Magpie

A magpie stands on weathered concrete at Newington Armament Depot and Nature Reserve, looking out across grounds that have been slowly returning to bush since the Royal Australian Navy vacated in December 1999. The bird is entirely at ease. It has no reason not to be. The depot was established in 1897, when the NSW Military Forces called tenders for a powder magazine, laboratory, gun cotton store, and associated buildings on the Parramatta River at Homebush. The original structures, completed in 1898 by master builder John Howie, were Federation face brick with cream brick trim, sandstone-capped gable ends, and polychromatic brickwork on three parapeted gables. The 1897 gunpowder magazine measured 24.4 metres square, its triple-gabled slate roof covering three barrel-vaulted store rooms insulated from any naked flame by a system of double walls and interior lamp passages. Earth banks surrounded the buildings to direct any accidental blast upward rather than outward. The site had been designed, at every level, around the possibility of catastrophic accident. Management transferred from the Commonwealth Military Forces to the Royal Australian Navy on 22 July 1921, and the depot grew steadily through pre-war expansion and wartime demand. By October 1945 the workforce across the Royal Australian Naval Armament Depot totalled 1,141. The site reached its greatest extent of approximately 259 hectares in 1950. The last ammunition operation over the wharf took place on 14 December 1999. Transfer to the NSW State Government was completed in January 2000. The 48-hectare nature reserve was gazetted on 14 September 2000. Today, 144 bird species have been recorded across the grounds. The concrete the magpie stands on is weathered and quiet. The bird does not look particularly impressed by any of this history. That is, in its way, part of the record too.