by Louis Nowra
Brad, once a professional Aussie Rules football player and former banker, has worked down at the Frisco as bar manager and in various country hotels. For some time he has been building swimming pools, and often arrives mud-splattered, twice with revolvers he’s found while digging holes for a pool, one from the First World War and a smaller gun that had been specially designed for women to hide in their purses. He loves to gamble on anything, really, but as I’m not interested in horses or poker, we have wagers on Aussie Rules games.
There are two Tonys. One is Aboriginal. Reserved and watchful, once he’s had a few beers Tony is sharp and observant in his humour. He was once homeless and was offered public housing accommodation but, because his beloved dog was not allowed to be with him, Tony preferred to live on the streets. Finally the Housing Commission saw reason and he was permitted to keep his dog. Above his fireplace is a wonderful painting of him sitting on his couch with his arm around Smokie, his heeler — two inseparable buddies.
‘Tickles’ is the nickname of the other Tony. An ex–art teacher whose superannuation pays for his drinks, he says with great enthusiasm that the day his super runs out is the day he wants to die. Until then he drinks enthusiastically. He starts at a Czech restaurant in the Cross at lunch, and during his peregrinations of an afternoon he stops at hotels in Oxford Street, at the East Sydney Hotel in Cathedral Street, and ends his journey, which he calls ‘the Stations of the Cross’, at the Old Fitzroy. Before too long his lips are red with the house wine and he’s boisterous, singing loudly, mostly show tunes and advertising jingles from his youth. On his way to the bar he can become extremely tactile with handsome lads, hence his nickname. He once lost twenty of his art students on a day trip to the Blue Mountains, and when he was teaching art in Bourke, locals tied him on a horse backwards and led him through town. His wire-rimmed glasses are so thick that when we’ve taken turns to look through them, the world is such an intense blur it causes a headache. The first question he was asked when he returned from a trip to Mali and Senegal was how an alcoholic like him managed to get booze in such countries. ‘Oh, it was easy,’ he said, his magnified eyes gleaming at the memory, ‘both countries have casks of cheap Spanish red wine.’
When not too far in his cups he has an astonishing knowledge of art. For some months we talked about Watteau and his painting Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera. We argued about whether the lovers were coming from or going to the island until one day he sighed and said softly, ‘The truth is, Louis, the distant mist they are heading towards is Death. They are going to their deaths, like we all are.’
A week after this conversation, and worse for wear, he tumbled over Tony’s dog. Tony still recalls with a shiver the sound of Tickles’ head smashing onto the concrete path outside his home. Twice he has fallen down the Butler Stairs injuring himself; the last incident was so bad that he spent ten weeks in hospital undergoing skin grafts for his pulped leg. I visited him several times. He had grown a beard and was sober, something I had rarely seen. I asked him if he had troubles during the withdrawal. He said the first night was the worst. He hallucinated (‘though it seemed real’) that the ceiling and walls were swapping positions. There was a glass floor two storeys down and beneath it he could see the Old Fitzroy from overhead. This Escher vision so frightened him that the nurses had to stop him from climbing out of bed to avoid falling through the glass down into his favourite watering hole.
Peter has a one-minute walk to the pub from his apartment just around the corner in Cathedral Street, but will he be morose or jolly today? If the former, he will sit on a stool staring vacantly at the far wall, his melancholy palpable, but if he’s happy, his face lights up as if he’s glowing inside and he’s full of stories, some about his accident-prone life — the scars on his limbs mark where he was hit by a bus (right leg), by a motor scooter in Bangkok (left leg), and falling down drunk when trying to take the pub’s glass bin outside (broken arm).
Another regular who lives close by is Ayesha, merely a minute’s amble across the street, where she lives in public housing. A former female impersonator at Les Girls, she’s in her early seventies, but you wouldn’t know it. Her clothes are glamorous, her tall glass of raspberry cordial with two straws is free. Sometimes she will be late because she’s had a ‘nanna nap’, at other times I arrive to find her holding court at the top table outside with her scruffy white terrier, Yoo-hoo, snoozing on her lap and a cigarette dangling imperiously from her ring-encrusted fingers.
