Life is constant change …

… but more intensely so if you are trying do do large scale work on industrial sites in Sydney.

Trucking out from Homebush Bay

Because car racing is coming to the Olympic site, my stonemason mate must leave Homebush Bay – great upheaval – and now he (and I) have a site on the old James Hardie factory site at Camellia, near Parramatta.

Farmed in the 1790s, it became part of the Macarthurs’ Elizabeth Farm estate before becoming, in the 1850s, a famous, beautiful and beloved camellia nursery. From 1916 to 1996 it was an asbestos board factory (and village for the workers). Now it is one of Sydney’s Cinderella places, a vast waste of concrete, bordered by mangroves and camphor laurels, the little Camellia railway station where the suburban trains toot – and the extraordinary burden of the James Hardie story weighing over it all.

Camellia, James Hardie site