You're history

It doesn't have to have happened donkeys'-years ago, to be historic. Yesterday is history. Just that in Castlecrag, the history I encounter is 80 years old, whereas in Paddington the history is 180 years old. Take this small cottage on Fourth Street. Constructed during the Great Depression, the socio-economic ebb and flow of suburbs make it solidly middle-class, evidenced by it being manicured to within an inch of its life.

This cottage, however, stands upon a short no-thru lane between Fourth and Eastern Valley Way, and that lane itself is cloaked in history, a history of road construction. Telford was a Scot who lived in the first half of the 19th century, yet this lane is in suburban Sydney and I have found one source that dates it 1920. It looks innocuous, and the upkeep appears to be zilch. But, the construction method is complex and took us from corrugated roads to bitumised freeways.

Transition's trauma

Upper Pond, Butt Park, off Eastern Valley Way, Castlecrag

There is a list somewhere that ranks the stress caused by major life-events. I feel as though I have undergone the top three or four during the first three months of this year. But slowly, ever so slowly, the fog is beginning to lift. And with the fog, goes the 'black dog'.

These two images show you but one of the stresses, one that goes to the heart of character. The other stresses were a younger brother in intensive care, and on the verge, throughout January; an older brother having to be uprooted from one aged-care facility to another; moving in with my daughter and her family as our own form of aged-care, as my degenerative neurological 'syndrome' heads toward the pointy end; being always on-tap for my grand-daughter; and discovering that another grand-child is on the way. These are merely external stressors.

The stress that goes to the heart of character involves moving from the grunge of the inner-city urban jungle, to the beauty of the lower-north-shore suburban oasis. It is the stress of self-definition. Instead of finding my photographic delight in gutters, and the beauty of decay, I now am reduced to finding my photographic fodder in manicured gardens, and the natural world clinging to the coves of Sydney harbour.

This has been the hardest journey.

The Porterhouse, Cnr Riley & Campbell, Surry Hills