Future Ruins

Charlotte Ave, Marrickville on Friday, 4 December 2020

This street forms a corner with Myrtle Street where I went many months ago. The picture-perfect house which I found so hyperreal seems to be empty. It sits here glowing yellow in the sunshine with shuttered windows as it looked before. In Charlotte Avenue is a second similar building belonging to the same property, its driveway guarded by cypress trees.

Across the street is an abandoned construction project for a new residential home. The hessian cloth on the tumbled fence is torn and sagging. Tagging covers the unfinished brick walls. At the top, it says: ‘It’s going to be okay’. The building or our lives, I wonder? At this end, you look towards a railway track, half hidden behind bushes. A freight train passes and continues over the bridge crossing Victoria Street. At the other end the street curves at an old sandstone wall. Steps go up to where the suburb continues on a higher level.

Caroline

Caroline Lane, St Peters on Friday, 4 December 2020

Caroline runs parallel to May Street and has a lot of graffiti. It’s a backside alley lined with fences and factories. There is a gym and a poster printer. A broken model of an 18th-century ship is dumped outside one of the garage doors. Maybe it’s meant to be the HMS Endeavour?

A sketchy, black-and-white Spiderman rises above a geometrical graffiti. A paper sign says “Do not paint here”. At the corner of May Lane is a mural by Reubszz. When I look around towards St Peters station I see a construction site, a high building, almost finished. Just there I took a photo of a grey old house many years ago.

It’s hot today. What am I doing here?

"Built for Cruisin"

Catherine Street, Lilyfield on Saturday 21 November 2020

Catherine is a long street. I know it from the days when I lived in the area. One part belongs to Leichhardt, at the other to Lilyfield.

That’s where I am today. It’s a sunny Saturday. Clothes and things are displayed on the footpath in front of houses for sale. Further down in the shopping strip are some tables with bric-à-brac in front of two old buildings with closed stores. One has a beautiful door and large windows. The door is unevenly painted white and yellow. A poster tells me that it was an old post office. I also learn that the many street stalls are due to a garage sale trail happening in the area. I imagine how the post office would have looked in Colonial times. Situated on a dusty road, a horse tied up at the front, a general store nearby. I can’t find anything about it on the internet.

Across the street is the ‘Friendly Grocer’. I thought it was a local feature, but find out later that it's the name of a chain. On the street corner is a café. It's closed. I peek through the window. It has a coffee roasting machine, and milk crates hang from the ceiling serving as lampshades. On the outside are green tiles with an art deco poppy design from a former incarnation of the shop.

I go back to one of the spots I have passed before. They have already packed up most of it, carrying it into a ramshackle house. Outside is a Bluebird old-timer camper van. ‘Built for Cruisin’, it says on the windshield. The small group of people lingering and chatting on the footpath are of a generation who would have gone cruising in camper vans like that in the 70s. People I would have met. Except for one younger woman with a little boy. He struggles away from the old guy who took him in his arms. “He still doesn’t like me”, the man says.

Next is a park. Groups of people have parties. Further along, used to be the Council garbage dump, and maybe still is. There is a view of the CBD high rises from there. Close by is an empty lot with a red car, dumped. The weed has grown already up to the windows. On the fence nearby it says ‘No Parking’.

You see nothing

Linden Lane and Clare Street, Surry Hills on Sunday, 15 November 2020

Linden Lane goes from Bourke to Flinders Street and features some newish apartment buildings. A demolition site further down is obscured by a high wooden fence. A spray-painted inscription tells me ‘You see nothing’. And that is true. But the view back to Bourke Street is quite nice in the late afternoon light.

Clare Street is more like a back alley than a street. One side is new the other old. In the corner, several windows display large fashion photos. On the other side are an orange door and a dumped bicycle which matches the colour. The old side is dominated by the back of a very dark and sombre-looking brick building from the 20s or 30s. The windows are rather whimsically placed. There is graffiti a bit further along which matches the blue rubbish bins and higher up is a painting of a man with blue eyes in a white face looking maliciously sideways onto whoever passes this lane. At the very end is the side wall of the Flinders Hotel. It looks as if it’s closed for good, but a yellowish light is shining in a small window.

A lane with a name

Marys Place, Surry Hills on Sunday, 15 November 2020

Marys Place has been renamed from Floods Lane to commemorate the woman who was raped and beaten here in 1996. There is a memorial inscription on the wall to raise awareness against homophobic violence.

