Neither Joan nor Hugh had ever been this close to the bridge’s monumental pylons and soaring arch. Joan was impressed, of course, by the audacity and scale of the construction (52,800 tonnes of steel, boasted the official program, 6 million hand-driven rivets, 20,000 cubic yards of granite) and the labour of so many minds and hands. What a vision, what an enterprise! For six years the city had watched in wonder at the gravity-defying thrust of two half-arches reaching in slow motion across the harbour like the outstretched arms of two lovers. And now here it was, finished at last, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a miracle like everyone said, a dream come true, a blessing in hard times, a vote of confidence in the future.
Radio and newspaper journalists watched the proceedings from specially constructed press boxes (which looked a lot like small bus stops, thought Joan) along the top row of the grandstand. Joan craned her neck to look for Bill Jenkins or any of his colleagues from Truth. She and Hugh could clearly see the red-carpeted official dais bedecked with Union Jacks, coats of arms and a thick hedgerow’s worth of palms. Here, microphones hung in front of the speakers’ podium and large megaphone horns were affixed to the lampposts to broadcast the speeches to the public and, by wireless, to the nation.
Tens of thousands lined the route of the official cavalcade of cars from Government House and the eagerly awaited pageant that would pass through Sydney’s streets on its way to the bridge from Queen’s Square. Tens of thousands more looked on from every rooftop, balcony and window that faced the harbour, while the well-to-do watched from the decks of their yachts and motor launches. It felt as if the whole city was holding its breath.
The Premier and Mrs Lang arrived first, the Big Fella unmistakeable even from a distance: the giant physique, the pugnacious stance, the high-domed forehead, the thick broom-bristle moustache, the boxer’s lantern jaw, the flashing rimless glasses. A lusty roar of approval and a wave of applause rose from the crowd at the sight of their hero.
‘I bet he’s pretty wound up today,’ Hugh whispered to Joan, ‘playing host to his nemesis, Joe Lyons. Wondering what the New Guard have up their sleeve despite Campbell’s reassurances they wouldn’t interfere. Giving the King and his vice-regal flunkeys the finger. Betting his popularity and street politics against the power of the rich and the High Court. A big day for Jack.’
The Governor Sir Philip and Lady Game arrived next in an open car with a mounted police escort. They were followed closely by the limousine of the Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs, and Lady Isaacs, escorted by an honour guard of light horse sporting cavalry swords and slouch hats. Uniformed men were to be seen everywhere: aide-de-camps, bandsmen, soldiers in khaki, sailors and naval officers in dress whites with rifles sloped, policemen fingering batons. The occasion called for full regalia: plumed helmets, cocked hats, shoulder boards, gold aiguillettes, white gloves and belts, medals, ribbons, ceremonial swords.
Amid all this peacock-strutting, the Premier stood out in his unremarkable suit and grey hat, his refusal to wear top hat and frock coat another spit-in-the-eye to the establishment. It was not too hard to spot the cordon of plainclothes coppers sticking close from the moment he exited his car. ‘It’s like a bloody Gilbert and Sullivan operetta out there,’ chuckled Hugh. ‘I’d like to see the New Guard try anything with all these fellows about. No one could get within cooee of the Big Fella today.’
The band played ‘God Save the King’ as the main players saluted and shook hands with each other before taking their seats. Bang on ten, the Governor stood to deliver His Majesty’s message of congratulations in a clipped, slightly shrill voice: ‘It is my earnest hope that this bridge may be a means of increasing the prosperity and of contributing to the comfort and welfare not only of the citizens of Sydney but to the whole of the people of New South Wales.’
The Premier then stepped up to the microphone. Hugh and Joan exchanged looks; they were not the only ones in this crowd wondering whether Lang would use this occasion, recorded by newsreel cameras for a worldwide audience, to renew his attack on the Prime Minister’s collusion with the British banks and bondholders.
In contrast to the Governor’s polished inflections, Lang’s voice was its usual rasping series of barks, like a saw biting through wood. ‘Long before the engineers drew the plan or the labourer turned the sod, the people of Sydney dreamed about, worked for, and fought over the bridge that is about to be made available to them.’
