‘Whadayafuckin’ doin?’ Steps toward him.
‘Whadayafuckin’ doin?’ Steps toward him.
‘Don’t get fuckin’ smart, mate. Whadayafuckin’ dooon?’ Waves hands about.
‘Don’t get fuckin’ smart, mate. Whadayafuckin’ dooon?’ Waves hands about.
‘Oim fuckin’ tellin’ ya.’ Jabs right index finger.
‘Oim fuckin’ tellin’ ya.’ Jabs right index finger.
It was only when the bloke pulled back his fist that the busker took off on someone else’s tail, drawing a huge round of applause from all around except the potential puncher, who looked as if he wanted to deck us all, then gave us the finger and took off.
Ferries to Parramatta only go once an hour but we’d timed our run to perfection. Or at least we thought we had.
‘It’s been cancelled,’ said the bloke behind the glass when I tried to buy tickets.
I waited for him to tell me why. He didn’t.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Dunno, mate.’
‘Really?’
‘Just happens sometimes.’
One difference between ferries and trains is that if the train you wanted to catch, say the 4.51 p.m. to Cronulla, was cancelled you wouldn’t just catch the next one, the 4.54 p.m. to Strathfield instead, because you thought you might enjoy the trip.
That’s what we did with the ferry, though. We had a choice of two: to Rydalmere or Cremorne. Neither of us knew anything about Rydalmere and it was also up the river, the last stop before Parramatta. Perfect.
Another difference between ferries and other methods of public transport is that ferries have their names proudly displayed on the side. Ours was Marjorie Jackson, after the sprinter (or the ferry-namers just thought it was a nice name), and we took a seat outside at the front with the tourists while a group of old people on a day trip took the inside.
We started off by reversing away from the jetty, which felt strange. Reversing is so car-like, as was the three-point turn Marjorie did to get going toward the bridge.
‘Excuse me, do you know what there is to do at Rydalmere?’ said the fiftyish man next to me in a thick German accent.
‘I’ve got no idea, I’m sorry,’ I admitted. ‘You’ve come a long way.’
‘Yes, I am from Adelaide,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘But 20 years ago, I lived in Rydalmere.’
‘You lived in Rydalmere?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t know what there is to do in Rydalmere?’
‘No.’
‘Right.’
Perhaps we should have picked Cremorne.
Ferries are God’s buses. A road train or track can’t compare with the sea. You suck in the salty air, feel the breeze and the spray and worry about whether you are being a bad parent by exposing your child to winds that could give her a nasty chill that might develop into pneumonia.
You can’t overrate the sea. Yes, it’s made of the same stuff that comes out of the tap but when it’s all around I can’t help but feel better about everything. It’s a mood booster. If you’re feeling okay, the sea will up it to good, good on land will be boosted to great on the water, and great will become ecstatic. Even suicidal on land becomes merely very depressed at sea.
There was a bit of wind, but the water was calm, so no one nearly fell overboard. Unlike last time.
Six months earlier we had been staying at Lucy’s parents’ house on the Central Coast and had discovered that a ferry ran from Ettalong, just down the road, across Broken Bay to Palm Beach. While the idea of leaving Sydney for a holiday and then taking a day trip back to Sydney was weird, we convinced ourselves that Palm Beach was only technically Sydney. Its essence was posh coastal town.
Bibi was six months old and before we boarded we swaddled her up so she looked like a blanket with a face. On board, downstairs was closed in and full of rows of pleasant seats protected from the elements by closed windows. Not for us—we wanted the full experience so we headed upstairs into the open.
We picked seats at the front and admired the big view south of Broken Bay. Lion Island sat in the middle with the Hawkes-bury River heading inland to its right, and the ocean opening out to its left. Past it was Barrenjoey Head and beyond it Pitt-water and Palm Beach.
‘Why would you sit inside and miss out on this?’ I said.
As we set off the conductor popped his head up and addressed us and the only other passengers upstairs, a twentyish couple in either love or lust.
‘You might want to come downstairs. It can get a bit choppy up here.’