At one end of Marys Place a church steeple is visible through Jacaranda trees. People have gathered on the grounds of the church, standing around in groups and holding wine glasses.

On this side of the fence, somebody has made a Christmas decoration with a tinsel wound around the remains of a vacuum cleaner next to a sign saying ‘Dumping of Litter, Penalty $200’.

Whispers

Charlotte Lane, Darlinghurst on Saturday, 14 November

Some streets or lanes give me a special tingle. The walls whisper. It’s not just because they have features of the past. In this case, a row of brick and sandstone houses are from an earlier time than the usual Victorian terrace. What I see in my mind’s eye are not the old Colonial times but the early 20th Century. Crammed life in narrow streets, small corner shops, men with hats, ragged-looking children, no trees, no flower pots.

Darlinghurst was the domain of gangster boss Tilly Devine. I look up the history and specifically search for Charlotte Lane. In this lane, the founder of the first Razor Gang, Norman Bruhn, was shot dead outside Mac’s sly-grog and cocaine den in 1927. Bruhn had come from Melbourne and thought that it was ridiculous that Sydney’s crime world was run by two women, the other being Kate Leigh. Serves him right. It is said that this killing was executed by one of Tilly’s gang, Frankie Green. But there are other possibilities, one being the owner of the den, Joe McNamara, who had been robbed by Bruhn and his mates sometime earlier.

This end of Darlinghurst struggles against the bullies from the city. The high buildings of College Street tower over old Charlotte Lane.

Ivy

Ivy Street and Lane, Darlington on Sunday, 8 November 2020

First I walk along Ivy Street which has mainly Victorian terraces and big, old eucalyptus trees.

This suburb still seems to have the Council waste collection day for household items which the neighbouring Redfern has not to my great regret. I am tempted to take a discarded little footstool with me. I am also tempted to bring some of my own unwanted household goods here. But I resist both temptations.

Across Abercrombie Street, Ivy Street is dominated by the large warehouse which used to have offices and now flats. I had an encounter with this part of Ivy Street, when I did my ‘Night Cruise’ project, photographing the building through raindrops on the windshield of my car.

Ivy Lane is divided by Lawson and Abercrombie Street, merging here with the Glengarry Castle Hotel at the corner. People walk slowly, getting coffee from the shops, stopping for a chat. The area feels like a secluded neighbourhood this Sunday afternoon. Not like the busy thoroughfare it is during the week between Redfern Station and the nearby university.

Ghost Signs

Rose Lane, Darlington on Sunday, 8 November 2020

I had forgotten to look for Rose Lane after I found out a few months ago that Rose Street doesn’t exist anymore in Darlington.

I came past it recently by coincidence. It is a very small lane with an old brick factory building on one side. Through the wire mesh windows, I can see a courtyard with trees and plants. Some parts of the windows still have dusty, old pieces of frosted glass. Through one of them, I suddenly recognise the head of a female mannequin. It looks eerie, a bit like a person trapped in a cage.

People live in this building. Around the corner are two doors in bright colours. There still is the name of the factory in faded letters. Only a few of them are recognisable. A young woman with two little children has just arrived at one of the doors and is ringing the bell. It’s an old-fashioned one where you turn a metal knob, like winding up a clock.

On the other side of the lane is the Darlington Activity Club, a low brick building with tin rubbish bins in the courtyard. Looking across from here is another lane with yet another former factory at the corner. Here I can read quite clearly that it was called Blue Diamond and has a pale blue triangle painted on the brickwork.

Neighbourhood Watch

Flora Street, Mascot on Friday, 6 November 2020

There is nothing remarkable in this street. At the end of its cul-de-sac, a woman is unloading shopping bags from her SUV, taking them inside a house. An elderly couple is watching. Then she gets into her car to leave, greeting me in a friendly fashion as I walk by.

Something looks interesting about that tucked-away property. When I think she is already far away, I return. But no, she comes driving back and asks me why I am taking photos. I have to think fast. “Art project” doesn’t sound right this time. I say that I research architecture and record the different styles of houses - nothing about the people. She thought I was here on behalf of a neighbour’s grievance. In other words, they must have done something to cause a grievance to a neighbour. People who are suspicious of photographers always seem to have some agenda. 

Daphne, Rose, Ivy Street, Botany

In Daphne Street, they are building a row of new townhouses. One has a white Madonna and Child near the front steps. I walk past a few remnants of industry. A rustic-looking house contains Redelman Fabrics. In a front yard sits a container labelled ‘Hapag-Lloyd’, the North German shipping company I worked for in Hamburg many decades ago.

