Epilogue

Roslyn Street, Kings Cross, 7 June 2021

In the final month before my exhibition, I realised that I cannot visit all of Sydney’s streets with female names. I would have liked to go to Sandy Glen, Nadine Close, Kerry Avenue or Kim Street because I know women with these names who might possibly visit the exhibition and should find a photo with their name. But this would have meant to do many more trips to far-away suburbs. Looking at some of them on Google maps also told me that these streets are mostly residential and very similar to each other. I took some screenshots from the map, but that was not the original idea. So the most logical moment to stop was with the exhibition Random Discoveries in April 2021.

There were also a few streets in my vicinity that I had missed. One of them was Roslyn Street in Kings Cross. This street has a lot of memories for me as I lived nearby in Macleay Street when I had come to Sydney in 1997. It marks the beginning of my life in this city. That’s why I want to include it here at the end of this journal.

In those days the street was busy by day and night. There was the Café Amsterdam at the corner to a small lane. Smoking was still allowed in cafés and bars then. In the ‘Amsterdam’ people often smoked other stuff than just cigarettes. Next door was the Baron’s, a bar to chill out late at night. On the other side of the street was the Piccolo Bar, an iconic café since 1952. The owner Vittorio himself was always present, making cups of coffee and chatting with customers.

My visit today is not the first one since the heady days of the late 1990s. I’ve been here many times and know that the ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Barons’ are long gone. Instead, there is a commercial building by the Architects Durbach Block which won the Harry Seidler Award. It is impressive but somehow cold and impersonal. At least on my last visits, Vittorio was still there, sitting outside of his café and talking to his friends.

This time, after lock-outs and lockdowns the street looks sad. The Piccolo Bar is closed, and newspapers boarding up the windows. I heard that Vittorio has retired and wants to sell it.

It is the beginning of June 2021 and I don’t know yet that the longest lockdown is still to come.

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.

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.

Caroline

Caroline Lane, St Peters on Friday, 4 December 2020

Caroline runs parallel to May Street and has a lot of graffiti. It’s a backside alley lined with fences and factories. There is a gym and a poster printer. A broken model of an 18th-century ship is dumped outside one of the garage doors. Maybe it’s meant to be the HMS Endeavour?

A sketchy, black-and-white Spiderman rises above a geometrical graffiti. A paper sign says “Do not paint here”. At the corner of May Lane is a mural by Reubszz. When I look around towards St Peters station I see a construction site, a high building, almost finished. Just there I took a photo of a grey old house many years ago.

It’s hot today. What am I doing here?

Whispers

Charlotte Lane, Darlinghurst on Saturday, 14 November

Some streets or lanes give me a special tingle. The walls whisper. It’s not just because they have features of the past. In this case, a row of brick and sandstone houses are from an earlier time than the usual Victorian terrace. What I see in my mind’s eye are not the old Colonial times but the early 20th Century. Crammed life in narrow streets, small corner shops, men with hats, ragged-looking children, no trees, no flower pots.

Darlinghurst was the domain of gangster boss Tilly Devine. I look up the history and specifically search for Charlotte Lane. In this lane, the founder of the first Razor Gang, Norman Bruhn, was shot dead outside Mac’s sly-grog and cocaine den in 1927. Bruhn had come from Melbourne and thought that it was ridiculous that Sydney’s crime world was run by two women, the other being Kate Leigh. Serves him right. It is said that this killing was executed by one of Tilly’s gang, Frankie Green. But there are other possibilities, one being the owner of the den, Joe McNamara, who had been robbed by Bruhn and his mates sometime earlier.

This end of Darlinghurst struggles against the bullies from the city. The high buildings of College Street tower over old Charlotte Lane.

Far Horizons

Morgan Avenue, Matraville on Thursday, 15 October 2020

I cannot find Morgan Avenue. I am already at the roundabout at La Perouse where I eat my sandwich, sitting on a bench. It is very windy. I turn the navigator on to find a petrol station and make another attempt to locate this street. It leads me through an area where trucks come thundering out of yards without stopping to look left or right. Finally, the navigator takes me into the Botany Cemetery. From here I can see the bay where Captain Cook first landed in Kamay (Botany Bay) on the fateful day of 29 April 1770.

