Lorna

Lorna Lane, Stanmore on Thursday, 24 September 2020

There are a lot of lanes in Stanmore. Lorna Lane is one of them. It’s not, as I first thought, because there were many back street factories, like in Lilyfield and Rozelle. Stanmore mainly started from big farming estates granted to settlers in the early days of the Colony. Over time it developed into a place where affluent working people would move to bigger houses, away from the overcrowded inner suburbs.

Today I find a few discarded things, thoughtfully arranged for people who might need these items: a lamp, an outdated TV table with drawers for the video player and cassettes, and some crockery neatly stacked. There is a tent in its bag. I am tempted in case I’ll go on a camping trip again. But I leave it, too much worry about cleaning and disinfecting. In another lane are some thick-skinned lemons on the ground which fell over the fence. I leave them too.

There is a lot of renovation happening in the area. It seems to be a sign of these times. They say home improvement purchases have increased. Bunnings is laughing.

Always was, always will be

Adina Avenue, La Perouse,  31 August 2020

It is amazing how Sydney is blessed with so many beautiful shores and beaches without having to travel very far from the centre. Adina Avenue is on a hill, overlooking Botany Bay.

The area is named after the French Comte La Pérouse who landed here in 1788.

I read that the original name was Gooriwal, and the traditional custodians were the Kameygal people.

The first thing I notice is an old timber church, fenced in for restoration. On the fence banners, it says ‘This Church Restoration priority belongs to the Elders, who have expressed their desire to restore the Church to provide a space for healing and fostering strong social cohesion.’ I learn later that this was an Evangelical Mission Church, significant to the Aboriginal community of La Perouse as it had been a form of protection for the Aboriginal people of the area from the government’s policy of child-taking.

At the corner of Adina Avenue and Goolagong Place is a weathered community board containing a notice in faded handwriting: ‘La Perouse Discreet Aboriginal Community. Residents only.’ Down the hill from here is a bungalow. On the low brick wall surrounding it, are written the words ‘Bidjigal Land’.

The resistance leader Pemulwuy, who fought against the British occupation in the 1790s, lived in this area. I read that he belonged to the Bidjigal people who resided in Toongabbie and Parramatta.

The white settlers found the area too rough for living, but it attracted city dwellers for day trips, especially when a tram line was created in 1902. The Aboriginal residents used this fact to create a tourist industry, presenting a snake man show and selling boomerangs and ornaments made from sea shells. The most prominent shellwork artist was Emma Timbery also known as “Queen of La Perouse” or “Queen Emma”. She is the great-grandmother of Esme Timbery who is known for her shellwork of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

During the Depression in 1929, hundreds of unemployed people moved out to La Perouse and set up camp in “Happy Valley”. Families lived in shacks made from scavenged wood, corrugated iron, flour bags and cardboard. There was no electricity or running water.

European and indigenous people lived together there. Stories tell that there was a great community spirit despite the hardships.

The Aboriginal community of La Perouse is the only one in the Sydney region that held on to its territory until today against all adversaries and threats of relocation. Land rights were finally obtained in 1984.

Phoenix

Jennifer Street, Little Bay, 31 August 2020

This street has residential houses on one side, the Botany National Park and a golf course on the other. There is a boardwalk that leads through an area that was created for the regeneration of a plant community named ‘Banksia Scrub.’ Sadly, here too was a fire and most of the scrub has burned down, new fern growing underneath the blackened branches of short trees and bushes. 

At the end is a road dividing the golf course and I walk along a little way. It’s very windy, I have to brace myself against it. I veer off on a path that goes a bit uphill. From here I can see the undulating landscape of the golf course and the ocean on the horizon.

I think, I am looking towards the side of Little Bay, where Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the coast in 1969. 

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.”

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.

Elsie and Minna

Elsie and Minna Street, Burwood on Sunday, 12 July 2020

Elsie Street is just a shadowy wind tunnel between high office buildings. Its past is wiped out. There could have been the type of houses I saw near Mary Street. Dark brick, one-storey, squat and sombre looking. 

Walking through the parallel back lane which is also the backside of Burwood Road, I am amazed at how make-shift and run down these in-between alleys often are. The dirtiest ibis I have ever seen is picking its way through some overflowing rubbish bins. The Burwood Medical Centre looks like something where Netflix serial killers keep their victims. Nearby is the Ninety Plus Education Centre. I wonder if the name indicates an IQ score or an age group. The owner must be doing well as a new black Audi is parked near the fire stairs. “No customer parking”. The neighbour is more drastic: “Don’t even think about parking here” is written on a proper custom-made metal sign. The wire mesh gate guarding the carport is rusty and twisted by someone trying to force it open. Dead leaves, paper and plastic bags litter the floor. There is a peeling wall painting that says Hardwick’s Shoes.

