If you've ever driven over the Anzac Bridge heading for Rozelle, you've passed straight over the top of Glebe Island. Most people never give it a second thought. It's that flat stretch of port land with the big painted silos, the one with the giant billboard on top. But it was a real island once, a rocky lump of sandstone sitting out in the water between Balmain, Pyrmont and Glebe. Over 180-odd years it's been church land, a failed housing estate, the colony's main slaughterhouse, a quarry, a wheat terminal, a US Army depot, a container port, a car yard, an exhibition centre and a concert ground. Now it's about to become a suburb.
Here's the whole story, as best I can piece it together.
Gadigal and Wangal Country
Long before anyone called it Glebe Island, this was Aboriginal country. The Port Authority of NSW says the White Bay and Glebe Island area was home to the Gadigal and Wangal people, with Wangal country starting at Memel (Goat Island) and running across the Balmain peninsula and west along the Parramatta River. The City of Sydney likewise describes nearby Glebe Point as the land of the Wangal and Gadigal peoples. The Port Authority's own heritage form for the silos simply records the Aboriginal area as "Wangal clan".
How It Got Its Name
The "Glebe" bit comes from the church. A glebe is land set aside to support a clergyman, and the Rev. Richard Johnson, the First Fleet's chaplain, was granted glebe land west of Sydney Cove. The Port Authority's heritage form says the 1790 grant was 160 acres and took in a 23-acre island, which is Glebe Island. The City of Sydney says the grant was 400 acres in 1789. Either way, the island took its name from the parson's land across the water.
The Island Before It Joined the Mainland
For a long time you could only walk out to Glebe Island from the Balmain shore at low tide. According to Peter Reynolds in the Dictionary of Sydney, a causeway was laid in the 1840s that fixed that. In 1841 the surveyor William Wells drew up a subdivision for the Balmain end of the island, with four streets and six sections making 86 lots. It never happened. Wells also drew a plan of the island property in 1844, which survives in the State Library.
The Glebe Island Abattoirs, 1860 to 1915
Sydney had a smelly problem in the mid-1800s: slaughtering was going on far too close to town. The answer was a big public abattoir out on Glebe Island, where the blood and offal could go into the water away from the houses. Between 1850 and 1854 the Colonial Architect Edmund Blacket designed the stone buildings. Joan Kerr, Blacket's biographer, described them as Norman in style, with round-headed openings and plain decoration, and almost certainly based on an American design.
The Port Authority's heritage form gives a good picture of the layout: two parallel ranges of sandstone buildings, each 220 feet long, one holding 12 slaughterhouses for beef and the other 12 for sheep. Double steam punts ran across to the Pyrmont shore. It says the abattoir opened in October 1860. Wharves were built alongside for the meat canning and export trade.
It was a huge operation. The 1882 Royal Commission into noxious and offensive trades was set up partly because people in Balmain and Glebe Point were sick of the stink. The commission found that in 1882 alone, 524,415 sheep, 69,991 cattle, 31,269 pigs and 8,348 calves were killed on the island. The Australian Town and Country Journal ran a series of engravings in June 1879 showing the work inside, and they don't pull any punches.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
The end came in the 1910s. The Dictionary of Sydney says the Metropolitan Meat Industry Board resolved to shut the abattoirs and build new ones at Homebush; the Wikipedia version of the same text says that decision came in 1912, while the Dictionary itself says 1915. The Port Authority's form says the abattoir stopped work in 1916. The new Homebush abattoirs took over, and Glebe Island's 50-odd years as Sydney's slaughterhouse were done.
The Glebe Island Bridges
Blackbutt Bridge, the First Crossing
Once you've got a slaughterhouse on an island, you need a way to get the meat to town. Until a bridge was built, the punts did the job. On 7 September 1860 Balmain Council resolved to ask the owners of the leftover Balmain Estate land for a road to the island. The Pyrmont Bridge Company then built a low timber bridge across Johnstons Bay to Pyrmont.
It was made of Tasmanian blackbutt, which is why everyone called it the Blackbutt Bridge. According to the Wikipedia article on the bridge, the first pile went in during October 1860. It was a timber beam bridge about 318 metres long and 8.5 metres wide, with a small hand-cranked swing section on the Pyrmont side. When it actually opened depends on who you read (more on that below).
