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.