It was mercifully short, a simple but elegant speech that compared the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the ‘bridge of common understanding’ conceived by the architects of Federation and still being built to ‘serve the whole of the people of our great continent’. If this was a swipe at Lyons’s interference with the sovereignty of New South Wales, Joan thought that it was a pretty oblique, gentle one.
It was getting hotter and brighter. Ladies hoisted their parasols and men mopped their brows with handkerchiefs. Next to Joan, a small boy in the arms of his mother began to whimper and squirm. A fixed look crept over the faces of the spectators in anticipation of the eight more speeches that were to be delivered. The Minister for Public Works, Mr Davidson, followed the Premier to the podium and began his long and worthy address.
Over the top of Davidson’s speech, the crowd heard a commotion near the tollbooths close to where the blue ribbon, soon to be cut by the Premier, was strung across the roadway. And then came the moment many had been fearing, even anticipating. A lone horseman in a baggy AIF infantry uniform and wearing medals and an officer’s peaked cap had arrived at the bridge looking as if he belonged to the Governor-General’s honour guard. He had then taken up a position inside the official enclosure near the ribbon, partly obscuring the view of a Movietone News cameraman. ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place, mate?’
‘Look! Look!’ cried Joan, clutching at Hugh’s elbow.
‘Christ Almighty!’ swore Hugh.
Having inched ever closer to the ceremonial ribbon, the officer suddenly spurred his horse forward and held aloft a cavalry sabre he had kept tucked in the back of his Sam Brown belt. His voice rose to the cloudless autumn sky in a triumphant shout: ‘I officially declare this bridge open, in the name of the decent people of New South Wales!’
The spectators leaped to their feet with a roar and the pressmen and photographers jumped down from their boxes and scrambled across the roadway. The lone horseman made two unsuccessful slashes at the ribbon before finally clutching it in his hand and sawing at it with his sabre until it fell asunder on the tarmac. Within seconds, a squad of police was upon him, trying to grab the reins as his bewildered horse wheeled in wild circles.
‘You can’t touch me, I’m wearing the King’s uniform,’ the man shouted at the cops, waving his sword to fend them off.
All around them, Joan and Hugh could hear people exclaiming: ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Has the fellow lost control of his horse?’ ‘Where are the police?’
The minister bravely kept on speaking like an actor delivering his lines even when part of the theatre set has collapsed. Joan saw Lang’s large head swivel in the direction of the ribbon for a moment and then swing back, grimly determined to ignore the fracas.
‘Crikey,’ said Hugh, who was still watching the action avidly. ‘That fellow with the sword is Francis de Groot, one of Campbell’s most trusted commanders.’
‘And here comes “Big Bill”,’ Joan observed as the stocky figure of ‘Big Bill’ MacKay, Superintendent-in-Charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch, then entered the fray.
MacKay charged at the panicked horse and, with both hands clasped firmly under de Groot’s right stirrup, turfed the New Guardsman clean out of his saddle. De Groot came crashing down onto the road, suspended upside down with his left foot still caught in the other stirrup. MacKay and his men hauled the skinny Irishman to his feet. With the loss of his cap, the crowd had a clear view of a weak-chinned, balding man, dazed but defiant. Loud boos and catcalls erupted from the crowd as he was marched away to the nearby tollhouse. Th
e entire episode had taken less than a minute.
‘So much for Campbell’s promises,’ said Hugh. ‘That’ll really get Jack riled up.’
Determined to proceed as if nothing had happened, the officials retied the ribbon and the speeches continued, though Joan wondered who could possibly concentrate on them after the shock of this lone horseman’s scene-stealing.
Wrongheaded and outrageous as this action was, she could not help but feel a sneaking admiration for the fellow’s courage. It would have taken some guts to pull off a stunt like that. Was this the worst threat the New Guard had to offer, she wondered, this theatrical attempt at valiant action ending in farce? Or was it a warning, a taste of things to come, an embarrassing demonstration of how easily the New Guard could fool the police and steal Lang’s thunder, a brief moral victory but also an opening gambit in a more violent plan? It was possible that, despite the angry hoots and jeers of the crowd, Campbell would be bolstered by today’s disruption. Now the whole world would be aware of the New Guard.
