Tag Archives: dreaming

Asbestos and chrome

Posted on by
Reply

Warilla is the houso suburb where you get more bang for your buck according to the real-estate ads, draped like itchy blankets over ‘concrete deals’ and ‘below median prices’.

This spacious family home in its peaceful and convenient location, for example, is a mere $670,000, starting price only:

That edict only applies the western edge though, where the town tapers out towards the lake. Closer to the pounding surf of the South Pacific, the prices are not as benign. With its as yet ‘unverified balcony’, the pile on Little Lake Crescent is a cool $2.45mill:

Supreme coastal glamour with a uniquely versatile floor plan, this top-drawer residence nestled directly opposite one of the South Coast’s most known beaches and footsteps to Little Lake foreshore, and waterside parklands. An exclusive statement in contemporary style, the property showcases an array of premium appointments guaranteed to amaze. Entertaining is of first-class caliber, and embraces multiple family and entertaining options including a spacious lounge and dining zone finished in neutral tones flowing to a wide balcony commanding those majestic water views.

Sic-kening content aside, the marble tone and neutral ‘fusion of luxury and lifestyle convenience’ DO look directly out at the ocean, if you squint past the dead tree and property eyesore.

Just shy of Shellharbour, and deep in the straggling suburbs of the Gong, Warilla is a curious place. The local Chinese restaurant sports a pseudo temple roofline and majestic cement arches: it is closed indefinitely, however.

Granny flats and troopies line streets prosaically named Veronica, Dave, Jason and Anne, Terry, Brian and Raymond. Joan is a personal favourite, her tin rooves and verdant edges a swan dive into yesteryear.

Across the main road, things are less quaint, Grimmet and Spofforth Streets carve deep grooves into an overactive imagination that conjures underground criminal activity and latent despair. But the blocks are as big…

A mobility scooter flies past, its transportation executive trailing ALDI bags and grim determination to make headway on the only roundabout for 10 miles. On the bumper bar, a sticker reads:

Your political correctness offends me

Which is apt. I suspect the Tin Lid and I might be highly offensive to some, lefties on the loose on an Easter weekend devoid of eggs, carrots or commitment.

This place is liminal, caught between cause and effect. Flagrant ad copy spruiks a realm far removed from the asbestos bungalows and tank traps, from clutches of boardriders blowing horns into the wind, and pokies at the pub, their meaty clatter heard streets away.

Its raw edges are powerfully beautiful – a sand-blasted fringe that stretches to an ocean horizon, and a salted lake that cradles this spit of land in its embrace, full of story and lore – but at its heart, Warilla is pockmarked and sore, unable to reason with a future unchosen by its residents.

At Windang, sentinel structures dominate the horizon, placed with intent to mark a shared place, a dog beach where canine and human partner in their shared distaste for rangers and leashed areas, the air bristling with barking joy and the spray of sand, a tribe at play.

But it falls heavily into the one-careful-owner trope. This pristine Country is what attracts the development that circles – like a dingo on its prey – ready to capitalise on the ‘untouched potential’ it offers.

The traditional custodians of the land surrounding what is now known as Lake Illawarra are the Wadi Wadi people, part of the Dharawal Nation. Jubborsay, as it is known, is a place of spirits, a place to meet, eat, birth and die, burial sites and middens flanking the water’s edge.

The name Illawarra is derived from various adaptions of eloura, or allowrie; illa, wurra, or warra: all refer to ‘a generally pleasant place near the sea’, which seems like a singularly white reinterpretation. It is ‘generally pleasant’, but this belies the powerful undertones that curl around you like tendrils of hair on a blowy day, tickling your subconscious, demanding it takes notice.

It won’t be long before the tatty authenticity of this forgotten community, with its rich Dreaming and proud history, is replaced with an expensive veneer, one that ousts anyone who can’t afford it.

Generational homes on wide blocks will disappear, tended greenery will be forfeited, and the light will change as it is swallowed by buildings that reach for the sky.

