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.