Angel

Angel Street, Newtown on Friday, 5 March 2021

This street has a lot of variety, considering that it’s only small. Here is the old, derelict factory which you can see from the platform of Newtown Station. It must be one of the last abandoned industrial sites in Sydney still standing untouched. Further down is a community garden before the street turns into a footpath with a village feel to it. I imagine the two empty shops at a corner to have been the butcher and the baker in days long ago. The news agency was in the next street. I recognise it from the peeling ‘Daily Telegraph’ sign.

The World is Yours

Elizabeth Street, Newtown on Sunday 17 May 2020

I have never been in that street before. It’s where City Road becomes King Street, just before Missenden Road. It’s only a short lane and leads to the backside of the King Street shops and restaurants. I find it fascinating to see the unpolished side of all these places, where the empty food boxes and milk crates are stored, a drum with cooking oil, a baby chair, and a makeshift shed. Some material hangs on a back gate to a yard that looks like a raincoat for a dead animal.

On the other side are the backyards of a row of terrace houses of yet another lane. At the end is a fenced-in part of Sydney University with student accommodation.

It is Sunday late afternoon. The sun just came out from the clouds to say good night, highlighting the graffiti message ‘The World Is Yours’. At a corner a car lurks like a living being, ready to pounce.

Restaurants are allowed to have guests, ten at a time, for the first time since the lockdown. When I walk past the windows in King Street I see some people sitting at tables which has become an unusual sight. Not all tables are used. That would be too crowded. Staff is wiping down the surfaces more carefully than ever, it seems.

Cheer

Pearl Street, Newtown on Wednesday, 13 May 2020

The factory worker’s house

Pearl Street is at the other end of the new ‘Industri’ apartment complex I mentioned in my writing about Alice Street, published on 23 October 2020 with the title I wait for you here.

I was sure that a factory would have been on that site and that the name ‘Industri’ was honouring this industrial past.

Opposite this complex is a stately home on a large property with tall trees. Very unusual for this area which has mainly small terrace houses. I imagine it belonged to the owner or director of the factory that once stood at the location of the new residential block. He was of a generation and work ethic who believed to have to be present at their own business or otherwise things wouldn’t function properly. I am making this up entirely. 

The factory owner’s house

I notice a variation of the peaky gable style terrace house in this street, where two entities share the same gable and have two entrances underneath, while most I have seen have a window underneath and the entrance at one side. A big fenced-in playground is closed. In a small passageway, a few young men are working on graffiti. At the end is Pearl Lane with a retro feel and look about it, enhanced by the intense light that breaks through dark clouds.

Back in Pearl Street is a large empty lot and on the exposed wall of a house at the end of it is the word CHEER in graffiti lettering. I consider briefly photographing some discarded items on the porch of a neglected small cottage, including a scarf wound around the fence post which matches the colour of the window frames. But give it up. A moment later a truck arrives and stops right there. Two delivery guys carry in a big packaged screen and something else. Someone seems to need better entertainment equipment for the lockdown, no matter how shabby all the rest looks. And I thought the house is deserted.  

All you need is love

Question marks

Clara Street, Newtown on Wednesday, 13 May 2020

There are new posters everywhere in Newtown and surrounding areas listing telephone numbers to ring for health advice, mental health and domestic violence. They are from the Newtown Green MP Jenny Leong. Next to those on the pole at the beginning of Clara Street is another lost cat notice. I think it’s about the same cat as from the poster in Eve Street. Clara Street has a few colourful murals and graffiti. On one end are big question marks painted on the wall. I interpret these as symbolic of our times, though they probably were there before.

At the end of the street, a slim, elegant cat tiptoes across the pavement. It has a collar with a bell that jingles at every step. I decide it must be female and wonder if she is the lost one, but she is already gone. After a moment, she reappears, racing, almost flying at high speed, chased by an ordinary-looking house and garden variety cat.

Clinging to a wooden fence, a tangle of strings, torn fabric, and dry branches of a vine remind me of the network of streets I am walking through on my discoveries. Nearby I read “Welcome home, Milly” on a garden gate. An odd pair of graffiti creatures look disapprovingly at a red piece of cloth dangling in a tree.

