With my Back to Harry’s, Evening…

It’s been far too long since I stopped here. Stopped at all now that I think about it. The seagulls stand around me silent and sulky. Not a crumb from my pie falls away to catch their eye. But the sky is sunset grey and the harbour is darkening through green to black – its time to settle down after all. The background sounds are soporific. The traffic hums along behind Harry’s Cafe de Wheels (purveyor of fine pies and peas). In the distance sulphur crested cockatoos fight a raucous and strident scrap over nesting spots but they are far enough away to not be discordant. The US Navy is tied up alongside and the occasional drawling accent, softer than the Sydney woman on her cell phone, murmer past as pair after pair of young men with short haircuts make for the city lights. USS John Cain is lit from bow to stern with its Christmas lights as these warships do – painted ladies in port, snarling beasts on the high seas. Apparently visiting to commemorate a round-the-world voyage of the US Navy in 1908-9. The warships signal with the tinkle of bells and the tannoy clips its messages to the crew across the water. I can’t hear the instructions, but there a dozens of them. Orange lights scatter reflections down the harbour as the sun makes for Perth and lights in the apartments along the wharf start lighting up as people arrive home. One imagines a very convenient lifestyle there and I guess the warship announcements every couple of minutes or so would soon fade into the background. Water sloshes along the rocks at my feet – sounds that take me to childhood places vastly different to a harbour city of 4 million people. The homeless of them are drifting past with their trolleys, mixing with the suits walking with more purpose to their expensive apartments. But Harry’s is something of a “leveller” – one of the suits props beside me and eats a pie with a plastic fork and protects his garb with a paper towel. I could prop here all night but tonight has another purpose and I had best get on with it.

Poverty Under Our Noses

Yesterday was one of those glittering Sydney days we all want to bottle and sell to anyone who glances our way – and which we delight to remind anyone living further south (or to anyone living in the UK) is a Spring treat you don’t really find anywhere else. I had reason to be down at the harbour at one point in the afternoon and found myself enjoying the day and figuring there had to be better things than having to go back to the office at the end of it. The previous evening I was reminded there are certainly worse things. A few hundred metres back from the Finger Wharf, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country and home to Russel Crowe, a cluster of homeless men camped under the rail overpass linking the city with Kings Cross and Bondi.  They bicker like birds settling on the wire for the evening, huddled against the cool evening under old blankets, some of them ducking away from the camera but all watching carefully, alert to we strangers wandering through their turf. As I watch these guys hunker down for the night behind the expensive BMW sports car it is not this contrast that is foremost in my mind but the former Navy Commander who found himself in these circumstances a few years ago and was killed by someone deranged who thought  a man living on the street had no right to live at all. How does a Commander find himself in these circumstances? A man on top of his game, with a family in the suburbs and a career stretched out forever in front of him

Taxi Story – The Iraqi (II)

(Slunk down in his seat, a quiet night on Macquarie Street). Hey, where do you want to go? St Leonards eh? Strange place. You had a long day? 5.30 in the morning start? You are crazy. It is  long enough for me starting to drive at 3pm.  I finish at 11pm. That is respectable. But not respectable enough Read more

Sunday At Collaroy

On a day like today we are not in any winter thrall to speak of. Wave after flat wave softly slushes into the sand and dies in a sigh, to be gently gathered up again and returned to the white hot glitter of blue sea diamonds which are spread out today under a clear sky and bright sun. Read more

Tourist in Sydney

Occasionally we have attempted to be a tourist in our own town but we usually stagger to a hotel, collapse, have a late breakfast on the sidewalk and then head home feeling somewhat cheated and resolved to be more “touristy”next time. This morning I walked with some friends along 10km of track only minutes from home. It’s perhaps the best result of checking out my own town in a long time. Read more

I Fell in Love with A Cemetery

Yup, you read that correctly. In the middle of a busy Sydney suburb, next to the Pacific Highway, is a snapshot of Victoriana, the discovery of which was totally startling. Read more

Sydney Has itself An Indian Summer

Memories of summers in younger years always include rounds of cricket. In the driveway. On the beach. At a picnic. School days. Games against Waitaki Boys High or St Kevins where more passion than technical skill invariably led the play. Later it was getting down to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) Read more

One Unnatural Way to Die in Australia

You can call it Macho Drowning. Pigheaded Drowning. I know Better Drowning. Don’t tell me What to Do Drowning. I Am Stronger than the Rules Drowning. Or just Plain Dumb Drowning. OK, it is not as exotic as a Taipan bite or being bitten by a Red Back Spider while on the toilet (I have a friend who suffered that recently – that Post coming!) Read more

Best City in the World

We all want to claim that title for our home towns but on a day like today, when Sydney is at its humid, sunny, sparkling best, it is hard to not want to say that we live in a pretty neat part of the scrub. Read more

Sydney Storm

Some dogs smell them coming and hide under the hedge. Others smell them coming and spin on their chains in insane, barely comprehensible excitement. I relate to the latter. Read more

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