By the time I reached legal drinking age the six o’clock swill was just a memory, but ten o’clock closing and no Sunday trading were facts of life. So it is that my strongest memory of late teens and early twenties pub life is of the post nine pm Saturday night panic, to stock up for the dry day coming. The time, and bottle shop conditions, were constantly monitored by us on this night when it was vital to have something to do and fuel with which to do it. From nine o’clock on Bottle Shops, part of the pub, there were no independents back then, were the most popular and crowded parts of any pub and pity help those who arrived a 9:50 on a bumper evening to find the sort of crowd that these days you might expect to see for the release of the latest X-Box, though not as orderly.
It’s Saturday night for god’s sake and at Nine PM, instead of setting out for the night as our European cousins might, we were panicking as our core social center, the only one with a government license to purvey fermented liquor, is one hour away from closing. Not just for the night but for the next 36 hours. By the time it re opens the weekend will be over and you will be dragging your sorry ass back to work for another grinding week. Is it any wonder that under such conditions people got confused about their requirements and over compensated, not unlike people threatened by war-time-rationing. “A slab of VB tinnies please” (they were actually steel cans, far more deserving of this title than their aluminum descendants) “No hold on Andy is down this weekend make it two” Hmm, last time he was down his cousin was to, man she’s hot. “Give us a bottle of Vodka too, and I better have a bottle of that Riesling stuff” This was a rationale played out much more often than I’m ever going to be able to convince you.
That it happened is our disgrace, mine, the AHA’s and the NSW Governments. Once all this alcohol was purchased what do you think happened. There’s a point at which drinking becomes irrational. Even if Andy and his hot cousin didn’t show this alcohol needed drinking. Yes we went on to drink at least three times what we would have, had we known as our European and Asian cousins did, that if we wanted it a drink was always available, often from the local grocer. I’m not sure that there weren’t other parts of the world were conditions were as bad as this but I am sure that if there were, then culturally they should have been described, as I would describe us, as Barbarians.
Innocent as I then was I took my publican at his word when he said “sorry mate, it’s the law” little realizing that it was his law. It’s fascinating to reflect that in those days (and little has changed) publicans thrived with little in way of marketing, supported instead by their governments restrictions which made pub attendance a right of passage that guaranteed an ever growing market. What can you do when you turn 18? Go to the pub. What a fabulous marketing ploy and it costs peanuts. I thought my publican wanted longer trading hours in which to do business from which he would obviously profit. Not till much later, did I realize that he was very happy with the status quo. He sold two to three times as much product as he would have staying open without having to pay all those extra wages. A win win situation that left him with plenty of time to stand upright in church on Sunday proud of his handsome contribution to the plate.
Nowadays I, and the public at large, bare up under the tyranny of the descendants of these licensed purveyors who having been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty first century, where to compete with licensed clubs their friends in government have granted them licenses for poker machines and Totalizer agencies that have turned them into gambling factories where we can relieve ourselves from the pointlessness of work that demands a ludicrously unreal commitment to corporate greed. Throwing our money into ever increasing slots while throwing ever increasing varieties of alcohol down our throats, in order to reach a charged oblivion that often ends in violence and glassing.
It’s in this environment that John Thorpe the current chief of the AHA stands up to warn us that new legislation to license small bars will see the city awash in alcohol. That’s flawless; and why not. His organization has been practicing this hypocrisy for decades.
The second phase of my education in the in the purveying of alcohol began when in the early seventies I set out to travel in the world at large. A quest at which I failed though having set such a large goal I did manage to spend a number of years in Asia or more specifically Indonesia, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong and Japan. Traveling then, with my particular acquired disposition to Alcohol and its consumption, I paid close attention to the social and political mores of its dispensation and effects.