Some locals sit outside, others inside, depending on the weather and how much they are desperate for a smoke. Outside, the regulars take over the ‘top’ table, one of six with ceramic tops, which is nearest the front door. Those inside either occupy a table for four next to the fireplace in a dingy corner, a position that visitors shun, or take to the stools around the service entrance of the bar. Curly Cole always sits on a stool against the back wall and woe betide any stranger he finds sitting on it. Stolid German Dave, like the former lanky barman Dan, served in Afghanistan. When I asked about his immediate memory of his time there he could only shake his head and say ‘Sand, sand, sand smelling of shit, sand, sand smelling of shit and sand.’ He and his friend Bald Dave, both from Bland Street, sit on stools at the bar with their close friend Cornish Adam, who sucks on his electronic cigarette. His Cornish origins distinguish him from Adam the publican’s son, who is in his final years of medicine, another barman also called Adam, and Scottish Adam the bar manager, who has a huge black gemstone implanted in his right ear and a tattoo of his favourite animal, an elephant, on his chest.
There are some patrons we try to avoid: the boring, the utterly mad, and those like Nevil, who used to come in sporadically, generally coked out of his head. He was a wealthy man with a coarse face and a belly bloated by beer and expensive food. He didn’t have girlfriends but hired prostitutes, making sure they met up with him at the pub so he could show them off. He treated them with the haughtiness and disdain of a true misogynist. His idea of fun was to come up behind Tickles when he was sitting at the bar and attempt to set fire to his trousers. One time I noticed him rolling a beer barrel towards Coco, and told him to stop. His chemically inflamed brain turned to seething hatred and he stood over me, spitting in his fury, his eyes bright with cocaine, shouting at me to come outside and fight him. I was twice his age, but that didn’t matter. He was so obnoxious when coked that the Crew would do anything not to be near him as he ranted wildly and laughed like a loon. It was a relief when he vanished overseas.
By 8 o’clock most of the Crew has gone. My limit is four glasses of wine, with an occasional Irish whiskey to finish the evening. If I go beyond four drinks, Coco, who counts my intake, starts barking at me and heading to the door, hinting I should do the same. Generally I finish about the time the theatre shows start (7.30) and if I stay on for one more drink, I know it’s just on 8 p.m. when ‘The Captain’ (no-one can remember why he’s called that) arrives from across the road, precisely on the dot at three minutes to eight — one time he apologised to me for being five minutes late. If the regulars drink on, they invariably stay until closing time at eleven. Next day they sip their first beer in silence, trying to remember what they did the night before and hoping to stop the infernal throbbing in their heads but knowing, through experience, that the best hangover cure is, of course, more alcohol.
If there is a common denominator to this motley crew it’s that the majority are middle-aged, and many of us have survived dysfunctional childhoods (in Vagrer they are called ‘the mad characters … of a madhouse’). Most have been in trouble with the law (arrests, courtrooms, prison), including me; almost all have never had children and most are determined drinkers and confirmed dope smokers. As long as you can tell a good story and have a sense of humour then it’s totally inclusive, whatever your occupation, race or sexuality. The humour is macabre, cynical, and underpinned by a cheerful pessimism about humanity. In an article on the Old Fitzroy the magazine Time Out gave us our name: ‘The Mot
ley Crew’.
McELHONE STREET TO THE SECRET GARDEN
IF YOU’RE NOT ENTERING WOOLLOOMOOLOO from the sea then you’re descending into it. At the top of McElhone Street you can see all the way down to the sparkling harbour where Fort Denison (‘Pinchgut’) is a solitary, gloomy feature like the visible remains of a submerged castle.
Most days, for almost a decade I have walked down McElhone. At certain times during the afternoon the sun hits the eastern side of the street with a piercing sharpness. Near the corner of William Street is the barbershop. There are seldom any customers and I often see the middle-aged barber asleep in his bucket chair, his face tilted towards the sun shining in through the large window with two or three letters from the words ‘Men’s Hair Stylist’ projected onto his face like a stencil. Next door is a tiny shop specialising in manicures. The staff are Japanese women who, because they have few clients, seem to spend much of their time looking at their smartphones and giggling.
