This too shall pass

Mary Street, Burwood on Sunday, 12 July 2020

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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. 

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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.

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Another Margaret

Margaret Street, CBD on Wednesday, 17 June 2020

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.’

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