These of course were many and varied. Indonesia and Malaya, both predominately Muslim saw the vast population abstinent but alcohol was, particularly where foreign tourists were likely to be, readily available, a mere commodity like soap or jam or anything that might sell, not restricted to any special licensing. In Singapore and Thailand there was little more discrimination against alcohol consumption than one would find in Australia, that’s to say not much. Availability was again across the board from supermarkets to restaurants, grocery stores to road side stalls. Anywhere in fact that someone might chance to want to buy it. In Hong Kong where I might have expected the then British rule to have imposed restrictions not unlike our own, I once more found liquor available anywhere it might be in demand. It was here, where I spent some time, that I was to come to love the liberty of sitting dockside in the hot evening, when the commerce of the day had left it free, at hastily spread tables, drinking beer eating Rambutans, Satays, Lichees, Noodles and all manner of curbside prepared delicacies amidst crowds of happy punters and wonder why I could not do this at home. Even on the small island Cueung Chow where I rented a flat, with a population of twenty thousand people and no motorized transport, I was able to buy a beer from a dockside grocery and drink at the table they would conveniently erect for me as I awaited incoming friends on the ferry from Hong Kong. On some evenings long socials with beer and Backgammon would last well into the early morning hours.
In none of these countries did I ever witness the cultural drunkenness and violence which had been so obvious back home in Australia. Rather there, where by John Thorpe’s standards, he would have had to say that the cities were awash in alcohol, I never saw a punch let alone a glassing. In fact I saw very little drunkenness of the falling down kind at all.
Japan or Tokyo where I was also to spend some time was another story, not just in regard to alcohol consumption but on every plane as I’m sure anyone who has been there will agree. Now there may have been some licensing laws I don’t know, there were so many things going on I didn’t understand. However I or anyone else was able to get a shot of scotch or sake from a not vandalized vending machine 24/7, and it was not uncommon to see a Japanese gentleman having a relationship with one in the early hours of the morning. In those days expense accounts were a large portion of co-operate salaries ensuring the money went round. From my position as barman at a small club I was able to observe their strange customs. It was not in the least uncommon for a group of seven to seventeen (they did nothing in groups of less than seven) to turn up and, after a round of drinks for themselves and as many hostesses were appropriate and available, to order another round upon receipt of which and without drinking them, rise, bid polite farewells and leave. All drinks were frightfully expensive and were put on what we call a tab to be paid on departure. Here again I never witnessed violence, drunkenness yes, in their strange structured parameters of exclusively male culture, violence, never.
I accept that there will always be cultural differences to how different communities approach alcohol consumption but It’s well known by me, government and the AHA that government prohibition as in restrictive licensing of markets and age limits on consumption only serve to encourage abuse of alcohol. Any statement contrary to this such as those of John Thorpe can only be regarded as those of the hopelessly politically compromised and should be ignored.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Morning Walk
I suppose the undisciplined mind has always been the natural enemy of exercise, a state recognized long ago by armies and sports institutions who have always sought to subjugate the minds of their recruits. A Japanese soldier character in a novel I recently read, taught himself to sleep whilst on route march, now that’s mental discipline. I, who never remember a name but always forget a face, am not of this disciplined milieu and often find myself half way through my walk still debating whether to walk today or not. For this reason it’s important that I take each walk on the same route least I become lost and carrying, as I do to remain light, no more identification than a house key, might end my life wandering uncertainly looking for a lock to fit it. I have thus become quite intimate with geophysical, social and philosophical nature of this walk and wish here portray to you my impressions of the same in the hope that you can at least in my telling, enjoy some of the pleasures even if you can not benefit from the exercise.
As the walk commences we proceeds west away from Enmore only three house blocks away into Stanmore proper. I say proper for here we are on the high right side of the tracks where more than a century ago the establishment’s burgers had built for themselves noble homes in the Victorian style and were proud of there Stanmore address. Inspired by their example wealthy merchants continued to come for the next fifty years and theirs is the heritage of federation style houses and flats that make up the bulk of Stanmore today. Their workmen and servants built for themselves, often with the off cuts or stolen materials from these fine houses, what I like to think of as the rubble houses on the other side of the tracks where also the commercial heart, or less glorious sounding shopping centre was established.
On a slightly upward slope we proceed along an avenue of genus Callistemon or Bottle Brush as we have so ingenuously called them. There blossoms combined with Jasmine fill the air with an intoxicating scent powerful enough to overcome even the smell of emissions from jets passing just beyond arms reach and the steady stream of Mosman tractors dropping little treasures at Newington. Here on warm mornings proprietorial cats with no ancestral memory of unleashed dogs roll on their backs in the sun in anticipation of a belly rub.
