Victoria Street, Redfern on Sunday, 12 April 2020

It’s a tiny street. I couldn’t find it at first, though it’s in an area I always drive past to get to Cleveland Street. There is also a small shopping centre and my car mechanic in this part of Redfern. A yellow corner building used to be an ice cream shop and is now empty. A bit shabby, with faded paint and crumbling mortar. It’s still somehow picturesque. A transparent door on the top seems to lead into the light. Otherwise, there are just back doors and garage doors. Music sounds from an open garage that contains a motorbike.

Esther and Violet Street, Surry Hills

There is a small net of alleys behind the warehouse that used to be the gallery of the legendary Ray Hughes. He died in 2017. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, he bought the building in 1987, “when the suburb was more seedy than trendy.” One of these small streets within this net is Raper Street, where Brett Whiteley’s former studio and living space was in another warehouse. His studio has been preserved as a museum.

Esther and Violet are blending into each other, formerly consisting of warehouses or small factories, now converted into residential and office spaces.

Esther Lane is flanked by a yellow-painted house. It creates a stunning glow in the afternoon light. The windows of the opposite building throw an interesting reflection onto the yellow wall. By coincidence, I photographed that street before, late last year, because I was attracted to this light.

To get to Esther and Violet Street I have to turn into Devonshire Street. I drive past a queue of people outside a corner shop. At present, only one or two people are allowed to be in small spaces. But there are still more people waiting outside than usual. I wonder what the attraction is and then see it’s the Bourke Street Bakery. My friend Elke mentioned it just yesterday. Surprisingly, I hadn’t known that bakery, even though I am a baker’s daughter and call myself an urban explorer. 

The very end of Devonshire just before South Dowling opens up like a brand new territory. The new tramline has created open spaces in the city. At this end, there used to be a small park with a playground. Now there is a long strip of lawn. This Easter Sunday is a bright, sunny day and the grass sparkles in the sunlight.

People are lying or sitting on the grass. Only two or three together at the most and far apart from each group, sticking to the new rules. Children from the row of dwellings bordering the lawn are playing and riding their scooters on the surrounding pavement. 

At the end of the lawn, a multi-coloured older building stands alone which declares itself as the “Surry Hills Art District”, the words written on one wall in between comic book style painted figures playing musical instruments. Two women, one in a canary yellow dress, are taking photos. The yellow one is the model. The building had been there before and it was not visible from this end as far as I remember. They must have pulled down a whole row of houses to create space for the tramline. The former Wimbo Park now seems to have shrunk to a fenced-in piece of land with no gate. It has a few young trees randomly dispersed amid otherwise barren, wood chip covered soil as if they are the sole survivors of an attempted and abandoned gardening project.