Paradise, Purgatory & Hellhole

"I think Pyrmont and Ultimo have changed more over the years than any other suburb," says the curator, Anni Turnbull.

Pyrmont is named after a German spa town (Bad Pyrmont) near Hanover. Legend has it that in 1806 the landowner Captain John Macarthur held a picnic on the peninsula for some visiting Englishwomen. "One of them remarked that the bubbling springs and rocky outcrops reminded her of the beautiful spa," Turnbull says. Ironically, Sydney's Pyrmont soon became an industrial Hades.

Three sandstone quarries in Pyrmont - Paradise, Purgatory and Hellhole - which provided the fathers of colonial Sydney with the raw material to build their city. Many people have seen these names on the sandstone carvings that decorate the footpaths between the Fish Markets and the Channel Ten complex.

Hellhole, by contrast, involved a lot of hard work for poorer-quality stone.

"Paradise was the easiest to work and also delivered the most beautiful golden sandstone," Turnbull says. "Most people don't realise that many of our finest buildings were built of sandstone from Paradise - including St Mary's Cathedral, the Town Hall, Sydney University and Sydney Tech."

Read more