Notable in this first stretch is Vygonia ( engraved in gold leaf on mirror, looks quite original) this grand free standing manor where current occupants are so confident that they eschew any downstairs curtaining allow us a view, over the hedge, of their grand living and dining areas, library and piano. On the left and at the corner of Merchant Street stands a large originally single story free standing bungalow, now with a rather tacky loft extension and a trickling fountain which always makes me wonder should I have gone before I left home. Although this house on a relatively large land mass has a garage there are always at least three and sometimes four black BMWs parked adjacently. A wealthy family of undertakers perhaps, still wondering why the kids won’t leave home.
At the next corner stands the Cambridge lodge, “32 rooms short or long term stay” semi attached to which stands a renovation site that proceeds so slowly that I’ve begun to believe it is only worked on by those who default on their accommodation fees. By now you notice the grinding marks that have left fresh concrete underbelly exposed where pavement slabs adjoin on the foot paths, and realise that The Marrickville Municipal Council has contracted someone to go all over our finely kept suburb grinding the pavement joints level in an effort to avoid law suits from trippers and ankle turners.
Here’s Newington College Preparatory School which, in light of being the destination of so many afore mentioned Mosman Tractors, has remarkably few parking restrictions. An underground car park - most likely funded by my taxes, - into which said tractors bearing precious plunge from Harrow road, to emerge sans precious, in Cambridge Street may help to explain this. A three car five minute parking zone provides for those not suited by the underground loading dock and it’s here that I often witness these five and six year old tots climbing down from mum’s tipper and struggling into their disproportionate back packs. What can such giant packs contain? Surely this age needs little else than a sandwich, apple and muesli bar. Perhaps the school has a one size fits all bag policy that these poor little buggers must grow into and meanwhile mum blows up a balloon for them each morning, stuffing it in to occupy vacant space. Across the street from the college and its associated buildings, where once surely stood oversized palatial homes we now find a large complex of 1970’s pink and cream brick home units still awaiting the arrival of some PHD student who’s thesis, supported by a grant from the real estate institute, is to realise their worth as equal to their Victorian and Federation ancestors and to provide an ever so favorable comparison to their fascist concrete progeny. Wedged between these and Montague gardens with its overgrow Morteon Bay Figs, stands Hollingworth, obviously way out of space and time from its kin in Castlecrag and the leafy north shore though equally welcome in today’s upwardly mobile Stanmore.
Next of note comes Stanmore Public School and Common 1883, Edwardian really as behooves the consciously conservative mind set of the merchants of Stanmore who saw no need to curtail the ostentatious Victorianism of their homes but drew the line when it came to the institutions from which the very fabric of their society was drawn such as schools. Stanmore P.S. is just such, surrounded now by more nondescript modern demountable buildings play grounds sports fields and no go zones, (even to maintenance staff it appears) the original buildings maintain their empirical integrity..
Our walk now turns west away from the station where immediately to our right are two of my favorite homes. Both spacious and free standing, originally in a style I’ll call Victorian colonial town house though built obviously in the federation era judging by the brickwork. Whilst the one to the right in original double fronted condition maintains its open wrought iron balcony and lead light windows the one to the left has had its single face cleverly bricked over, in arches with baroque balustrades over which are in fills of modern wrought alloy lace. Behind this lace stands statutory to bring tears to the eyes of any Romanic (no not romantic, see Bob Carr like) nut who doesn’t mind a little Kitsch. Between floors set into the brickwork is a relief plaque of cupids. Yes of course it’s terribly gay, both of them with deliberate touches of gilt to the rust look iron work, I can easily imagine Gore Vidal staying over for piss ups with Colleen McCullough.
I’m sorry this is taking so long I’ll try to hurry though I am getting a sweat up. The next turn west into Cavendish Street sees little to remark upon other than a doppelganger of my own duplex block in mirror image. I suspect the builder had his plans on that old tracing paper and just put them down upside down. The only other remarkable thing about this stretch is the number of computer carcasses and monitors abandoned in the street. In fact it begins to remind me of the number I passed in the previous streets without noticing as they have become so much a part of our urban landscape. In these shortening saw tooth blocks heading towards and away from the railway, ever slightly uphill and getting beyond the commuters to Stanmore I begin to find my pace. Broard fronted terraces and Federation Bungalows on both sides of the street now and pretty streets they are with short blocks and leafy trees and look here, another unashamed to allow us uninterrupted view through their downstairs right to the back of their very attractive extensions. That prominently placed music room with the piano, harp and drums looks good, must come by some evening and see what type of concert is preformed with such instruments.
