Know my name

March and April 2021

By March I was mainly hunting for street names. My exhibition was going to open on 17th April at Articulate project space in Leichhardt. Over the months of working on the project, I became more and more aware that the accumulation of female street names is a powerful statement as such. This had to manifest itself visually in the exhibition. I had mostly taken photos of the things I encountered in the streets and the signs just occasionally. It was only a few weeks ago that I realised I needed many more of those. I visited Penrith and Fairfield, Chester Hill, and Greenacre to name a few because there are clusters of female names in these suburbs. I think they were just taken out of the hat to name the many new streets in the sprawling residential developments over the last 30 years or so.

Streets named in the 19th century mostly refer to Colonial interests. Elizabeth Street which goes from the CBD to Zetland is named after the first wife of Governor Macquarie. Many of the countless Victoria roads and streets in Sydney would have been named after Queen Victoria, among them the one in Marrickville. There was a push from the Inner West Council last year to rename such streets with Aboriginal names.

But apart from Victoria and a few princesses, the naming of the older streets took place on a more domestic level. From what I could find in the online history archives, they were named after relatives of early property developers. One of them was Joshua Josephson, the son of a convict, who became a musician, a solicitor and the Mayor of Sydney at some stage. In Newtown, many streets were named after his daughters, his stepsister and his brother’s wife.

I found only one street with a first and a surname: Lilian Fowler Place in Marrickville. She was Australia’s first female mayor, serving as the mayor of Newton from 1937 to 1939. It seemed to show that Sydney doesn’t acknowledge the achievement of women in their naming of places. A historian pointed out later that some women may be mentioned only by their surname. But this is a half-hearted homage. Who would know that Lawson Avenue in Marrickville is named after Louisa Lawson? A poet, writer and feminist and the mother of Henry Lawson. But this is an entirely different area of research. Instead, I took the liberty to claim some of the street names as female, when they might have been someone’s surname, a flower or a place.

For the exhibition, I installed rows of photos with street signs running along the gallery walls like roads. Another part was to put a second set of photos into alphabetically labelled boxes. Visitors were encouraged to look for their name or for any woman’s name who has a meaning to them and take the photo home.

Down the "Olive"

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.

And the times they are a-changin'

Fanny Place, Surry Hills on Friday 15 January 2021

It’s a small lane, lined by neat, freshly painted houses. People who live here meet for a glass of wine outside on Sunday evenings, as I discovered one day when coming past by coincidence. Today a plaque in the small playground tells me that the area became a desired address in the 1830s. In the 1860s mechanics, shopkeepers and skilled artisans moved in. And by the turn of the 20th century, it was an overcrowded slum. Now Fanny Place looks gentrified and rather wealthy.

The plaque doesn’t tell me that this was and always will be Gadigal land.

Ivy

Ivy Street and Lane, Darlington on Sunday, 8 November 2020

First I walk along Ivy Street which has mainly Victorian terraces and big, old eucalyptus trees.

This suburb still seems to have the Council waste collection day for household items which the neighbouring Redfern has not to my great regret. I am tempted to take a discarded little footstool with me. I am also tempted to bring some of my own unwanted household goods here. But I resist both temptations.

Across Abercrombie Street, Ivy Street is dominated by the large warehouse which used to have offices and now flats. I had an encounter with this part of Ivy Street, when I did my ‘Night Cruise’ project, photographing the building through raindrops on the windshield of my car.

Ivy Lane is divided by Lawson and Abercrombie Street, merging here with the Glengarry Castle Hotel at the corner. People walk slowly, getting coffee from the shops, stopping for a chat. The area feels like a secluded neighbourhood this Sunday afternoon. Not like the busy thoroughfare it is during the week between Redfern Station and the nearby university.

Rosemary's Windows

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.

Chelsea and Zamia

Chelsea and Zamia Street, Redfern on Monday, 19 October 2020

On the corner of Chelsea Street are the ‘Little Evie’ café and deli. This street has some very pretty houses, some of them timber cottages. One building is grey and quite neglected. It must have been a warehouse recognisable from the loading beam. The window underneath is bricked up. There is another neglected warehouse and a Victorian terrace, apparently also empty, with trees and vines taking over. Chelsea Lodge is a 60s yellow brick block and advertises a flat for lease. As I walk along on one side of the street, I pass a school girl, about 10 years old who is wearing magenta-coloured leg warmers. When I go back on the other side, she comes towards me again. 

