Pyrmont Destructor — Pyrmont History Group

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Pyrmont Destructor 1910—1971

by Dorothy Outram

Traditionally, Sydney’s rubbish was punted out to sea — with most unsatisfactory results when the tide brought it back to the shore again! Rubbish was also dumped in smelly tips, or burned in high polluting and unsafe incinerators such as the Pyrmont Destructor.

Built in 1910 near the Glebe Island Bridge and Blackwattle Bay, the Pyrmont Destructor was designed to serve the whole of western Sydney and replace the existing destructor at Moore Park.

Refuse was to be burned so thoroughly that it would produce “a fine, hard, vitreous clinker from any combustible or innocuous matter” (Evening News 12 July 1909.)

Despite such glowing predictions, incinerators like this one posed extreme hazards for workers, who had to shovel refuse into the mouth of a roaring furnace and dig amongst piles of super-heated fine grey ash to remove partially burned objects.

However, so economical was the destructor that, in 1933, some Sydney City councillors were reluctant to approve the Burley Griffin Incinerator at a proposed cost of £40,000 plus running expenses.

Surely “a plain brick building would suffice for Pyrmont. Not more than £10,000 should be spent on a building in that locality.” (Sydney Morning Herald 1 October 1933)

After the Burley Griffin Incinerator opened in 1937, the destructor remained in service at its side, dealing mainly with contraband seized by Customs and end-of-line products from retailers and manufacturers.

Both incinerators were shut down in September 1971 after failing to meet emissions standards required by the NSW Clean Air Act (1961).

Both were ultimately demolished.

Pyrmont Destructor 1910—1971

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