Three story federation blocks of flats are common throughout this walk and if you look to your left here at this rounded corner, these three adjacent blocks reflect this, with their own rounded corners. Red bricks, rounded corners and Deco features, especially to entrances are all that is left to identify these blocks as their original stained lead light windows have long gone in favor of the ubiquitous aluminum variety.
Here I am in one of those fabulous Victorian parks that I call Pathway Parks as along with their stately mature trees, Oaks in this instance, Palm Sunday Palms, play parks with rubberized bitumen and bubblers they feature a maze of interconnecting stone curbed paths one of which leads me on a one way street past All Saints Parish Hall on the left to the civic center of Petersham.
Petersham’s beautiful 1937 art deco town hall stands in stark contrast to the run down boarding houses that make up the rest of the environment on this side of ironically named Crystal Street. This row attracts a type of tenant, maybe themselves attracted by the adjacent Oxford Hotel the longest running topless bar and sex pub in suburban Sydney, who make a busy practice of scarping by moonlight leaving all unwanted worldly goods on the pavement for the homeless to pick through and feather their bus shelter nests .
Now if you’ll bear with me we are half way there and about to cross to the dark, no lets just say other side of the tracks. Here we cross the rail bridge and turn east on York Crescent a cul-de-sac heading back toward Stanmore and the city. Only a hundred meters long it ends in some mystery of ancient town planning or lack there of where the last weatherboard cottage in the street which would not look out of place on a hill outside any country town has a front yard that stretches right across the street leaving only a foot/cycle path between it and the railway corridor.
This narrow path leads into a Boulevard of Grande dimension called Gordon Crescent which runs all the way to Stanmore station. Mirroring Trafalgar street on the other side of the rail, a heavily trafficked two car width concrete corridor with next to no pedestrian access, Gordon crescent, four lanes wide with generous nature strips both sides has virtually no through traffic at all. Yes, since the baker and milkman stopped delivering here, were able to amble down the middle of the road without a care in the world though as I’m here for exercise, of course I walk briskly. This virtually unused street, host to houses of a scale which precludes their use for anything other than Institutions - there’s “Xavier House” - boarding houses, or fantasy investment opportunities for upwardly mobile young things with delusions of grandeur to vie with Napoleon. The end result of this is that very rare, inner western Sydney street, with 75% of its available parking space free at any time night or day.
If such a street was your responsibility, as it is that of the Marrickville Municipal Council what would your priorities be? Well I can tell you that the MMC have just completed their grand plan to completely repair all curbs and gutters, grade and re surface the whole road, presumably for the visual pleasure of commuters as they pass in there sardine can trains. I fell into conversation with one of the workers on a recent morning walk and am pleased to be able to report that the age old practice of having a second Service instrumentality come by as soon as work is completed and dig it back up, this time for electric cables, is still standard procedure. I have strong memories of my father railing against this practice. I don’t want anyone to think that this is a criticism of the MMC. Making extensive repairs to a seemingly undeserving street is not a fault as long as it is not done in neglect of other more deserving works and I know of no such works.
At the Stanmore Station end of Gordon Crescent where it joins a busy rat run through Stanmore shops is another peculiar mini dead end. Here some fool saw fit to place charity clothing bins which as we all know are code for “ local dump”. Here I once saw a twenty year old kitchen donated by some generous benefactor. I think I met the previous owner once, couldn’t bear to see such a waste, couldn’t bear not to have a new one. Some so excited by the opportunity to provide succor have thrown their hob-tops and bags of unwanted clothing clear over the two meter fence into the no mans land bordering the rail line. Thankfully the clothing bins have been removed, but the sites reputation survives and bags of refuse are still scattered here.