I have taken photos in Zamia Street before around 2005. I can’t find the spot where I photographed the public housing buildings through bougainvillea blossoms. But the blocks are still there, looming against dark clouds. These are the ones belonging to the complex built in the 1970s with a utopian vision and now threatened to be demolished. The development plans were already made public a few years ago. It is unclear yet what is going to happen.

Further down the street is a shed-like construction that seemed to be made entirely out of rusty corrugated-iron panels. That’s what I thought back then. But it is a solid house and a family is apparently living there. I hear the voices of children from behind the fenced-in yard.

Strangely, the girl with the magenta leg warmers is with me again, this time accompanied by another girl and a woman. They all get into a car. The two streets are not even so close to each other. I feel like a stalker.

Both Chelsea and Zamia have a playground that is full of children and adults, real neighbourhood meeting points. If you have small children…

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. 

Finding gold in Auburn

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.

Wealthy sisters

Margaret, Myrna, Ada, Marion, Strathfield on Sunday, 19 July 2020

Many of the residential streets in Strathfield have big mansion-style houses. Some must have been built at a time when the area was rural and the houses were surrounded by large properties. Other architectural styles followed. By the end of the 19th century, this suburb was known as one of the highest-status areas in Sydney, along with Double Bay and Darling Point. In comparison, the churches around here are rather modest. 

In Myrna Road new white palaces are dominant. An arch window theme of different sizes and executions seems to be en vogue. The burned-out rooftop of a simple brick house tells me that the fire gods deemed it to be unworthy of its neighbours.

I learn that Meredith Street is not derived from the female name but refers to Frederick Meredith. He was a free settler who had been given land in the area in 1793, the land which belonged to the traditional custodians, the Wangal people. 

There are several schools in Margaret Street, or rather several buildings of the Meriden School, Junior and Senior. It’s an Anglican school for girls. The Santa Maria del Monte Santa Sabina College is at the corner of The Boulevarde with several huge mansions on the campus. This one is a Catholic school.

The apartment blocks around here are less impressive, even though one of them is called “Place Vendôme”. Another has a comfortable chair with a blanket draped over it out on the front lawn. Someone must have been sitting there, enjoying the sunshine.

It’s funny how the eye and the mind see different things than the camera because later I notice that it wasn’t a blanket but the chair was used to dry the bed sheets which didn’t fit on the rack.

This too shall pass

Mary Street, Burwood on Sunday, 12 July 2020

It’s a small street near the train station at the back of the main shopping strip in Burwood Road. On one side is a newish high apartment building with a glass shopfront, featuring a jewellery shop and a restaurant. On the other side, stretching all along the street is an old, grey-painted building. It seems to be empty. Looking at its new neighbours, I guess it probably won’t survive very much longer. I discover an alley at the back. At the corner, it is revealed that the building belonged to the Police Citizens Boys Club, chiselled in big bold letters into the wall. I first thought this was a club for the police when there were hardly any women in the force and the men felt like boys among themselves playing snooker and clapping each other on the shoulder. 

People who grew up in Sydney probably know what the club really stands for. But my uninformed guess is not entirely ridiculous when you know that exclusive all-male institutions still exist, like The Australian Club in Sydney, frequented by the likes of John Howard and George Pell. 

The Police Citizens Boys Club was founded by Police Commissioner William John MacKay in 1937 to keep boys from poor neighbourhoods off the streets and offer them a better chance in life. I found a newsreel from 1939 in the National Film and Sound Archive, praising the club as one of the greatest and most humane organisations in the world. They offered sports activities and a safe environment for socialising. Apparently also helped with finding jobs and enabling the boys when they were grown up to “move their families to a better residential area”. All this is delivered in the typical male newsreader voice of the 30s and 40s. Today the club includes females and has still a similar function. 

The alley behind Mary Street features back doors of food shops and restaurants, milk crates to sit on when you step out from work for a break, kitchen smells, music sounding faintly from somewhere inside, towels drying on a rack next to a shiny BMW. In one corner we are urged not to pee, an unofficial inscription in scrawly letters. 

