The irony of history

Margaret Place, Paddington on Wednesday, 26 August 2020

Margaret is a tiny lane hidden away in an old part of Paddington. There are many sandstone and timber houses in the neighbourhood. The lane is narrow, just a footpath with a row of 3 small cottages with a wall at the end. Outside are plants and a table and chairs. I don’t dare to go too far inside, it feels private. One door is open. The interior is bright, thanks to installed skylights and probably a glassed verandah door at the back. In the past, it must have been very dark in these houses. By 1900 Sydney’s population had grown significantly and Paddington had turned into a slum. The rows of terraces were overcrowded, there was no sewerage. These days the area is charming with its narrow streets in the sunlight. It’s ironic how these squalid places have turned into prime real estate.

The neighbourhood

Suitcases are for free these days

Madeline and Maria St, Strathfield South; Mina Rosa St, Enfield on Tuesday, 25 August 2020

On one end of Maria Street is Ford Park. There is nothing much happening in this street. In front of a family home are several suitcases in various styles and sizes with a ‘For Free’ note on them.

Madeline Street begins as a residential street and then after driving through the tiniest passage between curved concrete walls, it starts to be industrial. There are lots of trucks thundering along this street, obviously via another route than that narrow passage. It doesn’t feel safe to walk. There is a large complex named “Sydney Meat Market”. It houses many known brand names. I immediately think ‘Corona hotspot’, just because one or two meat factories had outbreaks.

Mina Rosa Street in Enfield is also unremarkable but has an Olympic swimming pool at the end with a little park around it. There are Art Deco lamp posts. The plane trees are still bare. The pool opened in 1933 and was Sydney’s first freshwater swimming pool. I am reading in a blog about swimming pools that not long after the opening, which attracted a crowd of 16,000 visitors in the first week, there was a big flu epidemic in Sydney. Some reports blamed it on the crowded pool. 

Today it looks deserted at first glance, but it’s open by appointment and a young man is just walking through the park and enters the gates. 

Jane and Ann have seen a lot

Jane and Ann Street, Balmain on Monday, 24 August 2020

These streets are in an old part of Balmain with many sandstone houses and the traces of previous times tangible. It feels good to be back in a street with history after some weeks in suburbia.

In Jane Street is the tall church you can see from the Pyrmont waterfront where I often go for walks. The street is on a hill and the church appears even taller for that, a true landmark of Balmain. The church’s name is St Augustine and the foundation of the first smaller sandstone church was laid in 1848. This building is still standing and nestling next to the tall brick church which was built in 1907 to accommodate a growing population. I am reading now that the church has a most beautiful stained glass rose window which catches the morning light. I should go back there to see it. There is a Catholic Primary School named after Fr John Therry. He was appointed Parish Priest for Balmain in 1856, apparently after difficult struggles with Governor Macquarie who was supporting the Anglican church. I am reading in the history pages of the St Augustine website that Fr Therry was constantly agitating for the rights of Catholics and Aboriginal people so that he was even fired as a Catholic Chaplain at one stage, later to be re-instituted. In the early days of the Colony, Catholics were viewed with suspicion and Masses were even banned. The 1877 convent of the Immaculate Conception is also in Jane Street.

At the corner to Darling Street is the London Hotel, one of the oldest pubs in Sydney, operating non-stop since 1870. I am glad to see that it has survived the Covid19 lockdown and restrictions with a safety plan in place. The building itself is even older, it was built as a corner shop in 1857. I remember the London Hotel to be a very touristy pub, but it probably always had its congregation of locals as regular patrons. It looks as if they have regained their territory. People know each other.

At the corner of Ann Street is a café, preparing to close. A last customer and his dog are sitting at an outside table in the probably also last ray of sunshine in this corner.

The street slopes down to a park at White Bay and the empty docks. You can see some of Pyrmont and the Anzac bridge through trees. There are modest timber cottages, sandstone houses, terraces, and a sixties block of flats. I photograph bits and pieces of these places when suddenly a shabbily dressed woman with her dog comes up behind me and asks accusingly what I am photographing. I say, the lovely houses around here. “You are not allowed to do that. I watched you taking photographs of my place. They should not be on your phone.” “Ok”, I say, “which house was it? I’ll delete it.” She’s taken aback and doesn’t want to do it. Momentarily I have forgotten that nobody wants to be next to strangers in these Corona times and flick through their photos, heads bent over the phone. She could have told me which one it was, but that may be too much information if you are already suspicious. 

