Pier 2, Walsh Bay

This guide to Pier 2 at Walsh Bay in Sydney opens in 1900, as bubonic plague spreads along the waterfront and engineer Henry Deane Walsh promises the harbour trust wharves that rats simply cannot climb. You'll hear how his curved concrete seawall and the timber pier built on top of it, finished around 1920, were built not for people but for wool, and how bales moved through the hydraulic chutes still bolted to the structure. Listen for how the pier's decades as one of the world's busiest wool ports came to an end.