Police have charged a man after a machete was allegedly used to rob a service station at Sydenham last week.

Officers from Redfern and Newtown Local Area Command were patrolling yesterday as part of a joint investigation, when they saw an 18-year-old man on Pitt Street in Waterloo.

Police arrested the man a short time later in the basement of a nearby unit block.

The man was taken to Redfern Police Station where he was interviewed about three incidents:

• the robbery of a service station in Sydenham on Thursday 6 March 2014;

• the assault and robbery of a motorist on Wellington Street in Waterloo on 25 January 2014; and,

• the assault of a man in the stairwell of a unit complex at Pagewood on 31 January 2014.

The man has been charged with two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, larceny and robbery armed with an offensive weapon. He was also charged with four outstanding warrants.

He has been refused bail and will appear at Central Local Court today.