After about 30 years the old bridge was worn out, and the government bought it and started planning a replacement. It nearly fell down by itself first. In August 1899 a big load of ballast being dumped for the new causeway slid sideways and crushed the piles of the old bridge. The Australian National Maritime Museum's notes on its photo say the Sydney Morning Herald reported the collapse at 3am on Saturday 5 August 1899, and traffic to Balmain was stopped. For a fortnight the bridge was only good for people on foot.
.jpg)
Percy Allan's 1903 Swing Bridge
The replacement was designed by Percy Allan of the Public Works Department, the same man who did the new Pyrmont Bridge over Darling Harbour. His team included a young John Bradfield, who later built the Harbour Bridge and here had charge of the foundations, abutments and retaining walls. Parliament found the money in 1898 and tenders went out in March 1899. The builders were H. McKenzie and Sons.
Both of Allan's bridges were electric swing bridges, the first time electricity had been used to swing a bridge in Australia, and they could open in 44 seconds. The Glebe Island one has a swing span turning on a big pivot pier that sits on timber piles capped with concrete. It's 108 metres long overall, with a 12.2-metre roadway and footpaths each side. A 600-volt motor swings it, and for years it ran off the tramway's DC power. When the trams finished in 1961 it was switched to the ordinary mains, and the rare mercury-arc rectifier put in then is still there.
The Wikipedia article on the bridge says it was opened on 1 July 1903 by Miss Lily See, daughter of the Premier John See. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 28 June 1903.
.jpg)
.jpg)
For over 90 years it carried the main road from the city to Balmain, Rozelle and beyond. It was part of the old "five bridges" route out to the northern and western suburbs, along with Pyrmont, Iron Cove, Gladesville and Fig Tree. The trouble was that every time a ship needed to get into Blackwattle Bay, the whole road stopped. That delay is what eventually led to the Anzac Bridge.
The Fight to Save It
When the new bridge opened on 3 December 1995, the old one was swung open and left that way. It's been sitting there ever since, getting rustier. A 2009 assessment called it "very poor", and a 2013 report found it had got worse. It was put on the Register of the National Estate in 1989 and on the NSW State Heritage Register on 29 November 2013.
The City of Sydney and local groups have been pushing since at least 2013 to fix it and reopen it for people walking and riding. Ideas have come and gone, including light rail across it in 2015 and an architect's design in 2025 with a higher walkway arching over the top. On 21 February 2026 locals gathered near the bridge to campaign for the reopening, backed by the Balmain MP Kobi Shetty. Then the NSW Government's Bays West announcement in March 2026 promised "an active transport link across the Glebe Island Bridge". After 30 years of waiting, it finally looks like it'll carry people again.
Levelling the Island and Joining It to the Mainland
Most of the original island isn't there any more. The new bridge needed an elevated causeway across Glebe Island, and to build it they dredged mud and cut down what was left of the island's hill for fill. Wikipedia's bridge article says this produced about 5.3 hectares of flat land for railway yards and 853 metres of deepwater frontage for wharves.
From 1912 the Sydney Harbour Trust (later the Maritime Services Board) planned wharves along the southern shore of Balmain, Glebe Island included. By 1915 the Pyrmont quarry master Robert Saunders had been hired to level the island for wharves. His firm tipped a lot of the spoil at the eastern end to build up the wharf area, but plenty of good building stone was carefully cut out and almost certainly sold for construction. There were still about 250 of Saunders' men working on the island in 1920.
Wharves went in on three sides of the flattened island. The fourth side was joined to the Rozelle shore as part of the big reclamation of Rozelle Bay and White Bay that had started in the 1890s. That's the moment Glebe Island stopped being an island in anything but name. Under the 1906 local government changes it had already been added to the Municipality of Balmain.
The Grain Silos
The "Cubist Castle"
By 1916 the wheat trade needed to stop shipping grain in bags and switch to bulk handling. The Canadian firm John S. Metcalfe and Company drew up the plans: 143 cylindrical bins, 72 round and 71 "interspace" bins between them, with cone-shaped bottoms that let the wheat run down chutes onto conveyor belts and straight into the ships. There was a working house with elevators, weighing hoppers, cleaners, dryers, dust collection and a power plant.
