who knows what would have happened? So, raise a glass to the Terminus and celebrate its reincarnation as a better pub than it never was.
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