Now, more than a year later, I read up about this shop. It was a family business, founded in 1902 and closed in 2016. The article says the history of the shop is written on its interior walls. I am curious about what would be in there now and if they’ve kept the writing. I look up Google photos. It’s “Mr Vitamins - Best Price + Expert Advice”. I can’t go there to have a look as we are in another lockdown, Burwood is more than 5km away from my home and a no-entry red zone. 

Minna Street is a bit further along from the Burwood Road shopping centre. By the time I arrive there, a storm is brewing, the sky has turned dark. It’s an entirely residential street with big houses of different architectural periods. All are kept in perfect condition. There is an empty lot that has a banner on the fence saying cross = love in symbols. In one of the gardens, a Magnolia tree is starting to flower. Spring is not far. 

This too shall pass

Mary Street, Burwood on Sunday, 12 July 2020

It’s a small street near the train station at the back of the main shopping strip in Burwood Road. On one side is a newish high apartment building with a glass shopfront, featuring a jewellery shop and a restaurant. On the other side, stretching all along the street is an old, grey-painted building. It seems to be empty. Looking at its new neighbours, I guess it probably won’t survive very much longer. I discover an alley at the back. At the corner, it is revealed that the building belonged to the Police Citizens Boys Club, chiselled in big bold letters into the wall. I first thought this was a club for the police when there were hardly any women in the force and the men felt like boys among themselves playing snooker and clapping each other on the shoulder. 

People who grew up in Sydney probably know what the club really stands for. But my uninformed guess is not entirely ridiculous when you know that exclusive all-male institutions still exist, like The Australian Club in Sydney, frequented by the likes of John Howard and George Pell. 

The Police Citizens Boys Club was founded by Police Commissioner William John MacKay in 1937 to keep boys from poor neighbourhoods off the streets and offer them a better chance in life. I found a newsreel from 1939 in the National Film and Sound Archive, praising the club as one of the greatest and most humane organisations in the world. They offered sports activities and a safe environment for socialising. Apparently also helped with finding jobs and enabling the boys when they were grown up to “move their families to a better residential area”. All this is delivered in the typical male newsreader voice of the 30s and 40s. Today the club includes females and has still a similar function. 

The alley behind Mary Street features back doors of food shops and restaurants, milk crates to sit on when you step out from work for a break, kitchen smells, music sounding faintly from somewhere inside, towels drying on a rack next to a shiny BMW. In one corner we are urged not to pee, an unofficial inscription in scrawly letters. 

The lockdown is over, but restrictions still remain. There are some places where you can sit inside with a limited number of people, some only offer takeaway and others haven’t survived.

Maria and Olympia

Maria Street, Petersham on Friday, 19 June 2020

This street is entirely residential, nice little houses with porches, each one has its own character. 

One house seems to be derelict. A huge poinsettia is growing over the broken entrance gate to the front garden. I dare to go in. Steps lead up to a grill door which allows a view into the room beyond. Suddenly I get a terrible feeling that it’s not deserted. Someone lives here in between the cardboard boxes, rags and old newspapers and I’m intruding.

It’s a bit like the old milk bar in Parramatta Road near Johnston Street. For years the door was open every time I drove past, but it looked dark and forbidding. Once I ventured inside. There was no merchandise or food, just empty chocolate cartons and posters from another time. While I was snooping around, a terrible voice suddenly yelled from the back. I didn’t wait for the owner of the voice to appear. I read later that the Olympia Milk Bar used to be an institution in that neighbourhood.

Today, at the house in Maria Street, there is no sound. Maybe it is deserted after all. 

Twice I meet a young woman with pink hair, each time going in the opposite direction. First, she is with a small boy, later she has two boys with her, one in a school uniform. She looks very young and I wonder if she is the mother or the nanny. If I was a little boy I would like to have a mother like that. 

Olympia Milk Bar in 2012

Another Margaret

Margaret Street, CBD on Wednesday, 17 June 2020

The day is windy and rainy. I am at Circular Quay to catch a ferry to meet a friend on Cockatoo Island which had just reopened the day before with the extension of the Sydney Biennale ‘Nirin’ after months of lockdown. But I get a phone call that she fell off her bike and had to go back home. So I use the opportunity to go to Margaret Street as I’m always putting off going to the CBD.

