Monday Mural - Illustrated Man

'The Illustrated Man' is a tattoo shop on Elizabeth Street close to Central Station. It used to be seedy, and reek of ill-repute. Well to my WASP, middle-class, ageing eyes it did. However, tatts are very much 'in' and a decent tattooist must be raking it in, because TIM has gone all glass, chrome and Scandinavian wood. And moved. To the OTHER corner on the intersection.

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Thanks to Google, you can see what I mean. It is no longer where that gorgeous tiger welcomes you, but across the road at the defunct Central Internet Cafe. Furthermore, see the mural splashed along the wall as you turn from Elizabeth Street up into Forster Street. Bingo. This be it!

That entire block is now derelict and awaiting Whelan the Wrecker to begin the process of converting it into BORING apartments. How do I know BORING? Because all the other apartments around there are very B-for-BORING! For a look at the other end of this same block closer to its hay-day, take a look at Jim's March Theme Day post where he shows the Sharpie Golf House neon-light sign.

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Monday Mural - Cubicle Farm

This style of mural is gentle, and archaic. It is complementary, rather than attention-seeking. Cubical Farm was created by Penelope Cain, and is part of the city's Streetware II installation.


These murals are in the city block bounded by Elizabeth, Liverpool, and Goulburn Streets, ie down close to Central Station. There is a below-ground Secure Parking Station. The land itself is bounded by a high wrought-iron fence. These murals run along the wall on which the fence is attached. They are the most discreet of murals.

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Monday Mural - Chalmers Street railway history

If you recall, last Monday I showed you the air-brushed murals along the Devonshire Tunnel which is a pedestrian walkway connecting Chalmers Street to George Street along the imagined extension of Devonshire Street, Surry Hills. Today's murals, are in Chalmers Street itself from the start of the Devonshire Street Tunnel down to Eddy Avenue which runs along the front of Central Railway station.


There are quite a few panels to this mural as my final shot shows. The mural celebrates (mainly) the 150th anniversary of the railways in NSW, 1855 to 2005. They are a paen to the working man of our state, unabashedly pro-labour, pro-poor, and pro-rail. Each panel represents sometimes ten sometimes fifteen years, along that continuum.

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Monday Mural - The Devonshire St Tunnel

Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, used to dead-end at a cemetery. Well, it did from about 1820 to about 1895 or so. Then at the turn of that century, all the bodies had to be moved because the powers-that-was decided that great expanse of land would be just dandy for the terminal of the state railways, which commenced in 1855 and until then, terminated at Redfern Station which is off the lower left of the map.


See all that area on the map down there that is now occupied by a maze of rail tracks? All used to be bodies and grave markers. The hassle became, though, how to get from one side of the city to the other once Sydney Central Station was plonked down in the middle of that end of the city. The solution was to dig a tunnel. Well, this is just the largest (and straightest) of a maze of tunnels beneath the train tracks. Now, as to whether they found any bodies still there when digging the tunnels, no one is telling.


You can just see the dotted line on the map which represents the Devonshire Street Tunnel. This is a very busy pedestrian throughway from one side of the city to the other, and into Central Station itself. The tunnel invariably has a busker or three trying to coerce the unwilling commuter. But the tunnel also has its walls adorned with murals on the history of rail in and around Central Station. They seem to be that sort of painting that is air-brushed on to thin metal and then tacked into position. The other parts of the tunnel are tiled. The effect is quite pleasing, I reckon.

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Monday Mural - Sydney Place

Deep in the heart of Wooloomooloo lies a town centre, where the decaying tenements of the early 1970s were demolished. Through roads have been blocked off, parks and playgrounds take their place. It is low-rise all packed together, with a large number of unemployed, indigent, and indigenous inhabitants.


There are a number of murals in the area, mostly with indigenous motifs, which were restored by the City Of Sydney during 2010. Once again, for residents of Sydney, I have included the ubiquitous Sydney Tower in the post to enable you to orient yourself. One of the signs says 'Dowling Street'. I was standing in Sydney Place to take the photograph of the mid-nineteenth century working man's cottage.

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The 'poof' factor

The past is an elusive land, that fritters through our fingers. The 1840 Sydney of Joseph Fowles has been no-more for eons. The Darlinghurst struggle-street of Henry Lawson has been botoxed into oblivion. The gentrified and bohemian Macleay Street of Kenneth Slessor has oozed into the sludge of the criminal under-class. So the inner glass-half-full that is me, hummed with positivism during the week when I encountered Jane Cooper Bennett, historical artist.

Having seen my photographic record of the Victoria Street AIDS mural, Jane invited me along to the opening of her latest show in a public exhibition space within St Vincents hospital. She had been asked to record the streetscape of the immediate vicinity prior to the construction of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre. A plein-air historical artist and a photographic footpath flaneur espouse similar urban streetscape values. We trawl the delapidated inner city recording what exists before the wrecker's ball calls 'poof'.

There is a Heritage Fair on 25th February at the Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh, during which Jane will be painting en-plein-air. Come along from 10am 'til 4pm. Watch her canvas tranform before your eyes. Experience the skill and artistry of the forgers of wrought iron. The past is gone, but not forgotten. We lament its passing, but celebrate its being.

Monday Mural -The Battle for the 'Loo

Wooloomooloo is a tiny suburb in the very inner city, bordered on one side by a steep escarpment, and on another by the harbour. In the late 60s and early 70s it was the battleground for a no-holds barred war between property developers, residents, and the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF). I touched upon this in my post about Juanita Neilsen for Taphophile Tragics a couple of weeks ago.

In 1973, as the Green Bans were proving pivotal, the viaduct for the Eastern Suburbs railway was also slicing through the southern portion of the area. The viaduct can be seen here near the intersection of Bourke and Cathedral Streets. After the battle was over, the residents and a group of artists coalesced on the creation of 16 massive murals to be attached to the pylons of the viaduct. Over the years, 8 were either lost or destroyed. The preserved murals were rehung last year. The story is too long and involved to rehash here, but those interested may care to read this. The murals have been preserved rather than restored, at the behest of the artists. The complete set of 16 murals, in their original (1983) condition, can be viewed on Matthias Tomczak's Flickr page.

I will show more of the murals on Wednesday and Thursday this week, together with the story of the activists involved. There is also the story of what they were fighting to stop, and what was built instead. Join me then.

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Monday Mural - Victoria Street

One of the blessings of photography, is the ability to show something that no longer exists. This photograph was taken early in 2010, in Victoria Street, Darlinghurst.

The mural was on the hoarding for the Kinghorn Cancer Research facility which is still under construction between the Green Park Hotel and St Vincent's Hospital.

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Monday Mural - Harrington Street

The Rocks is a suburb of Sydney settled within weeks of the arrival of The First Fleet. It was named from the high sandstone escarpment that ran along the 'spine' of the western shore of Sydney Cove. Building was tough and rough, and therefore, the suburb was populated by the convicts, thieves and whores who were part of our first settlement. The soldiers and administrators lived along the eastern and southern shore of the cove.


In the late 1920s the geography of The Rocks was decimated (north-south) by bull-dozing required to swathe the approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In the mid 1950s The Rocks was once again sliced (east-west this time) by the construction of the Cahill Expressway extending the railway to the east of the city, and increasing the flow of vehicular traffic onto the bridge.

These murals are on stanchions of the Cahill Expressway as it crosses Harrington Street. They show scenes of The Rocks in its hey-day, prior to the general widening of roads and attempted gentrification of the area at the very beginning of the 20th century.

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