I find it unsettling to be guided to a street in a graveyard. I used to like cemeteries, reading the inscriptions on the stones and guessing about the lives of the people buried. Today it makes me sad. The inscriptions on the headstones speak of tragedies. Here lies a two-year-old boy and his mother who died only one month later. Somewhere else a young man is dearly missed. I think I am too old to enjoy cemeteries.

A car arrives, and a middle-aged man gets out with a watering can. Most graves here don’t have living plants. I am curious about who he is visiting. When he has gone, I find the grave easily. It has a rosebush, the water droplets are still on the petals. The woman remembered on the stone died old in 1986. I am touched by this dedication.

Many of the graves have no one who cares for them anymore. They are caved in, the stone plates broken into pieces, covered with lichen.

School children walk by on a path outside.

Lola and the sea

Lola Road, Dover Heights on Friday, 9 October 2020

Lola Road ends at a park called Raleigh Reserve and a cliff overlooking the ocean. The park is just a stretch of mangy grass with a tree in the middle, but the view over the wide open sea is amazing. There are different styles of houses, big and small. I walk past a cute bungalow with three chairs and a table on the verandah. Just when I wondered why people don’t use their outdoor settings, a white Spitz appears from behind the house and an old man with a teacup and a book in his hands follows. 

The girls have taken over

Leslie Street, Tempe on Sunday, 4 October 2020

In the days this street was named, Leslie was known as a male name, while the female version was Lesley. But in the meantime, this distinction has been overturned. It sounds the same anyway. And so I am here in this cozy street. I hope all the neighbours like each other because it’s the kind of environment where they should. I feel that most small cul-de-sac streets have this ambience of privacy. Because you can’t drive through, there is no reason for anyone to go there who is not connected in some way to the residents. Except for me, of course. 

The only person I see is a young man in his driveway, loading a small truck with witches’ hats and whatever other barricades. A trailer is parked in the street, stacked up with the same things. A sign says it’s a traffic management business.

The weird and the beautiful

Margaret Street, North Sydney on Monday, 28 September 2020

This street looks like a walkway in a park, going uphill between trees and bushes. First, there are some sandstone houses, a small art deco block of flats and a car mechanic workshop hidden away in a recess. Then steps are going up high to the next level. Halfway is a small lawn with a bench under trees and on the other side a sprawling building with walls and towers like a fortress. Some renovation work is in progress. They are putting in shiny corrugated aluminium roofs that clash with the medieval theme. A man working on the site asks me if I got lost. In turn, I ask him if he is the owner of this building, seeing that he looks a bit older than the average construction worker.

“No, I wished”, he answers. “You wished? It’s rather weird.” “Yeah, it is a bit. It has been here for 40 years.”

Chomsky Knows

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. 

Lorna

Lorna Lane, Stanmore on Thursday, 24 September 2020

There are a lot of lanes in Stanmore. Lorna Lane is one of them. It’s not, as I first thought, because there were many back street factories, like in Lilyfield and Rozelle. Stanmore mainly started from big farming estates granted to settlers in the early days of the Colony. Over time it developed into a place where affluent working people would move to bigger houses, away from the overcrowded inner suburbs.

Today I find a few discarded things, thoughtfully arranged for people who might need these items: a lamp, an outdated TV table with drawers for the video player and cassettes, and some crockery neatly stacked. There is a tent in its bag. I am tempted in case I’ll go on a camping trip again. But I leave it, too much worry about cleaning and disinfecting. In another lane are some thick-skinned lemons on the ground which fell over the fence. I leave them too.

There is a lot of renovation happening in the area. It seems to be a sign of these times. They say home improvement purchases have increased. Bunnings is laughing.

