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.

Marcia

Marcia Street and Lane, Hurlstone Park on Saturday, 18 July 2020

I think I have never been to Hurlstone Park. To the south, it is bounded by the Cooks River. Wikipedia says: “Some of the suburb is an oasis of heritage, with a village atmosphere valued by the residents. It is potentially threatened by changes to zoning and increased high-rise development.” Marcia Street looks like such an oasis. It has mostly Federation family homes, tall trees and a park at the end. Not everything looks entirely idyllic. I am warned that a guard dog is on duty and a fading Australian flag is draped over the dusty, cluttered windows of a brick bungalow.

Marcia Lane makes me happy. It’s that type of lane I love to discover. First, turning right from Marcia Street, there is a row of closed-down grocery shops in Duntroon Street, one has a ‘For Lease’ sign. From another, I hear the voices of adults, children and television. People live here. 

Around the corner, there is a low brick house that has a white wooden cross near the entrance door. Chinese music, interrupted by drilling and hammering noises, comes from a place opposite. The lane slopes downhill and curves to the right. 

In the corner I find a cat sitting next to stacked chairs. On the other side is a family home with barren grapevine branches covering the roof of a terrace in the backyard. Next door an orange tree, bearing fruit, has extended its branches around a palm tree. The lane ends at the park and the backside of the small block of flats from where I started. It has a unit for lease. I could consider it. The light is beautiful, breaking strongly through dark clouds. 

Offerings to Mona

Mona Road and Lane, Darling Point on Monday, 13 July 2020

Mona Road merges with Darling Point Road and at the very end is the beautiful McKell Park. It’s like entering paradise. On this sparkling day, people sit on benches facing the water. A young couple is having a picnic on the grass. A ferry just arrives at the Darling Point wharf.

On an ornamented stone bench, which could be a leftover of the former neo-gothic mansion Canonbury, are small objects like offerings: three green fruits, two snail shells, a golden star and pink coloured discs from a wind charm. Canonbury was built at this location in 1904 and became a naval hospital during WWII. Before there were two other residences, a cottage in 1841 and the Landsdowne mansion in 1879. And before that, the area was called Yarranabbee by the traditional owners of the Gadigal land.

The two people, who sat on the bench when the ferry came in, are leaving. An elegant, old lady with the white stick for the vision impaired and a younger man guiding her, possibly her son. I hear her saying, “Silly Scott…” and think immediately that she is talking about Scott Morrison. I have learned a while ago that the upper middle classes, especially of her generation, use the word ‘silly’ instead of ‘stupid’. Using his first name indicates that she sees him as being on her side of the fence, but she reserves the right to have a critical attitude. This is my interpretation. 

Now in September 2021, after more than a year of pandemic, it seems that we are all on first-name terms with our politicians, at least in our minds. Gladys, Dan and Scott, we see them every day at press conferences on TV. They have become so familiar.

Next to the park is the Gothic Revival residence Lindesay, completed in 1836 for the colony’s treasurer Mr Campbell Drummond Riddell, and had many subsequent owners including Charles Nicholson, a collector of rare books and antiquities and chancellor of the University of Sydney. His collection used to be in the Nicholson Museum on the university’s main campus. The Lindesay is now also a museum and is temporarily closed because of COVID-19. 

Mona Road has some grand houses, but the part near New South Head Road also has quite modest brick residences and flats and a small row of dark-looking Victorian terraces which must have a fantastic view over Rushcutters Bay. 

I once lived in Mona Lane in ‘The Georgeson’ at the time of the Sydney Olympics. My flat was on the upper floor and had an unrestricted view over the bay to the city. I would come home from my job at ‘Opal Fields’ in Darling Harbour and sit at night in the lounge room to watch the laser show. It was also the final year of my Master's Degree at SCA and the self-portraits I took with an old Rolleicord and a long shutter release cable for my project were taken in that flat. It was big and I had it all to myself. 

Next door is a sombre 1930’s brick block of flats that got fitted with new roof tiles in 2000, but now looks deserted. Mona Lane ends with a footpath down to Rushcutters Bay. In those days you could still go to the park on New Year’s Eve with your friends and bring alcohol without having to pay or pass barricades. 

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.