Ways to get out

Joan Lane and Marie Street, Belmore on Wednesday, 12 August 2020

Joan Lane is very close to Canterbury Road at the backside of a new apartment block. In the parking area, I notice two young women in a car, smoking, and talking on the phone. I decide to let them drive away first. People get suspicious when you loiter around their homes. After a little walk, I find them still there. They are not going anywhere, just sitting in the car. I imagine it’s a way to get out of the house or to get away from someone who’s home too often.

Canterbury Road has changed a lot. Not that I ever knew it very well out here, but it was mainly old. Now there are many new buildings and the remaining small old shops are mostly empty, dark and looking sad. They will be gone too very soon and you wouldn’t even have a trace left of that old road. At the end of Joan Lane is an empty lot, waiting to be developed.

From the verandah of the corner house, a big fabric monkey is watching everything.

In Marie Street, I think of a rallying call from the French Revolution: “War to the palaces, peace to the cottages.”

Lost in translation

Mona Street, Allawah on Monday, 10 August 2020

I have never been to Allawah or even heard of it. But it has a train station. A strong, cold wind is blowing down Mona Street. The Allawah hotel is at the corner and the small strip of shops around there is protected from the wind and warm in the sunshine. The barber shop is closed, maybe just because it’s Monday. The Nepalese takeaway is closed because of a technical problem. “Inconvenience is highly solicited,” says a hand-written note on the glass door. I am trying to think what word they mixed it up with. There must be an expression in Nepalese used in this context and lost in translation. 

The Postman

Myrtle and Virginia Street, Kensington on Thursday, 6 August 2020

Myrtle runs off Virginia Street and ends at the sound wall bordering South Dowling Street. It could as well be the border to another world, as on the other side is the immense stretch of new apartment blocks, while on this side are neat and pretty family homes with picket fences.

It’s a sunny but very cold day. The streets are quite empty, except for a few people going about their business. I keep running into the postman as I am crossing and recrossing the street, going in one direction and then returning and so is he. Another man is putting unwanted junk mail into letterboxes. The child care centre is still closed. The drawings the children made before the lockdown are displayed in the window. Henry tells us to keep smiling.

Foo dogs and dandelions

Mary, Frances, Victoria Street, Lidcombe on Friday, 31 July 2020

Lidcombe has only very few shops but a lot of churches instead. I park in John Street near the Armenian Catholic Church, across is the Art Deco Lidcombe Hotel. I walk a few steps to Mary Street past a café and a Japanese restaurant and there the shopping and entertainment part of Lidcombe ends already. It’s only 5 minutes away from the train station. In Mary Street, I find the St Joachim’s Catholic Primary School and St Joseph’s Childcare Centre, defended by a hysterically barking dog. Through a gap between buildings, I glimpse the St Andrews Ukrainian Catholic Church in the next street.

Most of the shops are on the other side of the railway track, many of them Korean. A bit further down is Victoria Street East with a few factories in low buildings and a majestic domed church, the St Ephraim Syrian Orthodox Cathedral at the corner. A few houses further down I discover that a “true blue Aussie” lives there, displaying the Australian flag and a photo of Clint Eastwood with a rifle, saying “Get out of my driveway!!!”.

There are many streets with female names in Lidcombe all over the suburb. It’s too far to walk to everyone, so I check out most of them by driving through. All a bit of the same. On my way, I pass two more churches. Later I learn that there are even more, among them a Russian Orthodox Church. 

Frances is a long street and at the end towards Parramatta Road, it looks industrial with some small neglected houses. A large family with a cute toddler is gathered in an untidy garden, next door to a plastic manufacturer. The presumed father of the family says, “The good news is…” and then something about the electricity bill. The factory buildings on the other side seem to be abandoned. They don’t have any signs and weed grows high in front. A gate is open and I want to have a look, but then stop. There is someone. In movies, such places are used for bad things. 

