A timeless endeavour

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Babelfishing

It’s mid-January-duco-stripping-red-raw-trucker’s-tan-Holden-seats-that-peel-thighs-as-an-ape-undoes-a-banana-HOT. The tar ripples, snaking into the distance like a strap of liquorice that writhes indecently in the sun, and while I cope admirably with such adversity (a packet of frozen peas between now steaming knees), cold water is called for.

In this wasted fringe of the city, once the site of fellmongers yards and slaughter works and still shrouded in heavy industry – its legacy of contamination worn like a muzzle –wharfies and stevedores rumble in gangs in fluoro, a fine mist of av-gas sprinkles burning shoulders and the sun bakes an oily blackness deeper into the earth. And while Foreshore Beach is just moments away from the wreckers I am hunting through for hot-to-the-touch Kingswood parts, its sand/ sea/ sun = beach classification got cancelled a while back.

The grease monkey points west: “Best get up there doll, it’s cool and wet”. Not entirely sure I understand what he is talking about I enquire further – he goes on to describe a fertile sanctuary: “Honest love, we all get up there after a coldie at the end of the day…”

Almost louche in its reclining glory, the Botany Aquatic Centre lounges amid a sea of city green, hidden from the horror of the stained industry at the bay’s edge. With a Soviet-style entrance and solid concrete floor the centre is a throwback to a simpler time, and a paean to 70s swimming culture.

It inadvertently celebrates the halcyon days of summers past, with sole-burning bricks that steam as the drips dry, concrete fissures that sprout lurid life, springy grass sprinkled with bindis, a Peters-ice-cream-blue kiosk doing a roaring trade in schitzies and hot chips, drumsticks and zoopa doopas – all drizzled in utilitarian institutionalisation for good measure. Can’t be getting out of hand now.

This is a world steeped in blue and green, the surf and turf of the colour palette, with flecks of neon and soda adorning skin from chocolate to Pepto-Bismol pink in delicious contrast. Pools are lapped by grass while ancient paperbarks dip their toes in the damp, and shady groves curl out tendrils of cool, home to sprawls of families their boundaries littered with picnics, floaties and striped towels that flak and flutter in the breeze.

I follow the trawl of tip turkeys that sidle and stalk for Jatz and hot chips, red sauce like blood on their beaks. They lead me to my plastic moulded nirvana, a place that is maudlin in its search for a frosted glass of tequila sunrise…

Umbrellas crowd excitedly, splashes of tango, turquoise and out-of-fashion blue. They are the stars of the show, selflessly casting pockets of shade onto passing birds and their reluctant sidekicks, chained to them to prevent ‘an incident’:

There is a rowdy scrabble of youth, from goggle-eyed babes to splashing small fry who squeak and giggle, tweens that tumble and preen, and teens closely monitoring the ride of hi-cut swimmers and low-slung boardies. They are hunting. Mostly each other.

Beads of salty water roll from goosebumped skin and the wet bricks sweat. The kids’ pool is like a chlorinated Lord of the Flies, piggy howling in the shadows and ripe fruit smeared along the edge. A scrawny, wiry woman with a litter of kids still suckling her home-brewed homilies entreats Lozza to “ger outta the water, youse getting wrinkles!” Her age-rippled back reads Live Not to Lose and she is as yet unaware of the rusting hose coiled menacingly behind her…

Shrouded women lead their lycra’d progeny to the water’s edge but resist the temptation, the sedate demeanour of their darkened attire balanced by a swooping cursive dialect, non-stop chatter and bawdy laughter: Asra and her toes again…

Stained creme caramel coloured brick blocks squat around the largest expanse of water, bleachers climbing high with a ‘competitive edge’. The lane markers are rolled up tight, despite the best machinations of a toddler intent on their release, and the bunting droops – it’s been a busy day.

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Credit: Awol Monk.

A lifeguard trundles past on rubbish duty, a message on his back reading; WHERE IS YOUR CHILD?

I recover quickly, realising he doesn’t mean mine, and that the Tin Lid is safely ensconced in Kindy. He can, however, shed no light on what this is:

An older woman sporting a natty zebra one-piece, straw hat with a knitted brim band and a jaunty ankle flick wanders through the generations, perusing life. She stops for a chat: Beryl’s a local, been coming here for ‘too many years my dear. But it’s always the same. It’s real and genuine and honest. Now, you enjoy your little slice love. See you next time, I’m off to the waterslide…”

Unbound palms sprout and seed with abandon at the entrance to the water slide, indicative perhaps of the jungle that awaits. Harassed lifeguards corral the mob in human sale yards that get sprayed with salt each time another cork pops from the pipe, yelling. On and on hot steaming skin is flushed through soupy water in sun-cracked tubes in a febrile ripple of sound, flumes spewing laughter and one-piece bum-wedgies.