There is a lot of construction work happening. One huge building is totally covered with scaffolding and the protective coverings they now use. At the corner it reveals to be the old 1938 Elgin Building, at least judging from the enlarged photo with the art deco style clock tower and the writing on the panels covering the construction site. It’s strange how often you cannot remember a place, once it is gone or covered up. It’s also strange how often you don’t look up while walking in the streets, because when I do, the old clock tower is there, sticking out above the scaffolding. It’s 12 o’clock until further notice.

I read up about the Elgin building on the internet. It was once the Shell House. In April 2019 the Menzies Hotel next to it was demolished and revealed large painted ‘Shell’ signs on the side wall of the adjacent building. It says in this article that the signs would be covered again soon as the new 27-storey Wynyard Place Tower is going up there. And this is happening now. The article also says how significant the Shell company was for the growth of Australian business.

On the other side of the street is a diner with glass doors displaying so many warning signs that I wonder how anybody dared to make their way inside. But some did.

Next is the Scots Presbyterian Church Sydney. It’s a huge neo-gothic building and it is closed. Within its arches is a small coffee kiosk with the sign ‘Order Inside’. I find this unusual as recently we were always told to stay outside of cafés. The next window reveals that it is quite nice inside and you are allowed to sit down. One woman, however, is standing near the open window reading a newspaper, probably waiting for a takeaway. I glimpse the headline of an article on the open page: “What discounts to look for as isolation ends”.

At the corner of Kent Street, the pavement at the traffic lights is covered with mysterious multicoloured numbers and letters, lines and arrows. Some say ‘EMPTY’. Obviously, it must have to do with what is underneath. I’ve looked that up afterwards too and found that these signs indicate cables and pipes underneath, red for electric wiring, blue for water, yellow for gas, green for CCTV or cable networks, white has mixed meanings, for proposed excavation but also messages for workers.

Margaret Lane is just a gap between glass and concrete towers. It only has backside garage doors and service and fire exits, no front entrances. Someone is smoking in one of the doorways. I make up my own theory about the lane, inspired by the large photo at a corner on the way back to Circular Quay. The photo shows a lane that was there at this location in 1901 called Brown Bear Lane (Later Little Essex Street). It is a narrow alley with a dilapidated wall and workers’ housing. That’s what Margaret Lane could have looked like.

Yesterday's smoke

Margaret Street, Rozelle on Tuesday, 16 June 2020

The street is on the Balmain side of Victoria Road near Iron Cove Bridge. It goes down towards the waterfront ending with a curved wall. There are plaques with photos and text informing about the industrial history of this place. To the east of Margaret Street was the site of the Balmain Power Station, constructed in two phases between 1908 and 1956. Next to it was the Monsanto factory complex. The plaques show photos of these colossal industries with their smoking chimneys. It looked horrendous. Preceding this in the 19th century there were iron, steel and timber works and small cottages. Some of them are still here and so is the old administration building of the power station. The rest is all apartment blocks overlooking the water.

I notice that the curved wall already existed in earlier photos from the 1930s. The wall is high above the water. You have to go down many steep stairs to get to Bridgewater Park and the promenade. There is the old pump house, which has been preserved as a heritage piece. Formerly this was all industrial with coal conveyors, coal stores and turbine houses, probably inaccessible except for the workers. My research tells me that before the industrial period, there was a public ferry at the end of Margaret Street. The development of this area as residential started around 2000. There is a photo from 2002 which shows some new buildings, but the waterfront was still used as yards for new cars.

While strolling along and turning corners, I encounter slim, young women with prams, dressed in gym tights and jogging tops. They all look the same. From previous observations, I have come to the conclusion that there is a generic type of young, fit mothers in certain affluent neighbourhoods. But maybe it is really the same woman in this case.

Schoolchildren are on an excursion down at the waterfront. Janitors are rolling the rubbish bins back to their designated areas. In one downstairs window, I see a cardboard sign “Black Lives Matter”. Right opposite is a small park with the Australian Flag in the middle. I notice that two of the streets in the new apartment complex have Aboriginal names, Waragal and Wulumay. I learn from the internet that they mean mackerel and snapper. These translations are from the book “The Sydney Language” which the Aboriginal linguist Jakelin Troy compiled with words used across the many language groups in the Sydney area and with approximate spelling. This area is the land of the Wangal people of the Dharug (Eora) language group.

Today I am testing the arbitrary left/right/right repeat method used by some other street explorers. I turn left into Terry Street. Lots of schoolchildren here, a sight which is still somehow unusual. There is a linden-green door in the corner building to Wellington Street. It has a sign which promises ‘Treat Dreams’. At first, I thought it was a brothel. When looking closer I notice the drawing of a cake on that sign.