Finding gold in Auburn

Helena, Louisa, Marion, Lily, Mona Street, Auburn on Wednesday, 29 July 2020

Auburn has a large Turkish community, also Lebanese, Chinese, Pakistani, Somalian, Afghan and more. There is a big mosque which was built just a few years ago. Seeing it from afar reminds me of travelling by bus from Bulgaria to Turkey some years ago and the first appearance of a mosque instead of another Orthodox Church after crossing the border.

The streets are suburban, just the type which I always thought were too boring and too much the same to want to go ‘street exploring’ in. They are mostly residential with a mix of architectural styles, some modest Federation weatherboard houses, and some larger new ones with elaborate fences and ornaments. Interspersed are playgrounds, schools, and corner shops. 

In Louisa Street, a cat with a bushy tail tries to open a parcel that was left on the porch. At the corner to Helena Street is a suburban dream house, built from sandstone with three curved balconies held up by four round pillars and a fleur-de-lys fence around it. Over the front door is a horseshoe for good luck, which may be needed as one of the marble tiles decorating a balcony just above the entrance has come off. The places here have many chairs around big tables in their backyards. Near a playground is a sign saying “Warning - Area Under Surveillance”. It immediately makes me feel worried. In these times of the Coronavirus, we have become insecure about what is allowed and what is not. Can I walk here, can I be here? But it’s not that. It’s about illegal dumping.

At the corner of Marion Street is the Arafah Market, not a market but just a small store. I look up what Arafah means and find it is an Islamic holiday and by coincidence falls this year on the very day I am here, the 29th of July. Further down Marion Street, I see a small old caravan of the type street vendors would use, painted bright green with rusty patches. There is a small window at the front which opens as a counter. Behind the caravan, lions are guarding the wall of a family house. Some homes have quite large properties around them. Near Beatrice Street, a sign offers ‘LIFESIZE PLANS’. The surface is cracked. Around a bent are the railway tracks and beyond is the big mosque with its minaret and domes. The view from this side is obscured by the powerlines and railway structures.

In Alice Street are more ornamented fences, outdoor lamps and fancy letterboxes and a house with large oriental-looking arches. On a property nearby is an army of traffic cones, spades sitting in wooden barrels, piles of rocks, garden gnomes, toddler-sized cars, and wilted leeks stuck into pots. Several ‘No Entry’ and CCTV signs tell you to back off.

I look down Lily Street and decide not to go there. But I drive along Mary Street which ends at a park and a football oval. A group of ibises are picking at a discarded food box. Mary Street has an old corner store at Cumberland Road. On the other end, the street finishes at the town centre. But by the time I arrive in that section, there is too much traffic to go near it.

I drive down Mona Street. It's very long and very busy. I can’t find anywhere to park my car to get out and walk along. I pass a sign to the next suburb, Granville, which acknowledges that it is the land of the Dharug people. There is nowhere to turn until I come to a T section and turn right, hoping to cut back through one of the side streets, but they are all dead-ends. Later I find out that the Duck River runs along the end of these streets. I finally turn into one of them. By coincidence, it is a street with a female name: Myrtle in Granville. At the corner is a barber shop of the new trendy kind, using the traditional blue, white and red striped barber sign painted in shiny colours. Two young men are outside smoking. One has a complicated plaited hairstyle. When I am back near the Auburn town centre, it’s the end of school time. I am stuck at a roundabout with a school at the corner. Flashing neon letters tell everyone: “Be cool, go to school.” Many women are wearing headscarves and fashionable clothes, picking up their children.

When I leave, trying to escape the peak hour traffic, I realise how lively this town centre is. I decide it doesn’t give justice to the people living in the quiet streets if I don’t explore where they go when they leave their homes. So I come back on Saturday by train. Like it always seems to be in Australian cities, this suburb only has a few streets with shops and restaurants. But they are very busy, and I imagine even more so if it weren’t for the new outbreaks of COVID-19.

There are a lot of jewellery shops and they have customers, unlike in some other areas where jewellery shops are notoriously empty. Here people apparently love gold and big elaborate designs. The women are dressed well and colourfully. There are people from nations I am not versed enough to identify, who you hardly see in Redfern our Newtown. It’s a bit like travelling to other continents. Nice as we can’t do it in reality at the moment. Names of restaurants and shops identify Turkish, Afghani, Pakistani, Korean and more. I pass an Afghani bakery, the smell is delicious and there is a queue waiting outside.