Work started late in 1918 under the Public Works engineer Robert Kendall. The contractor was Henry Teesdale Smith, a timber merchant, railway builder and former politician. It was finished in 1921. The Sun newspaper called it the "cubist castle" and "futurist fortress", towering up to 120 feet with a flat roof covering two acres. The Bulletin noted that 250,000 bags of Kandos cement went into it. The terminal was run from 1921 by the Grain Elevators Board of NSW.
_A.G._Foster_(22098180260).jpg)
_A.G._Foster_(22098194890).jpg)
It kept growing. Between 1921 and 1932 the facilities were greatly expanded, with 63 more silos by 1925, along with rail and road links and handling gear. The 1958 Australian Encyclopaedia put the bulk wheat terminal's capacity at 7,500,000 bushels, or 202,500 tonnes. By the 1930s it was regarded as one of the largest and best-planned installations of its kind.
.jpg)
.jpg)
The War Years
During the Second World War much of the island was taken over for the main United States Army depot in Sydney. The Port Authority's form says it was a major armament and engineers' supply depot and a troop embarkation area. Its local history page calls Glebe Island the principal staging area for thousands of American troops. Australian troops going to join the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan after the war also left from Glebe Island and White Bay.
The 1974 Silos You See Today
The silos you see from the Anzac Bridge aren't the originals. On 9 December 1974 the Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, opened 30 new concrete silos, each 38.4 metres high and holding 2,400 tonnes, in two rows of fifteen. They lifted the island's wheat storage from 163,000 to 245,000 tonnes and cost about $4 million.
Grain didn't last much longer. Port Kembla took over as the state's main grain export terminal, and from 1991 Australian Cement (now Cement Australia) used 16 of the silos as a bulk cement terminal, with part of the complex changed for cement storage in 1994. The worn-out original block from 1918 to 1925 was knocked down in 1999 and 2000 by Metropolitan Demolitions and Recycling under a $7 million contract. More than half of the 110,000 tonnes of concrete was crushed and reused as road base around the port.
_(2).jpg)
The Olympic Mural and the Giant Billboard
This is the bit most Sydneysiders know. On 21 May 1992 the Planning Minister approved an Olympic Games 2000 mural on the silos, plus sponsor advertising and lighting, as part of the "Olympic Look" for Sydney's bid. A reported 2,000 litres of paint went on. In 1993 a new mural was painted on the side facing the bridge, turning the silos into Greek columns with a different sports figure on each one, and a big entablature was fitted across the top to carry advertising.
The Dictionary of Sydney notes, a bit drily, that it's often called "the largest billboard in the southern hemisphere", a claim made "with the lack of research characteristic of such claims". The current operator, oOh!media, still calls it exactly that. Its site covers more than 1,000 square metres across the tops of the silos. The mural itself was assessed in 2011 by GML Heritage as having historic and social value in its own right, but it isn't part of the silos' heritage listing.
When people talk about art projected onto the silos, the best-documented case I could find is an odd one. Rave-goers remember the illegal "Ov Thee Earth Tribe" party inside the Glebe wheat silos on 21 November 1992, where a giant projection of Sonic the Hedgehog filled one wall.
Containers and Cars
As shipping went over to containers, Glebe Island changed with it. Premier Robert Askin officially opened the Glebe Island Container Terminal on 22 February 1973. The Maritime Services Board built it on just under 24 acres next to the grain terminal, at a cost of $13 million, from plans drawn up in 1970. It quickly copped criticism for inefficiency and harbour congestion. Along with the White Bay terminal, opened in March 1969, it was the centre of container shipping in the Port of Sydney until the early 1980s.
Later the island became Sydney's car import yard. Until November 2008 it was the Australian Amalgamated Terminals facility for imported vehicles. That year car imports were moved to Port Kembla, and the NSW Government says the island has been underused ever since. Since the early 1990s the port has also handled cement and gypsum for Sydney's building industry.
