|
I WILL NEVER LIVE IN MOSMAN
I am totally loyal to Sydney, although I've never been able to afford to live in it. I will never live in Mosman. I experienced the millenium for the price of a train ticket. But on my good days the north side of the city is the eventual goal. I've always planned to live on the harbour like Ken Done. He paints the boats as easily and freely as if they were tropical fish, so that the whole of Sydney is relaxed and exotic with the same far northern vibrance of the Great Barrier Reef. I imagine Ken Done in one of his colourful designer t-shirts, staring out of his full length glass windows onto the wooden slatted verandah, with the grevillea and currawongs overlooking the harbour. All his kitchen utensils would be made of clean straight steel with the garlic hanging down on a rope and his spacious house stylishly revealing its big sculptures and brown baked pottery. He is thinking about how lucky he is to live in the lucky country and he often daydreams about the First Fleet. I would be like him when I lived in Mosman. Or maybe I'll just write about the harbour and the ships. But sooner or later I would come back to reality and know that the only view of the harbour is from the Manly Ferry.
I'm travelling home from Tiffany's after a twelve hour shift at 6.30am in the morning. I am off to Macquarie Fields. The yellow lit grey platforms are barely open, the stairways still with the fluorescent ribbon barricades across them and the big wind pushes through the tunnels that thunder with trains. As usual I ride the complete loop of the City Circle on the way home. The train has stopped at Circular Quay. I sit on the side of the train where I can look out at the harbour, even though it is difficult to keep my eyes open. I love those gentle harbourside waves that rest in my heart each morning and the golden sandstone lighting up with the colour that runs deep into the country. The beautiful Harbour Bridge and Opera House only intensify my feelings. Is this what it feels like to be a Sydney-sider? Sydney-siders are renowned for their dedication and love of Sydney above all other cities and above all else they love porsches and mobile phones, even more than the people of New York City do. I like looking out at the Quay every morning. It fills me with a sense of well being. Once the train moves on through the city circle, I fall asleep with the rest. We are on the Macarthur line via East Hills.
An old bikie sits next to me on Town Hall station. He's been drinking at the Revesby Workers Club all weekend. He thinks we have a lot in common because we are catching the same train out west. He sidles over to me with his stale beer gut breath. 'Where ya headed to love?' 'Macquarie Fields.' 'What's a lovely girl like you doing going all the way out there?' 'I'm visiting friends. I've never been there before.' 'It's okay,' he said. 'Just finished work?' 'No, I'm on holidays.' 'What do you do?' 'I'm an artist, a writer actually.' 'Ahhhh, unemployed then.' He smiled. Because I was unemployed and headed out to Macquarie Fields, it put us on equal footing in life and made us more compatible. He winked. He was getting off at Macquarie Fields too, but thankfully he had fallen asleep by the time the station came up. I watched the rise and fall of his red beard along his old denims, American bald eagle belt buckle and big gut hanging out over that - all the way home. If worse came to worst there would be no reviving him. When our station finally came up, I let him sleep as I crept past. With any luck he'd sleep all the way out to Macarthur.
I don't want to live in Mosman because the rich live there and they think that people from Mt Druitt are lifeforms from distant stars. Yet despite the presence of the absurdly rich, I do want to live on the edge of the harbour. I want to daydream about what it must have been like over two hundred years ago before the arrival of the tall ships. I want to think about history and my sense of place. The Sydney sandstone makes me feel like I have returned home from a long journey. I would do a lot in life to wake up to that view each day and those feelings. But I've already added up my wage and if I worked in a brothel all my life five nights a week, I wouldn't even be able to afford a one bedroom apartment by retirement. If I worked in a job requiring unskilled labour, then I wouldn't be able to afford to live there, but I'd be driving a very nice motor car out at Pennant Hills, and if I worked as an artist or writer, then forget the car and just keep dreaming.
