Sydney in the 1920s
Central Station's clock was set going on 12 March 1921. The tower under it had been begun in 1915 and then stood unfinished right through the war, so Sydney's main terminus spent six years with its top missing — which is why the view looking south from that tower, taken in July 1920, was made from a building site.
At ground level the station is the decade's centre of gravity: the great arched concourse with crowds moving under it, the clock tower seen up Railway Square, the whole terminus from the air. Bradfield's city railway was being cut in around it through these years — the underground lines that would not open until the thirties, being dug while everyone walked past. A sandstone-faced retaining wall was going up along Elizabeth Street in 1922.
Out on the harbour the other project had started. Arch erection began in October 1928, the southern half worked ahead of the northern, and the two did not meet over the water until 19 August 1930; the bridge opened on 19 March 1932. So in this decade it is only ever an unfinished thing — approach spans marching out from Milsons Point, and the southern arch reaching from Dawes Point with a creeper crane at its advancing end and open sky where the other half will be.
Sydney spent the same years in the water. Coogee's pleasure pier, modelled on the English seaside piers and built between 1924 and 1928, opened on 24 July 1928 with a two-storey pavilion on piles above the surf; storm damage and the Depression had it demolished by 1934. Avalon was new enough to be photographed as a general store and a bathing pool cut into the rock. Palms had been planted along the Corso at Manly by 1920, and children were paddling off The Island at Balmoral.
The pier lasted six years. The bridge is still there.