Visionaries

Una Street, Redfern on Saturday, 19 September 2020

I’m looking for Una Street. It doesn’t seem to exist. Even though my phone map is trying to get me there with its pulsating dot. I’m at the corner of Regent Place and Lawson Square where a blue building stood empty for decades, now finally demolished. An apartment block nearby has been here for at least twenty years as far as I remember. Behind is a path with no name, maybe that was Una Street once? When I walk around the block, I see a wig shop. It is closed, maybe forever. This small area is like a peninsular between two major roads with roaring traffic. Doesn’t seem to be a good spot for a speciality store. The window display is stacked with mannequin heads wearing wigs of different hairstyles and colours. They all stare into the distance, or into the future, mouths set defiantly. It doesn’t seem good what they are seeing.

Rocky Shores

Undine Street, Maroubra on Friday, 11 September 2020

This street runs steeply downhill towards the ocean and ends at a promenade above a rocky shore. At the corner is a pretty home with stained glass windows and a swimming pool at the front, facing the sea. The view is spectacular. It’s sunny and windy today.

Some front gardens have low-growing yellow or orange flowers with thick, fleshy leaves, which only grow on the sandy ground near the ocean. They are closing their petals early for the night while the sun is still out, at least two hours before dusk. Beyond the fence of a property is an orange variety of this flower in a rock bed. Someone has written a warning on an ugly cardboard box sitting next to it: “Do not pick the flowers”. It seems to defeat the purpose.

I walk along the path for some time until I see Maroubra beach in the distance. 

Dark Clouds

Marion Street, Bankstown on Sunday, 6 September 2020

At one end of Marion Street is the Bankstown airport for small planes and helicopters. It has its own set of streets and street names. It is Sunday and cloudy. The airport is empty.

I was never here before, but I guess it would normally be very busy on a Sunday. There are tourist flights on offer, flying lessons and other things, but everything is shut. Some people are around, but few and far between. A couple of small planes are taking off, and a helicopter hovers above the airfield otherwise is silence.

I read on a banner that it’s the 80th birthday of the airport this year. Maybe they would have had celebrations with stalls and lots of people. It’s sad. Dark clouds are hanging over deserted buildings.

The other end of Marion Street finishes at the town centre at City Plaza. It's deserted. The centre looks as if a big child has taken pieces from different sets of building toys and placed them haphazardly here and there.

In the meantime, the sun has come out, and some trees show their first white blossoms on leafless branches. Elsewhere, I have noticed tiny buds on the plane trees. The Bankstown hotel has pretty chairs and tables under umbrellas. Two men are sitting outside. When I return from my little tour around town, there is no one.

Bankstown had COVID-19 cases recently and was declared a hot spot, so I had put off going here for this reason. But this is quite a while ago. I don’t think there is any danger in walking through the empty streets. I am not going inside to eat or drink or buy anything anywhere.

Just when you don’t want to get into contact with strangers a man stops near me. “Excuse me, my name is Bob and what is yours?”

I guess he's from an African country, but I am not informed enough to know which one. I tell him my name and he asks if I am from around here. I say, “No, actually from further away. I’m just about to return.” He thinks I’m beautiful. I thank him for his nice words and start to leave. Then he wants my telephone number, but I decline. He accepts the refusal gracefully.

Always was, always will be

Adina Avenue, La Perouse,  31 August 2020

It is amazing how Sydney is blessed with so many beautiful shores and beaches without having to travel very far from the centre. Adina Avenue is on a hill, overlooking Botany Bay.

The area is named after the French Comte La Pérouse who landed here in 1788.

I read that the original name was Gooriwal, and the traditional custodians were the Kameygal people.

The first thing I notice is an old timber church, fenced in for restoration. On the fence banners, it says ‘This Church Restoration priority belongs to the Elders, who have expressed their desire to restore the Church to provide a space for healing and fostering strong social cohesion.’ I learn later that this was an Evangelical Mission Church, significant to the Aboriginal community of La Perouse as it had been a form of protection for the Aboriginal people of the area from the government’s policy of child-taking.

At the corner of Adina Avenue and Goolagong Place is a weathered community board containing a notice in faded handwriting: ‘La Perouse Discreet Aboriginal Community. Residents only.’ Down the hill from here is a bungalow. On the low brick wall surrounding it, are written the words ‘Bidjigal Land’.

The resistance leader Pemulwuy, who fought against the British occupation in the 1790s, lived in this area. I read that he belonged to the Bidjigal people who resided in Toongabbie and Parramatta.

