SYDNEY'S BRIDGE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 28, 2 August 1927, Page 14

SYDNEY'S BRIDGE

EXHIBITION PROJECT

AN AUSTRALIAN WEMBLEY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 22nd July.

Although the date of the completion of the Sydney Harbour bridge, viz., 1931, is a long way off, there is already talk of an exhibition in Sydney on the lines 4>f Wembley. In fact, the idea is beyond the merely talking stage;.the Commonwealth, and New Soutli Wales Governments are now co-operating in what might be termed the spade work. Wliether the exhibition is to be of an Australian, an Empire, or an international character, will depend upon the cost of staging it. A purely Australian and New Zealand exhibition, for New Zealand is hardly likely to be left out of it, sjnee it is as close a neighcost of staging it.| A purely Australia, will cost less than £1,000,000. The cost of an Empire exhibition, fashioned on the lines of Wembley, will, it is thought, amount to slightly less than £2,000,000, while an international exhibition will run into £3,000,000. The project, at present in a somewhat nebulous stage, is expected to assume more tangible shape as a result of the coming Premiers' Conference. A proposal to hold the exhibition at the Federal Capital has been rejected. There'will, of course, be the inevitable battle of sites. Centennial Park, almost within a stone 's-throw of the city, is the most popular of the sites suggested. Other suggested sites are on the North Shore, but as an exhibition there would involve a long journey from the city it would not be Without its drawbacks.

It was in the Botanic Gardens that the famous Sydney International Exhibition of 1879-80 was 'held, in an imposing structure known as the Garden Palace. Fire a little later swept it out of existence. It was for the transport of visitors to it that the Sydney tramway system was first laid. That, was back in the days when the premises of the oldest afternoon paper in Australia were graced, in Pitt street, by a dovecot, which housed pigeons that acted as. .carriers of news, including, on one notable occasion, the result of the great sculling championship on the Parrainatta River.