Eyes closed, toes exposed, it surges over me, a sluice of a time past yet vividly of the now as cool drips of water sprinkle my exposed skin, courtesy of a cartwheeler as she spins past.

An oasis is defined as a ‘fertile spot in a desert, where water is found amid the burning desert sands, a watering place’. Beyond the oil-streaked mirage out the back of the wreckers, I was led to my oasis by a grease monkey and an ibis. I just have to work out a way to thank them…

Fishos

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Babelfishing

Kyeemagh is an Aboriginal name meaning ‘beautiful dawn’. Thing is, by the time the Tin Lid and I cruise down in the Holden the dawn has long legged it, replaced by a scowling, irritated howler of a day, spring in name only.

Scorched winds shake the beast, rustling the duco and unnerving the driver, whose hair tangles in the slipstream that burls through the car from five gaping windows. The Tin Lid is staunch in his acceptance of the five horsemen of the apocalypse and their climate-born reign of terror, happy to keep filing forward into the maelstrom in search of The Boat.

It is all about The Boat. His first time at sea; the Cowboy’s first-time first mate and chief bottle-washer. We had sparkling plans that dripped with flat-calm azure seas, a light breeze and palm fronds, open waters and sandy bays. But they are fresh victims of a gale that scours the seas, whipping up sand and spray 500m on shore.

So we find ourselves at Muddy Creek, a shuffle-up of dirty water that snakes lazily along the borders of Kyeemagh and Banksia, beneath the roaring bellies of outbound jets. The Brighton-Le-Sands Amateur Fisherman’s Association is the landmark, the bit we all know for its flash 80s signage:

It is morose, tired and locked-up tight, a moment caught in time. Notices flap angrily on a squat Besser-brick block, Foreclosed; Until Further Notice; Member’s Only. There is grit in the air, and the putrefying stench of mangroves and diesel. The water is slack, slick with oil and barely supporting its wallowing clinkers…

But the distance has captured The Boat and the Tin Lid has begun an animalistic wail that is stoppered only when he is delivered into the clutch of his mariner crew:

As they motor into the tempest with only seedless grapes and ginger beer I wonder idly if a broad-brim-hatted three-year-old could tip the delicate balance in high seas, but am soon distracted by the bones of what was Fishos, one-time thriving cultural hub, albeit with slight scent of fish…

Empty-eyed and retired, she is like a salty run aground forever, sadly listing back into the creek, silent but for the clack clack of tip turkeys as they squabble over the debris.

The boat yard sprouts a little more life, but is the preserve of a wily few with hard-clung-to keys for shiny padlocks that cluster like haemorrhoids around a rusting chain-link fence. And there are signs in abundance, manifestos for the suburban trailer-sailors:

A chalkboard with a nub of chalk dangling from a strand of twine, its blurry scrawl almost illegible, belies the sense of community it inspires. It is a trip log, where each and every skipper signs-out on departure. If they fail to sign-in on their return it is assumed they are in difficulty on the water and require assistance, and someone will head out to find them.

Of course, this premise relies on any number of factors; that the skipper remembers to sign back in, that the chalkboard isn’t wiped clean by onshore gusts of ocean, and that visiting 50s speedboats reliant solely on broad-brim-hatted children and ginger beer have seen this board and added themselves to it. Oh, and that there is someone there to read it…

TS Sirius, a utilitarian bunker that adjoins the boatyard offers a skerrick of solace – an Australian Navy Cadet unit right here! Perfect for open-water rescues in cyclonic conditions, reliable, big-boated and undeniably attractive in uniform – but the concrete is moth-eaten, honeycombed out by time. There is no epaulette’d admiral barking orders here, no swarm of sailors to save the day.