I pass a primary school with children playing in the yard. Then a run-down Victorian house which nevertheless has new plants in the front garden, the nursery labels are still attached. After that an upholstery business. An old Mercedes Cabriolet, exhaling toxic fumes, is just exiting out from there. The equally vintage driver is having a chat with the business owner, both ignoring the clouds of smoke.

At the end is busy Victoria Road. There are major road works going on, either for WestConnex or for the Metro. I wonder what has been pulled down for that. The derelict former Tigers’ Football club building is still there. Even when in use it has looked like a social realist’s architectural nightmare. 

Blue Hour

Matilda and Cecily Street, Rozelle on Wednesday, 3 June 2020

It is almost 5 pm when I start my walk and the light is already fading on this winter day. Matilda is a very small street off Balmain Road. On one side is a factory building with big windows, painted white, now housing a physio practice. On the other side is the Gary Owen Hotel from 1920. It’s open again.

I walk along Balmain Road a bit and come to Cecily Street. It’s the one opposite the main gate of Callan Park where I had stopped at the light so often, coming from Sydney College of the Arts. They have moved out now, the old Kirkbride building empty, at least for now. There is a COVID-19 safety message at the gate. People are leaving the darkening park after walking their dogs.

At the corner is an old factory with artists’ studios. At least they were there once. It looks shut now. It could be because of the virus or it could be permanent. There is graffiti saying “Leave It”. All along the bottom of the wall is a mural painting on which horses with aprons and baker’s hats are baking bread and muffins. Above are large, awkwardly painted letters in white. I can read RUIN, the next word is not clear. But if it is supposed to be PARTY, they forgot the T in their haste.

Cecily Street is quite long. It goes downhill towards the City West Link, but on google maps it says Rozelle Interchange. That’s part of the Westconnex project. At the end of the street is a tall crane visible at the horizon.

When I come back up the street in the dark, the white letters on the wall look iridescent, lit by the street lamps and cars. I notice another signage underneath. It says something starting with P and then ‘Baking Company’. Only later at home on the computer can I decipher the name: Pilcher. I find an entry online about the F. Pilcher Baking Company opening a new bakery in 1913. The family had a commemoration event with the History Division of the Balmain Association in 1989.

I haven’t done any street walks for this project in the evenings yet and it reminds me of the days when I did the ‘Windows at Night’ series in 2001. Today was bright and sunny. Now the light at the horizon is fading to a pink-purple. And the sky is changing to a darker shade of blue. ‘Indigo Sky’ comes to mind: ‘Under the indigo sky we lay down and we died.’

Isabella among the smells of industry

Isabellla Street, Camperdown on Thursday, 28 May 2020

Isabella is a very short street which I first couldn’t find. When I finally drive into this narrow one-way lane, there is a big SUV in front of a new apartment building, blocking the way. A man with a big, black beard is talking to the driver. I immediately think that the car is collecting a COVID-19 test sample. At other times I would have thought they are just having a chat. The bearded man opens the garage door, but the car drives off. There is something strange about that car since I see it again a bit later, parking around the corner, then driving away, apparently having gone around the block as it comes back and enters Isabella Street from the wrong side.

This part of Camperdown has an industrial feel. Even though most of the old warehouses are now residential dwellings and the former factories are gone. At the Layton Street exit is a heavily fenced and barb-wired property that warns of high voltage. It has a rusty, crane-like contraption with a hook in the shape of an anchor. In Isabella Street are three small one-level terraces wedged between two dark brick warehouses.

I imagine the whole street would have been lined with terraces, like in working-class areas in England. These three are the leftovers. Maybe the warehouses came later. It’s dark in the street and the houses look utterly depressing. They were probably built to house the people working in the surrounding factories, as there was a foundry, a tannery, a coach works, biscuit factories, soap manufacturers, Fowler’s pottery and more.

For Eliza

Eliza Street, Newtown on Wednesday, 27 May 2020

When I researched Georgina Street I came across Eliza Donnithorne who lived nearby on King Street in the mid-1800s. The legend goes that on her wedding day, she and the assembled guest waited in vain for the groom to arrive at her home for the wedding breakfast. When the guest had gone, she locked the house and never went out or let anyone come in. When she died 30 years later, they found her in her wedding dress. The food on the dining table had mouldered into dust. She is buried with her father in the Camperdown Cemetery. The headstone is still there.

I thought it was very romantic to have named a street after her, but this doesn't seem to be the case. According to one source, the name was derived from the daughter of Thomas Rowley. The only information I could find about him is that he was born in the Colony, classified as Australian Royalty and had a daughter named Eliza, among other children. 