Across Brougham Lane, which is a narrow passageway to and from Kings Cross, is Fascination, a women’s hairdresser. Its interior is hidden by faded posters of old-fashioned hairdos. For years the name was painted in red and black above the front door, peeling and shrivelling in the sun, until the owner scraped it away, leaving only a blank space. But it doesn’t matter, the loyal customers (including Ayesha) know where it is. There are no young clients, only women of a certain age who, once they go through the front door, enter a time warp. These customers want the hairstyles of their youth and the staff oblige, creating or restoring coiffures that go right back to 1960s beehives. After a couple of hours they emerge with hair evocative of the time when they were young and beautiful.
Just past Fascination is a row of narrow two-storeyed terrace houses painted in a child’s palette of white, light yellow, black and turquoise. The two worn concrete steps outside every front door are set on the footpath. These cottages have changed little since a century ago when they were photographed for the City of Sydney’s ‘Demolition Books’.
Before they were widened, the affected streets in Woolloomooloo were extensively photographed in 1912. The images are a fascinating glimpse of how McElhone Street once looked. Then known as Duke Street, it was as narrow as a lane with rows of two-storey bald-front terraces also with the front steps plonked directly onto the footpaths. These cottages mingled with singlestorey houses fenced with iron rails and simple verandahs and perhaps a tiny front patio. There were even a few houses whose front doors were sunk below street level. Gas lamps were sparse in the long street and, compared to the powerful streetlights of today, must have cast little light. What is obvious is that there were no trees. The unpaved street looks bleak, barren and forbidding.
The photographs are evidence that the rows of houses on the western side no longer exist. In order for the street to be widened, they were obliterated. Where there used to be terraces is now a small park, the size of a suburban backyard, filled with ten tall gum trees, including an unusual tri-forked stringybark. Daffodil Park is named after the Cancer Council’s annual Daffodil Day fundraiser, and the Council’s offices are in a large building situated just south of the railway viaduct on Dowling Street. For visitors, the curious thing is that, despite its name, there are no daffodils growing in the park.
The park is tiered, so that the soil will not be washed away during heavy rains. It’s a favourite place for owners to walk their dogs and also an unobtrusive spot for backpackers to get stoned. I once saw a crying paranoid ice addict using his hands to frantically dig himself a hollow to hide in. Another time an Aboriginal guy rushed up to me, highly excited because he had won a million dollars. As proof he showed me a letter he had found in the street. It was one of those form letters firms send out as bait for the unwary to enter a lottery. I told him that he actually hadn’t won the money, but he didn’t care. In his euphoria he rattled off what he was planning to do with his win; he was going to buy his father a yacht and his brothers and sisters were getting a car each. I left him sitting on the grass shaking his head with amazement that he was now rich.
Next to the park is the railway line overpass. Parents hold their toddlers up so they can see the trains hurrying along the viaduct before heading underground to Kings Cross station. The kids attend the day care centre next to the railway and are dropped off and picked up by their mothers or fathers in fourwheel drives, or by the occasional househusband who prefers to walk. The day care centre was built in Spanish Mission–style and opened in 1920. Since the late 1890s Woolloomooloo has been a trendsetter for children’s day care because it has always been an area where many women worked. The centre remains popular, so much so that there is a long waiting list to get in and, judging by their late-model cars and their clothes, the parents are from the eastern suburbs. Only a few local children attend.
A spiked green steel fence protects the playground, and for half the year it is concealed by a prolific passionfruit vine. For several seasons I have tried to pick some of the ripe fruit but a Chinese woman always beats me to it, selfishly taking them all, including the unripe. I once asked her why she didn’t leave fruit for others but she shrugged, pretending not to understand me, and repeated angrily, ‘Me no English.’ Peering through the bars at the playground with its astroturf and garden plots, the passer-by is struck by an unexpected sight: a scarecrow wearing grey trousers, faded check shirt and bandanna is propped up amid the shrubs, arms permanently outstretched like a crucified farmer.
