View from Harriett Street
Harriett and Ruby St, Marrickville on Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Ruby and Harriett are neighbours. In between is an industrial strip of Carrington Road. While Harriett is a rather unassuming, residential street, Ruby has an unusual feature. The street has a higher and a lower part which is divided by an old sandstone wall. Above runs a path that reminds me very much of places I have seen in France. It feels like being in a village.
Amy Street, Marrickville on Friday, 29 January 2021
When I arrive in Amy Street it was raining heavily. At the end of the street is a playground and beyond an oval which is being resurfaced. The lawn has been removed, bulldozers are lined up. Two teenage girls are making their way down to the oval despite the rain. Maybe they’re going to sit in the Grand Stand under the roof? It’s still school holidays. You need to do something with your time off.
Cecilia Street, Marrickville on Tuesday, 5 January 2021
From the corner of Cecilia Street, the view goes to the Marrickville Town Hall and a winged goddess on a pedestal in front.
The street is a cul-de-sac, ending with a block of units. It looks almost like a gated community. There are two long rows of garbage bins lined up on the side of the footpath. A young man comes out from the property, rolling a bin to join the others. He’s wearing a mask and a turban and looks suspiciously at me. I don’t know why as I haven’t even taken any photos yet. I think it’s this aimless, slow walking and looking around, this loitering in a place without an apparent purpose that is suspicious. I turn around but observe that he is appearing again and again, one bin at a time. A tedious job.
Charlotte Ave, Marrickville on Friday, 4 December 2020
This street forms a corner with Myrtle Street where I went many months ago. The picture-perfect house which I found so hyperreal seems to be empty. It sits here glowing yellow in the sunshine with shuttered windows as it looked before. In Charlotte Avenue is a second similar building belonging to the same property, its driveway guarded by cypress trees.
Across the street is an abandoned construction project for a new residential home. The hessian cloth on the tumbled fence is torn and sagging. Tagging covers the unfinished brick walls. At the top, it says: ‘It’s going to be okay’. The building or our lives, I wonder? At this end, you look towards a railway track, half hidden behind bushes. A freight train passes and continues over the bridge crossing Victoria Street. At the other end the street curves at an old sandstone wall. Steps go up to where the suburb continues on a higher level.
Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville on Saturday, 26 September 2020
It’s rare to find a street in Sydney named after a woman in history for her own merit and not because she was the wife or daughter of someone. Or at least it’s rare that the street has the full name. Lilian Fowler was the mayor of Newtown in the 1930s and the first female mayor in Australia.
The street forms an oval, lined with small workshops and offices. Today, on a Saturday, most of them are closed but there is some activity.
On a roller door, I read “Chomsky Knows”. This seems to be rather deep and meaningful. Noam Chomsky is a linguist, historian and social critic and his ideas are said to be highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. On the next wall, I am told that “Life Stinks”.
There are two caravans parked in this street. One is the kind used for selling food in the street, like Harry’s Café de Wheels in Woolloomooloo. There is a small passage at the end with graffiti on the walls, and rubbish bins full of spray paint cans. It leads to Sydney Steel Road which has the famous graffiti wall where people are allowed to paint.
Three men with cameras are photographing and filming a woman in black sports gear and neon yellow trainers. She’s sitting against the wall and laughing all the time. On the other side is a huge fenced-in site with containers. I learn later that it is the building site for the new Metro. I don’t remember what was there before. Maybe a steel factory, hence the name. It’s strange how you can’t remember things, once they are gone.
Myrtle Street, Marrickville on Sunday, 8 March 2020
This street has a row of residential houses on one side and small factory buildings on the other. Many family homes here are neatly renovated, especially the one at the corner coming from Victoria Road. In the sunlight breaking through clouds, it reminds me of the movie “The Truman Show”. Almost too perfect to be true.
I guess the neat houses belong to Europeans, maybe Portuguese or Greek. An old man is pottering around in front of his house, picking up some stray twigs. In the middle of the street is a stormwater canal, coming out from under the footpath on both sides. It has a sign that warns of sewage overflow. There are symbols to tell us: do not swim, do not sit here with a fishing line, and do not let a dog go here. I don’t think anyone would be tempted. A stale smell is wafting from the trickle of water.
One of the factories is a yoghurt manufacturer. Next, a mysterious old house with a rusty corrugated iron roof hides behind a wall and trees.
At the other end of Myrtle Street, I look over to a patch of green hedges and shrubs, a factory chimney and an old, tall house, a bit grander than the ones nearby. That’s where the pedestrian railway crossing is. It looks from far like a remnant from a bygone era. Another sign tells me that the street is subject to flooding.
Maud Lane, Marrickville on Sunday, 8 March 2020
On my way to Maud Lane, I passed by Maude Street which isn't on any map. It runs alongside the Braddock Playground, with only grass and bushes and a sandstone arch leading into it. Someone is meditating under the arch.
The street turns around a corner and becomes Maud Lane. It runs along the railway track. The first view around the bend is a section with rubbish bins, a container with pallets piled on top, and a truck in front of a low white building. Squashed cardboard boxes, a battered suitcase and an abandoned shopping trolley are sitting right under a bent sign that tells everyone not to dump rubbish there. Is this ignorance, vandalism or civil disobedience?
The lane has workshops, garages and warehouses on both sides. Number 25 insists that the lane’s name is Maude with an ‘e’, defying the street directories’ spelling. It is empty and silent. Good to come on a Sunday.
Funny how I get excited by the sight of a rather ugly street. The feeling comes from something unexplainable, a vague memory of industrial streets in my home town Hamburg. But also from the fact that this place, like so many in Marrickville, is yet untouched by new apartment block developments. A couple of people are working. One is behind half-closed roller doors, and the other is driving a forklift from one end of the lane to the other. Apart from them, I am all alone. After heavy rain, the sun has come out and it’s warm.
While editing the photos I enjoy looking at all the details on the walls. Not so much the big elaborate graffiti, but the small scribbles, messages, colours, and objects leaning against them. In one section a few pieces of broken timber are leaning against a black wall. They look like words from an ancient language, like runes. Now, in August, five months later, they look to me like the “writing on the wall”, an ominous warning.