The best I can hope for is a bloke in a tinny, back from an afternoon’s squid fishing, who seems interested only in the sinks:

In this incongruous place, a concrete wasteland, forgotten yet not forgiven, it seems strange to smell the ripe aromatic tang of oriental greens, yet out the back, beyond a playground that may or may not have been imported from Soviet Russia during the Cold War, is a lush emerald ocean, conical hats bobbing in it like buoys:

Bok choy, choy sum, on choy and Chinese broccoli vie for light, fat with water and love. The scent of coriander, parsley and mint make my mouth water, despite the festering mangroves, and the rich alluvial soil crumbles seductively beneath my toes. It is no stretch to imagine Muddy Creek as it once was, teeming with life, unencumbered by industrial decay and the social stoush endemic in the economic collapse and involuntary administration of community organisations.

Yet, in this moribund place caught in the thrall of an angry sou’easter, there is a moment of bright, bright joy – it is written on the face of the Tin Lid as he returns from his first time on the high seas.

Perhaps this is the ‘beautiful dawn’ Kyeemagh whispers of?

Old bones

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Babelfishing

The Secretary, in a well-considered manner, grabs a knife and stabs efficiently at an entirely innocent map: “We shall go here. Now”; the edict comes down. The paper tears into a tiny fold, its edges frayed and flapping, and for a moment I think she means Punchbowl. Summoning the courage to tell her we have already been there and her head must be leaking, I realise its the fold – its swallowed Campsie whole.

Like a flap of skin jammed beneath meaty thighs and sticky with the sweat of close proximity, Campsie is tucked conspiratorially between Belmore and Ashbury, Clemton Park and Harcourt (the suburb that died).

Strange streets that seem banished from my map are flighty creatures that wriggle and stop without warning. Lead skies shroud a greyed-out afternoon, while the screech of the Holden’s fan-belt makes my eyelid tick impatiently and I begin to wonder if this inner western shadow actually exists.

The internet says it does, though every What to do in Campsie inquiry directs the viewer to a skeletal line-up of Korean BBQ joints, chicken shops and Cake World. Apparently this little slice of suburban life also features heavily on the National Public Toilet Map.

The heart of Campsie looks like an Asian strip mall, albeit under temperate skies without the tiniest dash of humidity. It lacks, however, the notorious smell and sound of the subcontinent, a place that guzzles expectation before burping languorously and leaving an aftertaste of exotic chaos that will never be fully digested.

Here, life is more prosaic. Beamish Street chunters through the middle, a teeming mess of life: I can just imagine the ad hoardings glistening like gems in bright sun, but today the asphalt absorbs light in gloomy resignation:

Cheap phone joints bawl and titter, knock-off shops pander to the plastic senses and signs talk in tongues, cursive updrafts of Hindi and Arabic shouted down by rapid-fire Hanzi and the Altaic Korean script. They brag of bibimap and kimchi, toum, black cumin and MSG:

As if compensating for the ominous lack of bright light, savage hits of fluorescent colour spark on the back of my retinas with gaudy promises of brooms and plastic blooms,

a pink-stripped butcher and Snow Monkey, of which I have nothing to report as I have no idea what it is, though Weekend Notes exclaim it is a ‘thing to do’ in Campsie:

Warming pink aside, in a floodlit mall gilded in concrete and pebble-dash, knecking teens emit warning pulses of “WTF do you want?” Contemptuous eyes and lip-locked mouths snarl a warning: “This is our piss-stained stairwell”.

And from a rough-as-guts pub, garish bastion of the corner, a clutch of greased mechanics drink with a crew of council workers. They stare menacingly at our snail’s pace along the street.

Their corner, their fight, right? Swill-time has started early and they are ready to brawl.

We seek sanctuary in Denoy’s, a barber’s shop from the past that has a new lease on life. Repurposed as an old timers’ card palace, Denoy’s is flooded with jocular warmth and filled with the scent of cardamom and coffee and unfiltered cigs.

A grey-haired grandfather strolls over; “Please, you come in, see for yourselves? You wanna play cards? You wanna coffee?” I ask how the men know each other and he replies,

“As you get older you fight with your wife. This place here? It gives us something to do, some place to be. We play cards, we drink coffee, we smoke. It’s good, you know?”

There are cosy pockets of the past here, jostled between the pings of a non-stop-can’t-put-it-down-must-have-it consumerism. Denoy’s is just the first hint. Across the road, Wally & Ossie’s pizza joint warbles a siren song of foot-long garlic bread and Chianti from the ’70s.

And Bruno and Marian’s is a picture of retro cool, flecked with nostalgia,

its window pane a living memory.