Eventually Lang led the official party to the ribbon and did the honours with the golden ceremonial scissors, triggering the sundering of a second white ribbon in the middle of the bridge and an explosion of streamers from atop the pylons. This in turn signalled a twenty-one-gun salute from a battery at Bennelong Point at the same time as a squadron of Royal Australian Air Force planes came buzzing like giant insects over the top of the arch.
A huge cheer went up from the crowd and was almost drowned out by the blare of factory whistles and pealing of church bells all over the city. This cacophony was then joined by the braying of sirens and horns from the armada of liners, warships, ferries, yachts and speedboats that passed in stately procession beneath the suspended roadway. ‘It’s amazing!’ cried Joan, and so it was. What heart could resist this mass outburst of joy, this symphonic swell of pride, this giddy feeling of unity, with a fleeting prayer of thanks that for one blessed day at least the people of Sydney could forget their privations and look to the future with a glimmer of hope.
Following a second ribbon-cutting ceremony on the northern side, there came the much-anticipated grand pageant, led by a boy drum major and his youth band with hundreds of schoolchildren close on their heels. The crowd cheered even louder for the four columns of men marching under the banner SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE WORKERS. In case anyone missed the occasion’s historic significance, there followed an abbreviated chronicle of the state’s history, opening with twenty Aborigines on foot and in full body paint (looking none too happy, thought Joan) followed by a succession of mostly horse-drawn floats: Captain Cook with a toy-sized Endeavour, Governor Phillip and a handful of redcoats, assorted explorers in attitudes of conquest, the beloved Governor Macquarie, a wobbly replica of Sydney University’s Great Hall surrounded by gowned students, an august assembly of Federation fathers, and generations of veterans of colonial skirmishes (Sudan, South Africa, China) and the Great War.
Other than the schoolgirls in the vanguard, no women had yet featured in the parade. And then, crowned with the words FUTURE OF AUSTRALIA as a tiara (or a laurel wreath?), there came a giant papier-mâché head of Mother Australia, bearing a grotesquely huge infant like a victory torch in her arms. On this float, alongside a cricketer, cow cocky, sailor and jockey, all male, were some young women in bathing suits. And a flapper and a dairy maid.
Joan rolled her eyes at Hugh. ‘Looks like nothing much has changed for us girls in the future. We’re still only mothers and sex sirens.’
‘Well, no surprises there, love.’ Hugh smiled grimly. ‘Reckon that slim-looking pilot could be Amy Johnson maybe? Not that she’s an Aussie!’
As further proof of the impressive (and inevitable) path of progress, there followed a parade of historical and modern modes of transport, including a penny-farthing, a wool wagon, a Cobb & Co coach, a motorcycle, a charabanc, a double-decker bus and (rather oddly, thought Joan) a howitzer. Then came the most elaborate floats of all, each a work of local pride, representing the suburbs of Sydney with mythical creatures smothered in luxuriant layers of flowers. Joan was most taken with the St George float featuring a sweet-natured, petal-scaled dragon ridden by a young knight and led by a band of bathing beauties from the Brighton Le Sands ladies’ surf-lifesaving club.
‘It’s a shame Norman Lindsay couldn’t be here. He’d be thrilled to see so many scantily clad, buxom women adorning such a public event,’ Joan said with a laugh. ‘Nothing like a shapely leg and a perky bust to make the men of Australia feel their hearts quicken with civic pride.’
It was well past lunchtime by now and Joan and Hugh were famished. Sandwich vendors moved up and down the grandstand and were well patronised by the hungry spectators. Some lucky people had bought tickets for the first tram ride and first train ride. But with the guests of honour now departed, the hour had come for the citizens of Sydney to claim the bridge as their own. When the barricades opened at two o’clock, Sydney witnessed the largest gathering of people ever seen in the history of the city roll majestically forward like an ocean wave.
