Guy Cox, July 2015

I lived in Balmain from 1975 to 2010 and entirely agree with Tim Flannery (May) about the transformation of Sydney Harbour in that time, and also about the dedication of government and community to achieve this goal. But there are other factors he didn’t mention. In Balmain alone, those years saw the closure of the Colgate-Palmolive soap factory, the Unilever margarine factory, the Monsanto chemical plant, two power stations, a coal loader, the Caltex oil terminal and two container terminals. Further up the Parramatta River we saw the closure of the enormous AGL works at Mortlake and the Homebush abattoirs. In short, there was a huge exodus of polluting industry driven largely by economic factors, and without that the transformation might not have been possible.