At the corner of Eliza and Lennox Street is the backside of the Court House Hotel, closed for now. A bit further is a pile of rubbish dumped near a graffitied wall. A thin older man, doubled over from the waist, is trying to reassemble a rollator.

Next is the back side of the Newtown Fire Station. At 5 Eliza Street is the Newtown School of Art, founded in 1916. It existed beforehand in another building, established in 1899 as the Newtown Workman’s Institute. It was rather a recreational institution than an art school. “It featured a library, lecture hall, billiards hall, and small rooms for reading, retiring, smoking, games, meeting and classrooms.” (cited from the Gritty Newtown Historical Walking Tour site). The library sign is still there, maybe even the library, but everything is closed because of the Coronavirus lockdown, so I can’t check it out. Part of the building is now the home of the theatre Old 505 in memory of its former address at 505 Elizabeth Street in Surry Hills.

Near the library entrance, is a mural in memory of a missing person, a young man from Maroubra.

From here on, the street is paved with red bricks laid out in a herringbone pattern. It looks like a pedestrian zone, but cars are permitted to drive through from the King Street end. It's a bit confusing for pedestrians. There is also the backside of the Newtown police station, a rather grand building from 1885.

A pub at the corner is called Websters. I read that the ex-convict John Webster opened a shop at this spot named New Town Stores which allegedly gave the suburb its name. 

Georgina and her neighbours

Georgina Street and Lane on Tuesday, 26 May 2020

It’s the first day with a promise of sunshine after a week of rain and cold. But when I arrive at my destination, the sky turned dark again. It's starting to drizzle. Despite the weather, a toddler is running around in the playground. An unusual sight, first almost like a shock: “Is that safe?” Playgrounds have just opened to the public on the weekend. 

When researching the local history, I read that Georgina Street was the most prestigious address in Newtown. Indeed there is a row of terrace houses, unlike any others I have seen elsewhere. They have another storey, rising above the filigree balconies or winter garden encasements. Each building has its individual ornaments and decorations. Some are run down, with peeling paint and crumbling tiles in the front yard. A couple of them are derelict and deserted. Others are renovated and freshly painted.

The houses adjacent to Warren Ball Avenue, facing Hollis Park, are particularly well-kept and elegant. There are two old stone pillars guarding the end of the street. On one of them, it says L’Avenue in chiselled letters. Beyond is Fitzroy Street. It looks like the poor cousin of Georgina, lined with low, dark terraces. Paradise ends here.

The grand houses were built by Magistrate John Kettle around 1880 when he had purchased that piece of land. Georgina Street is named after his daughter, so it says in the Newtown History Project pages. It also says it was a planned development unusual for Sydney and inspired by the planned squares in London and Brighton.

I try to peer through a downstairs window framed by dark green curtains. The room is quite large. Then I notice two dogs, only their heads visible above the window sill. They are hard to recognise through the reflection of trees and the sky. When I look at the photo later, taken with a flashlight, there are only two pairs of green glowing eyes. 

I am particularly attracted to this house. It has a mix of neglect and care.

A bit further down is a funny repetition of a dog in a window. This one is a deserted house. The dog is a picture on a poster. 

The area was and is home to a substantial Jewish community. I don’t know exactly when this began. At least since around 1918 when the Synagogue was built.

Warren Ball Avenue, once simply L’Avenue

Fitzroy Street

Georgina Lane shows the backside of places, as lanes often do, and speaks of a simpler life.

The World is Yours

Elizabeth Street, Newtown on Sunday 17 May 2020

I have never been in that street before. It’s where City Road becomes King Street, just before Missenden Road. It’s only a short lane and leads to the backside of the King Street shops and restaurants. I find it fascinating to see the unpolished side of all these places, where the empty food boxes and milk crates are stored, a drum with cooking oil, a baby chair, and a makeshift shed. Some material hangs on a back gate to a yard that looks like a raincoat for a dead animal.

On the other side are the backyards of a row of terrace houses of yet another lane. At the end is a fenced-in part of Sydney University with student accommodation.

It is Sunday late afternoon. The sun just came out from the clouds to say good night, highlighting the graffiti message ‘The World Is Yours’. At a corner a car lurks like a living being, ready to pounce.

Restaurants are allowed to have guests, ten at a time, for the first time since the lockdown. When I walk past the windows in King Street I see some people sitting at tables which has become an unusual sight. Not all tables are used. That would be too crowded. Staff is wiping down the surfaces more carefully than ever, it seems.