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[Jimmy-T]

They’re paving paradise and putting up – well, it’s not a parking lot but it’s a 60-unit apartment block with underground parking for 30 cars.

An intriguing inner-city idiosyncratic garden that featured on ABC TV’s Gardening Australia TV show just a couple of years ago has been allowed to deteriorate into a haven for drunks and junkies and soon, adding insult to urban injury, will be replaced by an eight story apartment block.

Until fairly recently, Kings Cross residents and TV viewers were charmed and not a little intrigued by Barry Minhinnick’s creation of a phantasmagorical garden on the corner of Ward Avenue and Bayswater Rd.

Barry, live-in caretaker of the adjoining Hensley Hall,  collected his amazing agglomeration of objet trouve and discarded plants to build his urban jungle on a scrap of land owned by the RTA and used only by weekend warriors who parked their cars there while they hit the clubs of the Cross.

Barry’s garden featured in newspaper and magazine articles and even Gardening Australia did a piece on him.

But Barry was evicted from the building last year and the garden was allowed to go to rack and ruin.  Pretty soon the fence was smashed, anything worth taking was stolen while other less valuable items (like a dumped urinal) took their place.

As soon as Barry moved out, inevitably,  junkies and ‘streeties’ moved in while caught-short drunken weekenders used it as a toilet.

And now the final insult, Barry’s Urban Jungle will be swallowed up by an apartment block to be built behind and, in part, over the quirky Hensley Hall.  All that will be left to remind residents of this shard of paradise in Kings Cross will be a “green wall” where an elegant wooden fence and a wonderland of plants and oddities once intrigued and delighted locals.

One local who preferred not to be named said, “We all knew the site was too valuable not to be redeveloped sooner or later but if they had any heart, they’d at least restore Barry’s garden.”

Submissions on the development application to City of Sydney planning close on Friday, July 13.

 

REFERENCES

Here is the link to the Gardening Australia video: https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/video/default.htm?clip=rtmp://cp44823.edgefcs.net/ondemand/flash/tv/streams/gardening_australia/kingscross_ep11_2011_hi.flv&title=A%20%20Kings%20Cross%20Treasure

 

Here are the original Pdfs of the artists impressions of the new block: https://development.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Datasource/DANotifications/1104633_041.pdf

And

https://development.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Datasource/DANotifications/1104633_038.pdf

 

Here’s a link to the transcript of the ABC TV Gardening Australia show: https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s3198498.htm

 

Found this online gallery of Barry and his garden: https://jaroslaw-gasiorek.photoshelter.com/gallery/Barry/G0000tTPXs0M2sYA/C0000sADIs30Oem8

 

Here’s the DA submission at City of Sydney: https://development.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/DAsOnExhibition/details.asp?tpk=1104633

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