Harbour Glimpses

Mary Street, Glebe on Saturday 27 June 2020

This small street comes off Glebe Point Road. One side overlooks Sydney harbour with a stunning view of the old Glebe Bridge and Anzac Bridge. But I can only catch glimpses through the gaps between buildings. Enjoying the view are the people who live in two mansion-style houses. Judging from the many letterboxes they are subdivided into flats. The next place with a view is a yellow brick block of flats with a driveway leading to a park at the back. “Residents Only - Trespassers Prosecuted” stops my temptation to enter it.

Outside in the street is a big barbecue with an orange sticker, saying “Illegally dumped material under investigation.” The next street goes steeply down towards the bay. From around the street corner and through the shrubs I see an older couple emerging from the yellow brick flats. They are slow, taking their time, but their little dog is impatient and has already rounded the corner, stretching his long elastic leash to the max. It looks funny as if he is held on a string by some invisible forces, stopped in motion, scratching the air with his front paws. When I go back there are picture books and wooden toys on the low wall.

The gutter here has been made from sandstone in earlier days, old and worn. It whispers about generations of feet wearing it down.

Charlotte's Way

Charlotte Street, Ashfield on Sunday 21 June 2020

Charlotte was my mother’s name. The street is guarded by a church at the Alt Street end. It’s now a Yoga and Meditation Centre. I can’t find out what religion it housed before. At the corner is a small convenience store, named Mona Supermarket or otherwise Janati Food Store. The two signs live peacefully together. Next door is a 60’s block of flats. Several young men are moving a fridge from a truck into the building, shouting instructions to each other in Arabic. Cupboards and boxes are already in the forecourt. Next door a woman sits on a low wall crouched over her phone. Opposite are art deco apartments named ‘Charlotte’s Way’. The occupants of a downstairs flat have gone on a bear hunt, so it says in childish writing in the window next to a teddy bear.

There are different types of trees in the street, bottle brush, palm trees and gum trees among them. The street curves to the right and there is the Rochester Private Hotel in an old mansion-style house with some bland bungalows added to the property. It offers single and twin shared serviced rooms. That type of hotel is usually for single people, mostly men. There are a few grander-looking houses in this area in Ashfield. Another one is the Pitt Wood Mansion further along. A new, stylish apartment building is next to it, named Pitt Wood Village in gold letters. On the other side is the Presbyterian Homes for Aged Persons in a grey concrete block, next to the St Vincent Primary School. It turns out that Pitt Wood is a retirement complex, also belonging to the Presbyterian Age Care. Gold or grey, two classes of retirement options. 

Charlotte Street ends at the Ashfield train station with shops and cafés in old buildings. On the facades, you can read their many incarnations over time. One was ‘The Island Supermarket’, the words painted underneath the ornamented rooftop with a sense of permanence. Another sign on the awning lower down identifies the same shop being something ‘Polski’. Judging from the window posters, it now seems to be a mobile phone shop. A hairdresser and a jewellery shop are open, visit by appointment only. Both have quite a few customers. Coffee shops are all closed. It’s a cosy little area, looking inviting in the sunshine, but not many people around. 

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. 

Dream Catcher

Catherine, Elizabeth, Ellen, Charlotte, Emily, Alice and Mary Street, Rozelle on Sunday 14 June 2020

Rozelle is on a peninsular in Sydney Harbour. The area where I am today is on the ridge sloping to Rozelle Bay.  Alfred Hancock, an Englishman, who later served as an alderman of Balmain purchased and sold land parcels to working people with the slogan “Homes for the People” (1867 to 1907). Like everywhere in this colony, the land was considered to be free for the taking by the British Crown. Then private business people bought it from the Governors. The indigenous population of this land had been decimated by smallpox. Hancock offered small deposits and supplied timber at low prices, so owning a home became affordable for the working class. That must be the reason why many of the houses here have such individual characters and are mostly freestanding and made from timber. Unlike the brick terraces in other suburbs of Sydney, which were built to house working families as tenants, not as owners. There are a few terraces here and there. And some old sandstone houses which are characteristic of the harbourside suburbs of Balmain and Rozelle.

At the end of Elizabeth Street is a small park and playground and a path slopes down to another street below. There is a view over the bay towards Anzac Bridge and the city as is the case with many of these streets in the area. Catherine Street ends with narrow steep stairs down to another level and Emily Street has stairs going up. Like the neighbouring Lilyfield, the area looks friendly with pretty houses and front yards, flowers, and trees. Everything looks loved and cared for. I hardly see any derelict or neglected places.