Auburn, by another name then, was a marketplace for the exchange of goods for the Indigenous people of this land. Wikipedia tells me it was a border between the inland Dharug and the coastal Dharawal group. I think places have a memory. It is still a marketplace, now bringing together groups of immigrants to this land.

Wealthy sisters

Margaret, Myrna, Ada, Marion, Strathfield on Sunday, 19 July 2020

Many of the residential streets in Strathfield have big mansion-style houses. Some must have been built at a time when the area was rural and the houses were surrounded by large properties. Other architectural styles followed. By the end of the 19th century, this suburb was known as one of the highest-status areas in Sydney, along with Double Bay and Darling Point. In comparison, the churches around here are rather modest. 

In Myrna Road new white palaces are dominant. An arch window theme of different sizes and executions seems to be en vogue. The burned-out rooftop of a simple brick house tells me that the fire gods deemed it to be unworthy of its neighbours.

I learn that Meredith Street is not derived from the female name but refers to Frederick Meredith. He was a free settler who had been given land in the area in 1793, the land which belonged to the traditional custodians, the Wangal people. 

There are several schools in Margaret Street, or rather several buildings of the Meriden School, Junior and Senior. It’s an Anglican school for girls. The Santa Maria del Monte Santa Sabina College is at the corner of The Boulevarde with several huge mansions on the campus. This one is a Catholic school.

The apartment blocks around here are less impressive, even though one of them is called “Place Vendôme”. Another has a comfortable chair with a blanket draped over it out on the front lawn. Someone must have been sitting there, enjoying the sunshine.

It’s funny how the eye and the mind see different things than the camera because later I notice that it wasn’t a blanket but the chair was used to dry the bed sheets which didn’t fit on the rack.

I could live here

Helena, May, Maida and Victoria Street, Lilyfield on Thursday, 11 June 2020

This is a cluster of streets with female names. I start in Helena Street near some red brick flats which are most likely public housing units. An almost sure telling sign is the high number of makeshift curtains, ragged pieces of fabric, plastic sheets or broken blinds in the windows. At least that has been my observation.

In comparison, another block further along in the same style and by no means any prettier architecturally has neat curtains and blinds and polished window panes. There is a flat for lease: 2 bedrooms, undercover car park, parquetry floors, sun-drenched balcony. I could live there, even though it’s ugly from the outside. I have lived in a building like that before in Leichhardt, and the flat was very nice. Otherwise, the street has a mixture of family homes, like the surrounding streets. All have been lovingly renovated with different colour themes, yellow and blue, linden and dark green, and gleaming white, showing the tastes of their respective owners.

I discover a theme for this walk: There are chairs on the porches of most of the houses. This afternoon they are empty but they look as if the occupier has just got up to get something. You can see that people actually sit there in the evenings, on the weekend. I mark this as typical for this area, where sitting outdoors on the street side of your house and chatting to your neighbours is important. Especially in recent times when you couldn’t visit other people. The end of Victoria Street portrays this feeling in particular. It’s a cul-de-sac. There are swings in the trees, benches on the footpath, a stone buddha and children’s tiny toy houses. I have often wondered about this in other streets and suburbs, where the porches are empty, except for a flowerpot or ornament, or even messed up with the things you don’t want to have inside.

Children are coming home from school. When I started a bit after 2 pm, I first saw the little ones. The later it gets, the older the children are. Some are big enough to walk home without an adult. The school must be nearby, no one is driving.

In May Street is a laneway library where you can leave and pick up books. There are more and more of this kind around. In Maida Street, I meet a cat, miaowing and brushing against my legs. She has a collar. I wonder if she’s a lost one. I haven’t seen any posters of that kind in the area. It turns out quickly that she lives nearby. When I come back that way, she is sitting on the wall bordering her front garden.

Sometime during the walk, I hear a half-forgotten sound: A plane in low flight. It’s a cargo plane.

Anzac Day in the time of Corona

Ada Place, Pyrmont on Saturday, 25 April 2020

Today is Anzac Day, no marches. In some suburbs people held the dawn service in front of their houses, each on their own front lawn or porch, even playing “The Last Post”. Some lit a candle at their open window. All this I learned from Facebook, Instagram and TV news as nothing happened in my neighbourhood. But then again I wasn’t up yet to see it.

