Woolloomooloo

by Louis Nowra

  This one opens up into a courtyard that bumps up against a high sandstone wall on the Brougham Street side. In the middle is a circular raised garden bed made of bricks, while the rest of the space is barren soil with a few weeds. Looks are deceptive. This is not abandoned but in the process of becoming a proper garden. The soil was originally infertile but Woolley, who has a green thumb, set out to change this. He and the pub crew have laid down railway sleepers and Woolley convinced one production team who had put on a play at the Old Fitzroy theatre to donate the expensive soil they had used as the set. On the hot day the set was struck I sat outside the pub drinking with Woolley as he oversaw the actors and production team trudging back and forth carrying heavy buckets of the soil up steep Reid Street and into Rae Street. Unused to such physical effort, they were soon exhausted. Woolley had tried once before to develop a garden, but the exotic shrubs had been stolen. This time the challenge was to create a garden which wouldn’t be tempting to thieves.

  Another lane at right angles from McElhone channels you into Windeyer, parallel to Rae. On the right-hand side, next to an imposing sandstone wall, is an apartment block so out of keeping with the neighbouring rows of Victorian terraces that it’s amazing it was ever built. The Oasis is a 1960s red brick box that has all the charm of a modern prison. Its brutal indifference to any building around it reeks of commercial expediency. The adjoining terraces have even more of a toy town appearance, their façades painted burnt orange, lemon, ochre and dark yellows. Ornate, almost art nouveau–inspired tin awnings protect their entrances. On the corner of McElhone Street is Aboriginal Tony’s two-storey terrace. It’s been there since the late nineteenth century and was once a corner store. He has a backyard hidden by a high brick fence and rising above it is an anorexic palm tree. Not far from here is the house where a twelve-year-old boy hanged himself. Exactly a year later paramedics wheeled his father out in a body bag after he too had taken his life.

  McElhone Street is home to an important presence in the area, the community centre. Walla Mulla offers many programs to the locals. One is ‘My Kids and Me’, a seven-week course for parents whose children have been taken from them by the authorities. Each week topics are covered such as ‘How did we get here?’, ‘What’s it like looking after yourself?’, ‘Talking and listening’, ‘The legal system’, ‘What’s it like for your kids?’ and, the most difficult of all, ‘Where to from here?’

  An indication of the ageing population is a program to help locals reduce the risk of falling, eating healthily for strong bones, knowing your pills, and exercises to ‘make you stronger and less wobbly’. Given that two Old Fitzroy regulars have fallen down the stairs of their homes and one has had to resort to a motorised scooter, the program is necessary.

  Past Walla Mulla, the original Victorian terraces terminate suddenly and the new housing commission units take over with a bland sameness that is at odds with the older buildings. These units stop at the corner of Stephen Street, now virtually unrecognisable from the photographs of 1912, except for the Hills Stairs leading up to Brougham Street. The block once had an oyster shop and on the corner was one of the first hotels in the area, the Little House Under the Hill, built in the early 1850s. One of its publicans was famous for keeping a loaded gun under the counter to protect himself. Later it was a popular grocery shop and featured in the 1922 movie Sunshine Sally. By the late 1960s the corner store was derelict as more and more locals abandoned, or were forced to leave, Woolloomooloo.

  It’s here that McElhone is cut off by the blank side of a block of units and a long colourful mural with profuse Aboriginal motifs. A pathway between the front of the units and the basketball and tennis courts leads to the continuation of McElhone Street that carries on towards the bay, but if you veer right there is a walkway one can use, hidden to the casual observer.

  And what an extraordinary passageway it turns out to be. It is a long rectangular courtyard between a block of units facing Brougham Street, and those orientated towards the basketball and tennis courts. Two Old Fitzroy regulars live here, Juan on one side and Chris on the other. Chris has painted the walls of his unit turquoise, a colour with which he has become obsessed.

