Around our ears

The mighty Parramatta Road tumbles down around our ears, as the city spews ever further west and eschews shopping strips for the ubiquitous mall. Australia doesn't have a term like 'High Street' or 'Main Street', but our city suburbs and our country towns are designed around the shopping 'strip': that one popular area where shops proliferate on both sides of the street, if only for 200 metres.

In Sydney, the first road to radiate out of the city to the west became known as Parramatta Road, and it was hewn out of the undergrowth by convicts within two years of settlement in 1788. Many modes of traffic proliferated, and the road became an essential part of the economy of the city. The mercantilists and the small family shopfronts followed, and by 1865 Parramatta Road was a burgeoning thoroughfare. The vast majority of the terraces and shopfronts that strip Parramatta Road today in the inner west, were built between 1850 and 1914.

Their age, and our lack of respect for them, is showing.

An empty shell

As I l meandered from Leichhardt to Newtown the other day, along Norton Street, Parramatta Road, and then Australia Street, I was overwhelmed with the amount of building work I passed. I though we were in a recession, being pummled by the 'patchwork economy'. There were numerous shabby, vacant shop fronts, but they were matched by factory conversions into living units and trendy workplaces.

Here is one such. Along the lower end of Australia Street stand these old warehouses. Only the facade of the original remains, the guts to be renovated to within an inch of its life, no doubt. I have seen so many of these go pear-shaped, be insensitive to the original, be PC-heritage.

I will come back and look at these apartments in the Spring, and see if they get MY tick of approval.

A bald faced something or other

My ex-father-in-law (long since departed), used to tell the story of his favourite axe, you know the one, with the seven different handles, and three different heads. This pub, today, reminds me of Johnny's old axe.

It stands, rather flagrantly, out along Parramatta Road, somewhere between Leichhardt and Annandale. It is called the Bald Faced Stag, and it claims to be 'Hearn's' with a date of '1830'. Where to start to unravel this? Official licences for hotels in New South Wales were only required from 1830 onwards with the passage of the 'New Licensing Act'. Until then, pubs were unofficially licenced, if that is possible.

On 22nd June 1830, Licence # 1 was issued to George Morris for the 'Crown & Anchor Tavern' in George Street. Later that month, Licence # 160 was issued to Michael Napthali for the Bald Faced Stag, also in George Street. Napthali also claimed Licence # 164 for his Bunch of Grapes on Pitt Street on 5th July. Napthali had a series of pubs, some of which overlapped, causing his eventual bankruptcy. In June 1846, the licence for the BFS was transferred to John Aspinall, and then, in June 1847, to Abraham Hearn, as Licence # 480, situated on Parramatta Road. However, that building pre-dated the one I show you today. It was just a rough-caste square humpty that stood near the entrance to the local race-course.

So, if you are following the axe heads and the axe handles, voila! I give you Hearn's Bald Faced Stag of 1830.