Pyrmont/Ultimo

 Once a vital component of Sydney’s industrial waterfront, with wharves, shipbuilding yards, factories and wool stores.  As industry moved out, the population declined and the area underwent urban decay.  In recent years it has undergone a change to be populated by urban professionals and office workers.

 Features of Pyrmont included: quarries, the Colonial Sugar Refinery, flour mills, engineering works, a distillery, wharves, and wool stores - the colony's principal source of wealth.  Both Pyrmont and Ultimo contained some of the most squalid housing in the city.

 Ultimo was formerly the setting for a sandstone quarry and a vast power station, now the Powerhouse Museum.  Ultimo was still relatively rural until the 1890s, with dairy herds, whereas Pyrmont, with its deep-water access, was quickly associated with heavy industry.

 Now the streetscapes of both Pyrmont and Ultimo are dominated by new homes for the newly affluent.  Along with them have come new industries, particularly those linked with telecommunications.