In Melbourne it's not who you are, it's what school you went to. Melbourne is old money. In bitchy Sydney it's where to you live, err Balmoral, and mummy and daddy provide the place of residence and all the e-pills for my actor friends, aahhh, Darling harbour and all my friends are barristers, err Glebe and Paddo the cocaine haven for fashion designers and failed yuppies ... well you've passed the starting line like and it's, oh, okay, so now where did you originally come from? Later on it's what do you do for a living and driving a porsche helps, although everybody hates you for it. A radio traffic report says there's been an accident on the M6, with cars banked up for quite some time all the way to Parramatta and lastly a porsche has just crashed into a brick wall. They won't be going anywhere in a hurry now will they?! We smile quietly to ourselves in the peak hour traffic. Sydney is all about real estate and harbour real estate. After all the closer you are to the harbour, the better view you will have of the next fireworks display, along the harbour bridge.
Just as the chiropractor was about to adjust my vertebrae in C2, she tried to distract me. They usually said, 'wiggle your toes,' then crack! But being a Sydney chiropractor, she asked, 'and where do you live?' Oh shit. In that split second I had to think fast. Being from Macquarie Fields in the hands of a rich girl just before a major adjustment was worrying. She was from Peakhurst now living in Mosman and most of Sydney's suburbs had over two syllables. I said, '... err, Harbord. It was right next to M-a-n-l-y. Everybody loved Manly! 'Oh,' she said smiling. 'That's a nice area.' Crack! The adjustment was a success! In the northern suburbs you're a winner everytime. And you know Sydney is the winner also. And the winner is Sydney! Because Sydney won the Olympics, not only over Melbourne but the rest of the world. And it didn't matter whether our athletes were any good, only that Sydney had won the right to host the Olympics. We didn't even need any athletes and the winner is Sydney. Sydney is the winner! Always the winner and in Melbourne there's trams and it rains.
In Sydney it is acceptabe to lie about where you live, particularly when dating or going for a job. Or you can tell the truth and make it sound like a novelty. Minto Heights - where's that? Oh, it's out near Camden, you know where that famous fellow Macarthur first ran his sheep, not unlike Botany Bay or the North Head. Oh, how historical! And where do you come from originally? Oh, I come from Norlangie Rock in the Northern Territory. Have you heard of it? No, I can't say I have. Where is the Northern Territory exactly? Well, it's actually part of Australia and they don't even know that Sydney has a harbour and they've never seen a train or a mountain! They think the Opera House sits on the edge of a big grass plain and the Harbour Bridge goes over a river! Really, how odd that they haven't been to Sydney - the centre of the southern hemisphere - firecracker capital of the world, cultural haven for pyro-technicians. What Sydney lacks in friendliness and culture, it certainly makes up for in fireworks displays.
And you know how they love B-o-w-r-a-l on the weekends. The cafés and craft markets. It's a quick 90 minute drive south on the Kiama blowhole circuit. Tell 'em you live in Bowral next time. Next time they say, and Campbeltown, where is that? - don't say down south or south west. Just say it's near Bowral. They love B-o-w-r-a-l. And Bowral loves them! And never say, Rooty Hill - because you know my mother's boyfriend, the taxi driver, well he won the karaoke competition at Rooty Hill by singing; 'I Still Call Australia Home.' But in Sydney there is no Australia. There is a Rooty Hillian with a good voice - but it may as well be the Rooty Hillbillies. In Sydney there is no 'I still can't call anywhere home - except for Sydney and then only certain streets in certain suburbs, darling - we were just down at B-a-l-m-o-r-a-l the other day, (not Bowral or Balmain, but Balmoral), did you hear what I said, I said B-a-l-m-o-r-a-l and I'll keep on saying it, until you at last understand the importance of it and that it has the best views of the harbour.
I'm from Melbourne and my dogs are actually from Adelaide. Oh, how nice. It's very confusing for a Sydney-sider trying to judge whether you are good enough to talk to when you come from interstate, because they don't actually know what suburb you come from in Sydney. And they can't make any conversation about Melbourne, only to say that they held a dreadful fireworks display along the Yarra for the year two thousand and what's the difference between a Melbourne winter and a Melbourne summer? - during a Melbourne summer the rain is warmer. Most of the news about Melbourne is about the bad weather, the roads being barricaded, the tunnel leaking or the police shooting everyone. 'Adelaide, oh, I've never been there, it's on the edge of the Nullarbor isn't it? I've heard they make great wine. I must fly there on the way to Ayres Rock. I just love flying!' You soon know how important it is to be at the local airports, particularly when conducting extremely urgent and important business between Sydney and Melbourne. Who needs Europe and the United States?