Ada Place is a narrow lane off Pyrmont Bridge Road, overshadowed by high apartment buildings on each side. They were probably built when Pyrmont was being redeveloped in the late 1990s.

Judging from old photos I’ve seen about Sydney, I imagine Ada Place would have looked quite grim in previous times. Maybe there were workers’ cottages or warehouses on this street when Pyrmont was an operating dock area. It still looks grim - in a bland, new way. But somehow it retains that harbourside ambience, especially at the end towards Pyrmont Bridge Road where I can see old buildings in the sunshine on the other side.

Pyrmont Bridge is normally a busy road. It leads to several thoroughfares and the Anzac Bridge. Today there is hardly any traffic. There is a silence, like a hush in the air.

Back in Ada Place, an older and a younger man are carrying furniture out from a flat into the street. A chair and a cupboard are already there. A dog is whimpering after them. “Come inside, Winston”, I hear a woman’s voice calling. The flats facing this lane on the lower floors are very dark. I get glimpses of the interior here and there. A politician recently complained about people treating the beach as their back garden, meaning they want to stay and not leave immediately after a swim. (Most beaches, except Bondi, just opened again last week, just for a swim). This politician may have a back garden and more, but the people in Ada Place don’t, not even a ray of sunshine.

One lonely balloon

Elizabeth Lane, Redfern on Saturday, 11 April 2020

It’s Easter Saturday. Restrictions are reinforced over this long weekend. No travel too far from your own suburb. Not sure what too far is, but definitely nowhere outside of Sydney. They have roadblocks. You are only allowed to go out shopping, exercise, and whatever else the ‘absolutely necessary’ activities may be. Yesterday afternoon I drove to Pyrmont with Dimitri to walk at the waterfront. I imagined there would be random checks at the side of the road to ask where we were going. There were none. Even though I was behind a police car at a traffic light which then stopped at the side of the road around the corner as they do when they want to wave you down. But nothing happened. Otherwise I haven’t seen any police patrolling these inner suburbs. 

Apart from a few exceptions, I was so far going through the letter M. Out of necessity in these times, I have changed my system a bit and now try to find any street with a female name in my neighbourhood as it would be unwise to travel to a faraway suburb to take photos.

Today I went to ‘Breadfern’, the local organic bakery, to buy hot cross buns and a loaf of bread. Elizabeth Lane is nearby. It’s only a small stretch at the backside of Elizabeth Street, bordered by Redfern Lane and James Street. 

It’s a sparkling, sunny day, it almost feels happy. When I turn around the corner from Redfern Lane, I hear music coming from an open garage door. It sounds familiar. I know the song well from listening to ‘Triple J’ some years ago. They played it often, so I am able to decipher the words “I’ve got a strange disease”. How appropriate. I couldn’t remember who it was by. When I looked it up later, I realised that I never took notice of the name. It was a Canadian pop music duo named Prozzäk. 

Inside the small courtyard from where the music comes, I see a young couple. He is doing sit-ups. Otherwise, there is nobody in this lane. The wind plays with a yellow balloon on the ground, blowing it back and forth. 

At the other end of Elizabeth Lane is the backside of the warehouse where Damien Minton lives and where he occasionally holds his Sunday arvo art salons. He just recently posted on Instagram of his little adventures in the back lane, observed in isolation from his window. The old, broken piano, he had posted a photo of, is still there. I think he made the comment that art is a victim of the Coronavirus. There is more music coming from inside another place. 

Do not push the button

Mary Ann Street, Ultimo on Thursday, 9 April 2020

I am constantly thinking about where to be outside and to go for a walk without causing any trouble or getting into trouble. Centennial Park was still open the last time I looked and ok on weekdays, but on the weekend there are too many people. I thought to check out Pyrmont and the waterfront at the end of Harris Street. I stopped in Mary Ann Street on the way. It runs from Wattle to Harris Street and then has another cul-de-sac end at the top. As a pedestrian, you can walk on from that point up some stairs or along a little passageway at the side. This street has some UTS buildings and the old Sydney Technical College which is now TAFE. There is a row of small sandstone terraces with a history plaque mentioning the surgeon John Harris to whom this land had been granted by the ‘Crown’. Two stonemasons built the terraces in 1869 to use as their family homes and rental housing. Another terrace has a small Chinese dumpling restaurant which is open for takeaway. The ‘Fork and Grind Café’ is closed and cordoned off. There is a small park with rose bushes. Two little girls are playing in the grass.

