Location and Climate

Darling Park is part of the Darling Harbour precinct on the western edge of the Sydney CBD. It is well located for public transport, being two minutes walk from Town Hall station and bus stop; there are ferry and monorail stops close by. Sydney experiences a mild climate with warm summers and cool winters. Average daily maximum temperatures are 25.8 degrees C for January (Summer) and 16.2 degrees C for July (Winter).

Darling Park is on the eastern side of Darling Harbour closest to the CBD. Formerly, Darling Harbour had been a rail yard and waterfront industrial area that had fallen into disuse by the 1970s and in the 1980s was developed as a leisure-retail-entertainment precinct by the NSW State government. As an abandoned industrial area adjacent to the CBD, Darling Harbour had been completely shut off from the life of the city. Its total redevelopment was conceived to turn this around by creating a new integrated development.

Today, on the western side of Darling Harbour are a convention centre, exhibition halls, a casino, the National Maritime Museum and tourist-oriented shopping complex. On the eastern side are entertainment facilities such as the Sydney Aquarium, IMAX Theatre, as well as the Cockle Bay Wharf complex of Darling Park. Since opening in 1988, Darling Harbour has had mixed commercial success, the type of facilities attracting mainly tourists during the week and Sydney-siders on weekends to special events, firework displays etc. Darling Harbour's previous life as a railhead and port is now totally invisible (except as reified signs of 'history' like Pyrmont Bridge which though restored, now functions primarily as a route for the monorail and pedestrian access across Darling Harbour).

The masterplan for Darling Harbour did not initially succeed in either integrating it into the city, or in creating the conditions for an organically developing place beyond being somewhere to visit. This is partly due to the site being intersected by a series of elevated expressways that connect to Sydney Harbour Bridge and move traffic east-west across the city, but also because residential development and 'everyday' type commercial activities were not part of the original concept. The planning for Darling Park, which began after the main elements of Darling Harbour were already in place, was to be a means of diversifying what was rapidly becoming a somewhat limited event and leisure-based precinct.

Site plan of Darling Park development