Hot Asphalt

Crystal Street, Rozelle on Thursday, 21 January 2021

Crystal is a U-shaped, small street between Wellington and Terry ending at Victoria Road. It seems to be hard to reach, coming from the city by car. Maybe that’s why it still looks like a remnant of old times in the midst of new developments. Not in the sense of historical buildings, but rather something thrown together haphazardly and then forgotten. There is a mix of modest homes and local industry. One of them is a panel beating shop. So there must be a way for the initiated to get in here with their cars.

In fact, the difficulty reaching this spot at the moment is due to the extensive road works happening in Victoria Road. The pungent odour of hot tar is drifting over from the construction site. The smell should be unpleasant, but I almost like it. It brings back memories of playing in the streets in my hometown Hamburg, when, in hot summers, the asphalt melted in the heat.

Yesterday's smoke

Margaret Street, Rozelle on Tuesday, 16 June 2020

The street is on the Balmain side of Victoria Road near Iron Cove Bridge. It goes down towards the waterfront ending with a curved wall. There are plaques with photos and text informing about the industrial history of this place. To the east of Margaret Street was the site of the Balmain Power Station, constructed in two phases between 1908 and 1956. Next to it was the Monsanto factory complex. The plaques show photos of these colossal industries with their smoking chimneys. It looked horrendous. Preceding this in the 19th century there were iron, steel and timber works and small cottages. Some of them are still here and so is the old administration building of the power station. The rest is all apartment blocks overlooking the water.

I notice that the curved wall already existed in earlier photos from the 1930s. The wall is high above the water. You have to go down many steep stairs to get to Bridgewater Park and the promenade. There is the old pump house, which has been preserved as a heritage piece. Formerly this was all industrial with coal conveyors, coal stores and turbine houses, probably inaccessible except for the workers. My research tells me that before the industrial period, there was a public ferry at the end of Margaret Street. The development of this area as residential started around 2000. There is a photo from 2002 which shows some new buildings, but the waterfront was still used as yards for new cars.

While strolling along and turning corners, I encounter slim, young women with prams, dressed in gym tights and jogging tops. They all look the same. From previous observations, I have come to the conclusion that there is a generic type of young, fit mothers in certain affluent neighbourhoods. But maybe it is really the same woman in this case.

Schoolchildren are on an excursion down at the waterfront. Janitors are rolling the rubbish bins back to their designated areas. In one downstairs window, I see a cardboard sign “Black Lives Matter”. Right opposite is a small park with the Australian Flag in the middle. I notice that two of the streets in the new apartment complex have Aboriginal names, Waragal and Wulumay. I learn from the internet that they mean mackerel and snapper. These translations are from the book “The Sydney Language” which the Aboriginal linguist Jakelin Troy compiled with words used across the many language groups in the Sydney area and with approximate spelling. This area is the land of the Wangal people of the Dharug (Eora) language group.

Today I am testing the arbitrary left/right/right repeat method used by some other street explorers. I turn left into Terry Street. Lots of schoolchildren here, a sight which is still somehow unusual. There is a linden-green door in the corner building to Wellington Street. It has a sign which promises ‘Treat Dreams’. At first, I thought it was a brothel. When looking closer I notice the drawing of a cake on that sign.

I pass a primary school with children playing in the yard. Then a run-down Victorian house which nevertheless has new plants in the front garden, the nursery labels are still attached. After that an upholstery business. An old Mercedes Cabriolet, exhaling toxic fumes, is just exiting out from there. The equally vintage driver is having a chat with the business owner, both ignoring the clouds of smoke.

At the end is busy Victoria Road. There are major road works going on, either for WestConnex or for the Metro. I wonder what has been pulled down for that. The derelict former Tigers’ Football club building is still there. Even when in use it has looked like a social realist’s architectural nightmare. 

