El Alamein Fountain, Kings Cross — Sydney's Finest Modernist Fountain

The El Alamein Fountain sits in Fitzroy Gardens in Kings Cross, and most people walking past have no idea what it commemorates.

The two battles of El Alamein were fought in the Egyptian desert in 1942. More than 1,200 Australian infantrymen died in fighting that stopped the Axis forces from taking control of North Africa. It was one of the decisive turning points of the Second World War. Churchill's assessment was characteristically blunt: before Alamein we never had a victory; after Alamein we never had a defeat.

The fountain was completed in 1961. Robert Woodward, who had worked as an armourer during the war, designed it in the shape of a dandelion — 211 radially dispersed stalks that shoot water outward, creating a fine mist and a series of layered overflow pools below. The form changes depending on wind and light. In direct afternoon sun it catches and scatters. At night, illuminated, it reads differently again — quieter, more considered.

It is a genuinely good piece of public art in a part of the city that has had a complicated history. Worth stopping for.

The El Alamein Fountain is a regular stop on the Bondi and Eastern Suburbs private tour, alongside the clifftop walk from Bondi to Bronte, the ocean pools, Watsons Bay and the harbour coves on the return.

pigeon paradise

inspiration

under the bonnet

mist monster