A huge empty lot alongside Rose Street is being prepared for the construction of yet another apartment block. I like how it looks at the moment. Hard to explain why. Maybe because of the white soil, or because it shows a side of places that were hidden for a long time. 

In Ivy Street are a preschool and a sewage pumping station. Builders are making a lot of noise in a house next door. Children are coming home from school.

Ethel

Ethel Street and Lane, Eastwood on Thursday, 5 November 2020

Ethel Street features mainly uniform-looking apartment blocks made of dark red brick. There used to be brickworks in Eastwood which explains the prevalence of this building material.

It’s raining heavily today and it’s cold. I had my doubts about even coming here but I was in the neighbourhood after having stayed with a friend in Dundas Valley. 

At the end of the street towards the railway tracks are a few shops, and a Korean grocery store at the corner. Fruit and vegetables are on display outside in boxes with handwritten labels above them. One says “Please DO NOT eat fruits on display”. This seems funny to me as it is above a box with pineapples. 

On the other side is a long, pale yellow building with a pub and a few shops, some empty. “First Fortune”, whatever it once promised, is no more. I venture out into the rain and into Ethel Lane, which looks sinister with its dark brick walls under the heavy clouds. A psychiatrist and a psychologist share premises. You enter through a narrow door under a tattered and faded canopy - rather what I’d imagine being the entrance of a cheap brothel.

It's really great to see you again

Frances Street, Randwick on Friday, 30 October 2020

Frances is one of the more majestic streets in Randwick. At the corner to Avoca Street is the old building of the Town Hall and on the other side the St Jude Anglican Church with its historic cemetery. I like that they let the grass and wildflowers grow high between the graves. The cemetery closes at 4 p.m., in 5 minutes, so I am a bit nervous about venturing too far in. For that reason, I didn’t inspect the newer-looking statue of three girls, which I saw from the street through the fence.

A bit further down is a park with a trampled lawn where people sit with their children after picking them up from school. There are a few mansions in this street. One is now a convention centre. Jacaranda trees are in blossom. The sky doesn’t know whether to be dark or friendly. Bus stops now display encouraging slogans: “Hello. It’s really great to see you again.” During lockdown other signs read: “Ask, are you ok?”

Several generations

Elizabeth Street and Lane, Lee Street, Ivy Street and Lane, Randwick on Thursday, 29 October 2020

Elizabeth Street has a music school. The sign reads “Music Is What Feelings Sound Like”. Two young women are loading lots of bottles of alcohol into a car parked out front.

Several generations of architecture come together in this street. Art Deco, 50’s style, Victorian, 21st century. A former garage has become a second-hand clothes shop.

Elizabeth Lane offers views of backyards, and a bit of urban grunge. 

Lee Street is on a hill with a view of the city. The area looks a bit like a country town with its unpaved lanes and grassy footpaths. There is a wooden gangway to one of the houses, like a bridge over a creek. Another house is bordered by a low, ancient-looking stone wall.

Sunlight shimmers through the leaves of Acacia trees.

Ivy Street

Ivy Lane

Rosemary's Windows

Crystal Street and Crystal Lane West, Petersham on Wednesday, 21 October 2020

Crystal Lane West has an old factory building which is now something fancy. A luxury car is just driving into the garage. It also has a 30s-style block of flats with a paved small courtyard, outdoor laundry, and washing lines. Some elaborate graffiti marks this lane, one with a huge mosquito. When I try to find out later if the mosquito is a logo for a particular graffiti artist, I come across this history: “Mosquito” was the name of an RAF combat aircraft also used by the Australian Air Force. On 2nd May 1945, one of these fighter planes disintegrated above Petersham. The pilots couldn’t save themselves as they were not high enough for their parachutes to open. One of the pilots landed tragically in the playground of the Petersham Public School. I wonder if the graffiti of the mosquito recalls this local event or if it’s an amazing coincidence.

I pass a car repair shop at the corner of Crystal Street. The wall bordering the yard shows a Bushell “ghost sign”, a remnant of a past commercial era. This section of the street has some empty shops. Among them, a harpsichord shop with a rusty banner alongside the awning, and a store that once sold Jackson cigarettes and Toblerone chocolate as the blue panels below the barred windows tell me. On the wall, a newer poster demands ‘Immediately Housing for the Homeless’. Mmh, good cause, but bad grammar. A bit further along is a Metropolitan Community Church with the LGBTQIA+ flag flying on its roof. On the other side is John While & Sons, “spring manufacturers established 1885”, now an apartment block. There are more small shops on that side; one identifies as an op shop by its display of secondhand clothes and knick-knacks visible behind the dark windows. This shop and all the others nearby are closed until further notice. 

