Tag Archives: weatherboard

Auburn’s got my back

Posted on by
1

In an effort-soaked quest to stick curious fingers in Sydney’s darkest recesses I find myself rifling through her secrets, tiny sparkling gems of Australiana my prize.

Equipped with an obliging stub of pencil, a crumpled notepad scoured with unintelligible marks, the tin lid (on occasion) and my trusty secretary, her aura of advice billowing gently, I am armed with inspiration and a tousled map from 1974.

As the crow flies, Auburn’s got my back, standing firm at the ever-shifting front between east and west. Just a dead-man’s hand from Rookwood, calm in the lee of the snarled western city arteries, Auburn is named after Oliver Goldsmith’s poem The Deserted Village, which describes the English version as the “loveliest village of the plain”. 

First impressions are less kind. No plains. No villages. But the threads of humanity have woven an exquisite pattern here, a tapestry of colour, creed and custom that sparks life into the air around me. I know that feeling. It’s the feeling of being able to breathe life, taste life and touch life in a single sensory moment.

The scent of sharp, earthy coffee snaps around my nose, fresh mint, cigarettes and scorched meats smear together in a smoky pall and the streets thrum with noise. Old men cluster around tables laden with thimble-full glasses stained with grounds, their prayer beads jostled in time with the conversation; a giggle of head-scarved girls peeps out from a milk-bar intent on attracting the boys’ attention; and statuesque African women, the bodies and hair swathed in peacock-bright tribal print, are silently, strikingly, beautiful. Joining the throng we eat and drink:

and jolted with caffeine spin out further into the streets. Our search is over before it has begun: the secretary, exhibiting a distinctly un-secretary-like intent, has barrelled into the Hot Sale furniture warehouse and is enthroned upon a glam-rock bed ensemble from the late 1970s. A quick flick of the peripherals and it is clear that we are in the heart of Australiana. Plasticky covers crackle with promise, shiny pvc glimmers in the dust and the air is stained with nostalgia:

Hot Sale furniture

Glam rock bed throne

Nostalgia mirror

Nearby a jewellery shop is gilded in light, the bright glint of yellow gold visible from a distance. Invited to “look, try” this is as close as I get:

All that glitters...

Though closer inspection was required for this message, a homily I am sad I cannot understand:

Cursive beauty

Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Somali, Bosnian, Iraqi, Iranian, Afghani, Pakistani and Sudanese communities call Auburn home and the taste of these cultures is rich and diverse. Cardamom, clove and cinnamon marries with the crisp sourness of cherries and delicate rosewater. Rank meat sweats in the open, unidentified greens are an array of shades from Persian to pistachio and the aromatic elegance of earl grey tea swirls in the mix. In a deliciously retro supermarket shelves of products line up for inspection and include these such childhood stalwarts:

Gima supermarket

While the Wing Fat Meat Market spruiked lesser known fare:

In this Persian inspired wonderland complete with accents of Middle-Eastern devotion, Asian diligence and African pride, the backstreets tell a different story. A lost space between the comforting human chaos of the strip and the genuine peace of the burbs, the roads we found all lead to the highway and were teeming with lost 4WDs.  Here there are jargon-juggled “medium-density housing solutions”, tired facades and stereotypes. Sheets stretched taught across windows are poor substitutes for curtains:

This is another Australiana, borne of necessity. It is a suburban paradise choked in skeins of diesel and tangled in expectation. A world of tacky stereotypes and wary glances, the rumble of our fast-paced world is just metres away, belching, farting and stinking. Residential backstreets should be peaceful, full of the sound of children laughing, their indulgent parents watching from the step – this a modern suburbia that challenges its very self, encroached by storming six-lane highways, shopping malls and strip lights.

Yet I left Auburn with a bright smile courtesy of this,

a monument to the weatherboard revolution of the 1920s, wishing well front and centre; and this:

a poor-man’s mansion with a shroud of shade.

Auburn is a surprise. Abayas abound and I sense my alienation from a culture I am yet to understand in full, yet I am made so welcome and the language of the streets is hypnotic, the soft cadence of sofra, burke, baba fuat, birfazla enveloping me in another world.

I will be pursuing my secretary for the following expenses:

Mountain tea: $2.70
Earl grey tea (in tin): $2.40
Cool op-shop shoes: $2
Sour cherry juice:  $1.50
An almost excessive yet utterly delicious lunch: $12

The search for Australiana Pt II – Bogan-arama

Posted on by
Reply

Things are looking up.

The moneyed sprawl of the North Shore-on-Sea gives way to scrubby-fronted Bundy-towel adorned fibros, interspersed with empty lots, like a decaying mouth, its teeth gone south. Run down, tired of the uphill crawl, The Entrance is bereft and our search for decent coffee runs aground. A lonesome jar of International Roast sits plaintively in a milk bar window, jostling for space with a jaded copy of Women’s Day and a dust monster. Oh. Wait. That’s the owner.

Catherine Hill Bay is a scrabble of gentrified and still aging weatherboards, overlooking a sulky, grey ocean. An idyllic haven, blighted by a one-time coal mine, its rusty limbs ghost-like on the horizon, the town is fighting a mass development threat. Catho is garlanded in protest banners, but the fear lingers in the air. One more victim of our gross excess?

http://www.catherinehillbay.org.au/save_the_bay_campaign/save_the_bay_campaign.htm

The road threads north past crumpled wrecks, former livelihoods swallowed whole by the present, while carnie trucks swagger and boast, bivouacs of latent distrust and glorious abandon. Theirs is a rural retreat from the flashing lights and the easy sell.

Passing one drive-thru-life after another, Newcastle hoves into view, its outer suburbs greasy with failed promise yet clutching tightly to the Australian dream. It’s memory tarnished with the gritty inevitability of the rich seam of coal beneath its lands, Newcastle is slowly re-emerging, its chrysalis sparkling with well-crafted tourism slogans and the promise of a newer, less grimy future. It is, apparently, my Brand Newcastle…

The seaside town of Stockton, known for its untamed sands, shipwrecks and aircraft crashes, squats to the north, an empty shell of a former existence clinging to its vapid association with its big sister. Separated by a thread of dieselly water, Stockton can be reached by an arching bridge that sets you down next to a coal mine. Literally. Next. To. A. Coal. Mine. Well, that sets the scene.

Just past the military installation, complete with edgy looking concrete bunkers, the slipway, the bowlo and the cemetery, the streets of the town all lead to the water. The beach flashes meaningful looks at us, while the harbour is choked with lumbering coal tankers, their horns the symphony of a briny life. Three pubs mark the boundaries of social interaction, the local with outside tables bristling with insider knowledge, the old man’s pub, rheumy and sad, and the new kid, tarted up, all gloss and chrome and rules.

All eyes are on Betty as she rumbles in.

An intriguing mix of gentrified weekenders and scarred, wafer-thin weatherboard the two halves of life are sadly evident. The haves have the polished pebble, spiky succulent in a beige pot plant by the front door and an alarm set-up, while the rest have a scrabble of boards, rusting 4WDs, dog leads, wellies and scuffed sand shoes filling the yard, the paint is peeling and life spills messily onto the road.

The chick at the bottlo filled us in. She reckoned that Stockton was chockers full of drug addicts, alcos and thieves and we should get the hell out like she did, you know, over the bridge?

Parked up next to a mob with a gaggle of kids, an old fella who called himself Jumbo and drank mids with a dedication rarely seen and the flotsam of a holiday caravan park.

And caravan parks are a whole other story.

Sygna shipwreck, Stockton Beach