A sign for Homy Ped shoes – the hoof of choice for an aging generation – age-spot creams, the Gentle Dentist and an eyebrow wax that promises immediate youthful rejuvenation are further indication.

There is a sense of temporal mutation here, a stubborn past captured in sepia that can’t be outshone by the bawdy neon of now. An Asian butchers looks suspiciously as though it is sited in what was once the undertakers:

while directly behind a young girl playing an ocarina in the shadow of the war memorial on Anglo Road, two blokes tweak the sound system on their souped-up Suby, mids and tweeters squabbling for supremacy of a track entitled Take Yo Bitch.

Even the pub’s logo is reminiscent of dentures:

Campsie’s old bones poke through tears in its new skin, a sharp jab, a knocked knee, a dislocation in time that cheapen a rapidly applied slick of external varnish.

I wonder how long it will be before they are encased in a tougher skin, a skin that refuses to let them jut out to escape their wives or get a perm beneath the tinsel? It will be a sadder day when this jangle of bones is retired at last.

Home of the brave

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Babelfishing

In an effort to maintain my frenetic search for Australiana, and in a fit of wild-eyed idealism, I packed the Tin Lid and the Cowboy into the Holden and pointed her nose to Soviet wastes of Homebush and the Royal Easter Show.

What better environment to bear witness to the deranged mania of our cultural psyche than an oversized paddock swarming with small humans high on sugar and roaring with adrenalin, mobs of cattle lowing with good health, outlaw clowns, balls of fluff that careen into ankles with squeaking abandon, roustabouts clutching half-crushed cans of brew and harried parents with fairy floss smeared across their peripheral vision?

This raging maelstrom is the crucible of Australiana: a small child coos lovingly at a helium-filled bunny snared to her wrist; an old bushie adjusts his hat to better see the young stags riding stallions in the rodeo; working dogs yip and holler, tucking sheep into corners as neatly as cobwebs. A stock whip cracks the air like a rifle, quivering knees or hearts depending on your view, and a sheep-handler sings a Kylie song out of key.

Here Chiko rolls and Dagwood dogs parry for supremacy, the doughnut stand puffs cinnamon into the air to attract its prey and pizza comes in cones. Here apples are juiced in front of you, offering a tart taste of the highlands, slabs of meat roast in the open and you get to have a beer with Duncan…

The stark truth though is it is the cheese-on-a-stick stall that they queue for, lines snaking with sinuous indecency. A small sign in each booth reads; Hold on to Hope, a gentle message for those struggling with life. It’s a curious marriage, cheese-on-a-stick and hope. Perhaps the message is reassurance that if you can get cheese to stick on a stick anything is possible.

Here ugg boots mate with flannelette in broad daylight and merry-go-rounds have heritage orders. Sensible shoes carry middle-aged knitters to the wool display passing Kermit and Miss Piggy, who hang suspended from their feet and, though clearly indisposed and eager to clamber down, are impossible to win.

The wooden monkey racetrack tests the Cowboy’s prowess and his dismal failure does not go unnoticed, however a rapid retreat into the arms of a horse named Stan lessens the blow:

Beneath a big-wheel shadow too small for its owner we find what we have come for, a barn that smells of the crush of fresh straw and the acrid smell of urine. It is fat with infants – human, poultry, bovine, ovine and swine – and life burgeons from the seams like jam from a well-held sandwich.

Obeying strict stroller parking instructions we duck to enter, and the Tin Lid hurls himself in the teeming melee – he has found his mob…

The public order riot squad lingers outside twiddling its thumbs, anxious to quell expected carnage. The bawking, squawking, bleating oink of the animal sheds does little to rearrange stultified expressions of derision, though a lone oik attracts attention, low-slung dacks and a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on his upper arm (which may or may not read #66 chicken chow mein) a dead giveaway of his criminal intent.

In the dairy shed a bored ringer cruises Facebook, a beer at his feet, his stock oblivious to his distraction;

While in the poultry shed the art section cuddles up close to the Pigeon Fanciers Association. This little gem says it all really:

In a quiet corner there is evidence of fowl play – a paper plate despoiled by sauce and sticky fingerprints, tiny bones littering the straw bale next to it, serve to remind of the tenuous nature of this show and tell…

The Country Women’s Association beckons. A nice sit down and a cuppa is the ticket, before a stroll through the cake decorating pavilion, a shrine to iced invention and the dark arts.