Now my walk passes through the tunnel below Stanmore Station past the remarkably blue, blues busker to the right side of the tracks where a stairway leads to the Trafalgar Street entry to Stanmore station. This barely legal flight of stairs built from cement and rubble, probably during the depression, crumbling way beyond their use by date, with aluminum tread edging that has been applied and repaired and re applied and re repaired gives of a sound like tap shoes under the feet of the probable thousands school kids and others every day every week. Not long after school went back I was climbing these stairs behind a mother with three young children when my attention was drawn to the smallest girl bringing up the tail with one of those monster back packs. Tempted to take her sack and give her a boost my eyes were drawn down to the legs below her midi length pinafore which were both artificial. She was only in kindy or first class if that what’s they still call it, climbing these tap stairs that even I view as exceptionally dangerous. Are State Government Services exempt from OH&S scrutiny?
At the top of these stairs I come to a point of local geography and demographic that is difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to describe. Trafalgar Street which as I mentioned before is a two lane busy corridor paralleling the rail line, has for the most part only a foot wide curb/ bump strip between itself and the brick wall of the rail line. At the station this widens into a generous six feet with a pretend barrier of aluminum fencing. This small eight to ten square meter island of pretend safety, at pedestrian lights across Trafalgar, forms the intersection of access to the west bound platform and ticket machines, and the afore mentioned rickety stairs to the tunnel with further stairs to the city bound platform. At peak hour it’s not uncommon to find on this island and back up onto the platform as many as one hundred Newington students, other students, city commuters, an exercising walker and a paper seller all with their own agendas, an accident just waiting to happen. To add coal to this potential fire Within fifteen meters lies the intersection of two saw teeth adjacent streets, the site of Stanmore Public School, and one of these goes on to intersect with Trafalgar Street in the same close proximity.
Now I’m on the home stretch with my Sydney Morning Herald under arm traveling previously covered terrain and I realize I haven’t told you about the trains. All the way from Crystal Street to Stanmore Station I have paralled the trains separated mostly by a wire fence and the inevitable rail side weeds. Sometimes from above, often at their level, I’m able to observe the silver battered bulk interspersed with Tangaras and now and then the pristine Milenium or Milenium+7 judging by the just off the factory floor condition they display. Not a red rattler to be seen which causes me to recollect my own train commuting days in the early and mid sixties when peak hour trains were equally crowded but the doors were manual and in the humid summer months left open to compensate for the lack of air conditioning, almost unbelievable these days but we survived.
Well that’s my walk and that’s how I expect it to be till I at least stop taking it. The variables will be the human encounters which, at walk time, closely approximating morning peak hour will remain fairly stable. Children with and without accompanying parents on their way to school. Newington prefects policing the roadways like shepherds herding their flocks. Commuters hurrying to the station gasping on post home pre train fags. It’s pretty standard but not without exceptions like the old bloke at the station who demanding as if it were his birthright that someone give him a dollar to make up his seniors fare. The people in phone boxes, there are two on my walk, who always seem a little desperate and loud. Maybe it’s just me but people making calls from phone boxes these days always seem desperate especially when some other desperate has thrown a pot plant shattering all the glass the previous night. In fact those out at this time of day who are not going to work or school or of course not in obvious exercise mode ehem do look to be a little desperate don’t you think?
Postscript
One of the best things about the demise of the Howard Government from my perspective is that no more will television news reports be dominated by footage of the PM’s morning walks. More often than I care to note in recent times, my reflection in shop windows puts me in mind of Mr. Howard, particularly in his summer mode of baggy dark shorts, white shirt, ankle high white sox, I think he and I are the only folk left wearing these, and horror of horror exactly the same New Balance joggers. With our peaked caps, worn as they were designed to be, covering the obviously different hair styles and our spreading waist lines we were horror twins.
As the walk commences we proceeds west away from Enmore only three house blocks away into Stanmore proper. I say proper for here we are on the high right side of the tracks where more than a century ago the establishment’s burgers had built for themselves noble homes in the Victorian style and were proud of there Stanmore address. Inspired by their example wealthy merchants continued to come for the next fifty years and theirs is the heritage of federation style houses and flats that make up the bulk of Stanmore today. Their workmen and servants built for themselves, often with the off cuts or stolen materials from these fine houses, what I like to think of as the rubble houses on the other side of the tracks where also the commercial heart, or less glorious sounding shopping centre was established.