The white settlers found the area too rough for living, but it attracted city dwellers for day trips, especially when a tram line was created in 1902. The Aboriginal residents used this fact to create a tourist industry, presenting a snake man show and selling boomerangs and ornaments made from sea shells. The most prominent shellwork artist was Emma Timbery also known as “Queen of La Perouse” or “Queen Emma”. She is the great-grandmother of Esme Timbery who is known for her shellwork of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

During the Depression in 1929, hundreds of unemployed people moved out to La Perouse and set up camp in “Happy Valley”. Families lived in shacks made from scavenged wood, corrugated iron, flour bags and cardboard. There was no electricity or running water.

European and indigenous people lived together there. Stories tell that there was a great community spirit despite the hardships.

The Aboriginal community of La Perouse is the only one in the Sydney region that held on to its territory until today against all adversaries and threats of relocation. Land rights were finally obtained in 1984.

Phoenix

Jennifer Street, Little Bay, 31 August 2020

This street has residential houses on one side, the Botany National Park and a golf course on the other. There is a boardwalk that leads through an area that was created for the regeneration of a plant community named ‘Banksia Scrub.’ Sadly, here too was a fire and most of the scrub has burned down, new fern growing underneath the blackened branches of short trees and bushes. 

At the end is a road dividing the golf course and I walk along a little way. It’s very windy, I have to brace myself against it. I veer off on a path that goes a bit uphill. From here I can see the undulating landscape of the golf course and the ocean on the horizon.

I think, I am looking towards the side of Little Bay, where Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the coast in 1969. 

The irony of history

Margaret Place, Paddington on Wednesday, 26 August 2020

Margaret is a tiny lane hidden away in an old part of Paddington. There are many sandstone and timber houses in the neighbourhood. The lane is narrow, just a footpath with a row of 3 small cottages with a wall at the end. Outside are plants and a table and chairs. I don’t dare to go too far inside, it feels private. One door is open. The interior is bright, thanks to installed skylights and probably a glassed verandah door at the back. In the past, it must have been very dark in these houses. By 1900 Sydney’s population had grown significantly and Paddington had turned into a slum. The rows of terraces were overcrowded, there was no sewerage. These days the area is charming with its narrow streets in the sunlight. It’s ironic how these squalid places have turned into prime real estate.

The neighbourhood

Suitcases are for free these days

Madeline and Maria St, Strathfield South; Mina Rosa St, Enfield on Tuesday, 25 August 2020

On one end of Maria Street is Ford Park. There is nothing much happening in this street. In front of a family home are several suitcases in various styles and sizes with a ‘For Free’ note on them.

Madeline Street begins as a residential street and then after driving through the tiniest passage between curved concrete walls, it starts to be industrial. There are lots of trucks thundering along this street, obviously via another route than that narrow passage. It doesn’t feel safe to walk. There is a large complex named “Sydney Meat Market”. It houses many known brand names. I immediately think ‘Corona hotspot’, just because one or two meat factories had outbreaks.

Mina Rosa Street in Enfield is also unremarkable but has an Olympic swimming pool at the end with a little park around it. There are Art Deco lamp posts. The plane trees are still bare. The pool opened in 1933 and was Sydney’s first freshwater swimming pool. I am reading in a blog about swimming pools that not long after the opening, which attracted a crowd of 16,000 visitors in the first week, there was a big flu epidemic in Sydney. Some reports blamed it on the crowded pool. 

Today it looks deserted at first glance, but it’s open by appointment and a young man is just walking through the park and enters the gates. 

Jane and Ann have seen a lot

Jane and Ann Street, Balmain on Monday, 24 August 2020

These streets are in an old part of Balmain with many sandstone houses and the traces of previous times tangible. It feels good to be back in a street with history after some weeks in suburbia.

