When Pyrmont estate was subdivided, the Chowne shipyards set up in 1840, followed by iron foundries and tin smiths. Stone was quarried near the shore, especially in O’Brien¹s quarry which sold ballast for sailing ships.
The land now occupied by Cadi Park was flattened, leaving the Cooperage site as an escarpment.
A bridge linking Glebe Island to Pyrmont and Ultimo (1857) allowed cattle and carcasses to cross the peninsula from Island abattoirs. From the Cooperage site, passers-by would observe the City Iron Works burning coal and creating steel. Our shoreline was already polluted when CSR arrived and built a refinery, which opened in 1878. As world prices collapsed in the 1880s (partly through the production of beet sugar) CSR harnessed science and technology to survive, and later to dominate the South Pacific markets.