Alfreda Street, Coogee on Tuesday, 9 March 2021
Alfreda goes down to the ocean. Everything is geared toward beach life. It has holiday flats, a shop for diving equipment and a busy parking officer. He slipped into my photo unnoticed when I took a shot of the buildings.
Alberta St, CBD on Thursday, 25 February 2021
Alberta is a narrow alley between high buildings where the sun never shines. Definitely not today. It just stopped raining. The clouds are dark and there are puddles on the pavement. In the past, this would have been an area for warehouses. The Teahouse, which stood empty for years, is still there across Wentworth Avenue. I find a few pleasant things though. When I turn around a corner, I see a colourful mural with pink trees and purple mountains. There are bright green teapots in the window of a closed café. Next to it is an Italian bar with old movie posters. I should go there one day.
Caroline Street, Balmain on Thursday, 21 January 2021
Caroline Street has a deserted-looking 60s block of flats. But if I took a photo, somebody would have watched me from inside through the dusty windows and broken blinds. And while I am thinking this, someone actually does come bursting out through the front door. Instead of asking the expected suspicious questions, he greets me very friendly like an old mate and rushes away. There is another almost derelict house where a down-at-heel-looking woman just enters. Otherwise, most places look neat.
Caroline Lane leads down to the former Colgate Palmolive factory at the waterfront. It has been converted into luxury apartments. The factory was established at this location in 1923. Local residents made up most of the staff. According to interviews with former employees ‘everyone had a cousin down the “Olive”’.
Ref: Lackey and Vardabasso, Down the ‘Olive: A memory of Colgate-Palmolive in Balmain, New South Wales, 1994.
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.
Adelaide Street and Place, Surry Hills on Saturday, 12 December 2020
In the 1920s and 30s, two women ruled the crime scene of illegal alcohol and drugs in Sydney. Tilly Devine in Darlinghurst and Kate Leigh in Surry Hills. Kate Leigh had a sly grog shop at 212 Devonshire Street in the flat above her fruit and veggie shop. Adelaide Place is just around the corner.
Places in Australia named Adelaide might refer rather to the city than a female name. But in fact, the city is named after the German princess Adelheid who married the English King William IV.
The houses in this street are pretty. Some have blue or yellow window frames. Bougainvillea is growing over garden fences. Further down is a colossal building occupying a whole block. I notice cubist-looking concrete ornaments intersecting the facade. I read that it is the former Readers’ Digest office and a highly significant modernist building, designed by architect John James, sculptor Douglas Annand and landscape architect Bruce Mackenzie. The construction was completed in 1967.
At the back of the building in Adelaide Place are cast iron statues with bull horns, reminiscent of ancient cult symbols. On the opposite side, a white-painted brick wall is covered with tags. Posters announce the upcoming Sydney Festival in January 2021. Walking towards Devonshire Street, I pass small houses, one a sandstone cottage that must be quite old. Somewhere two ibises are watching from the balustrade of a balcony. Around the corner, I find Kate Leigh’s former shop. It’s now called Jazzy Café Bar and is closed until further notice because of COVID. According to an online travel guide, it was the ‘Sly’, just a few years earlier. It probably had many incarnations since Kate Leigh died in 1964.
For Tilly Devine see the entry about Charlotte Lane, Darlinghurst published on 13 May 2022.
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.
Rose Lane, Darlington on Sunday, 8 November 2020
I had forgotten to look for Rose Lane after I found out a few months ago that Rose Street doesn’t exist anymore in Darlington.
I came past it recently by coincidence. It is a very small lane with an old brick factory building on one side. Through the wire mesh windows, I can see a courtyard with trees and plants. Some parts of the windows still have dusty, old pieces of frosted glass. Through one of them, I suddenly recognise the head of a female mannequin. It looks eerie, a bit like a person trapped in a cage.
People live in this building. Around the corner are two doors in bright colours. There still is the name of the factory in faded letters. Only a few of them are recognisable. A young woman with two little children has just arrived at one of the doors and is ringing the bell. It’s an old-fashioned one where you turn a metal knob, like winding up a clock.
On the other side of the lane is the Darlington Activity Club, a low brick building with tin rubbish bins in the courtyard. Looking across from here is another lane with yet another former factory at the corner. Here I can read quite clearly that it was called Blue Diamond and has a pale blue triangle painted on the brickwork.
