Local Highlight

 Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf

From local eyesore to international landmark destination.

Where:6 Cowper Wharf Roadway, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011

The Woolloomooloo Finger wharf is a wharf found in Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney Australia. The structure of the wharf that was completed in 1915,  is the longest timbered-piled wharf in the world. Previously it was used for around 70 years mostly to export wool, but also acted as a staging point for troops to be deployed to the world wars as well as a disembarking point for new migrants arriving in Australia. 

The 400 metre long structure that had a total of 11 berths, 4 being apart of the wharf was built primarily as the exit point for Australia’s wool exports. It is the last non-navel wharf going in Woolloomooloo. 

Today the wharf has been redeveloped as a fashionable complex for housing a hotel, multiple restaurants and residential apartments, although it is still a public wharf. You can examine the industrial conveyor-belt relics found etched into the glass walls which were retained during its conversion. 

By 1987, containerisation and the advent of air travel left the wharf’s purpose redundant as it remained empty for over a decade. It’s architectural significance has been recognised by a heritage listing on the register of the National Estate. Numerous proposals came and went until 1966 when the green light was given to redevelop the wharf. 

The redevelopment incorporated a 273-room three-star hotel at the southern end and 345 luxury apartments at the northern end, along with restaurants, retail stores and a 63-berth boating marina whilst large sections of the interior were left intact. These included three bays of the Berth 6 shed being left undivided (the hotel reception area), the preservation of one of four lifts (now a dining room of one of the restaurants), the eight pairs of huge lattice-timber goods conveyors, one of eight machinery rooms and much of the old corrugated steel, fibro and multi pane sashes and chain-wire cladding along the streets. The exterior facades were restored in Federation style.

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