The lockdown is over, but restrictions still remain. There are some places where you can sit inside with a limited number of people, some only offer takeaway and others haven’t survived.

Maria and Olympia

Maria Street, Petersham on Friday, 19 June 2020

This street is entirely residential, nice little houses with porches, each one has its own character. 

One house seems to be derelict. A huge poinsettia is growing over the broken entrance gate to the front garden. I dare to go in. Steps lead up to a grill door which allows a view into the room beyond. Suddenly I get a terrible feeling that it’s not deserted. Someone lives here in between the cardboard boxes, rags and old newspapers and I’m intruding.

It’s a bit like the old milk bar in Parramatta Road near Johnston Street. For years the door was open every time I drove past, but it looked dark and forbidding. Once I ventured inside. There was no merchandise or food, just empty chocolate cartons and posters from another time. While I was snooping around, a terrible voice suddenly yelled from the back. I didn’t wait for the owner of the voice to appear. I read later that the Olympia Milk Bar used to be an institution in that neighbourhood.

Today, at the house in Maria Street, there is no sound. Maybe it is deserted after all. 

Twice I meet a young woman with pink hair, each time going in the opposite direction. First, she is with a small boy, later she has two boys with her, one in a school uniform. She looks very young and I wonder if she is the mother or the nanny. If I was a little boy I would like to have a mother like that. 

Olympia Milk Bar in 2012

Another Margaret

Margaret Street, CBD on Wednesday, 17 June 2020

The day is windy and rainy. I am at Circular Quay to catch a ferry to meet a friend on Cockatoo Island which had just reopened the day before with the extension of the Sydney Biennale ‘Nirin’ after months of lockdown. But I get a phone call that she fell off her bike and had to go back home. So I use the opportunity to go to Margaret Street as I’m always putting off going to the CBD.

There is a lot of construction work happening. One huge building is totally covered with scaffolding and the protective coverings they now use. At the corner it reveals to be the old 1938 Elgin Building, at least judging from the enlarged photo with the art deco style clock tower and the writing on the panels covering the construction site. It’s strange how often you cannot remember a place, once it is gone or covered up. It’s also strange how often you don’t look up while walking in the streets, because when I do, the old clock tower is there, sticking out above the scaffolding. It’s 12 o’clock until further notice.

I read up about the Elgin building on the internet. It was once the Shell House. In April 2019 the Menzies Hotel next to it was demolished and revealed large painted ‘Shell’ signs on the side wall of the adjacent building. It says in this article that the signs would be covered again soon as the new 27-storey Wynyard Place Tower is going up there. And this is happening now. The article also says how significant the Shell company was for the growth of Australian business.

On the other side of the street is a diner with glass doors displaying so many warning signs that I wonder how anybody dared to make their way inside. But some did.

Next is the Scots Presbyterian Church Sydney. It’s a huge neo-gothic building and it is closed. Within its arches is a small coffee kiosk with the sign ‘Order Inside’. I find this unusual as recently we were always told to stay outside of cafés. The next window reveals that it is quite nice inside and you are allowed to sit down. One woman, however, is standing near the open window reading a newspaper, probably waiting for a takeaway. I glimpse the headline of an article on the open page: “What discounts to look for as isolation ends”.

At the corner of Kent Street, the pavement at the traffic lights is covered with mysterious multicoloured numbers and letters, lines and arrows. Some say ‘EMPTY’. Obviously, it must have to do with what is underneath. I’ve looked that up afterwards too and found that these signs indicate cables and pipes underneath, red for electric wiring, blue for water, yellow for gas, green for CCTV or cable networks, white has mixed meanings, for proposed excavation but also messages for workers.

Margaret Lane is just a gap between glass and concrete towers. It only has backside garage doors and service and fire exits, no front entrances. Someone is smoking in one of the doorways. I make up my own theory about the lane, inspired by the large photo at a corner on the way back to Circular Quay. The photo shows a lane that was there at this location in 1901 called Brown Bear Lane (Later Little Essex Street). It is a narrow alley with a dilapidated wall and workers’ housing. That’s what Margaret Lane could have looked like.

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.’