St James Abandoned ‘Ghost’ Railway Tunnels Reopening
- Alec Smart
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Secret WWII Bunkers, Movie Sets, and Urban Myths: What Awaits Inside the Refurbished St James Tunnels
By ALEC SMART
The St James Tunnels beneath Hyde Park in Central Sydney are expected to open soon for regular public-access tours after a multi-million-dollar refurbishment program. The 1920s-built subterranean railway corridor – never actually used as a rail conduit – are dual tunnels 20 metres below St James Station, adjacent to the City Circle line.
The long-closed subways, often called the ‘Ghost Tunnels’, consist of a double-track tunnel running north from St James for approximately 250 metres beneath Macquarie St (parallel to the NSW State Library) and two single track tunnels running south of St James that extend 750 metres to Whitlam Square (below the intersection of College St, Oxford St, Liverpool St and Wentworth Ave).
Originally intended to connect the east-west train link on the greater Sydney rail network, they were designed by visionary engineer John Bradfield, the project supervisor and chief designer on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as part of the Bradfield Plan (which he first proposed in 1908).
Inspired by the New York Subway, with station architecture influenced by the London Underground, this would have seen St James as a hub connecting the City Circle Line and a subterrestrial track east to Bondi Beach, beneath Oxford St.
Two additional platforms at St James were also built for this purpose.
However, after initial digging began in 1923, the project was largely abandoned in 1932 due to financial constraints caused by the Great Depression (worldwide economic downturn from 1929-1939), despite the construction of the first two stations on the U-shaped City Circle line: St James and Museum.
Although Wynyard Station was opened in 1932 (St James opened in December 1926), Circular Quay, the final link in the central business district rail loop that included Town Hall and Central, was not opened until 1956 – a quarter of a century later (Bradfield died in 1943).
Until then, St James Station was used as a terminating station for the East Hills and Illawarra lines.
The Eastern Suburbs line was not constructed until the 1970s (opening in June 1979). However, instead of utilising the two abandoned platforms and aforementioned tunnel sections at St James, planners diverted the route and constructed a new station at Martin Place, which was instead linked to Town Hall Station (and terminated at Bondi Junction, not the seafront).
Contemporary use of the tunnels
The ‘ghost’ tunnels and platforms have been closed and disused in the century since their development, apart from temporary sanctioned artistic productions. These include several movie scenes, a few artist projects and a mid-1990s episode of Australian TV drama series Police Rescue which featured a boy who fell down a stormwater drain.
A large bell is reportedly in situ in one tunnel, which was employed as a gong by ABC Radio sound effects technicians for an historic program called The Listening Room (broadcast on Classic FM on Monday nights from 1989 to 2003).
Six of the more significant uses include:
(1): From 1933-34, Spanish immigrant Raymond Mas utilised the northbound tunnel as an experimental mushroom farm (after an earlier venture in the Glenbrook Tunnel in the Blue Mountains failed). In an August 1934 article in the Blyth Agriculturalist, the mushrooms – which reportedly grew in beds consisting of “four parts of straw to one of cow manure” and yielded over three tonnes between April-May 1934 - were described as “a little gold mine.”
(2): In World War II the southbound tunnels were adapted to public air raid shelters as well as an operations bunker occupied by the Royal Australian Air Force and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, created to gather vital intelligence data.
This was in response to nationwide fears of a Japanese military invasion following the 31 May 1942 incursion into Sydney Harbour of three Japanese midget submarines, one of which torpedoed a troop accommodation ferry berthed at Garden Island.
The invasion threat was real – after multiple attacks on Australian and US Navy vessels and merchant ships off the NSW coast, sinking nine vessels and killing over 50 sailors - on 8 June 1942, a Japanese submarine fired 10 shells into Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, damaging houses in Woollahra.
The sub surfaced just 10km off the coast of Malabar, using the beam from Macquarie Lighthouse to guide its weapons’ trajectory.
The military attempted, unsuccessfully, to detonate and collapse the St James Tunnels after WWII (which proved too well reinforced for conventional dynamite), although the staircase that accessed the bunker was destroyed by fire on 16 November 1968.