The street is empty, except for some young people with face masks, carrying shopping bags. In front of one of the UTS buildings is a black couch, either dumped or put there for smokers. A man is sitting on it working with his tablet and phone as if it were his office. But mainly the street in this busy part of the city is very empty and deserted. While walking along all by myself, I happen to come upon the Frank Gehry ‘squashed brown paper bag’ building which I could never find before. This is truly a ‘random discovery’.

At the traffic lights is a cardboard device over the push button, advising not to touch it. The lights will change by themselves.

Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, UTS, Sydney, designed by Frank Gehry

Love is the answer

Mary Street, Newtown on Friday, 3 April 2020

I have to go to the bank to get my credit card. I was thinking of just leaving it, although banks are an essential service, and I need the card. The bank is at the corner of Mary and King Street, so I take the opportunity to look around. At the end near Lennox Street, dogs are barking ferociously inside a building with a mural painting. Two men with red safety tops are walking in and out.

The street is a bit shabby. Apart from the house with the mural, most buildings in the street look neglected and covered with tagging.

An old mattress and shoes are dumped in the driveway to an undercover parking lot. The only other neat place is the temporarily closed Kelly’s Lounge. There are beer kegs outside the door, waiting for nothing.

The next building has a tag saying “God hates us all”. Some posters inform people that a virus doesn’t target race. This is because Asian people have been attacked and vilified in public. There are too many dumb people who think the Chinese are personally responsible for the virus break-out. Words of encouragement are painted high up on a corner building glowing in the sunshine: “Love is the answer”.

Time Capsule 2003

Amelia Street, Waterloo on Monday, 30 March 2020

Yellow Night in Amelia Street from the series Night Cruise, 2003

Amelia Street in 2003

This is one of the streets I went to in 2003 when I first had the idea to record streets with female names. I didn’t continue then. Recently, I found some of the photos I took at the time. One of them was from my project Night Cruise.

Amelia Street is in the middle of the new apartment complex in Waterloo where an enormous factory ground used to be, spanning several blocks. When I came to Sydney in 1997 it was deserted, still remaining like this for years. In 2003 there was the first apartment block on Lachlan Street at the end of Amelia. It must have been just about to be finished. A banner on the building fence read “Now Leasing”. Apart from this, the skyline was empty.

At the dead end of this short street was a scrap metal yard. In its place and beyond, is now the vast complex of a residential area with new streets and shops. The former office building, 24 Amelia Street, is still standing.

Three dingy little terraces are lingering on. Maybe abandoned by now. There are a lot of discarded household goods on the porches. A small lot next to them is empty, protected by a wooden fence with barbed wire on the top. At the corner is a luxury car dealer named ‘Prestige Connex’, which has been there for 28 years. Opposite were small white factory buildings and a take-away shop in 2003. Now apartment buildings have replaced them.

I observe all this from the car. It just doesn’t feel right anymore to loiter in the streets and take photos.

Metal Merchant in 2003

End of Amelia Street in 2020

2020

Ann Street, Surry Hills

2003

After that, I drive to Ann Street. This is the other one from which I’ve found a photo from 2003. It’s divided by Riley Street, leaving only a short dead-end bit at the highest end. The other longer part winds steeply downhill to Commonwealth Street. This is the neighbourhood of Ruth Park’s novel The Harp of the South. 

I have to come back here sometime in the future because today I am not getting out of the car. I park at the upper end from where I can see the crossing to Riley Street. It is 5 pm, business traffic hour, but there are almost no cars. Eery and silent. I recognise the corner where I took the photo in 2003 by the yellow railing along the footpath. It’s still yellow. The side of the building, a small terrace, is now painted a dark grey. Then it was a lighter colour and had the street sign screwed to the wall. In 2003 a few things were happening on that wall. There was a patch of white which presumably was supposed to cover some tagging. But maybe they forgot their ladder and couldn’t get high enough, as some red tagging still sneaked out at the top of that white patch. The council used to cover tags and graffiti with whatever colour. It never matched the walls. The white rectangle in Ann Street proved to be a suitable background for some more stencils, tags and writings.