On a slightly upward slope we proceed along an avenue of genus Callistemon or Bottle Brush as we have so ingenuously called them. There blossoms combined with Jasmine fill the air with an intoxicating scent powerful enough to overcome even the smell of emissions from jets passing just beyond arms reach and the steady stream of Mosman tractors dropping little treasures at Newington. Here on warm mornings proprietorial cats with no ancestral memory of unleashed dogs roll on their backs in the sun in anticipation of a belly rub.
Notable in this first stretch is Vygonia ( engraved in gold leaf on mirror, looks quite original) this grand free standing manor where current occupants are so confident that they eschew any downstairs curtaining allow us a view, over the hedge, of their grand living and dining areas, library and piano. On the left and at the corner of Merchant Street stands a large originally single story free standing bungalow, now with a rather tacky loft extension and a trickling fountain which always makes me wonder should I have gone before I left home. Although this house on a relatively large land mass has a garage there are always at least three and sometimes four black BMWs parked adjacently. A wealthy family of undertakers perhaps, still wondering why the kids won’t leave home.
At the next corner stands the Cambridge lodge, “32 rooms short or long term stay” semi attached to which stands a renovation site that proceeds so slowly that I’ve begun to believe it is only worked on by those who default on their accommodation fees. By now you notice the grinding marks that have left fresh concrete underbelly exposed where pavement slabs adjoin on the foot paths, and realise that The Marrickville Municipal Council has contracted someone to go all over our finely kept suburb grinding the pavement joints level in an effort to avoid law suits from trippers and ankle turners.
Here’s Newington College Preparatory School which, in light of being the destination of so many afore mentioned Mosman Tractors, has remarkably few parking restrictions. An underground car park - most likely funded by my taxes, - into which said tractors bearing precious plunge from Harrow road, to emerge sans precious, in Cambridge Street may help to explain this. A three car five minute parking zone provides for those not suited by the underground loading dock and it’s here that I often witness these five and six year old tots climbing down from mum’s tipper and struggling into their disproportionate back packs. What can such giant packs contain? Surely this age needs little else than a sandwich, apple and muesli bar. Perhaps the school has a one size fits all bag policy that these poor little buggers must grow into and meanwhile mum blows up a balloon for them each morning, stuffing it in to occupy vacant space. Across the street from the college and its associated buildings, where once surely stood oversized palatial homes we now find a large complex of 1970’s pink and cream brick home units still awaiting the arrival of some PHD student who’s thesis, supported by a grant from the real estate institute, is to realise their worth as equal to their Victorian and Federation ancestors and to provide an ever so favorable comparison to their fascist concrete progeny. Wedged between these and Montague gardens with its overgrow Morteon Bay Figs, stands Hollingworth, obviously way out of space and time from its kin in Castlecrag and the leafy north shore though equally welcome in today’s upwardly mobile Stanmore.
Next of note comes Stanmore Public School and Common 1883, Edwardian really as behooves the consciously conservative mind set of the merchants of Stanmore who saw no need to curtail the ostentatious Victorianism of their homes but drew the line when it came to the institutions from which the very fabric of their society was drawn such as schools. Stanmore P.S. is just such, surrounded now by more nondescript modern demountable buildings play grounds sports fields and no go zones, (even to maintenance staff it appears) the original buildings maintain their empirical integrity..
Our walk now turns west away from the station where immediately to our right are two of my favorite homes. Both spacious and free standing, originally in a style I’ll call Victorian colonial town house though built obviously in the federation era judging by the brickwork. Whilst the one to the right in original double fronted condition maintains its open wrought iron balcony and lead light windows the one to the left has had its single face cleverly bricked over, in arches with baroque balustrades over which are in fills of modern wrought alloy lace. Behind this lace stands statutory to bring tears to the eyes of any Romanic (no not romantic, see Bob Carr like) nut who doesn’t mind a little Kitsch. Between floors set into the brickwork is a relief plaque of cupids. Yes of course it’s terribly gay, both of them with deliberate touches of gilt to the rust look iron work, I can easily imagine Gore Vidal staying over for piss ups with Colleen McCullough.