Local history

Susan Street, Rose and Victoria Street, Newtown on Sunday, 10 May 2020

Susan Street is where Ali used to live. He is one of the people I met when I first came to Sydney, but we lost contact. He is a cobbler and ran a shop in Missenden Road.

I never ventured any further into the small streets past Ali’s flat. It’s a part of Newtown where I feel the past speaks to me. Small dwellings, local industry, a few pubs, a church and a cemetery.

Victoria Street ends at the gate to the old cemetery of St Stephen's Anglican Church. On this sunny Sunday afternoon, I see people walking in and out through the gate as if there is a special event. Even though we are still in lockdown and the streets are mostly empty. It’s a peaceful place to go for a quiet walk, like a sanctuary. The graves are old, and flowers grow in between. Pink cosmos, one of my favourite summer flowers, have grown very tall above the graveyard wall towards the sun.

Later I learn from the 'City of Sydney Historic Walks' website that the 'NSW Railway and Recreation Club' used to be at the corner of Victoria and O’Connell Street, now converted into apartments. The 'Older Women’s Network NSW' is also housed in Victoria Street in a gated, freestanding bungalow with a library and outdoor space.

“O’Connell Town”, Newtown on Wednesday, 27 May 2020

I have read in the meantime that the area of Victoria, Susan, Rose, and a few more streets around there was created as a kind of village under Governor Maurice O’Connell in the 1840s. It was intended as a service centre for the surrounding estates. It’s said to have been the only purpose-built entity in that district. I guess that's why I felt that history was speaking to me. It’s still nestling in the corners and niches, as I can sense the village and workman’s atmosphere here. On my several visits to this area, I see many young people on bicycles or scooters with delivery food bags. Sometimes they sit on or next to their vehicles with their mobiles in hand, waiting for the next job. It's still a service centre. Even Ali’s cobbler trade fits well.

Back to my history research: Victoria Street was formerly called Brick Street, and there were brick manufacturers and stone masons for the adjacent graveyard.

There is still a Mechanic Street in this area. ‘Mechanic’ was a common term for working-class men who were not farmers or domestic staff. There is also still a ‘Colonial Engineering Co.’ at the corner of O’Connell and Victoria. I wonder why they’ve kept a name like that. After reading some more, I learn that 'Colonial Engineering' ceased to exist and was converted into flats by 1997. They must have kept the signage for historical reasons.

Love is the answer

Mary Street, Newtown on Friday, 3 April 2020

I have to go to the bank to get my credit card. I was thinking of just leaving it, although banks are an essential service, and I need the card. The bank is at the corner of Mary and King Street, so I take the opportunity to look around. At the end near Lennox Street, dogs are barking ferociously inside a building with a mural painting. Two men with red safety tops are walking in and out.

The street is a bit shabby. Apart from the house with the mural, most buildings in the street look neglected and covered with tagging.

An old mattress and shoes are dumped in the driveway to an undercover parking lot. The only other neat place is the temporarily closed Kelly’s Lounge. There are beer kegs outside the door, waiting for nothing.

The next building has a tag saying “God hates us all”. Some posters inform people that a virus doesn’t target race. This is because Asian people have been attacked and vilified in public. There are too many dumb people who think the Chinese are personally responsible for the virus break-out. Words of encouragement are painted high up on a corner building glowing in the sunshine: “Love is the answer”.

Light my heart

Margaret Street and Lane, Newtown on Monday, 16 March 2020

I came here in a dampened mood, as on a Monday everything is worse about the Corona crisis than the week before. It’s now declared to be a pandemic. The day is grey and rainy. Margaret Street in Newtown is hidden in between a labyrinth of small streets, one-ways, dead-ends. It has some wall paintings and the most peculiar-looking apartment building, brick, maybe 50s with a gabled roof. Very narrow, wedged between a fence and an older house.

The street curves and where it does three bikes are parked side by side, a big one, a middle-sized and a tiny children’s bike. Reminds me of the three Bears from ‘Goldilocks’.

It is quiet. There aren’t many cars driving through, maybe because they don’t find it, as happened to me first. But some people are emerging from somewhere to go somewhere. A man is rummaging in the rubbish bins of the peculiar apartment block for glass bottles. The houses here have their own character: creative, environmentalist, neat, neglected or entirely absent.

Margaret Lane shows the backside of such places. There’s rubbish including chairs. Discarded chairs seem to become an accidental theme in these discoveries.