Flora Street, Mascot on Friday, 6 November 2020
There is nothing remarkable in this street. At the end of its cul-de-sac, a woman is unloading shopping bags from her SUV, taking them inside a house. An elderly couple is watching. Then she gets into her car to leave, greeting me in a friendly fashion as I walk by.
Something looks interesting about that tucked-away property. When I think she is already far away, I return. But no, she comes driving back and asks me why I am taking photos. I have to think fast. “Art project” doesn’t sound right this time. I say that I research architecture and record the different styles of houses - nothing about the people. She thought I was here on behalf of a neighbour’s grievance. In other words, they must have done something to cause a grievance to a neighbour. People who are suspicious of photographers always seem to have some agenda.
Daphne, Rose, Ivy Street, Botany
In Daphne Street, they are building a row of new townhouses. One has a white Madonna and Child near the front steps. I walk past a few remnants of industry. A rustic-looking house contains Redelman Fabrics. In a front yard sits a container labelled ‘Hapag-Lloyd’, the North German shipping company I worked for in Hamburg many decades ago.
A huge empty lot alongside Rose Street is being prepared for the construction of yet another apartment block. I like how it looks at the moment. Hard to explain why. Maybe because of the white soil, or because it shows a side of places that were hidden for a long time.
In Ivy Street are a preschool and a sewage pumping station. Builders are making a lot of noise in a house next door. Children are coming home from school.
Ethel Street and Lane, Eastwood on Thursday, 5 November 2020
Ethel Street features mainly uniform-looking apartment blocks made of dark red brick. There used to be brickworks in Eastwood which explains the prevalence of this building material.
It’s raining heavily today and it’s cold. I had my doubts about even coming here but I was in the neighbourhood after having stayed with a friend in Dundas Valley.
At the end of the street towards the railway tracks are a few shops, and a Korean grocery store at the corner. Fruit and vegetables are on display outside in boxes with handwritten labels above them. One says “Please DO NOT eat fruits on display”. This seems funny to me as it is above a box with pineapples.
On the other side is a long, pale yellow building with a pub and a few shops, some empty. “First Fortune”, whatever it once promised, is no more. I venture out into the rain and into Ethel Lane, which looks sinister with its dark brick walls under the heavy clouds. A psychiatrist and a psychologist share premises. You enter through a narrow door under a tattered and faded canopy - rather what I’d imagine being the entrance of a cheap brothel.
Frances Street, Randwick on Friday, 30 October 2020
Frances is one of the more majestic streets in Randwick. At the corner to Avoca Street is the old building of the Town Hall and on the other side the St Jude Anglican Church with its historic cemetery. I like that they let the grass and wildflowers grow high between the graves. The cemetery closes at 4 p.m., in 5 minutes, so I am a bit nervous about venturing too far in. For that reason, I didn’t inspect the newer-looking statue of three girls, which I saw from the street through the fence.
A bit further down is a park with a trampled lawn where people sit with their children after picking them up from school. There are a few mansions in this street. One is now a convention centre. Jacaranda trees are in blossom. The sky doesn’t know whether to be dark or friendly. Bus stops now display encouraging slogans: “Hello. It’s really great to see you again.” During lockdown other signs read: “Ask, are you ok?”
Crystal Street and Crystal Lane West, Petersham on Wednesday, 21 October 2020
Crystal Lane West has an old factory building which is now something fancy. A luxury car is just driving into the garage. It also has a 30s-style block of flats with a paved small courtyard, outdoor laundry, and washing lines. Some elaborate graffiti marks this lane, one with a huge mosquito. When I try to find out later if the mosquito is a logo for a particular graffiti artist, I come across this history: “Mosquito” was the name of an RAF combat aircraft also used by the Australian Air Force. On 2nd May 1945, one of these fighter planes disintegrated above Petersham. The pilots couldn’t save themselves as they were not high enough for their parachutes to open. One of the pilots landed tragically in the playground of the Petersham Public School. I wonder if the graffiti of the mosquito recalls this local event or if it’s an amazing coincidence.
I pass a car repair shop at the corner of Crystal Street. The wall bordering the yard shows a Bushell “ghost sign”, a remnant of a past commercial era. This section of the street has some empty shops. Among them, a harpsichord shop with a rusty banner alongside the awning, and a store that once sold Jackson cigarettes and Toblerone chocolate as the blue panels below the barred windows tell me. On the wall, a newer poster demands ‘Immediately Housing for the Homeless’. Mmh, good cause, but bad grammar. A bit further along is a Metropolitan Community Church with the LGBTQIA+ flag flying on its roof. On the other side is John While & Sons, “spring manufacturers established 1885”, now an apartment block. There are more small shops on that side; one identifies as an op shop by its display of secondhand clothes and knick-knacks visible behind the dark windows. This shop and all the others nearby are closed until further notice.
