Welcome to Australia!
Most are up before dawn for our Sydney arrival. They're on the other side snapping the over snapped Opera House. I, however, want the face at the historic, harbour side amusement park.
Most are up before dawn for our Sydney arrival. They're on the other side snapping the over snapped Opera House. I, however, want the face at the historic, harbour side amusement park.
Long before the face, a 19th Century writer extolled the attractions of Australia and New Zealand in contrast with Canada:
“Australasia is the natural resort of emigrants from the British Isles, and ... it will continue to attract thence a steady flow of population. Canada for the emigrant presents not a moiety of the inducements of these South Sea lands”
(Under the Southern Cross Maturin Murray Ballou 1888)
(Under the Southern Cross Maturin Murray Ballou 1888)
Having had Canadian, rather than Australian, nationality bestowed on me, I await the wonders of the 'Lucky Country'. It better be good.
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Bar Luna Park’s manic face and a jolly immigration officer, what does one take away from Sydney? In my case, random, often disconnected impressions. Having been here before, I enjoyably wander without particular purpose. No Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair or surfing beaches for me. But good coffee, cafes and oddities, yes.
Our obsession with being connected is now - except for ‘lost’ tribes in the Amazon - universal. This young man, oblivious of commuters passing his window, is absorbed in communication of a kind.
Don't ask. Don't know. On the window of a dry cleaner that's closed. Perhaps someone more creative than me could turn it into a short story.
(January, 2017 - Since this was posted, my friend Richard in Melbourne (see part thirteen) has kindly done some sterling sleuthing. The dry cleaner’s owner explained that both Boris and Napoleon were cats. Boris, since passed on, lived with the previous owner for seventeen years. Napoleon is the current owner’s pet. When the business was sold, the former owner made the little poster and, as a joke, gave it to the new owner. I suspect the message from feline heaven to the new cat is - ‘Be careful about treading on my territory!’)
(January, 2017 - Since this was posted, my friend Richard in Melbourne (see part thirteen) has kindly done some sterling sleuthing. The dry cleaner’s owner explained that both Boris and Napoleon were cats. Boris, since passed on, lived with the previous owner for seventeen years. Napoleon is the current owner’s pet. When the business was sold, the former owner made the little poster and, as a joke, gave it to the new owner. I suspect the message from feline heaven to the new cat is - ‘Be careful about treading on my territory!’)
I have a particular peeve - standardized signs, instantly recognizable from Toronto to Tokyo, Sydney to Santiago. A depressing blight, although admittedly useful when there’s not an independent coffee shop or decent hamburger otherwise to be found.
So ‘Shark Hotel’ in all its glorious distinctiveness gets my seal of approval.
Sadly, this unusual chemist’s sign, which looks to be of the 1970s or 80s, has seen better days. The store’s days are over.
Who could resist a sign advertising corsets? This is on the side of a venerable department store, Mark Foy’s, which closed in 1980 and has become a court complex.
At a subway station entrance, a beautifully preserved, 1930s neon advertisement.
No messing about, no hiding facts. No 'collision' or worse that wishy-washy term 'accident repairs'. Aussies get straight to the point. A smash is a crash is a smash.
I pause at a pub. Polite Canadians would sooner give up Saturday night hockey on TV before they'd admonish litter bugs who toss their butts without a thought. Australians bring humour to the disgusting remains.
Australia has a history of union militancy and, in 1891, at a Sydney pub …
… the country’s labor movement was born.
The original pub was replaced by the 1919 building above, a popular watering hole in one of Sydney’s trendiest areas, Balmain.
An easy commute to Sydney centre, Balmain was once working class. Now, says a promotional leaflet, it’s an ‘eclectic waterside enclave’ with ‘a thriving culinary and cultural artisan scene’. This includes shops offering ‘directional Australian fashion’, whatever that is. What we do know is that where you trip over meditation classes is no longer home to factory workers, miners and dockers. Nor for humble, retired scribes who watch every penny. However, Australians are democratic lot and I’m allowed to stroll as long as I behave myself and don't sing ‘The Red Flag’ or ‘Internationale’.
As in Britain, homes often have names. In Balmain, I find 'Clarinda'. Who was Clarinda, I wonder. What memory, what long dead romance, consummated or otherwise, led to the name on a 19th Century house?
For that matter, what would possess someone to name their home after a Muppet? This worries me until inquiries reveal it was named Elmo more than a hundred years ago.
On a posh Balmain side street, I find a ‘Rover 75’, the poor man’s Rolls, produced a few years after the War. I had a ‘Rover 105’, bought used in the 1970s. Unfortunately, parking in Hampstead, where I lived in London, was impossible and I sold the car, complete with its original tool kit in a handcrafted, sliding wooden tray. The smell of the seat leather is with me yet.
Near the Harbour Bridge, another working class community under assault. Gentrification is a worldwide, some would say, plague, others improvement.
This iron stairway is in a threatened block of early 20th Century ‘workmen’s dwellings’.
Clicking on the link takes you a community group opposing redevelopment and shows pictures and an architect’s plan of the workers’ flats.
Ironically, on a crumbling building, a poster for an exhibition about a vanished Sydney.
However, on the plus side, in a splendid state, is this handsome 1880s pissoir.
I am intrigued, as obviously the gentleman is, by the unexpected sight under, of all places, the Harbour Bridge. It is - I checked - still in working order.
As we depart after two days, Luna Park's busier than it was at six in the morning.
Those prepared to pay $288 (AUS) to climb the bridge watch as we sail out.
Just to be contrary, I had thought about a post devoid of the Opera House …
... but, to keep people happy, include the shot. See? There it is in the distance. Satisfied?
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To say I have hardly done justice to a remarkable city is, of course, true. And, as we circle, how can one cover a continent in four or five posts? Impossible. Coming up will be but a few photos of, and inadequate comments on, Australia with a Bali temple or two tossed in.