Crystal Street, Petersham on Thursday, 7 January 2021

Today I start at the part of Crystal Street, where I once worked for the photo media artist Rosemary Laing in 2006/07. She had her live-in studio in an old, unconverted warehouse. It was very cold in winter there, in spite of portable heaters, hot cups of tea and ginger biscuits. The main entrance was in the courtyard. She eventually moved away, but the building remains the same, maybe still empty, the window frames unpainted. At the back of the yard is a workshop of some kind; a bathtub with plants outside the low building. The UGG sheepskin shop flanks the other side of the yard. At the street level are two empty shops. One still features faded posters and notes in the window: Sydney Folk Festival, Gulgong Folk Festival, ‘Rorts and Greed: Killing our Rivers’.

Back when I worked at Rosemary’s, the Hell’s Angels had leased or bought one of these shops for their clubhouse. They painted it red and fortified it with iron bars and security cameras. But this couldn’t stop a bomb from going off one night in June 2007, damaging the door and wall tiles. They moved out soon after that. 

On the other side of the road the dog-grooming shop ‘Wagging Tail’, which I could see from the room I worked in, now seems to have closed down. Crystal Street has a sign saying “Welcome to Cadigal-Wangal Country”. I don’t know if it was there before, or if I’m more aware of Aboriginal Country now.

A bit further along is the op shop which was closed when I passed by in October 2020. Now, three months later, dummies in colourful clothes are on display in the street outside. Further down is the Art Deco-style Petersham Town Hall. I learn from the internet that it has been a popular film location for movies and TV series such as ‘Strictly Ballroom’ and ‘A Place to Call Home’. 

Towards Stanmore Road opposite the Oxford Tavern is a Federation-style residential building with decorative green and cream timber features, and tiling on the entry paths. One section of it looks neglected. That part seems to be used as a boarding house. Another looks freshly renovated with shiny new street numbers.

Chelsea and Zamia

Chelsea and Zamia Street, Redfern on Monday, 19 October 2020

On the corner of Chelsea Street are the ‘Little Evie’ café and deli. This street has some very pretty houses, some of them timber cottages. One building is grey and quite neglected. It must have been a warehouse recognisable from the loading beam. The window underneath is bricked up. There is another neglected warehouse and a Victorian terrace, apparently also empty, with trees and vines taking over. Chelsea Lodge is a 60s yellow brick block and advertises a flat for lease. As I walk along on one side of the street, I pass a school girl, about 10 years old who is wearing magenta-coloured leg warmers. When I go back on the other side, she comes towards me again. 

I have taken photos in Zamia Street before around 2005. I can’t find the spot where I photographed the public housing buildings through bougainvillea blossoms. But the blocks are still there, looming against dark clouds. These are the ones belonging to the complex built in the 1970s with a utopian vision and now threatened to be demolished. The development plans were already made public a few years ago. It is unclear yet what is going to happen.

Further down the street is a shed-like construction that seemed to be made entirely out of rusty corrugated-iron panels. That’s what I thought back then. But it is a solid house and a family is apparently living there. I hear the voices of children from behind the fenced-in yard.

Strangely, the girl with the magenta leg warmers is with me again, this time accompanied by another girl and a woman. They all get into a car. The two streets are not even so close to each other. I feel like a stalker.

Both Chelsea and Zamia have a playground that is full of children and adults, real neighbourhood meeting points. If you have small children…

Where glass was made

Crystal Street, Waterloo on Monday, 19 October 2020

This is a new street in the big apartment complex which was built on the grounds of the former Australian Glass Manufacturers. It’s more than a complex, almost a suburb in itself with its own streets, parks and shopping centres. The first development started around 2003 and it has continuously grown since then.

I pass the slick facade of the ‘Orange Supermarket’, an Asian grocery store. The interior manages to look as if it is in an old Asian quarter and the prices are low. In the middle of the street is a small park with a water basin from which fountains of water emerge and benches are on each side. People are sitting and reading or having lunch or enjoying the water display. The trees are already quite high and give shade. There are lots of cafés and restaurants and more benches and palm trees lining the street in the pedestrian part. People sit around, meeting for a chat. It’s really quite nice here, even though I don’t like the buildings. At the end of the street is Coles Supermarket. 