I gave him a knowing smile. ‘We’ll be right, thanks.’
I knew boats.
The sea was glass and the slight rocking motion moved Bibi to pleasured squeals. We were pointing and laughing and looking. Even the couple behind us had stopped feeling each other up for a few seconds to admire the view.
Then we rounded the heads into Broken Bay. Instantly we were on one of those fun-park rides you pay $10 to get on and then within a minute would pay $50 to get off. We were pitching and yawing and other nautical-terming and someone hiding just over the side of the ferry was throwing buckets of water at us. Bibi kept squealing but the tone and meaning had changed. She had been squealing ‘fun’, now it was ‘not fun, anti-fun, bad fun, scared, scared, help’.
I looked over my shoulder to see how the lovers were coping. The gutless wonders had disappeared, hopefully downstairs and not overboard. We wanted to be downstairs as well, but getting there was a problem. We were at the front of the boat, the stairs were at the back. The floor was wet and slippery, the boat was pitching, we had two bags and Bibi was a baby.
‘Forget the bags,’ I yelled, ‘you grab Bibi and I’ll grab you.’
Lucy wrapped both arms around Bibi, and I grabbed Lucy around the waist with one hand and steadied myself by grabbing a chair with the other. Then we all tried to stand up. The deck pitched and we crashed back down again. We tried again and got to our feet. Lucy would have been over in a second if I hadn’t been holding her, and I would have too if I hadn’t been holding a seat with my other hand. The three of us, Bibi, held by Mummy, held by Daddy, slowly inched and staggered our way back to the stairs. Eventually we got there, drenched and shaken.
At the bottom of the stairs the boat seemed calm, or nearly so, but a level up the effect of any roll was double what it was at sea level.
‘The bags,’ I said. ‘I’ll go back and get them.’
Upstairs the pitching and yawing and other nautical-terming seemed to have gotten worse. I had to crawl back along the aisle on all fours, then put both shoulder straps in my teeth and crawl back, dragging the bags backwards to the stairs. Thank goodness I was alone; I looked ridiculous. Back downstairs I tried to compose and dry myself before walking with as much dignity as I could to where Lucy and Bibi were sitting.
It was only when we were pulling into Palm Beach wharf that I noticed the screen, twice television-size, next to the driver. It showed, from a fixed camera, the entire upper deck; my attempts at regaining dignity had been fruitless. The whole bottom level had seen me staggering, then crawling, up top, and because the camera was fixed and confined its view to the deck, rather than including the sea, you couldn’t actually see how violently the top deck was rocking. They’d all seen me crawling and falling, and dragging two bags in my teeth, along a seemingly placid deck.
Our harbour ferry was luckily just one storey high and there was no open ocean or video camera. We chugged under the Harbour Bridge heading west to Parramatta. No, west to Rydalmere.
You can divide Sydney north-south or east-west, and the harbour is a perfect spot to do it from. (You can also divide Sydney into ‘near the water’ and ‘not near the water’, but the harbour isn’t a perfect place to do that from because everything you can see from it is near the water, except for the water, which is the water.)
Obvious difference number one: west of the Harbour Bridge there are houses on the north side and apartments on the so
uth side—dozens of new, same-looking blocks, with owners all holding their breath and hoping the property bubble doesn’t burst. (Bad luck—it has.) At Breakfast Point, on the south side opposite Gladesville, was a 3-kilometre stretch of dirt that was either a desert theme park or about to become the king of all apartment blocks. As we got further up the river I expected things to spread out a bit, but the apartments on the south side continued to squeeze tight, crammed together in places that, quite frankly, didn’t look worth cramming together for. I wondered how they advertised them—‘All the disadvantages of cramped inner-city living without the convenience of actually being near anywhere’ perhaps.
It just shows the power of water. People will sacrifice a lot to be able to see it out their window.