Closely followed by the fruit cake display…

The necessary deliverance from this atavistic alchemy comes in the form of cold beer and a leather-carcassed biker slouched against a temporary bar discussing the drought out west with a mob of weathered stockmen, weary after a week in the city.

And as the sun melts from the sky smearing gold and crimson across the horizon the show comes into its own. The fading light sparks a flurry of fluorescence, neon flares stab and fizz and a cast of carnies loom from the darkened reaches of churning machines.

Rides emit a shrill pitch, lights flash and sparkle and the tension mounts, an amplified unease that heralds the birth of night.

Sideshow alley is the Apocalypse Now in this twisted grimace of entertainment, where life bellows in angry rebellion, strobe-lit in hot pink and lurid green. It is a giant step from fluffy bunnies to this greased oblivion, but the Tin Lid takes the steep learning curve in his stride, howling back his appreciation, slicing the air with a whirling blur of light that shrieks the opening chords to Waltzing Matilda.

It is the revelry of fools, a poisoned spurt of excess gilded by feel-good fantasy, yet I cannot wipe the grin from my face and the boys know no limits, cramming hot chips slathered in chicken salt into mouths sluiced with saliva.

This is the home of the brave, an unmanned crossroads deep in the heart of Australiana.

Adventures in Sydney-Panania

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Babelfishing

Back home in Sydney, a long way from those sighing sands and the halcyon days of my summer holiday. My attorney has been busy and I am wearing her advice like a jewel.

Buy the ticket, take the ride

she said.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used

she said.

So here goes. Here’s to freedom. Here’s to scratching the surface and sniffing what’s beneath, delving deep into the decay of urban life and filling my fingernails with tiny sparkled glimpses of Australiana.

First up: Panania with my secretary, the most organised creature I have ever met, an apparition of systematic accuracy to keep me on the straight and narrow, sharpen my pencil and remind me not to forget the baby.

I looked up Panania before we left. I discovered little. It has a Digger’s Association (renowned for its expansive and family orientated alfresco entertaining, dining and function area), a number of churches, a vet, a hotel and a school.

Venturing no further than the Panania cafe for a restorative cuppa we were delivered buttered toast and the story of the day Tony Abbott came to Panania. This set the tone well for the fibro gran-land that unleashed itself just metres from the scurry of tired shops that marked the centre.

The party wasn’t here

In a place where Gloria Jean’s is considered exotic, where the political spectrum narrows to a pinpoint – “You don’t name a park after yourself till yer dead, right? Bunch of monrgels that lot. That Tony, he was lovely” – and where the cafe owner suggested we should have had our drinks at the amusement arcade because the baby would have liked the flashing lights, it was a relief to escape to the wide, tree-lined residential streets behind.

Home to the archetypal quarter-acre block, each a patch of personal glory, these streets are a chorus of contentment, the ultimate expression of residential suburbia. Picture perfect, shaded by hundred-year-old gums, the houses are complacently normal with shorn concrete paths, sugar-soaped walls and neatly potted geraniums.

The quarter-acre block

The sun beats down on our backs, the birds squawk and carol from every tree and the thrum of a lawn mower adds a bass line. It is an 80s idyll, complete with legions of cortinas, toranas and geminis, lined up, freshly polished and ready to race. It is a nostalgic utopia.

The Panania Hotel is a behemoth, slunk low beneath the railway lines. It too adds to the bygone scent that lingers in the air, with loud billboards spruiking the Mental as Anything gig in late February. The Mental’s salad years capture the lost paradigm that is Panania, heady days hanging on sunbaked streets, billycarts at dawn, longnecks at dusk, batwing jumpers and cruising the streets with souped-up-gemini-driving boys. Heaven.

I can picture the late-night park-ups

Those torana kids are kids no more. The few people we see stand proud and true, but there is a sense of tired resignation. The young have moved on, the older generation left to mow the lawns and adjust the tarp on the kids’ cars. The place is kept perfect of course, for when the family visits. Not a contemporary square concrete plant pot footing a spiky succulent in sight. Begonias, azaleas and agapanthas rule the borders here.

Heading home caught up in our memories, we slipped through Revesby. Sliding inelegantly in an abrupt summer rain storm, this filled my vision from the fugged-up window of the Holden:

Blue Light Disco

Yesteryear is alive and well.

From the Sports Desk

The search for Australiana

Tag Archives: Holden

A timeless endeavour

Fishos

Old bones

Home of the brave

Adventures in Sydney-Panania

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