Crystal Street, Petersham on Thursday, 7 January 2021
Today I start at the part of Crystal Street, where I once worked for the photo media artist Rosemary Laing in 2006/07. She had her live-in studio in an old, unconverted warehouse. It was very cold in winter there, in spite of portable heaters, hot cups of tea and ginger biscuits. The main entrance was in the courtyard. She eventually moved away, but the building remains the same, maybe still empty, the window frames unpainted. At the back of the yard is a workshop of some kind; a bathtub with plants outside the low building. The UGG sheepskin shop flanks the other side of the yard. At the street level are two empty shops. One still features faded posters and notes in the window: Sydney Folk Festival, Gulgong Folk Festival, ‘Rorts and Greed: Killing our Rivers’.
Back when I worked at Rosemary’s, the Hell’s Angels had leased or bought one of these shops for their clubhouse. They painted it red and fortified it with iron bars and security cameras. But this couldn’t stop a bomb from going off one night in June 2007, damaging the door and wall tiles. They moved out soon after that.
On the other side of the road the dog-grooming shop ‘Wagging Tail’, which I could see from the room I worked in, now seems to have closed down. Crystal Street has a sign saying “Welcome to Cadigal-Wangal Country”. I don’t know if it was there before, or if I’m more aware of Aboriginal Country now.
A bit further along is the op shop which was closed when I passed by in October 2020. Now, three months later, dummies in colourful clothes are on display in the street outside. Further down is the Art Deco-style Petersham Town Hall. I learn from the internet that it has been a popular film location for movies and TV series such as ‘Strictly Ballroom’ and ‘A Place to Call Home’.
Towards Stanmore Road opposite the Oxford Tavern is a Federation-style residential building with decorative green and cream timber features, and tiling on the entry paths. One section of it looks neglected. That part seems to be used as a boarding house. Another looks freshly renovated with shiny new street numbers.
Joan Lane and Marie Street, Belmore on Wednesday, 12 August 2020
Joan Lane is very close to Canterbury Road at the backside of a new apartment block. In the parking area, I notice two young women in a car, smoking, and talking on the phone. I decide to let them drive away first. People get suspicious when you loiter around their homes. After a little walk, I find them still there. They are not going anywhere, just sitting in the car. I imagine it’s a way to get out of the house or to get away from someone who’s home too often.
Canterbury Road has changed a lot. Not that I ever knew it very well out here, but it was mainly old. Now there are many new buildings and the remaining small old shops are mostly empty, dark and looking sad. They will be gone too very soon and you wouldn’t even have a trace left of that old road. At the end of Joan Lane is an empty lot, waiting to be developed.
From the verandah of the corner house, a big fabric monkey is watching everything.
In Marie Street, I think of a rallying call from the French Revolution: “War to the palaces, peace to the cottages.”
Mona Street, Allawah on Monday, 10 August 2020
I have never been to Allawah or even heard of it. But it has a train station. A strong, cold wind is blowing down Mona Street. The Allawah hotel is at the corner and the small strip of shops around there is protected from the wind and warm in the sunshine. The barber shop is closed, maybe just because it’s Monday. The Nepalese takeaway is closed because of a technical problem. “Inconvenience is highly solicited,” says a hand-written note on the glass door. I am trying to think what word they mixed it up with. There must be an expression in Nepalese used in this context and lost in translation.
Mary, Frances, Victoria Street, Lidcombe on Friday, 31 July 2020
Lidcombe has only very few shops but a lot of churches instead. I park in John Street near the Armenian Catholic Church, across is the Art Deco Lidcombe Hotel. I walk a few steps to Mary Street past a café and a Japanese restaurant and there the shopping and entertainment part of Lidcombe ends already. It’s only 5 minutes away from the train station. In Mary Street, I find the St Joachim’s Catholic Primary School and St Joseph’s Childcare Centre, defended by a hysterically barking dog. Through a gap between buildings, I glimpse the St Andrews Ukrainian Catholic Church in the next street.
Most of the shops are on the other side of the railway track, many of them Korean. A bit further down is Victoria Street East with a few factories in low buildings and a majestic domed church, the St Ephraim Syrian Orthodox Cathedral at the corner. A few houses further down I discover that a “true blue Aussie” lives there, displaying the Australian flag and a photo of Clint Eastwood with a rifle, saying “Get out of my driveway!!!”.
