Life on the Coathanger

I’ve mentioned the Bridge before and it's already factored into one of our runs, so I might as well talk a bit more about it. It's a key part of the Sydney Shadow Community landscape while also being the city council's single biggest sticking point. It's definitely not the sort of thing you see on the tourist ads either, and for a good reason.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge copped it pretty bad in the first mana Storm. it suffered severe structural damage and had to be closed for a long-term repair project. Unfortunately, the resulting abandonment of Sydney and the entire country turning feral resulted in a massive influx of poor and desperate refugees from not just the country but even the outer parts of the city. They wound up funneling through the 'controlled areas of North Sydney and the CBD and squatting en-masse on the then abandoned bridge. Sure it was a creaky mess that could have fallen down at any moment, but it wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go.

It looks worse during the day

This didn't sit well with the Sydney City Council who wanted their key transportation backbone and iconic city symbol back. They sent in the cops to try and forcibly evict the squatters, which backfired terribly. Instead it turned into a riot, one that spread to the CUBD and did a lot of property damage before finally being quelled. So at the end of the day, the squatters still had the bridge and the city council had learned not to try and do that again.

As a result, the bridge's squatter community grew as more people moved on there, knowing full well that the City Council wouldn't touch them and that the police (And later KE) couldn’t give two craps about what they did there as long as they stayed there. What started as makeshift repairs evolved into a shanty town growing across the old roadways, onto the arch and even suspended underneath it. And since it's zero enforcement, it's a thriving black market for cyberwear, weapons, organlegging, human trafficking, drugs and whatever other nasties you could ever want. It's also a great place to hide because no bugger will follow you there.

For the most part, the City Council's policy has become one of containment and neglect. There's barricades over the old harbor approaches, and KE maintain armed checkpoints in the Rocks and Milson's Point to stop any undesirables from getting out, but they don't stop you from going in. The Council gave up trying to reclaim the Bridge, figuring that the whole thing was a structurally unsound mess that was doomed anyway and would cost more to repair then replace. Every now and then there's suggestions from the council that it would be a 'tragedy' if the whole thing was to 'suddenly collapse' and pointing out that explosives placed in several key locations could cause just that to happen.

Though the ultimate winner in all this has to be Baird Communications. With the advent of the Wireless Matrix, they won a deal to place massive ARO objects across the harbor so that people could simply pretend the bridge wasn't there anymore.