Dream Catcher

Catherine, Elizabeth, Ellen, Charlotte, Emily, Alice and Mary Street, Rozelle on Sunday 14 June 2020

Rozelle is on a peninsular in Sydney Harbour. The area where I am today is on the ridge sloping to Rozelle Bay.  Alfred Hancock, an Englishman, who later served as an alderman of Balmain purchased and sold land parcels to working people with the slogan “Homes for the People” (1867 to 1907). Like everywhere in this colony, the land was considered to be free for the taking by the British Crown. Then private business people bought it from the Governors. The indigenous population of this land had been decimated by smallpox. Hancock offered small deposits and supplied timber at low prices, so owning a home became affordable for the working class. That must be the reason why many of the houses here have such individual characters and are mostly freestanding and made from timber. Unlike the brick terraces in other suburbs of Sydney, which were built to house working families as tenants, not as owners. There are a few terraces here and there. And some old sandstone houses which are characteristic of the harbourside suburbs of Balmain and Rozelle.

At the end of Elizabeth Street is a small park and playground and a path slopes down to another street below. There is a view over the bay towards Anzac Bridge and the city as is the case with many of these streets in the area. Catherine Street ends with narrow steep stairs down to another level and Emily Street has stairs going up. Like the neighbouring Lilyfield, the area looks friendly with pretty houses and front yards, flowers, and trees. Everything looks loved and cared for. I hardly see any derelict or neglected places.

In the past, this suburb must have had a totally different look. There was not only the bigger industry near the waterfront, chemicals, soap, foundries, sawmills, abattoirs and later the coal-fired powerhouses, but also small industry, producing millet brooms and brushes in corrugated iron sheds scattered across the streets and laneways.  All this made the area very polluted.

On this sunny, warm winter Sunday I pass two girls in summer dresses, about twelve years old, eating fresh ice cream from cones. One asks the other: “Do you know what bail is?” No, she doesn’t. Then the first one tells a story that I can’t hear anymore. The pub ‘Three Weeds’ in Evans Street is still closed. 

Blue Hour

Matilda and Cecily Street, Rozelle on Wednesday, 3 June 2020

It is almost 5 pm when I start my walk and the light is already fading on this winter day. Matilda is a very small street off Balmain Road. On one side is a factory building with big windows, painted white, now housing a physio practice. On the other side is the Gary Owen Hotel from 1920. It’s open again.

I walk along Balmain Road a bit and come to Cecily Street. It’s the one opposite the main gate of Callan Park where I had stopped at the light so often, coming from Sydney College of the Arts. They have moved out now, the old Kirkbride building empty, at least for now. There is a COVID-19 safety message at the gate. People are leaving the darkening park after walking their dogs.

At the corner is an old factory with artists’ studios. At least they were there once. It looks shut now. It could be because of the virus or it could be permanent. There is graffiti saying “Leave It”. All along the bottom of the wall is a mural painting on which horses with aprons and baker’s hats are baking bread and muffins. Above are large, awkwardly painted letters in white. I can read RUIN, the next word is not clear. But if it is supposed to be PARTY, they forgot the T in their haste.

Cecily Street is quite long. It goes downhill towards the City West Link, but on google maps it says Rozelle Interchange. That’s part of the Westconnex project. At the end of the street is a tall crane visible at the horizon.

When I come back up the street in the dark, the white letters on the wall look iridescent, lit by the street lamps and cars. I notice another signage underneath. It says something starting with P and then ‘Baking Company’. Only later at home on the computer can I decipher the name: Pilcher. I find an entry online about the F. Pilcher Baking Company opening a new bakery in 1913. The family had a commemoration event with the History Division of the Balmain Association in 1989.

I haven’t done any street walks for this project in the evenings yet and it reminds me of the days when I did the ‘Windows at Night’ series in 2001. Today was bright and sunny. Now the light at the horizon is fading to a pink-purple. And the sky is changing to a darker shade of blue. ‘Indigo Sky’ comes to mind: ‘Under the indigo sky we lay down and we died.’