  Once you enter the courtyard it’s like encountering a clandestine rainforest, with tall trees smothered with creepers and garden beds of tropical plants, luscious succulents and gaudy flowers. Even the balconies are a riot of flowers and plants in hanging pots, like a domestic version of the hanging gardens of Babylon. Most of the trees are jacarandas, but these ones are amazingly tall, as they have to grow beyond the height of the four-storey buildings on either side in order to reach the sun. Their struggles have resulted in the twisted shapes of their trunks, as if frozen in agonised writhing. It’s a primeval arbour of nature where only dappled light reaches the ground. This lack of light has a malevolent aspect. On both sides of the garden are the back entrances to the apartment blocks, their covered walkways grim with shadows, moss and mildew, and fungal rot eating at the bottoms of the doors.

  This hidden courtyard is one of the many overlooked pockets of incongruous beauty in Woolloomooloo, and a reminder that to find these places you have to wander the streets and lanes with patience and a nosy curiosity. But it’s also a stunning confirmation of just how lush Woolloomooloo has become, and how different from the barren streets of a century before.

  TOMMY IN THE FREEZER

  TOMMY HAD BEEN IN THE MORTUARY FREEZER for over seven months. It wasn’t that we’d forgotten about him, it was just that his sixteen brothers and sisters back in Finland didn’t want to pay for his funeral and his ex-wife said she had no money.

  Tommy had been a permanent fixture at the Old Fitzroy. He’d arrive when it opened at 11 a.m. (pity help the staff member who didn’t open the doors on the dot) and he’d sit outside on his favourite white plastic chair pushed up against a permanently locked side door, so he could see people passing by in all directions. He sat there all through the day and into the early evening, so much a part of the place that his plump figure seemed attached to the bricks, like a gargoyle on a church wall. He knew everyone and they knew him. He’d wave or call out hello.

  Hello was probably the clearest word he said. He’d been born in Finland and came out to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme as a rigger, and later he worked on the wharves just down the road. He lived by himself in a public housing unit because he was separated from his wife, Rita, who was fourteen years older than him. Theirs had been a volatile relationship and she had migrated to New Zealand to get away from him. One afternoon someone had asked Tommy about his sex life and he stated firmly, and with a great sense of relief, that he ‘hadn’t had it in ages’.

  He was in his late sixties and had had a stroke before I knew him, so I never saw him in his prime. The stroke affected his verbal skills, so his mangled English was impenetrable to many, not helped by the fact that he felt it necessary to shout, so often he sounded like an elephant roaring in pain. He had the use of his right hand, but his left hand was useless and his fist was a grimlooking lump of gangrenous-coloured flesh. He was overweight and had a fondness for roast chicken, which would express itself in a nostalgic hungering for the KFC of the 1970s — in those days the chicken pieces filled a whole bucket. When angry his face resembled a pockmarked beetroot just pulled out of the earth. These outbursts generally occurred when someone criticised his hero, the radio shock jock Alan Jones. He’d yell so vehemently and incoherently that his shirt twinkled with spittle. When he told a story, we only knew it was funny because he would laugh at his own punch lines with a nicotine-sodden cackle.

  Yet he was a gentle fellow and adored Coco and would beam when she sat on his lap. He had old-fashioned values and so the presence of Ayesha, a female impersonator, made him uncomfortable. ‘She’s a bloke,’ he’d snarl. ‘She’s not a real girl!’ Ayesha would pretend she hadn’t heard. But if he had an enemy, it was Ray.

  They had known each other for a couple of decades. Ray was in his early eighties
. His attire was always the same: short-sleeved shirts and shorts, whatever the weather (underneath his knee caps were deep wrinkles, like several chins). He was so thin that he resembled an exclamation mark. His false teeth were too big for his mouth and when he grinned they seemed to want to jump out of their clammy dungeon. His walk was such a slow shuffle that he appeared stationary. Watching him come up to the hotel from his home at the bottom of Dowling Street it felt as if he’d never arrive, but somehow he made it.