Events on the Island
A big flat empty space with harbour views was always going to attract events. On New Year's Eve 2011–12 it hosted a major televised concert with Jamiroquai, Culture Club and the Pet Shop Boys, with a clear view of the Harbour Bridge fireworks.
When the old Darling Harbour convention centre was pulled down for rebuilding, the temporary Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island filled the gap. Construction began in August 2013 and it opened on 15 February 2014, with 20,000 square metres of space for trade and consumer shows. The site was cleared in 2017. The government's 2026 plan sets aside a staging area in White Bay so the New Year's Eve fireworks and Vivid can keep using the bays.
The Anzac Bridge, 1995
The new high-level bridge was designed by a Roads and Traffic Authority team led by chief bridge engineer Ray Wedgwood and built by Baulderstone. It's a cable-stayed concrete bridge with a 345-metre main span between two 120-metre pylons, and it sits right above Allan's old swing bridge. It opened on 3 December 1995 and was called the Glebe Island Bridge too, which must have confused a few people.
On Remembrance Day 1998 it was renamed the Anzac Bridge to honour the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. An Australian flag flies on one pylon and a New Zealand flag on the other. A bronze Australian digger, rifle reversed, was put up on Anzac Day 2000, and a New Zealand soldier joined him in April 2008, unveiled by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. The bridge can take 180,000 cars a day, and it hit that limit in 2002, only seven years after it opened.
Bays West: What Comes Next
Glebe Island is part of the government's Bays Precinct renewal, now called Bays West. It takes in White Bay, Glebe Island, Rozelle Bay, White Bay Power Station and the Rozelle Rail Yards, plus 76 hectares of water. The Stage 1 master plan and rezoning around the power station and metro station were approved in December 2022.
On 3 March 2026 the Minns Government announced up to 8,500 homes there, at least 10 per cent of them affordable and essential-worker housing. Bulk port work on Glebe Island, including cement, gypsum and sugar, is to stop by 2030 at the latest, with most working-harbour jobs moved into White Bay. The release also says the "existing 1970s industrial silos" will be removed to make way for public space and housing. That means the Olympic mural's days are probably numbered.
The trigger for all this is the metro. The Bays Station on Sydney Metro West is being built between Glebe Island and White Bay Power Station, with its entrance south of White Bay. Station box work started in 2022, and the government says Metro West will open in 2032. For the first time, rail will run to this corner of the harbour.
Timeline
- Before 1788 – Gadigal and Wangal country.
- 1789 or 1790 – Glebe land granted to the Rev. Richard Johnson, including the island.
- 1840s – Causeway laid from the Balmain shore.
- 1841 – William Wells' 86-lot subdivision of the island, never built.
- 1850–54 – Edmund Blacket designs the abattoir buildings.
- 1860 – The abattoir opens (October, per the Port Authority). The first bridge pile is driven in October.
- 1861 or 1862 – The timber Blackbutt Bridge to Pyrmont opens.
- 1882 – A Royal Commission counts more than 630,000 animals killed in a year.
- 1899 – Ballast collapses part of the old bridge (5 August).
- 1903 – Percy Allan's electric swing bridge opens (28 June or 1 July).
- 1906 – The island is added to the Municipality of Balmain.
- 1912 – Wharf building and reclamation begin.
- 1915–16 – The abattoirs close and the move to Homebush begins. Saunders starts levelling the island.
- 1918–21 – The first grain silos are built.
- 1939–45 – The island is taken over as a US Army depot.
- 1973 – The Glebe Island Container Terminal opens (22 February).
- 1974 – The 30 silos still standing open (9 December).
- 1984 or 1990 – Grain handling ends.
- 1991 – Cement storage begins in 16 silos.
- 1992–93 – The Olympic mural and billboard go up.
- 1995 – The new cable-stayed bridge opens (3 December) and the old swing bridge is left open.
- 1998 – It is renamed the Anzac Bridge on Remembrance Day.
- 1999–2000 – The original silos are demolished.
- 2008 – Car imports move to Port Kembla (November).
- 2011–12 – New Year's Eve concert.
- 2013 – The old bridge goes on the State Heritage Register (29 November).
- 2014–2017 – The Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island operates.
- 2022 – Bays West Stage 1 rezoning; metro station works begin.