Northside, everyone has their own garden. Some even have their own beach. Not a Manly-style beach, mind—most are only a 20-metre bit of sand hiding between two shabby jetties that you can’t jump into the water from because of the sharks and pollution—but nonetheless a beach. It would be perfect for those who like boating or have very low expectations of beaches, or who just like being able to drop into a conversation, ‘when I was down at our beach this morning’.
We passed the Abbotsford 12-Foot Flying Squadron. Funny place for an airport; you’d think near the water they’d have a sailing club.
The ferry goes slowly enough to allow a good thorough look, but fast enough that it doesn’t get boring, and more or less alternates between stops northside then southside, so you get to see a bit of everything. I saw a rich man in his garden on the north side, and a poorer one in his communal outside apartment space on the south. Few people got on or off on the north side (they don’t need public transport) while the southside stops were busier.
At Cabarita the group of oldies sitting inside got off. Had they had their day trip or was it just beginning? Presumably they had come from Cabarita on an adventure to the city, rather than the other way round. The name Cabarita, by the way, derives from an Aboriginal word thought to mean ‘by the water’, which is an immaculately accurate, if not a terribly imaginative or unique description.
Around Gladesville, east-west differences become apparent. The houses on the north side get smaller and then are gradually replaced by blocks of flats. On the south side apartment complexes get less shiny, bright and expensive looking.
By the way, ‘flat’ and ‘apartment’ are not interchangeable terms. ‘Apartment’ is a new property-boom term that has been appropriated from America by developers and real estate agents who don’t think the term ‘flat’ sounds glamorous enough to justify the amount of money they want people to pay. ‘Flats’ are things that were there before the late-nineties property boom. Apartments are new. Flats are usually brown or brick coloured, while apartments have been rendered and then desperately painted something bright that shouts ‘I’M NEW’ (usually pink, sky blue, a trendy brown subtly distinct from old flat brown, or something vaguely metallic), so they can be desperately sold at ‘I’M NEW’ prices. As the property boom falters, and the owners panic, the paint gets brighter.
By north-side Meadowbank, just 6 kilometres west of rich Hunters Hill, we were in the western suburbs. No more mansions, no more private beaches, just flats and modest houses. They, in turn, soon gave way on the north side to marshes and swamps overhung with mangroves. These are a new addition, apparently, since European arrival, so I hope whatever thrives on mangroves is grateful.
On the south side we docked at Homebush Bay. Homebush Bay is, of course, where the Olympics were held and, judging from the area’s development since then, that is all Homebush will ever be remembered for. Unless one day it hosts the Olympics again.
I would love to tell you that since the Olympics, Homebush Bay has gone from strength to strength and is now a thriving and cosmopolitan business centre, residential area and sports training facility. But it’s not. It’s a ghost town or, more accurately, since ghost towns were once real towns and Homebush never was, a ghost collection of stadiums and training facilities. It’s a wonderful place to be alone. Walking around, you see more stadiums than people. It would be the perfect place for a Buddhist retreat.
A couple of lonely hotels eke out a living from badly advised and no doubt (once they see where they are stuck), really pissed-off tourists and, yes, they have conferences and sporting events and athletes probably train there, but if you walk around Homebush Bay you will feel as if you are walking around a school in the middle of the Christmas holidays. There’s nothing to see except the outsides of big, functional, grey buildings.
Even the leisure and tourism link website seems to acknowledge it’s all over for Homebush. They advertise tours of the big stadium, but when I looked the price and other information on the website hadn’t been updated for nearly three years, since February 2001. Even then it was pricey to have a look; $26 for adults, half that for kiddies and $19.50 for pensioners. And that’s when there isn’t even anything on.
As we docked at Homebush Bay, four German tourists, a separate group from the Rydalmere Adelaidean German, strapped their backpacks on.
‘Don’t do it,’ I felt like shouting, ‘it’s a trap.’ But politeness and good manners held me back, and I let them walk the gangplank to their doom, or at least boredoom. As the ferry pressed on I felt a pang of guilt as their jaunty gait carried them closer and closer, they thought, to where the action was. What they didn’t know was that the ferry they just got off is the closest Homebush Bay ever gets to action.