There are many streets with female names in Lidcombe all over the suburb. It’s too far to walk to everyone, so I check out most of them by driving through. All a bit of the same. On my way, I pass two more churches. Later I learn that there are even more, among them a Russian Orthodox Church.
Frances is a long street and at the end towards Parramatta Road, it looks industrial with some small neglected houses. A large family with a cute toddler is gathered in an untidy garden, next door to a plastic manufacturer. The presumed father of the family says, “The good news is…” and then something about the electricity bill. The factory buildings on the other side seem to be abandoned. They don’t have any signs and weed grows high in front. A gate is open and I want to have a look, but then stop. There is someone. In movies, such places are used for bad things.
Helena, Louisa, Marion, Lily, Mona Street, Auburn on Wednesday, 29 July 2020
Auburn has a large Turkish community, also Lebanese, Chinese, Pakistani, Somalian, Afghan and more. There is a big mosque which was built just a few years ago. Seeing it from afar reminds me of travelling by bus from Bulgaria to Turkey some years ago and the first appearance of a mosque instead of another Orthodox Church after crossing the border.
The streets are suburban, just the type which I always thought were too boring and too much the same to want to go ‘street exploring’ in. They are mostly residential with a mix of architectural styles, some modest Federation weatherboard houses, and some larger new ones with elaborate fences and ornaments. Interspersed are playgrounds, schools, and corner shops.
In Louisa Street, a cat with a bushy tail tries to open a parcel that was left on the porch. At the corner to Helena Street is a suburban dream house, built from sandstone with three curved balconies held up by four round pillars and a fleur-de-lys fence around it. Over the front door is a horseshoe for good luck, which may be needed as one of the marble tiles decorating a balcony just above the entrance has come off. The places here have many chairs around big tables in their backyards. Near a playground is a sign saying “Warning - Area Under Surveillance”. It immediately makes me feel worried. In these times of the Coronavirus, we have become insecure about what is allowed and what is not. Can I walk here, can I be here? But it’s not that. It’s about illegal dumping.
At the corner of Marion Street is the Arafah Market, not a market but just a small store. I look up what Arafah means and find it is an Islamic holiday and by coincidence falls this year on the very day I am here, the 29th of July. Further down Marion Street, I see a small old caravan of the type street vendors would use, painted bright green with rusty patches. There is a small window at the front which opens as a counter. Behind the caravan, lions are guarding the wall of a family house. Some homes have quite large properties around them. Near Beatrice Street, a sign offers ‘LIFESIZE PLANS’. The surface is cracked. Around a bent are the railway tracks and beyond is the big mosque with its minaret and domes. The view from this side is obscured by the powerlines and railway structures.
In Alice Street are more ornamented fences, outdoor lamps and fancy letterboxes and a house with large oriental-looking arches. On a property nearby is an army of traffic cones, spades sitting in wooden barrels, piles of rocks, garden gnomes, toddler-sized cars, and wilted leeks stuck into pots. Several ‘No Entry’ and CCTV signs tell you to back off.
I look down Lily Street and decide not to go there. But I drive along Mary Street which ends at a park and a football oval. A group of ibises are picking at a discarded food box. Mary Street has an old corner store at Cumberland Road. On the other end, the street finishes at the town centre. But by the time I arrive in that section, there is too much traffic to go near it.
I drive down Mona Street. It's very long and very busy. I can’t find anywhere to park my car to get out and walk along. I pass a sign to the next suburb, Granville, which acknowledges that it is the land of the Dharug people. There is nowhere to turn until I come to a T section and turn right, hoping to cut back through one of the side streets, but they are all dead-ends. Later I find out that the Duck River runs along the end of these streets. I finally turn into one of them. By coincidence, it is a street with a female name: Myrtle in Granville. At the corner is a barber shop of the new trendy kind, using the traditional blue, white and red striped barber sign painted in shiny colours. Two young men are outside smoking. One has a complicated plaited hairstyle. When I am back near the Auburn town centre, it’s the end of school time. I am stuck at a roundabout with a school at the corner. Flashing neon letters tell everyone: “Be cool, go to school.” Many women are wearing headscarves and fashionable clothes, picking up their children.
