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Sydney Entertainment Centre

multi-purpose venue, located in Haymarket, Sydney, Australia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ29726
Source-derived summary

Sydney Entertainment Centre, later known as Qantas Credit Union Arena, was a multi-purpose arena located in Haymarket, Sydney, Australia. It opened in May 1983, to replace Sydney Stadium, which had been demolished in 1970 to make way for the Eastern Suburbs railway line. The centre was owned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, which administered the neighbouring Darling Harbour area, and managed under a lease.

It was one of Sydney's larger concert venues, licensed to accommodate over 13,000 people as a conventional theatre or 8,000 as a theatre-in-the-round. It was the largest permanent concert venue in Sydney until 1999, when the Sydney SuperDome opened at Sydney Olympic Park. The venue averaged attendances of 1 million people each year and hosted concerts, family shows, sporting events and corporate events. It closed the month before its demolition in January 2016.

Construction

The construction of the Sydney Entertainment Centre was orchestrated by Neville Wran, who appointed Sir Asher Joel as chairman of the project. The site was formerly occupied by fruit and vegetable markets, which were vacated by 1975. Construction began in 1979, contracted by the John Holland Group.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sydney Entertainment Centre” is multi-purpose venue, located in Haymarket, Sydney, Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sydney, Entertainment and Centre, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1983, 1970, 1999, 2016—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1983-01-01. For this dossier, Sydney, Entertainment and Centre is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “multi-purpose venue, located in Haymarket, Sydney, Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29726. Authority coordinates are -33.878, 151.203. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1970, 1999 and 2016.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sydney Entertainment Centre”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sydney Entertainment Centre primary sources, Sydney Entertainment Centre archive and Sydney research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sydney Entertainment Centre”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Sydney Entertainment Centre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.