  Once he did, he’d make his measured way to the bar and return outside to sit on one of the plastic chairs. If he sat down next to a local, he or she would make an excuse and shift somewhere else, not because he was disliked, it’s just that we had heard his stories too many times. Newcomers were fresh meat. They’d sit down and in the beginning find Ray’s stories amusing or intriguing, but then they’d begin to realise they were stuck with a fantasist whose monologues brooked no interruption, and even if they tried to interject he’d pay no attention. He’d brag about how he had captained the South Sydney Rugby League team, was a dancer on the level of Fred Astaire, had fought in Korea and Vietnam. He had once been an admiral in the Navy and commanded aircraft carriers. One of the locals met Ray’s niece a few years back and she said of her uncle, ‘Don’t believe anything that old cunt says.’

  Tommy had heard Ray’s tall stories for years and when Ray was in full flow Tommy would yell out, ‘You’re a fuckin’ bullshit artist, Ray!’ Understandably, Ray would sit at the far end of the tables, close to Cathedral Street, to avoid Tommy’s intemperate outbursts.

  Not long before he died Tommy was ecstatic to see Ray accidentally tumble backwards off the footpath and into the gutter. Graham, who witnessed it, said that Ray had fallen ‘like a fucking tree’. When the paramedics were putting his enemy into the ambulance Tommy gleefully cried out, ‘Why don’t you die, you old cunt.’ In fact, Tommy would often muse that his greatest wish was to outlive Ray — even for a couple of minutes.

  Tommy always sat next to the front door of the hotel so it was impossible not to see him when you entered. The stroke had given his face a ferocious demeanour and when the theatregoers filed inside to see a play, the newcomers visibly paled on spotting him; his appearance seemed to confirm the dangerous reputation of Woolloomooloo.

  After drinking for seven or eight hours Tommy would toddle off down the street to his flat clutching a six-pack. Sometimes he had no money before pension day came around and we’d loan him a few dollars, knowing it would never be returned. But then his drinking pattern unexpectedly changed. He was still a determined drinker but he began to swap beer for red wine and allowed his bar tab to grow beyond its $100 limit. In retrospect it’s easy to see that he sensed he didn’t have much time left and he died peacefully in his unit one night.

  We expected there would be a funeral as soon as possible, but he had died broke. Over the next few months there was a fruitless search for someone to claim the body, but none of his siblings or relatives or his ex-wife was interested. It was decided to take up a collection at the hotel with the aim of getting somewhere around $1500 for the funeral. A local woman, whom many of us didn’t know, supplied two large glass jars for the money, which she would supervise. Over a month the two glass jars were filled with notes and coins. Graham, generous as usual, not only put a considerable amount of money into the jars but also a note saying that if there wasn’t enough money, he’d supply the rest himself.

  Then one day the jars disappeared. The woman had promised us she would deposit the money in the bank. The trouble was, we only realised too late that she was a heroin addict. Tommy remained in the freezer and no local would sit in his chair for fear of it somehow being a harbinger of death.

  Rumours spread about the fate of his corpse, but one turned out to be true: because no-one would bury him, the government stepped in to give Tommy a pauper’s funeral.

  On the morning of the funeral I went down Bourke Street to the Mary McDonald Centre (aka the Woolloomooloo Activity Centre). Woolley, a liaison between charity groups and the needy, had organised for a City of Sydney minibus to pick us up.

  It was a subdued group, most of us nursing hangovers, except for chirpy Tickles who had prefuelled with whisky. The youngest passenger was Oscar, a barman from the hotel. He was working there to earn money to pay for his philosophy course at university. Handsome, tall, with hair to his shoulders, slightly vague, he was the solitary representative of the staff.

  We arrived at Rookwood Cemetery to be greeted by motorbikes roaring into the car park. These were half a dozen Old Fitzroy regulars. It was a bright sunny morning and at first I thought we had come to the wrong chapel because the name on the funeral notice looked Japanese. It was Tommy’s actual Finnish name. The service started at 11 a.m., the time Tommy always appeared at the hotel when its doors opened. Twenty of us filed inside. The chapel was small and Tommy’s closed coffin was on display. On top of it was a framed photograph of a beaming Tommy cradling Coco.

  The minister was Ken from Hope Street, the Baptist organisation that assists the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill in Woolloomooloo. Ken had met Tommy twice so he had little to say about him, except for his employment and his fractious relationship with his ex-wife. A dreadful mournful song called ‘Angel’ was played through the speakers and then a Leonard Cohen song from his latest album, during which his voice sounded so old and lugubrious that he seemed to be singing from beyond the grave. It was glaringly obvious to us all that Tommy would have hated the choices.

