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…