The choko vine as life blood

Foppish yellow flowers drip off the choko vine as it winds its way over the rusting corrugated iron that serves as a back fence. Lanes in working class Sydney in the 1930s were dotted with choko vines, mulberry trees, chook houses and pigeon lofts. Susannah Place in The Rocks is a perfect example of that poor urban landscape. Housing was basic and shoved together. Sanitation was a tin emptied weekly by the ‘dunny man’.

Women were poorly educated, married early and had larger families that are fashionable today. The evening meal (tea) might consist of a rabbit stew bulked up with wedges of choko, followed by bread’n’butter pudding or runny custard from a packet of Foster Clarke’s powder. Children thought there were kings and queens when able to take vegemite sandwiches or fairy bread to school for their meal in the middle of the day (dinner).



The head of the household might find a day’s work on the Hungry Mile wharves. This was no more than a day-by-day proposition. If he was lucky with a day’s work, Dad would knock-off at 4 o’clock and rush down to the local pub to knock back a schooner or two of Resch’s Draught or Toohey’s Old before the end of the 6 o’clock swill.

By the time he got home, Mum was onto her third or fourth Bex Powder. The next morning, they both needed a dose of castor oil to help unclog their systems and prepare them for more of the same.


I am down the South Coast, swimming and walking at Merry Beach, then to the Four Winds Music Festival at Bermagui. I return late Monday.

In praise of ordinary people

Statues of notable people crowd the city. They can be found in landscaped parks, on busy street corners, on the ediface of standstone buildings, and in cultured courtyards. But what of ordinary people, of the hoi-poloi, the madding crowd. Where are their memorials? I went in search of some.

Driving East along New South Head Road, you will come upon this stunning art-work on the left part way up the ridge just before Edgecliff Station. She is the "lady of Edgecliff", with various dedications over the years since she first arrived in 1989. Always drawn from the back, she is regularly updated with different surroundings and mottos. This version is dedicated to "Rebecca - life is a palette of colour to express beauty". The artist is Bruno Dutot.

A row of terraces is being restored on the corner of Bourke and Stanley Streets in East Sydney. Once the restoration is complete, this face will be lost to us. I think of it as a "dead christ", but more likely it is a dedication to a former tenant who passed away from HIV and other needle-borne diseases.

Lisa Marie Smith was serving time in a Bangkok gaol for being a drug courier. However, in early 1997, the Australian Embassy in Athens renewed her passport, someone paid her way out of the gaol and she simply disappeared. This memorial is on Oxford Street just before the Paddington RSL club on the left.

It is important that we remember the little people, whether they are goodies or baddies. This is the first of an occasional series.

Breathe

Staring blankly into the lens, fifteen widows step out of the darkness, learn to go it alone. By themselves. No arm to take. No pillow to share.

Mesothelioma is a deadly cancer contracted by people who worked with asbestos. In Australia, many men who mined the grey dust or worked during the 50s and 60s in the holds of ships, or in the cladding of buildings have died of the disease over the last decade.

"Breathe" is a collection of the photographs of Christopher Ireland that is currently on exhibition in the foyer of the NSW State Parliament in Macquarie Street.

I'm forever blowing bubbles

Instead of alighting the westbound platform at Newtown station, perhaps I found a new exit from platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station. Whichever it was, my journey from Double Bay to Newtown on Sunday teleported me to the Kingdom of Feral.

The old, the young and the very young are carving out life their way in the inner city and they are a very happy bunch of [insert sub-culture of choice here]. They are certainly community minded, if the turnout for the Newtown Festival is anything to go by.

Head nod to "Jaan Kenbrovin" for the title.

Where is our blogger?

A is missing and in peril. Together with many of my fellow CDPB bloggers, I post over the next few days - and especially on 28th June - in support of his freedom from this peril.

Interruption to normal service

I support the Iranian people in their endeavour to shape a society to their own liking. It is not a struggle for western style democracy and freedom. It is a struggle for self-determination. I am a small part of a world-wide hum that recognises that our emphasis on the individual should not replace their emphasis on the collective or the communal.

I support self-determination for all peoples through communal watchfulness. The world is watching.

Interruption to normal service

Thinking of A, missing presumed arrested, in Iran. Thinking of all the other Iranians who want a say in their own country. May they sort it out amongst themselves. I stand on the sideline in thoughtful contemplation of a people wronged.