Which one of these is worth 130,000 truck trips ?

Among all the big, beautiful or busy boats on Sydney Harbour, few people would pay much attention to a heap of dirt being barged under the Bridge.

They should. What you would be looking at is a small part of nearly 2 million tons of crushed sandstone being moved from one side of Sydney to the other, under the oblivious noses of the citizenry.

Where does it come from ? Well, if you're going to build a 20km long stormwater storage tunnel across northern Sydney to stop the sewer system getting distressed in heavy weather - with sometimes spectacular effects - then you are going to end up with a lot of sandstone. 1.9 million tons of it.

Finding a taker might have been difficult, had land reclaimers not been hard at work over in Western Sydney trying to turn a 35ha railway site (part of the former Commonwealth munitions dump at St Marys) into a modern freight terminal and other industrial facilities.

What actually happens is well worth a second look. The tunnel spoil moves :

• out of the construction site at Tunks Park and straight into barges, or
• out of the construction site at North Head and, by tunnel, into barges at Little Manly Point
• 12km across Sydney Harbour to the commercial wharf at White Bay, by barge
• onto the old coal stockpile at the disused White Bay Power Station, by dump truck
• into railway wagons
• through Sydney via freight and passenger lines and a disused branch line, by train
• into a purpose-built bottom dump facility, right where the stuff is needed

Having been on the receiving end of the disruption caused by some quite small excavations just for buildings in Sydney, I am rather impressed by this.

(Acknowledgements to Engineers Australia for much of this information.)

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