Juliett Street, Enmore on Tuesday, 21 April 2020

Juliett Street is fairly long. At one end it’s a cul-de-sac with a little green spot and trees. Beyond is the Marrickville Metro Shopping Centre.

The street is residential, apart from the corner café “West Juliett” which is open for takeaway only. The houses are mainly ‘Federation’ architecture which is, as I learnt in the meantime, what the British Edwardian style is called in Australia.

I meet a couple of cats, one settling for a snooze under a car, the other sitting on her own front porch and looking pretty. There is a truck with a flatbed made of wooden planks and on it sits a rusted metal toolbox. The number plate says ‘Historic Vehicle’.

Someone in a nearby house is getting a contactless delivery. Someone else is moving into a pretty Federation house a little further along. Such activities are still possible. The houses in this street are well cared for but there is one in ruins, only part of the back and side walls still standing. The front garden is overgrown and littered with plastic bags and household debris.

I wonder if such things happen when there is an inheritance dispute. In another place, three guys in working gear are hanging out in the front yard together, smoking. 

Opposite there is a house with a big white cross, white artificial flower garlands and teddy bears on the porch. It gives me the awful feeling that a child has died in the family. Then I see Easter eggs woven in between the ribbons on the fence and the tree in the street is decorated with pink, red and yellow garlands and red globes. So it may have been just for Easter, which wasn’t so long ago. But why the teddy bear?