And these childhood blocks, with their triangle rooves and strip of green by the gutter, will go.

The writing is on the wall just a few kays up the road. Frasers Property at Shell Cove is developing The Waterfront, and asking us to ‘set a course for luxury living’.

Like a clipper wallowing in dead water, the metaphor is insistent, nautical themes bedecking timber stanchions, caramel-and-sea-salt gelato flogged to the highest bidder.

The litany of advertorial is loud:

Here you can enjoy a harbourside lifestyle in a stunning natural environment with an array of amenity on your doorstep. The world-class Shellharbour Marina, The Waterfront Dining Precinct  and The Waterfront Tavern are all open. Imagine strolling along boardwalks surrounding the marina to shops, playgrounds and in 2025 a state-of-the-art community centre, library, visitors information centre. In 2025 there will be a stunning new Crowne Plaza hotel at The Waterfront. This is the opportunity to live metres away from unrivalled amenity not found anywhere else on the NSW South Coast.

Imagine the unrivaled amenity, she mutters with a hint of Kerrigan-esque irony. Imagine a state-of-the-art community centre…

Amid spanking new builds and sharply demarked 50-zones, life here is sanitised and a world away from Warilla and her renegade residents. The kid and I came here for seals (alleged to flump their salty weight on slick pontoons and bark menacingly at timid landlubbers), but we are met with linen smocks and squealing children on motorised toys, fluffy lap dogs and maniacal seagulls. At least there is one constant.

The digital download is less prosaic: masterplans, aerial construction updates, property guides and mortgage calculators paper the air, chasing buy-now die-later rhetoric full of ‘lifestyle opportunities’ and ‘last-ever lots’.

It leads me to question how this ‘unbeatable lifestyle’ is better than what Wal from Lake Entrance Road – to the west of Shellharbour Road, the ‘bad bit’ – has.

Wal’s coastal dream has been his reality for over 30 years. His hard-earned, deeply loved fibro is an asbestos castle. Just a few hundred metres from the sea and cradled in the swell of community, it’s a crucible for his family’s memories, steeped in a wealth far richer than a Warrigal new build, shiny with chrome and vanilla scented.

Frankly, Wal says he just can’t understand the fuss…

In the time of picnics

Posted on by
Reply

According to the NSW Government, on secondment from governing and moonlighting as health professionals, September 2021 is picnic time:

Households with all adults vaccinated will be able to gather outdoors for recreation (including picnics) within the existing rules (for one hour only, outside curfew hours and within 5km of home). This is in addition to the one hour allowed for exercise.

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/

Parks throughout the Greater Sydney Basin are brimming with socially distanced crowds, interspersed with authority figures to verify vaccination certificates. And while there is a palpable sense of relief at this easing of restriction, there is a Pythonesque element to this decree. Picnic hopping is now a thing, along with exquisitely delineated schedules that incorporate five, six, seven events adjacent in the park, and an overindulgence in cheese.

Never ones to break the rules, we too decided on a picnic in a park, albeit a national park, at a table scored by eons of time and beer-bottle tops, far from civilisation and with not a soul in sight.

Deep in the Wollemi, beyond the fringes of remote, along washed-out fire tracks and dirt-choked run-offs, this is 4WD country, the smell of diesel and hot brakes a sticky perfume that garlands the blue haunches of Mount Yengo and Pon Pon as the the convoy jolts deeper into the interior.

Captive of Pierce’s Putty Valley Tours – track-felled trees our speciality! – all we know is we’re heading west, along spine-like tracks said to follow songlines. This is Darkinjung Country in the shadow of Mount Yengo, where the dreaming speaks of silver-lipped gums, dappled light falling on gullies of unexpected flowers, and soaring grass trees. impervious to anything but a proud primordial form.