The centre backs on to Dowling Street and one side runs down Reid, once known as Fitzroy Avenue; its name was changed in honour of Sir George Reid, premier of New South Wales in the late 1800s and, for less than a year, prime minister. The corner where Reid and McElhone streets meet is so tight and narrow that trucks and buses find the turn difficult and hazardous and traffic can sometimes back up for kilometres if drivers have been forced to find another way home from the Eastern Distributor. Cars coming from either direction cannot see each other, so there are always near misses, which can prove entertaining viewing for the Motley Crew sitting outside the Old Fitzroy, loudly betting on the probability of collisions.
Duke Street’s name change to McElhone Street was gazetted in October 1922. The street had a notorious reputation and, in the same way that Woolloomooloo Street’s name was changed to the more moral Cathedral Street, it was hoped the change would remove the stigma. It was an odd choice. A highly controversial nineteenth-century politician, John McElhone, was violent both in word and deed. He punched an alderman and drew blood, lost a fight with a government member in the parliamentary smoking room and was incurably litigious. His driver was an ex-boxer and enjoyed roughing up McElhone’s opponents.
He may have been hot tempered, foul tongued and offensive, but McElhone’s contemporaries thought he was an honest man who exposed public wrongs. Perhaps his name was also chosen because he lived in a four-storeyed house in Potts Point near the majestic steps named after him.
Opposite the day care centre is a steep sandstone cliff, patches of it stained black and dark green by rain and seeping water, riddled with cracks and home to ivy, tufts of grass and pockets of ferns that stubbornly cling to its surface. There’s a photograph of workers clearing the site for the day care centre in 1920 and the cliff seems even higher and more confronting, as if the houses above it are floating like clouds. What’s on the clifftop now looks like a weather-beaten Alpine ski lodge with many large windows and a rusty flat roof. The Calidad Building, as it is known, is listed as having heritage significance and is protected from future development. It’s uncommon to heritage-list such a young building, but it’s one of the few remaining examples of the Sydney School architectural style, one that was heavily influenced by traditional Japanese architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Designed by Ian McKay in 1974, it is a split-level commercial property made of natural materials with stained dark timber, exposed rafters and beams which ‘create a feeling of warmth’ as one critic described it (no wonder it seems to be
long to the snowfields). Gazing up at the building from a table outside the Old Fitzroy it seems fragile, impermanent and of little value, but what would we drinkers know? We’re always reminded of its existence when the setting sun reflects off the windows and the light strikes our eyes with a laser-like intensity. There are plans to reconfigure its interior from commercial to residential and use the land around it to build thirty apartments and cut a huge rectangular hole into the sandstone cliff for a car park. These plans have met with considerable opposition from neighbours.
Across Reid Street is the site of the former steam laundry; in its day it was an eyesore with its tall chimney belching acrid black smoke and dominating the neighbouring streets. Further along on the eastern side of McElhone is a handful of mustard-coloured terraces before the turn-off into Rae Street, which was the first street to be redeveloped in Woolloomooloo during the late 1970s. Each side of this dead-end street has a short row of narrow houses in various shades of yellow that give the impression that they belong to a toy town. They may look cute but inside the houses the staircases are so narrow and the handrails so low that tenants frequently fall down them, sober or not. Tourette’s Cole took a tumble a few years ago and now has to drive a motorised scooter. The street abruptly finishes at the cliff face, where the residents have created a luxuriant garden filled with ferns, tropical plants and creepers.
Back out on McElhone, it’s easy to miss the entrance to an alley the width of a door. It’s really an old lane once used to collect the cans of night soil from backyard toilets, a vivid memory to people like me. As a child in our unsewered housing commission home, I knew the stink of shit and piss waiting to be collected by the dunny men. The alcoves where the night soil were positioned still exists. These dunny lanes remain a feature of those areas of Woolloomooloo that were never demolished, and ever since they have been the centre of neighbourhood disputes over who can claim them as an extension of their property.