- 2026 – Bays West suburb announced (3 March) with a commitment to reopen the old bridge.
- By 2030 – Port operations on Glebe Island are to end.
- 2032 – Sydney Metro West, with the Bays Station, is due to open.
Where the Sources Disagree
- Johnson's glebe grant: the Port Authority's silos heritage form says 160 acres in 1790, including a 23-acre island. The City of Sydney says 400 acres in 1789.
- The first bridge's opening: the Dictionary of Sydney says the Pyrmont Bridge Company's bridge opened in 1861. Wikipedia's Glebe Island article and Anzac Bridge article say 1862. The Glebe Island Bridge article says it opened for traffic in 1861 but calls it "completed in 1862". The Port Authority's timeline puts the first bridge at 1857, and the Maritime Museum's photo notes say the road had used the bridge "since 1860".
- The 1903 bridge opening: the Dictionary of Sydney says 28 June 1903. Wikipedia's bridge article says 1 July 1903, opened by Lily See.
- When the abattoirs were doomed: the Dictionary of Sydney says the Meat Industry Board resolved to close them in 1915. Wikipedia's version of the same passage says 1912. The Port Authority says they stopped work in 1916.
- When grain handling ended: the Dictionary of Sydney says bulk grain handling continued until 1990. The Port Authority's heritage form says Glebe Island stopped being a grain terminal in 1984.
- Size of the island: the Dictionary of Sydney says 34 acres (13.7 hectares) when it joined Balmain in 1906. The Port Authority says the original island in Johnson's grant was 23 acres.
- Number of lanes on the new bridge: the Dictionary of Sydney describes a six-lane bridge, while Wikipedia calls the Anzac Bridge eight-lane.
My Earlier Posts
- The 9 Islands of Sydney Harbour
- Robert 'Bobby' Hancock – Hancock's Tower and the Lady of the Lake Hotel, Glebe
- Lyndhurst – 61 Darghan Street – Glebe
- Ultimo House – Ultimo
- Darling Harbour May 2024
- Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
Sources
- Peter Reynolds, "Glebe Island", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/glebe_island
- Port Authority of NSW, s170 Heritage Inventory form, Glebe Island Silos – https://www.portauthoritynsw.com.au/sites/default/files/media/migrated/files/s170_shi-form_glebe-island-silos.pdf
- Port Authority of NSW, "Discover the Bays Port local history" – https://www.portauthoritynsw.com.au/around-ports/sydney-harbour/projects/bays-port/discover-bays-port-local-history
- City of Sydney, "History of Glebe foreshore parks" – https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/histories-local-parks-playgrounds/history-glebe-foreshore-parks
- Wikipedia, "Glebe Island" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe_Island
- Wikipedia, "Glebe Island Bridge" (incorporating NSW State Heritage Register entry 1914, CC BY 4.0) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebe_Island_Bridge
- Wikipedia, "Anzac Bridge" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Bridge
- NSW Government, "Minns Government to deliver thousands of homes near the Bays Metro Station", 3 March 2026 – https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/minns-government-to-deliver-thousands-of-homes-near-bays-metro-station-while-retaining-our-working-harbour
- NSW Government, "Suburban transformation: first glimpse of Metro West stations", 9 April 2026 – https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/suburban-transformation-first-glimpse-of-metro-west-stations
- NSW Planning, "Bays West" – https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/plans-in-nsw/state-significant-precincts/the-bays/bays-west
- Sydney Metro, "The Bays Station" – https://www.sydneymetro.info/station/bays-station
- oOh!media, "Specsavers launch new OOH on the largest Out of Home billboard in the Southern Hemisphere" – https://oohmedia.com.au/specsavers-launch-new-ooh-on-the-largest-out-of-home-billboard-in-the-southern-hemisphere/
- Sydney Rave History, "Ov Thee Earth Tribe", 21 November 1992 – https://sydneyravehistory.com/timeline/1992/19921121ovtheeearthtribe
- Australian National Maritime Museum, Samuel J. Hood and Frederick Wilkinson photograph notes, via Wikimedia Commons
- Image descriptions and credits from Wikimedia Commons (pages linked under each picture)