From his castle to his incinerator

Something there is in me that is becoming less and less enamoured of ANZAC Day, its plastic sincerity, and overweening jingoism. But like Douglas and Wilde, this is a perfidy that dare not speak its name, lest I be stoned, and forever regarded as an inner-city latte-sipping leftie. So it was with heavy heart, but tripping feet, that I took my camera for a walk yesterday, not into the den of flowing amber that were the streets of the CBD, but along part of the Griffin Federation Track, through Northbridge down to Bicentennial Park, Willoughby, where stands the reverbrating incinerator that Walter Burley Griffin designed and built in 1934. My camera leash was relaxed a little, and way allowed to lead onto way. On Sailors Bay Road, opposite the Shore playing fields, I loitered round a series of half-a-dozen shops, no doubt conceived and owned by bright young things with shiny degrees in modernity. They could, of course, be tax deductions for struggling consultants, but that would be unkind of me, not to say libelous. 'The Cookery Book' must surely be blemish-free. The facade of the building is tawdry, and mangled above the awning, lacking respect and maintenance in equal portion. My interest was aroused by the 'Haron's Building' emblazoned across one wall. Had the 's' been chipped off? Who was Haron? Of course, Google came to the rescue being the repository of a wondrous number of half done family trees. Haron was one William Bede Haron, who entered upon this life in 1846 and departed it in 1926. Initially a drayman, he later became a builder.