The Phoenix of Frying Pan Flat

A frying-pan has a handle, and a large flat cooking surface. Sydney's "Frying Pan Flat" had roughly that shape: with the handle being the alley; and, the cooking surface being the flat. It disappeared not long after the adverse Health Department assessment at the end of 1875. The "alley" ran down the slope, close to the current intersection of Erskine Street, and Sussex Street. The "flat" fanned out - roughly NW - encompassing reclaimed mud-flats. What you are looking at here, is the "flat". To make this image, I stood on the intersection of Erskine Strret and Shelley Street, looking North into Shelley. On the left, the building with the white diagonals is Macquarie Bank. On the right, starting up close, is the Hotel Ibis, the orange American Express building, and finally, the corporate head-quarters, in Australia, of the accounting services firm, KPMG. Across the far end of Shelley Street, rises the behemoth that is the "Barangaroo development. This is, essentially, a high-rollers casino, with all the other aspects of the development accreted, to increase its attractiveness to a state government. Even as late as 1890, according to the Higinbotham & Robinson 1890 Atlas of Sydney Suburbs, the far end of Shelley Street was washed by the mud-flats of Darling Harbour.

To read more about the Sussex Street North area of Sydney, see "Death in Frying Pan Alley".