I don’t think I can do this project any longer, as we are not supposed to leave our homes except for clearly defined purposes. Roaming streets, even by car, may not be part of this.

Maybe I can still do my own suburb Redfern on the way to the grocery and chemist shops?

Light my heart

Margaret Street and Lane, Newtown on Monday, 16 March 2020

I came here in a dampened mood, as on a Monday everything is worse about the Corona crisis than the week before. It’s now declared to be a pandemic. The day is grey and rainy. Margaret Street in Newtown is hidden in between a labyrinth of small streets, one-ways, dead-ends. It has some wall paintings and the most peculiar-looking apartment building, brick, maybe 50s with a gabled roof. Very narrow, wedged between a fence and an older house.

The street curves and where it does three bikes are parked side by side, a big one, a middle-sized and a tiny children’s bike. Reminds me of the three Bears from ‘Goldilocks’.

It is quiet. There aren’t many cars driving through, maybe because they don’t find it, as happened to me first. But some people are emerging from somewhere to go somewhere. A man is rummaging in the rubbish bins of the peculiar apartment block for glass bottles. The houses here have their own character: creative, environmentalist, neat, neglected or entirely absent.

Margaret Lane shows the backside of such places. There’s rubbish including chairs. Discarded chairs seem to become an accidental theme in these discoveries. 

Writings on the wall

Maud Lane, Marrickville on Sunday, 8 March 2020

On my way to Maud Lane, I passed by Maude Street which isn't on any map. It runs alongside the Braddock Playground, with only grass and bushes and a sandstone arch leading into it. Someone is meditating under the arch.

The street turns around a corner and becomes Maud Lane. It runs along the railway track. The first view around the bend is a section with rubbish bins, a container with pallets piled on top, and a truck in front of a low white building. Squashed cardboard boxes, a battered suitcase and an abandoned shopping trolley are sitting right under a bent sign that tells everyone not to dump rubbish there. Is this ignorance, vandalism or civil disobedience?

The lane has workshops, garages and warehouses on both sides. Number 25 insists that the lane’s name is Maude with an ‘e’, defying the street directories’ spelling. It is empty and silent. Good to come on a Sunday.

Funny how I get excited by the sight of a rather ugly street. The feeling comes from something unexplainable, a vague memory of industrial streets in my home town Hamburg. But also from the fact that this place, like so many in Marrickville, is yet untouched by new apartment block developments. A couple of people are working. One is behind half-closed roller doors, and the other is driving a forklift from one end of the lane to the other. Apart from them, I am all alone. After heavy rain, the sun has come out and it’s warm.

While editing the photos I enjoy looking at all the details on the walls. Not so much the big elaborate graffiti, but the small scribbles, messages, colours, and objects leaning against them. In one section a few pieces of broken timber are leaning against a black wall. They look like words from an ancient language, like runes. Now, in August, five months later, they look to me like the “writing on the wall”, an ominous warning.

A serious street in Surry Hills

Mary Street and Mary Lane, Surry Hills on Saturday, 7 March 2020

On the way home from East Sydney where I had my gallery tour this Saturday, I went to Mary Street. I had been in this street a bit in the past but never noticed the name. One part of Mary Street is flanked by the Centennial Plaza, an ugly, soulless office and shop complex. My first computer repair man had a shop there, so I often parked in this street. After that, it continues on past Albion and Reservoir Streets.

This narrow street is home to quite a lot of institutions. The Salvation Army Foster House, the Chinese Masonic Hall, the Australian Chinese Community Association, the NSW Teachers Federation building, a bookshop called Published Art, a few restaurants, a gym or two, and even a brewery.

I feel the street is overwhelmed by the seriousness of so many important places. It looks a bit down and depressed. 

The existence of a Chinese Masonic Hall intrigues me, so I try to find something about it. It is, like any aspect of Chinese history, multifaceted. It was built in 1911, the year when the Qing Dynasty in China came to an end and the Republic of China was formed a year later. It grew out of the Hung League, which was an ancient secret society. By the time of the foundation of the Chinese Masonic Hall, the Hung League was a strong supporter of the republican cause. Like other secret societies of China, it had been connected with crime in the 19th century, known as the Triads (their symbol is a triangle). The founding of the Masonic Hall was meant to end this association with crime and to gain respectability. 