When I leave, trying to escape the peak hour traffic, I realise how lively this town centre is. I decide it doesn’t give justice to the people living in the quiet streets if I don’t explore where they go when they leave their homes. So I come back on Saturday by train. Like it always seems to be in Australian cities, this suburb only has a few streets with shops and restaurants. But they are very busy, and I imagine even more so if it weren’t for the new outbreaks of COVID-19.
There are a lot of jewellery shops and they have customers, unlike in some other areas where jewellery shops are notoriously empty. Here people apparently love gold and big elaborate designs. The women are dressed well and colourfully. There are people from nations I am not versed enough to identify, who you hardly see in Redfern our Newtown. It’s a bit like travelling to other continents. Nice as we can’t do it in reality at the moment. Names of restaurants and shops identify Turkish, Afghani, Pakistani, Korean and more. I pass an Afghani bakery, the smell is delicious and there is a queue waiting outside.
Auburn, by another name then, was a marketplace for the exchange of goods for the Indigenous people of this land. Wikipedia tells me it was a border between the inland Dharug and the coastal Dharawal group. I think places have a memory. It is still a marketplace, now bringing together groups of immigrants to this land.
Helena, May, Maida and Victoria Street, Lilyfield on Thursday, 11 June 2020
This is a cluster of streets with female names. I start in Helena Street near some red brick flats which are most likely public housing units. An almost sure telling sign is the high number of makeshift curtains, ragged pieces of fabric, plastic sheets or broken blinds in the windows. At least that has been my observation.
In comparison, another block further along in the same style and by no means any prettier architecturally has neat curtains and blinds and polished window panes. There is a flat for lease: 2 bedrooms, undercover car park, parquetry floors, sun-drenched balcony. I could live there, even though it’s ugly from the outside. I have lived in a building like that before in Leichhardt, and the flat was very nice. Otherwise, the street has a mixture of family homes, like the surrounding streets. All have been lovingly renovated with different colour themes, yellow and blue, linden and dark green, and gleaming white, showing the tastes of their respective owners.
I discover a theme for this walk: There are chairs on the porches of most of the houses. This afternoon they are empty but they look as if the occupier has just got up to get something. You can see that people actually sit there in the evenings, on the weekend. I mark this as typical for this area, where sitting outdoors on the street side of your house and chatting to your neighbours is important. Especially in recent times when you couldn’t visit other people. The end of Victoria Street portrays this feeling in particular. It’s a cul-de-sac. There are swings in the trees, benches on the footpath, a stone buddha and children’s tiny toy houses. I have often wondered about this in other streets and suburbs, where the porches are empty, except for a flowerpot or ornament, or even messed up with the things you don’t want to have inside.
Children are coming home from school. When I started a bit after 2 pm, I first saw the little ones. The later it gets, the older the children are. Some are big enough to walk home without an adult. The school must be nearby, no one is driving.
In May Street is a laneway library where you can leave and pick up books. There are more and more of this kind around. In Maida Street, I meet a cat, miaowing and brushing against my legs. She has a collar. I wonder if she’s a lost one. I haven’t seen any posters of that kind in the area. It turns out quickly that she lives nearby. When I come back that way, she is sitting on the wall bordering her front garden.
Sometime during the walk, I hear a half-forgotten sound: A plane in low flight. It’s a cargo plane.
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.
Mary Place, Paddington on Friday, 21 Feb 2020
I went to visit some of the galleries for my Saturday gallery tour. One of them is in Mary Place, so I took the opportunity to explore this street. It’s narrow and divided into two parts. The gallery used to be called Mary Place Gallery, now the name is Defiance, a branch of the Newtown gallery of the same name. At the moment there is an exhibition upstairs with drawings by Kevin Connor. He is 88 years old and according to what I’ve read about him, he could be called a flâneur without necessarily using this term himself. He observes and draws the everyday activities of people in the city. One of the drawings was probably done at the Tropicana in Victoria Street which I mentioned in my last post.
Kevin Connor, drawing. Photo taken from exhibition at Deviance Gallery, Mary Place
Around 1958 the Barry Stern Gallery operated here in Mary Place. This was in the days when Paddington was grungy and a no-go zone for ‘respectable’ people. Today most parts of the street look affluent and well-kept. From the odd mix of buildings, you can still recognise the former working-class environment. One young, smart-casually dressed woman walks along, smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone. Another stands at the corner of a shop, also smoking a cigarette. Across is the other property Barry Stern had bought in the 1950s. He converted it into a gallery by joining three terrace houses. His name and founding date are imprinted on the pavement.
