Spanning New South Head Road in Rushcutters Bay is a massive concrete viaduct supporting the eastern suburbs railway. Thousands travel on it daily and thousands more travel under it daily. Not many realise it is the site of the former Sydney Stadium, from 1908 to 1970. The site was a former Chinese market garden leased by boxing promoter Hugh Donald Macintosh as a venue for sporting events. He originally built a temporary open-air stadium to promote a world championship title fight on 24 August 1908.

It also hosted the biggest sporting event in Australia’s history until then: over 20,000 crammed into the stadium on Boxing Day 1908 to see Tommy Burns fight the African-American Jack Johnson. The Stadium was roofed in 1911. Later, a large octagonal permanent building with a roof was built some distance away from the previous 1911 structure, with raked wooden seats facing towards the central stage. The venue seated between 10,000 and 12,000 people and was also mainly used for boxing matches.

From 1954 onwards it hosted concerts by visiting overseas performers. It was colloquially known by performers as “The Old Tin Shed” and was so big that Bob Hope purportedly said it was “like Texas with a roof on it”. Texas is the largest state in the USA.

This stadium hosted nearly every major Australian and United States star, including Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Johnnie Ray, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Cliff Richard, Chuck Berry, Bobby Darin, The Beach Boys, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Johnny Devlin, Johnny O’Keefe and Col Joye and the Joy Boys.

It was demolished in 1970 to build the railway link viaduct.

The viaduct was constructed between 1970-1976. It is only the second continuous prestressed concrete box girder railway viaduct built in NSW. It was a major component of one of the state’s largest post-war railway engineering undertakings and was the end piece in a project which took decades. The viaduct is a dominant visual component in the urban landscape and played a significant role in confirming the technical merit of prestressed concrete for major railway bridges.

It consists of eight prestressed-concrete spans ranging from 37.64m (123 feet) to 45.57m (149 feet) continuous over all concrete piers. The whole superstructure is a series of trapezoidal box girders wide enough across their tops for two railway tracks and with short cantilever wings to provide walkways for railway staff and for service ducts. The abutments and piers are made from reinforced concrete.

Where the viaduct crosses over the city-bound lanes of New South Head Road, between Neild and McLachlan Avenues, the viaduct is supported by a single massive reinforced concrete portal frame spanning clear cross the New South Head roadway.

The Eastern Suburbs Railway had been a long time in the planning and construction, with a number of false starts since work first began in earnest in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, to help the project along, the Commonwealth government offered the services of the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation for design work and supervision of contracts. The contract for assembling the viaduct was undertaken by Concrete Constructions, with work beginning in December 1969.

The viaduct was complete and operational in 1974 providing rail access to Edgecliff Station and the Eastern Suburbs Railway, which was later officially opened through to Bondi Junction on 23 June 1979.

By Andrew Woodhouse, Heritage Solutions