I’m sorry this is taking so long I’ll try to hurry though I am getting a sweat up. The next turn west into Cavendish Street sees little to remark upon other than a doppelganger of my own duplex block in mirror image. I suspect the builder had his plans on that old tracing paper and just put them down upside down. The only other remarkable thing about this stretch is the number of computer carcasses and monitors abandoned in the street. In fact it begins to remind me of the number I passed in the previous streets without noticing as they have become so much a part of our urban landscape. In these shortening saw tooth blocks heading towards and away from the railway, ever slightly uphill and getting beyond the commuters to Stanmore I begin to find my pace. Broard fronted terraces and Federation Bungalows on both sides of the street now and pretty streets they are with short blocks and leafy trees and look here, another unashamed to allow us uninterrupted view through their downstairs right to the back of their very attractive extensions. That prominently placed music room with the piano, harp and drums looks good, must come by some evening and see what type of concert is preformed with such instruments.
Three story federation blocks of flats are common throughout this walk and if you look to your left here at this rounded corner, these three adjacent blocks reflect this, with their own rounded corners. Red bricks, rounded corners and Deco features, especially to entrances are all that is left to identify these blocks as their original stained lead light windows have long gone in favor of the ubiquitous aluminum variety.
Here I am in one of those fabulous Victorian parks that I call Pathway Parks as along with their stately mature trees, Oaks in this instance, Palm Sunday Palms, play parks with rubberized bitumen and bubblers they feature a maze of interconnecting stone curbed paths one of which leads me on a one way street past All Saints Parish Hall on the left to the civic center of Petersham.
Petersham’s beautiful 1937 art deco town hall stands in stark contrast to the run down boarding houses that make up the rest of the environment on this side of ironically named Crystal Street. This row attracts a type of tenant, maybe themselves attracted by the adjacent Oxford Hotel the longest running topless bar and sex pub in suburban Sydney, who make a busy practice of scarping by moonlight leaving all unwanted worldly goods on the pavement for the homeless to pick through and feather their bus shelter nests .
Now if you’ll bear with me we are half way there and about to cross to the dark, no lets just say other side of the tracks. Here we cross the rail bridge and turn east on York Crescent a cul-de-sac heading back toward Stanmore and the city. Only a hundred meters long it ends in some mystery of ancient town planning or lack there of where the last weatherboard cottage in the street which would not look out of place on a hill outside any country town has a front yard that stretches right across the street leaving only a foot/cycle path between it and the railway corridor.
This narrow path leads into a Boulevard of Grande dimension called Gordon Crescent which runs all the way to Stanmore station. Mirroring Trafalgar street on the other side of the rail, a heavily trafficked two car width concrete corridor with next to no pedestrian access, Gordon crescent, four lanes wide with generous nature strips both sides has virtually no through traffic at all. Yes, since the baker and milkman stopped delivering here, were able to amble down the middle of the road without a care in the world though as I’m here for exercise, of course I walk briskly. This virtually unused street, host to houses of a scale which precludes their use for anything other than Institutions - there’s “Xavier House” - boarding houses, or fantasy investment opportunities for upwardly mobile young things with delusions of grandeur to vie with Napoleon. The end result of this is that very rare, inner western Sydney street, with 75% of its available parking space free at any time night or day.
If such a street was your responsibility, as it is that of the Marrickville Municipal Council what would your priorities be? Well I can tell you that the MMC have just completed their grand plan to completely repair all curbs and gutters, grade and re surface the whole road, presumably for the visual pleasure of commuters as they pass in there sardine can trains. I fell into conversation with one of the workers on a recent morning walk and am pleased to be able to report that the age old practice of having a second Service instrumentality come by as soon as work is completed and dig it back up, this time for electric cables, is still standard procedure. I have strong memories of my father railing against this practice. I don’t want anyone to think that this is a criticism of the MMC. Making extensive repairs to a seemingly undeserving street is not a fault as long as it is not done in neglect of other more deserving works and I know of no such works.
