A long timber wharf reaches into the bay below sandstone stairs climbing to Potts Point. Harry's Cafe de Wheels still serves pies from the corner where The Amazing Race once filmed a challenge.
What Woolloomooloo looks like
The runs more than 400 metres out into the bay on turpentine timber piles, built between 1910 and 1915. Its long corrugated roof and timber walls now hold apartments, a hotel, restaurants and a marina. Yachts and cruisers moor along both sides of the deck.
Streets climb sharply away from the water toward Potts Point, and cuts straight up the slope in three flights of sandstone blocks with a wrought iron rail on each side. Painted brick and rendered terraces line the streets below, two storeys with iron lace balconies hanging over the footpath, a sandstone cutting rising behind some of the rows.
Behind the terraces stand plain brick public housing blocks several storeys high, with balconies stacked one above the next along their fronts. Some of the newer blocks carry arched window heads and narrow verandas, the same details repeated on the terraces in front of them.
Harry's Cafe de Wheels stands fixed to a masonry base on Cowper Wharf Road, near the wharf and the old naval yard gates, its outside walls covered in painted murals under a narrow serving hatch. , a heritage brick building on the same road, holds the Artspace gallery behind arched windows and a lit sign on the parapet. sits farther along, on the harbour edge of the Domain, a saltwater pool with grey naval ships often moored across the water behind it.
Shot in Woolloomooloo
The Kid Stakes, a 1927 silent comedy, used McElhone Stairs for its street scenes. Two Hands returned to the same stairs in 1999. Harry's Cafe de Wheels hosted a Fast Forward challenge for the CBS series The Amazing Race in 2002, contestants lining up at the hatch to eat meat pies.
The Kid Stakes, 1927 and Two Hands, 1999
McElhone Stairs
Both productions used the same sandstone stairway between Woolloomooloo and Potts Point for their street scenes. The stairs run in three flights with a wrought iron rail on each side, planted with trees along the drop. Street View
The Amazing Race, season 2, 2002
Harry's Cafe de Wheels
Contestants had to eat a meat pie at the serving hatch for a Fast Forward challenge on this season of the CBS series The Amazing Race. The cart still stands fixed to its masonry base on Cowper Wharf Road, its walls covered in the same painted murals. Street View
Red Hook's old harbourside warehouses sit beside the Red Hook Houses, brick public housing blocks that give this stretch of Brooklyn a similar working waterfront scale to Woolloomooloo. American street signage and wider roadways would need dressing out, and the container terminal across the bay reads differently from Sydney Harbour. Try searching harbourside public housing blocks now.
Wapping's old wharf buildings were converted into apartments in the 1980s. Narrow lanes still run down to the water between brick terraces, much like the streets below Woolloomooloo's own wharf. Wapping's warehouses run darker brick and the Thames is a tidal brown, both different from the sandstone and blue water here. Try searching converted wharf apartments now.
Port Adelaide, South Australia
Port Adelaide kept a long timber wharf and cargo sheds from the same working port era as Woolloomooloo's own wharf, with low worker's cottages set back from the water. Port Adelaide's cottages run to a smaller single storey scale than Woolloomooloo's terraces. Tighter street level frames hold the match best here. Try searching timber wharf sheds now.
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