In the past, this suburb must have had a totally different look. There was not only the bigger industry near the waterfront, chemicals, soap, foundries, sawmills, abattoirs and later the coal-fired powerhouses, but also small industry, producing millet brooms and brushes in corrugated iron sheds scattered across the streets and laneways.  All this made the area very polluted.

On this sunny, warm winter Sunday I pass two girls in summer dresses, about twelve years old, eating fresh ice cream from cones. One asks the other: “Do you know what bail is?” No, she doesn’t. Then the first one tells a story that I can’t hear anymore. The pub ‘Three Weeds’ in Evans Street is still closed. 

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.

You are not alone

Mary Street, Lilyfield on Saturday, 6 June 2020

Part of the street runs next to the Leichhardt Oval leading to the swimming pool. The large car park area is almost empty. Two skateboarders are having a good time. The swimming pool is open, but no walk-ins. You have to make a booking. The Mary Street playground is empty, even though it’s available for use again.

The rest of the street is residential. Building and home improvement work is going on in several already existing homes. Somebody is playing the song ‘Everybody hurts’ by R.E.M. “Well, everybody hurts sometimes, everybody cries,…. So hold on, everybody hurts, you are not alone”.

A bit further down the street, two workers argue in a mix of Arabic and English. Later I see the younger of them walking away down the street, upset and talking on his phone.

While I am admiring a white gardenia bush, an instrumental jazzy music piece starts from inside a house. It’s beautiful. On my way back the music changed to a Van Morrison song: “Just like way back in the days of old…” Also beautiful. It seems, it’s music day today and every line of these old songs has taken on a new meaning.

The last house where Mary Street merges into the Leichhardt Oval section looks like the gatehouse of some old passageway where people had to pay the toll and could water their horses.

The last house where Mary Street merges into the Leichhardt Oval part looks to me like the gatehouse of some old passageway where people had to pay the toll and could water their horses.

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.’

Cats and Dogs

Myra Road and Margaret Street, Dulwich Hill on Saturday, 30 May 2020

Myra runs off Canterbury Road, descending to the train tracks below. Water is running down in the deep gutter like in a creek. The street consists mainly of small blocks of flats from the 1950s or 60s and some single houses in between. On the porch of one of these houses, an effigy is sitting in an armchair: runners, pants, a jumper, a black scarf, face mask. It looks eerie and strangely realistic. While taking a photo, I am a bit scared that it either might suddenly move and yell at me or that it is indeed a dead person.

I pass a woman with her children in front of one of the blocks of flats. She tells the smallest: “Call Daddy", who sits on a balcony and smokes. Daddy says: “The water pressure is low.” That seems to be the reason for the road works at the top of the street. An older man, his clothes matching the traffic cones, is watching the progress of the work.

Myra Lane

Margaret Street is residential with tall trees. Quiet. The only sounds come from invisible birds. It has dark brick family homes, two of them are empty, and the others are very well cared for. There are also a couple of small 50s blocks. An old woman with a shopping bag on wheels is doing something near one of them. When I come closer she is crossing the street very slowly and busies herself with the rubbish bins. I realise that she is collecting bottles. In another part of the street, I notice a discarded black backpack on the green strip. An old man carrying shopping bags comes slowly towards me. “Is that a dog?” He asks. I tell him that it is a bag. “Oh, I thought it was a dog.” That’s how my first English language lesson book at school started: “Is it a dog? No, it is not a dog, it is a fox”. We both smile and he walks on.  

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.

Two old friends

Alma Avenue, Enmore on Tuesday, 19 May 2020

The entry from Stanmore Road is almost invisible, hidden behind trees until you are just before it. On one side and a whole block down is the Cyprus Club member’s car park. It’s huge. A property developer would say, "what a waste of real estate". At least I knew one who did say that about large open-air car parks. I wonder if they used to have so many guests at their events to need that much space. One part seems to be leased by the Allied Express delivery company. There are many vans with that logo and drivers organising their pick-ups and deliveries. A little later, one after the other, the Allied vans are coming down this narrow, one-way lane. It seems I have picked a bad time, but in a moment they are all gone.

This street has some houses facing it and some turning their backs. It feels cozy. There are two chairs of a different kind next to each other like old friends. When I return, I notice a stall with a tent roof and two women sitting under it on the other side of the car park. At first, I don't understand what they are doing there, but then I see the sign: COVID-19 Specimen Collection Centre.