View from Harriett Street
Harriett and Ruby St, Marrickville on Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Ruby and Harriett are neighbours. In between is an industrial strip of Carrington Road. While Harriett is a rather unassuming, residential street, Ruby has an unusual feature. The street has a higher and a lower part which is divided by an old sandstone wall. Above runs a path that reminds me very much of places I have seen in France. It feels like being in a village.
Olivia Lane, Surry Hills on Friday, 15 January 2021 and 17 April 2020
I have gone back to Olivia Lane to get a photo of the street name for my exhibition project. My first visit was in the early weeks of the first lockdown in April 2020. I didn’t post my journal then, because I didn’t get any interesting photos. This lane shows mainly the backside of houses, fences and garage doors.
At one end it leads to Devonshire Street and the new tramline. When I look around the corner I notice a red armchair has replaced the discarded mattress from last year. This was the meeting place for a group of skateboarders, and maybe it still is. The only other person I saw then was a girl, about 8 years old, dancing all by herself a kind of hip-hop dance, pretty good. When I came nearer I heard that she was dancing to “Don’t worry, be happy”. She stopped and smiled at me. I smiled back and said “very nice”. She also had hopscotch squares drawn on the asphalt. She seemed to know how to keep up her spirits in those scary and lonely times.
Cecilia Street, Marrickville on Tuesday, 5 January 2021
From the corner of Cecilia Street, the view goes to the Marrickville Town Hall and a winged goddess on a pedestal in front.
The street is a cul-de-sac, ending with a block of units. It looks almost like a gated community. There are two long rows of garbage bins lined up on the side of the footpath. A young man comes out from the property, rolling a bin to join the others. He’s wearing a mask and a turban and looks suspiciously at me. I don’t know why as I haven’t even taken any photos yet. I think it’s this aimless, slow walking and looking around, this loitering in a place without an apparent purpose that is suspicious. I turn around but observe that he is appearing again and again, one bin at a time. A tedious job.
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.
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?
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.
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?”
Elizabeth Street and Lane, Lee Street, Ivy Street and Lane, Randwick on Thursday, 29 October 2020
Elizabeth Street has a music school. The sign reads “Music Is What Feelings Sound Like”. Two young women are loading lots of bottles of alcohol into a car parked out front.
Several generations of architecture come together in this street. Art Deco, 50’s style, Victorian, 21st century. A former garage has become a second-hand clothes shop.
Elizabeth Lane offers views of backyards, and a bit of urban grunge.
Lee Street is on a hill with a view of the city. The area looks a bit like a country town with its unpaved lanes and grassy footpaths. There is a wooden gangway to one of the houses, like a bridge over a creek. Another house is bordered by a low, ancient-looking stone wall.
Sunlight shimmers through the leaves of Acacia trees.
Ivy Street
Ivy Lane
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.
Crystal Street, Waterloo on Monday, 19 October 2020
This is a new street in the big apartment complex which was built on the grounds of the former Australian Glass Manufacturers. It’s more than a complex, almost a suburb in itself with its own streets, parks and shopping centres. The first development started around 2003 and it has continuously grown since then.
I pass the slick facade of the ‘Orange Supermarket’, an Asian grocery store. The interior manages to look as if it is in an old Asian quarter and the prices are low. In the middle of the street is a small park with a water basin from which fountains of water emerge and benches are on each side. People are sitting and reading or having lunch or enjoying the water display. The trees are already quite high and give shade. There are lots of cafés and restaurants and more benches and palm trees lining the street in the pedestrian part. People sit around, meeting for a chat. It’s really quite nice here, even though I don’t like the buildings. At the end of the street is Coles Supermarket.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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 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.