In Mary Lane is an intoxicated young man stumbling around and trying to do something with doorways. I think to leave him in peace and don’t venture very far into it.

At least one place is offering some fun. Or maybe not when you look closer.

Art lives in small streets

Mary Place, Paddington on Friday, 21 Feb 2020

I went to visit some of the galleries for my Saturday gallery tour. One of them is in Mary Place, so I took the opportunity to explore this street. It’s narrow and divided into two parts. The gallery used to be called Mary Place Gallery, now the name is Defiance, a branch of the Newtown gallery of the same name. At the moment there is an exhibition upstairs with drawings by Kevin Connor. He is 88 years old and according to what I’ve read about him, he could be called a flâneur without necessarily using this term himself. He observes and draws the everyday activities of people in the city. One of the drawings was probably done at the Tropicana in Victoria Street which I mentioned in my last post.

Kevin Connor, drawing. Photo taken from exhibition at Deviance Gallery, Mary Place

Around 1958 the Barry Stern Gallery operated here in Mary Place. This was in the days when Paddington was grungy and a no-go zone for ‘respectable’ people. Today most parts of the street look affluent and well-kept. From the odd mix of buildings, you can still recognise the former working-class environment. One young, smart-casually dressed woman walks along, smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone. Another stands at the corner of a shop, also smoking a cigarette. Across is the other property Barry Stern had bought in the 1950s. He converted it into a gallery by joining three terrace houses. His name and founding date are imprinted on the pavement.

An unexpected history lesson

Victoria Street, Kings Cross and Darlinghurst on Thursday, 5 March 2020 

The photography class I am teaching at WEA was scheduled for the Kings Cross field excursion. We meet at the Victoria Street exit of Kings X station in spite of heavy rain. I suggest we could stay a while at the Tropicana Caffe and take photos through foggy windows with raindrops, like the American photographer Saul Leiter. Passing Kings Cross Hotel, there is an especially heavy downpour. We stop outside under an awning for shelter. While there, I try to get some specific colour fields into my photos. That was one of the assignments I gave the students: Follow a colour. We go on to the Tropicana in the Darlinghurst part of Victoria Street. This was the place where the international short film festival Tropfest started in 1993. By the time I had moved from Melbourne to Sydney in 1997 the festival had already spilled out into the street. Rows of chairs and a screen were put into Victoria Street next to the café. Later it moved to Centennial Park and then to Parramatta. The Tropicana Caffe dates back to the 1980s and was, some say it still is, a place where local artists were hanging out to chat with friends and develop creative ideas. Or sit by themselves and draw. I remember it from the late 1990s when it still had its original style. Later it was renovated and lost, in my view, some of its flair. Today the creatives present are the students of my photography class. But sadly, no foggy glass panes.

Later we arrive at the Kings Cross part of Victoria Street near Orwell Street. The rain hadn’t stopped all day. By 4 pm it's dark like on a winter’s day. The lit shop windows, the fading light, the yellowing leaves on the plane trees give the street a slightly European autumnal mood. A slim, young man stands in the middle of the street next to a rubbish bin. It looks "compromised", marked with black and yellow security tape. It accidentally matches the man’s runners. He is guiding the traffic around the bin. After a while, he abandons his mission and tells us some of the histories of the immediate environment.

Here are the Butler Stairs, built in 1869 to create access between the higher and wealthier Potts Point and the lower and poorer neighbourhood of Woolloomooloo. That’s where the servants and maids lived who worked for the rich people up on the ridge, climbing up the 103 steps possibly several times a day. I’m disappointed to learn that the stairs are not named after the servants, but after an Irish draper called James Butler. He was an alderman on the Sydney Council and instrumental in the building of the stairs.

Then our new tour guide tells us about Juanita Nielsen who had lived nearby at 202 Victoria Street. She was a journalist and activist in the 1970s, fighting against demolition, redevelopment plans, and the forceful eviction of residents in Kings Cross. She disappeared in 1975. This mystery has never been solved, but it is assumed that she was kidnapped and murdered.

Another local resident of Victoria Street was the Green Ban activist Mick Fowler who was fighting for the same cause as Juanita. He has a plaque in his memory at the side of the stairs.