The peak of a dormant volcano, traditionally used for learning and ceremony for tens of thousands of years, Mount Yengo is rich with cultural significance. It is to the clans of this area as Uluru is to Central Desert communities, a sacred space that thrums with a pulse as old and deep as time itself. With a plateau’d top, the ancestral story of Mount Yengo depicts Baiame, a creational figure, jumping back up to the spirit world after he created the mountains, lakes, rivers and caves in the area. When he sprung skyward, Baiame flattened the top of the mountain. A landmark visible from every direction, Yengo is our guide as we venture further in, its stories cloaking us.

Pierce’s Putty Valley Tours come replete with stories, too. Theirs are lives lived in the very heart of this place, from grandfathers who built slab huts by hand to fathers who cut in the tracks with dozers and heavy plant equipment, through a landscape wild and untamed, ceding just metres a day. Each generation protects it, too, their stories secrets shared with only a few, or at least never pinpointed on a map.

And while the Sheepskin Hut is marked as a campground on the National Parks website, littered in 4WD conversations and the pinnacle of trailbikers’ torrid retellings, it is a lonely place rarely visited, a step beyond hillbilly haunts that spew woodsmoke and juice from the still.

When the hordes who’ve escaped the confinement of the truck quieten, it is still, listless; engines tick as they cool, a whip bird calls out caution. It is as if time forgot.

From beyond Kindarun Mountain, Wollemi and into Wiradjuri Country in the interior, this was a staging post on the stock route east. Drovers would graze their mobs here before the final run to the coastal markets. It is a lonely reprieve, but its functionality – built by men on horseback, carrying tin, carving stone and timber from the landscape – would have softened tired eyes and sore bodies.

One side of the hut is for animals, a tin umbrella on poles to shelter their ears, The other is a raw-hewn structure that is stained with stories and thick with ghosts.

Inside, the tin is singed, mottled with use, a cow cocky’s musings cast in leaded scrawl. The floor, compacted dirt and beer-bottle tops, is hard and cold but flattened for a swag. A broad-hipped fireplace holds a memory of raging heat, a lagerphone slouched against it happily worn.

The stink of old dung and smoke still lingers, and the ghosts are quick to let us know they are here; tin cups and horses’ bridles clink and jostle, moonshine slops in a barking laugh, an animal snorts in the dark. Tall tales swirl in the smoke, the weather catches in a rattle on the roof, and a rustle of wildlife in the thick undergrowth causes the dogs to snarl.

I can imagine the Sheepskin Hut, respite to a mob of travelling souls on the long journey east. We scoff damper and hard-boiled eggs, cured meat, beer and a billy of tea in salute to the old timers, aware that our only stock concerns involve running out of diesel.

The locals say there are rock petroglyphs in the area that feature sheep, drawn by the Darkinjung people, as this is their Country. I like to wonder at their wonder upon first meeting a sheep… let alone a mob of them driven by hatted men on horseback, the scent of sweat and durries ripe on the breeze.

The tall trees above us are part of a thick eucalypt forest of mountain blue gum and rough barked apple that slopes towards Doyle’s Creek, home to raucous gang-gangs that drop seeds and attitude from up high. We investigate the creek, marvel at the enormity of the canopy, and shiver a little, ghosts and the weather wrapping themselves around us.

We don’t stay long at the Sheepskin Hut. It entreats you to build a fire, settle the stock and bed down for the night, and though there is no doubt it can fit us all, its bare bones are cold to the touch.

Nature has the last laugh though, as is so often the way. It takes three hours to weave our way out, a ribald game of fill your boots with sawdust in play. Strong winds that rocked the Hunter two days earlier have littered the tracks with downed trees, giant obstacles that prevent escape.

Fortunately Pierce’s Putty Valley Tours – track-felled trees our speciality! – come prepared, a barrage of chainsaws revved and ready.

After 13 impromptu stops, chains loosed, diffs locked, coated in mud, we emerge from now darkening valleys. As our noise dissipates, the silence falls again on a world that seems intent on keeping the picnickers at bay.

I can understand why.