In Jane Street is the tall church you can see from the Pyrmont waterfront where I often go for walks. The street is on a hill and the church appears even taller for that, a true landmark of Balmain. The church’s name is St Augustine and the foundation of the first smaller sandstone church was laid in 1848. This building is still standing and nestling next to the tall brick church which was built in 1907 to accommodate a growing population. I am reading now that the church has a most beautiful stained glass rose window which catches the morning light. I should go back there to see it. There is a Catholic Primary School named after Fr John Therry. He was appointed Parish Priest for Balmain in 1856, apparently after difficult struggles with Governor Macquarie who was supporting the Anglican church. I am reading in the history pages of the St Augustine website that Fr Therry was constantly agitating for the rights of Catholics and Aboriginal people so that he was even fired as a Catholic Chaplain at one stage, later to be re-instituted. In the early days of the Colony, Catholics were viewed with suspicion and Masses were even banned. The 1877 convent of the Immaculate Conception is also in Jane Street.

At the corner to Darling Street is the London Hotel, one of the oldest pubs in Sydney, operating non-stop since 1870. I am glad to see that it has survived the Covid19 lockdown and restrictions with a safety plan in place. The building itself is even older, it was built as a corner shop in 1857. I remember the London Hotel to be a very touristy pub, but it probably always had its congregation of locals as regular patrons. It looks as if they have regained their territory. People know each other.

At the corner of Ann Street is a café, preparing to close. A last customer and his dog are sitting at an outside table in the probably also last ray of sunshine in this corner.

The street slopes down to a park at White Bay and the empty docks. You can see some of Pyrmont and the Anzac bridge through trees. There are modest timber cottages, sandstone houses, terraces, and a sixties block of flats. I photograph bits and pieces of these places when suddenly a shabbily dressed woman with her dog comes up behind me and asks accusingly what I am photographing. I say, the lovely houses around here. “You are not allowed to do that. I watched you taking photographs of my place. They should not be on your phone.” “Ok”, I say, “which house was it? I’ll delete it.” She’s taken aback and doesn’t want to do it. Momentarily I have forgotten that nobody wants to be next to strangers in these Corona times and flick through their photos, heads bent over the phone. She could have told me which one it was, but that may be too much information if you are already suspicious. 

One lonely balloon

Elizabeth Lane, Redfern on Saturday, 11 April 2020

It’s Easter Saturday. Restrictions are reinforced over this long weekend. No travel too far from your own suburb. Not sure what too far is, but definitely nowhere outside of Sydney. They have roadblocks. You are only allowed to go out shopping, exercise, and whatever else the ‘absolutely necessary’ activities may be. Yesterday afternoon I drove to Pyrmont with Dimitri to walk at the waterfront. I imagined there would be random checks at the side of the road to ask where we were going. There were none. Even though I was behind a police car at a traffic light which then stopped at the side of the road around the corner as they do when they want to wave you down. But nothing happened. Otherwise I haven’t seen any police patrolling these inner suburbs. 

Apart from a few exceptions, I was so far going through the letter M. Out of necessity in these times, I have changed my system a bit and now try to find any street with a female name in my neighbourhood as it would be unwise to travel to a faraway suburb to take photos.

Today I went to ‘Breadfern’, the local organic bakery, to buy hot cross buns and a loaf of bread. Elizabeth Lane is nearby. It’s only a small stretch at the backside of Elizabeth Street, bordered by Redfern Lane and James Street. 

It’s a sparkling, sunny day, it almost feels happy. When I turn around the corner from Redfern Lane, I hear music coming from an open garage door. It sounds familiar. I know the song well from listening to ‘Triple J’ some years ago. They played it often, so I am able to decipher the words “I’ve got a strange disease”. How appropriate. I couldn’t remember who it was by. When I looked it up later, I realised that I never took notice of the name. It was a Canadian pop music duo named Prozzäk. 

Inside the small courtyard from where the music comes, I see a young couple. He is doing sit-ups. Otherwise, there is nobody in this lane. The wind plays with a yellow balloon on the ground, blowing it back and forth. 

At the other end of Elizabeth Lane is the backside of the warehouse where Damien Minton lives and where he occasionally holds his Sunday arvo art salons. He just recently posted on Instagram of his little adventures in the back lane, observed in isolation from his window. The old, broken piano, he had posted a photo of, is still there. I think he made the comment that art is a victim of the Coronavirus. There is more music coming from inside another place.