  The minister asked for mourners to say a few words about Tommy. Few did, because, as they told me later, they needed alcohol to say something profound. I rattled off a few anecdotes about Tommy, especially his wish to outlive Ray. Tickles said something in Estonian, which had been his usual greeting to Tommy. Oscar, looking on the positive side, said that, yes, Tommy may have left a large bar tab, but he saved people plenty of money by always warning car owners about the arrival of parking rangers.

  The wake was held back at the hotel with Garry setting up a free bar tab for the exact amount Tommy owed ($460). Graham, typically, secretly set up a larger tab for everyone. Joel and Francis brought with them a dead snake they had found on their worksite, about six inches long with two funnel web spiders still attached to it. Who should also turn up but Ray, Tommy’s arch-enemy. Ray asked what the occasion was and when he was told he grinned, showing off his oversized dental work. ‘So the beer’s free?’ he asked, and began his painstaking shuffle towards the bar. Once he received his schooner he tottered outside into the sun and with much deliberation sat in Tommy’s chair, smiling. Not only was he drinking free alcohol courtesy of Tommy but he had survived his enemy and literally had the last laugh. Once he had downed the beer Ray slammed the empty glass onto the table, stood up, laughed and did a stiff-legged jig of happiness.

  During the next few months Ray’s walk grew slower and his stories became so outlandish that it was obvious he was not so much lying but completely delusional (he liked to repeat the one about how visiting nurses were having sex with him after he had competed in ballroom dancing competitions). After we hadn’t seen him for weeks we learned he had been placed in a nursing home.

  From the time of Tommy’s death we referred to the chair against the wall beside the front door as ‘Tommy’s chair’. Unless there were no spare chairs around the top table I was reluctant to sit in it. Whenever I did, I felt an inexplicable queasiness. The locked door at my back seemed oppressively close, as if it had become his ghostly presence. I was not alone in this. Members of the Crew only sat in the chair as a last resort; some even preferred to stand.

  A few years later I was sitting outside at the top table on an unnaturally warm spring evening. Shelley and I were ripping out recipes we fancied from some women’s magazines that Drew had rescued from the apartment block where he worked as a caretaker. Alex arrived and sat down in Tommy’s chair, something he rarely did. He seemed withdrawn and, as he sipped his beer, he grimaced
occasionally.

  Shelley went inside and I got up to get a wine when Alex gasped. The beer glass fell from his hand and shattered on the pavement. He tried to stagger to his feet but couldn’t manage it and gripped the side of the table, upsetting another glass that also shattered on the ground. His eyes seemed dazed and for a moment I feared he was going to tumble onto the broken glass. Instead he fell back into Tommy’s chair. His face was an uncanny white. While Brad went to help him I rushed inside to get Shelley, but couldn’t find her. However my alarm was noticed by Adam, the publican’s son, who ran outside. He was in his final year of medicine and calmly went through a checklist of symptoms with Alex, who had the dizzy and distracted mien of a man seeing the world through a frosted window.

  Shelley came out and, distraught on seeing Alex in such a condition, began waving a magazine in front of him, ordering him to breathe. As an experienced nurse, she knew what to do. He tried to get up but could only manage to take a couple of steps before slowly collapsing onto the footpath, thankfully well away from the glass. Brad called an ambulance and as we waited — it was to take twenty minutes — Shelley fanned him while Adam checked his pulse, asked him what day it was and, attempting to ascertain his mental alertness, asked: ‘Alex, I want you to tell me your name.’ Alex briefly opened his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe the question. ‘Well, it’s Alex, isn’t it?’ Ayesha, watching all this from her chair plonked under a plane tree, four metres from the hotel as the new smoking regulations demanded, cried out, ‘It was sitting in Tommy’s chair that did it!’

  After the ambulance drove her husband away to St Vincent’s, Shelley gathered her bags of groceries to take home before heading off to the hospital. Before she left, however, she paused to stare at the empty chair by the door.