At the Stanmore Station end of Gordon Crescent where it joins a busy rat run through Stanmore shops is another peculiar mini dead end. Here some fool saw fit to place charity clothing bins which as we all know are code for “ local dump”. Here I once saw a twenty year old kitchen donated by some generous benefactor. I think I met the previous owner once, couldn’t bear to see such a waste, couldn’t bear not to have a new one. Some so excited by the opportunity to provide succor have thrown their hob-tops and bags of unwanted clothing clear over the two meter fence into the no mans land bordering the rail line. Thankfully the clothing bins have been removed, but the sites reputation survives and bags of refuse are still scattered here.
Now my walk passes through the tunnel below Stanmore Station past the remarkably blue, blues busker to the right side of the tracks where a stairway leads to the Trafalgar Street entry to Stanmore station. This barely legal flight of stairs built from cement and rubble, probably during the depression, crumbling way beyond their use by date, with aluminum tread edging that has been applied and repaired and re applied and re repaired gives of a sound like tap shoes under the feet of the probable thousands school kids and others every day every week. Not long after school went back I was climbing these stairs behind a mother with three young children when my attention was drawn to the smallest girl bringing up the tail with one of those monster back packs. Tempted to take her sack and give her a boost my eyes were drawn down to the legs below her midi length pinafore which were both artificial. She was only in kindy or first class if that what’s they still call it, climbing these tap stairs that even I view as exceptionally dangerous. Are State Government Services exempt from OH&S scrutiny?
At the top of these stairs I come to a point of local geography and demographic that is difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to describe. Trafalgar Street which as I mentioned before is a two lane busy corridor paralleling the rail line, has for the most part only a foot wide curb/ bump strip between itself and the brick wall of the rail line. At the station this widens into a generous six feet with a pretend barrier of aluminum fencing. This small eight to ten square meter island of pretend safety, at pedestrian lights across Trafalgar, forms the intersection of access to the west bound platform and ticket machines, and the afore mentioned rickety stairs to the tunnel with further stairs to the city bound platform. At peak hour it’s not uncommon to find on this island and back up onto the platform as many as one hundred Newington students, other students, city commuters, an exercising walker and a paper seller all with their own agendas, an accident just waiting to happen. To add coal to this potential fire Within fifteen meters lies the intersection of two saw teeth adjacent streets, the site of Stanmore Public School, and one of these goes on to intersect with Trafalgar Street in the same close proximity.
Now I’m on the home stretch with my Sydney Morning Herald under arm traveling previously covered terrain and I realize I haven’t told you about the trains. All the way from Crystal Street to Stanmore Station I have paralled the trains separated mostly by a wire fence and the inevitable rail side weeds. Sometimes from above, often at their level, I’m able to observe the silver battered bulk interspersed with Tangaras and now and then the pristine Milenium or Milenium+7 judging by the just off the factory floor condition they display. Not a red rattler to be seen which causes me to recollect my own train commuting days in the early and mid sixties when peak hour trains were equally crowded but the doors were manual and in the humid summer months left open to compensate for the lack of air conditioning, almost unbelievable these days but we survived.
Well that’s my walk and that’s how I expect it to be till I at least stop taking it. The variables will be the human encounters which, at walk time, closely approximating morning peak hour will remain fairly stable. Children with and without accompanying parents on their way to school. Newington prefects policing the roadways like shepherds herding their flocks. Commuters hurrying to the station gasping on post home pre train fags. It’s pretty standard but not without exceptions like the old bloke at the station who demanding as if it were his birthright that someone give him a dollar to make up his seniors fare. The people in phone boxes, there are two on my walk, who always seem a little desperate and loud. Maybe it’s just me but people making calls from phone boxes these days always seem desperate especially when some other desperate has thrown a pot plant shattering all the glass the previous night. In fact those out at this time of day who are not going to work or school or of course not in obvious exercise mode ehem do look to be a little desperate don’t you think?
Postscript
One of the best things about the demise of the Howard Government from my perspective is that no more will television news reports be dominated by footage of the PM’s morning walks. More often than I care to note in recent times, my reflection in shop windows puts me in mind of Mr. Howard, particularly in his summer mode of baggy dark shorts, white shirt, ankle high white sox, I think he and I are the only folk left wearing these, and horror of horror exactly the same New Balance joggers. With our peaked caps, worn as they were designed to be, covering the obviously different hair styles and our spreading waist lines we were horror twins.
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