Finger Wharf

This guide to Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo, Sydney opens before dawn in January 1991, when a crowd of locals blocked the gates against a demolition crew and refused to move. It traces the wharf's earlier life, built between 1910 and 1915 as one of the longest timber-piled wharves ever constructed, sending soldiers off to Gallipoli and welcoming waves of migrants to Australia. It also lingers on the 1980s, when the wharf stood rotten and empty, its piles crumbling, and the state government first drew up plans for a marina and resort in its place.