It appeared as if every suburb had been drained of its inhabitants, hundreds of streams pouring in by train, tram, ferry and bus and flowing into one unstoppable tide of jubilant humanity. It was this great wave of people, their cloches and bonnets, trilbies and fedoras bobbing like bubbles of sea foam on the surface, that surged noisily up the ramps of the southern roadway, past the great pylons and onto the bridge itself. The newspapers would later report that on that first day between seven hundred thousand to one million people crossed the bridge by trains, trams, cars and on foot out of an entire city population of only 1.2 million.
The atmosphere reminded Joan of the good-natured holiday crowds at the Royal Easter Show, all tizzied up and determined to have a good time. With the worst heat of the day starting to ease, tempered by breezes off the harbour that breathed life back into the city’s drooping trees and limp flags, Joan and Hugh stepped down from the grandstand into this cheerful multitude. Chins tilted, eyes widened, heads craned skywards, mouths gaped in undisguised amazement. Total strangers smiled at each other, united in disbelief and awe. Australians were, as a habit, slow to praise anything, thought Joan, and quick to take the piss (they’d already nicknamed the bridge the ‘coat hanger’), but their affectionate pride was real enough.
While the skill of the engineers and courage of the bridge workers and drama of the bridge’s long gestation were things to admire, today Joan was struck most of all by its geometric beauty. She loved the repeating pattern of X-shaped crosses within the massive latticework of girders, cables and struts; the seemingly endless parallel lines of rivets like half a million double-six dominos laid end to end; the lovely interplay of bright sky, dark water and grey steel; the shifting angles of sunlight, shadows and silhouette; the jigsaw view of the harbour’s scenery sliced into multiple triangles (already recorded in black and white by Balmain photographer Henri Mallard, who’d crawled all over the thing during the six years of its construction), and the seductive skyward-sweeping curves of the great arch (captured so eloquently in paint by artist Grace Cossington Smith even before that gap had been closed).
Joan was sure she was not alone in thinking that once this bridge was open for business the opportunity for pedestrians to enjoy this vertiginous close-up view up from the middle of the roadway might never be repeated. It was vital to cherish the moment. While everyone kept on the move like a mob of cattle, it was at a leisurely amble that allowed time for gawking and pointing and letting wonder soak into the soul. Now and then there were spontaneous cheers and whistling and cooees. Something like the carnival atmosphere of the Easter Show made this day feel at times like a passing fantasy waiting to pop like a bubble or melt away when the sun set. All too soon, in maybe as little as a matter of weeks or even days, this bridge would change from an object of breathtaking beauty and mystery into a thing of utility, merely a road to convey motorists to their jobs in the city or for a family picnic or swim on the nor
thern beaches.
Hugh and Joan walked in a half-trance, pausing every now and then to swap observations or just marvel at what they saw. And then, out of the corner of her eye, Joan recognised a familiar figure: a thin, bony woman in a worn blue-and-white-spotted summer dress and a tatty straw hat. ‘Ruby?’ Joan called out. ‘Is that you?’
It was indeed. Ruby looked straight at Joan and took several seconds to register her face. Clutching Ruby’s left hand was little Greta, looking quite different from the last time Joan clapped eyes on her, in a butter-yellow dress with her bowl haircut hidden under a small flowered bonnet. ‘Miss Linderman?’ said Ruby. ‘Say hello, Greta. You remember our visitor?’
‘Yes, of course,’ protested Greta, as if her grandmother had accused her of being dim. ‘She brought the yummy strawberry jam. Thank you!’
‘My pleasure!’ Joan smiled. ‘Please let me introduce you to my friend Hugh.’
Hugh looked a little alarmed, clearly not expecting that they would run into anyone they knew—what were the chances?—in this vast throng.
‘This is Ruby Dawson and her granddaughter Greta.’
Hugh’s face paled a little. ‘Dawson?’
‘That’s right.’ As the four of them kept pace with the flow of the crowd, Joan lowered her voice to explain, ‘Eleanor’s mother and daughter.’
Hugh looked haunted but smiled. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘I wish Mummy could have come with us today but she’s still sick in hospital,’ said Greta solemnly as she placed her hand in Joan’s. ‘She would have loved to see all this.’
Hugh’s face was dead white now.
Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club Page 26