(3): The successful quartet of Matrix films (1999-2021), a dystopian science-fiction series starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburn as cyber-rebels pursued by violent government agents headed by Hugo Weaving, included fight scenes filmed on the abandoned platforms beside the St James Tunnels and around the station above.
In the 2003-released Matrix Revolutions, the third instalment in the series, the consciousness of Keanu Reeve’s character Neo is trapped in a subway station called ‘Mobil Ave’, which serves as a transition zone between the Matrix (the cyber program that controls humanity) and the material world.
(4): The 1998 movie Dark City, described as ‘tech noir’ (a subgenre of science fiction), which borrowed significantly from the Matrix series, includes scenes filmed in the St James Tunnels where a mysterious group known as ‘the Strangers’ dwell.
(5): A tunnel and platform is featured in Zoë Badwi's 2010 music video Freefallin, during which she wanders along an illuminated pedestrian subway after the station exit is closed and encounters a twilight world of erotic dancers splashing in water.
(6): Australian cult-horror film The Tunnel (2011), a drama presented as a documentary, utilised the St James Tunnels. A film crew descends beneath the city to investigate why homeless people are going missing and encounters an underground lake and predatory monsters.
Revitalisation
In September 2018, NSW Government sought expressions of interest “to activate the hidden space at St James Station into a world-class attraction. The proposed opportunities include entertainment, retail or dining options.”
Then-NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance declared, “We want ideas that could transform the platform and tunnels into a world-renowned attraction. Spaces like the St James tunnel are rare. Around the world, hidden spaces are being converted into unique experiences and we want St James Station to be part of that.”
The solicitations closed on 6 November 2018, but in 2020 a Sydney Trains spokesperson revealed the expression of interest process was ‘not complete.’
On 28 February 2025, the NSW Government’s Ministry of Transport issued a statement announcing the St James tunnels had been “turned into a historic tourist hotspot after a million-dollar makeover.”
Minister for Transport John Graham said: “These historic tunnels are more than just infrastructure; they are an expression of Sydney’s development as a modern, international city. These tunnels belong to the people of NSW, so it’s fantastic news that they’ll become another of our city’s great public spaces.
“Tours like BridgeClimb on the Harbour Bridge are now a must-do experience for Sydney locals and visitors alike. In time, we want to see tours of the St James tunnels become just as popular.”
The media release promised “visitors will be able to explore hidden parts of the St James Tunnels following restoration and revitalisation works to create a unique underground experience.”
This will involve a walking tour with a guide combined with an “immersive multimedia and soundscape” – presumably without the sound of Japanese missiles and the smell of cow manure!
Until now, the tunnels were only legally opened to the public during Sydney Open, an annual event that supervises access to restricted areas across the city; described by the organisers as “a chance to explore the city’s most historic and significant buildings, religious structures and architectural monuments”.
Anecdotes from previous visitors to the old tunnels – which include graffiti artists, the Melbourne-based subterranean explorers known as the Cave Clan, and even a 1970s witches’ coven that allegedly performed seances in the dark, damp conduits – describe graffiti-strewn walls (among them Heritage-listed messages written by the soldiers stationed there in WWII) and a fine netting of tree roots hanging down.
The latter are the exploratory ends of fig trees growing in the grounds of Hyde Park, many metres above.
A large sector of the northern tunnel is flooded by decades of seeping stormwater. Colloquially known as ‘St James Lake’, witnesses describe it as ten metres wide and up to five metres in depth.
An urban legend reveals the waters host a mysterious albino eel. An inflatable dinghy and paddle were photographed at the side of the ‘lake’ for explorers to paddle into the darkness, if the sharp teeth of a hungry eel doesn’t deter brave venturers.
The water will be drained before the northern tunnel is open for public access. Guided walks through the southern tunnels (reportedly accessible via a black door set into the wall of a subway in St James Station) and the WWII bunker are anticipated to run several times a day, after an accredited tour operator is appointed to oversee the attraction.
Opening dates and details on the St James Tunnels tours will be released via NSW Government’s Transport for NSW webpage.
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