Far Horizons

Morgan Avenue, Matraville on Thursday, 15 October 2020

I cannot find Morgan Avenue. I am already at the roundabout at La Perouse where I eat my sandwich, sitting on a bench. It is very windy. I turn the navigator on to find a petrol station and make another attempt to locate this street. It leads me through an area where trucks come thundering out of yards without stopping to look left or right. Finally, the navigator takes me into the Botany Cemetery. From here I can see the bay where Captain Cook first landed in Kamay (Botany Bay) on the fateful day of 29 April 1770.

I find it unsettling to be guided to a street in a graveyard. I used to like cemeteries, reading the inscriptions on the stones and guessing about the lives of the people buried. Today it makes me sad. The inscriptions on the headstones speak of tragedies. Here lies a two-year-old boy and his mother who died only one month later. Somewhere else a young man is dearly missed. I think I am too old to enjoy cemeteries.

A car arrives, and a middle-aged man gets out with a watering can. Most graves here don’t have living plants. I am curious about who he is visiting. When he has gone, I find the grave easily. It has a rosebush, the water droplets are still on the petals. The woman remembered on the stone died old in 1986. I am touched by this dedication.

Many of the graves have no one who cares for them anymore. They are caved in, the stone plates broken into pieces, covered with lichen.

School children walk by on a path outside.

Lola and the sea

Lola Road, Dover Heights on Friday, 9 October 2020

Lola Road ends at a park called Raleigh Reserve and a cliff overlooking the ocean. The park is just a stretch of mangy grass with a tree in the middle, but the view over the wide open sea is amazing. There are different styles of houses, big and small. I walk past a cute bungalow with three chairs and a table on the verandah. Just when I wondered why people don’t use their outdoor settings, a white Spitz appears from behind the house and an old man with a teacup and a book in his hands follows. 

A bit of everything

Louisa Road, Birchgrove on Thursday, 8 October 2020

Louisa Road is on a very thin peninsula reaching into Sydney Harbour. You can see the water on both sides between the houses. At the beginning is Birchgrove Park and at the tip is Yurulbin Park and the Birchgrove ferry wharf. Cockatoo Island is on the left and across are Greenwich and Waverton. I can see the omnipresent ugly finger of the yet unfinished Crown Casino at Barangaroo, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and even glimpses of the Anzac Bridge.

Two young women are in Yurulbin Park with their little sons who have a great time playing with each other. A group of young men have gathered at the waterfront to go fishing. All of a sudden an unexpected downpour chases everyone away. A traffic officer still manages to register a car, parked illegally on the footpath. The rain stops soon after and I walk along the street.

There is a mix of houses, grand and modest, old and new. Each one has a view of the harbour. A lot of traders are around: builders, gardeners, and cleaners to keep this street in top shape. Yet, some places look a bit neglected. I like that. There is beauty in the imperfect. 

The girls have taken over

Leslie Street, Tempe on Sunday, 4 October 2020

In the days this street was named, Leslie was known as a male name, while the female version was Lesley. But in the meantime, this distinction has been overturned. It sounds the same anyway. And so I am here in this cozy street. I hope all the neighbours like each other because it’s the kind of environment where they should. I feel that most small cul-de-sac streets have this ambience of privacy. Because you can’t drive through, there is no reason for anyone to go there who is not connected in some way to the residents. Except for me, of course. 

The only person I see is a young man in his driveway, loading a small truck with witches’ hats and whatever other barricades. A trailer is parked in the street, stacked up with the same things. A sign says it’s a traffic management business.

The weird and the beautiful

Margaret Street, North Sydney on Monday, 28 September 2020

This street looks like a walkway in a park, going uphill between trees and bushes. First, there are some sandstone houses, a small art deco block of flats and a car mechanic workshop hidden away in a recess. Then steps are going up high to the next level. Halfway is a small lawn with a bench under trees and on the other side a sprawling building with walls and towers like a fortress. Some renovation work is in progress. They are putting in shiny corrugated aluminium roofs that clash with the medieval theme. A man working on the site asks me if I got lost. In turn, I ask him if he is the owner of this building, seeing that he looks a bit older than the average construction worker.

“No, I wished”, he answers. “You wished? It’s rather weird.” “Yeah, it is a bit. It has been here for 40 years.”