Homebush was the last sign of civilisation, if you can call it that. The harbour had narrowed to a river about 40 metres wide with dense swampy mangroves and bush closing in on it on both sides.
‘It’s like something out of The African Queen,’ said Lucy.
‘Except they didn’t have smokestacks coming out of the tops of the trees.’ There were about four of them, politely reminding us that, no, we weren’t in deepest, darkest Africa, and that heavy industry was just a hundred or so metres away. You could smell it, too. Burning factory stuff.
I was thinking of a different movie: Apocalypse Now. We were going up the river, not to kill Colonel Kurtz, but on a mission that might be even harder to accomplish—to find something to do at Rydalmere. I love the smell of burning factory stuff in the morning.
All right, it had just gone midday, but it was close enough.
Around another bend the mangroves opened to reveal a dock packed with hundreds of truck-sized containers fresh from a ship. What did they contain? Kettles, teddy bears, shoes, exercise bikes?
Then our destination. We docked on the north side of the river at Rydalmere. There were only us and the Adelaide German left. He sighed, picked up his backpack and walked off to search for his past. I picked up Bibi and we walked after him.
Rydalmere is one of the few suburbs that hasn’t privatised its foreshore. Rather than houses or apartments and flats coming right to the river, there is a 40-metre wide stretch of parkland running along the water. On the other side of the park are houses, although upriver they become factories. North of the jetty is industrial Rydalmere, south of it residential Rydalmere.
We decided to strike out upriver—west—first, but after a hundred metres came to a fence surrounding a factory. ‘Beware of snakes,’ said a sign behind the wire. Normally when you have to beware of snakes the consolation is that you are somewhere in nature, not next to a factory. It seemed a bit unfair, the worst of both worlds.
There was a narrow pedestrian bridge attached to a pipeline that led over to the south side of the river. As we climbed the stairs, three men in factory grey hurried past us, going the other way. The view at the top was of a huge factory yard full of more shipping containers being moved about by forklifts. Another grey-dressed man walked vigorously past, looking anxiously ahead as if trying to catch the first three. We turned around and followed him back.
As we walked back to the jetty the three men passed us again, now heading back to the bridge. The same distance behind them w
as the fourth man, still looking as if he was trying to catch up. What was going on? A desperate industrial drama that could end in treachery and violence, or a lunchtime exercise kick?
We headed downriver, then cut inland. We’d seen the river, now for residential Rydalmere. What lurked within a suburb that I had, in eighteen years in Sydney, never once thought about, except when I had first heard its name and thought, And I thought Ryde had a strange name.
Rydalmere is an average suburb full of average houses. There is plenty of room and very little to do. It offers typical suburban life. You do your living elsewhere, then come home and hide from the world.
Some of the houses have nice gardens. Some don’t. Some are new and some are old and some have been knocked down to build apartment blocks to fit more people in. We saw virtually no one, but it was a Thursday morning and people clearly had more important things to do than wander the streets looking for action. And if you were going to wander the streets looking for action, you wouldn’t do it in Rydalmere. You’d pick somewhere more exciting, like Homebush.
It’s very quiet. It’s peaceful, and may well be a nice place to come home to, but if you were unemployed or retired or even worked from home, I imagine it could get very lonely.
The occasional house was special. One had a fake rock wall, a plaster of Paris cliff-face stuck on the front of the house. Why would you do that to a house? For rock-climbing practice? But if you tried to climb it, it would break. Another had a mini wishing-well in the front garden. A cunning plan to lure coins from passers-by? Fatal flaw: there were no passers-by. We wandered about, found a swing for Bibi and then made our way back to the ferry.
If we had found something at Rydalmere that was fascinating, or even quite interesting, it would have beautifully exemplified the point that if you look hard enough, and if you have the right attitude, you can find fun and excitement anywhere. That’s what we hoped we’d discover, that the most important thing when we went to a particular place wasn’t whether there were lovely views or interesting sights, but our attitude. But in Rydalmere we came up empty.
A Month of Sundays Page 8