I've come back to Sydney. It's my home but I can't afford to live here. Perhaps I will just perpetually catch trains and ferries and live that way in order to save the rent. Yet out at Macquarie Fields (Where's that? It's out near Glenfield) the area has its own beauty. My mother lives out there because she likes the space. And also because she couldn't afford to live in Bondi or Coogee. She daydreams about the beach and the coast. Ya know Karen moved to Queensland and she's only five minutes' walk from the beach! But she knows that once you move out of Sydney, you can never afford to get back in. When the train moves through Ingleburn, Holsworthy and Glenfield, we see the sprawling green fields mixed with factories. The magnificent white cockatoos soar in from the Royal National Park and swoop down onto people's front lawns and land in their driveways to feed. I walk my dogs through a mixture of sports ovals, parks, industrial areas and remnant bushland. There are red ironbarks, grevillias, banksias, river red gums, magpies, bell birds, and red whiskered bul buls (they're from China).
The other morning some power walkers from the Macquarie Fields Leisure Centre walked right into a gun siege on a back street. The trainers shouted, 'just duck' but the police sent them back and made them go around the long way. It's okay out at Macquarie Fields and despite what people in Paddington, Balmain, or Glebe might think, people like living here. One yuppie said, 'where are you living at present?' I wouldn't tell him and he said, 'you don't have to be ashamed of it. I was born out west as well, in Strathfield.' Later I returned his mobile phone cord from a post office in Liverpool and never heard from him again. I wanted to explain that I was only passing through on my way to B-o-w-r-a-l, but it was too late. No wonder people out here didn't vote for the Republic. 'It was all about the TV personalities,' said a neighbour, 'it wasn't about us.' It was the Paddo Republic or the Yuppie Republic. The Elle MacPherson and Kylie Minogue Republic. It weren't no proper Republic. God save the Queen and Pauline. I didn't want no monarchy either but the way I saw it, nothing better was on offer.
She was a hooker from Cabramatta who screwed the factory workers and the tradesmen who counted every dollar. Their only education in sex was a woman on her knees. Or one who always laughed and threw her head back, because wise men know that a woman can't think and laugh at the same time, now can she? Yet when the situation became a little 'frayed around the edges' and he said her real name, it was as if it had been recorded in all the layers of harbour history and that all of Sydney's sandstone said it. The current in that old sedimentary rock rushing south to south west had said her real name and it was c-o-n-v-i-c-t. The history of Sydney's naked women resides in small coves, units, on yachts and private beaches. My mother used to point out, 'that's a nudist beach over there, Lady Jane, Bronte.' It was all unknown territory from the ferry. We were pouring in from the outer west for Sydney's corrupt and flamboyant weekends, always the litter through Newtown, George Street, The Hoyts Entertainment Centre and Time Zone. The city was dirty and intertwined, brash but never straight to the point. And Sydney's outrageous sleazy taxi drivers, Lebanese and Indian, doubling up on streets and fares before the sun had risen.
My heart is sandstone shelves - golden and undercut by salt and sea - clumps of shrubby rocks and the little whisper of deep green waves. Sydney's coastal heath is like carpet grown right to the edge. You are home from the past - but the city will always break your heart - it will never let you in. Even in outback New South Wales they talk of Mosman, Neutral Bay and Dee Why. They want to know what suburb you're from and what street within that suburb and what circles you mix in and all they do is get pissed on the pension and shoot rabbits at Bourke and Cobar! I don't fucken care anymore. I'm tired at this point. When the train pulls into Campbelltown, I lift my feet up as all the bottles roll under them and when it starts moving, I lift my feet up again, so all the bottles roll back the way they came from. When it rains or is windy, I grab a seat by the windows with the least bullet holes through them. But at the other end of the City Circle, there is always an ocean view, and that distracts me from anything I might be thinking. It says 'harbour' and then 'harbour-front-real-estate,' then it goes deeper still - because this is my country. Even though I can't afford to be a part of it yet.
I love the harbour. Yeah, so do millions of others who can't afford to live there. But you don't understand. I belong to it and it is my insides. It is very peaceful. I have been here a long time. I belong to the sky and the land and to where they meet. I'm standing here with my heart full of the place. It's my right to belong. I can't think of anything more that I want. The sadness in my throat in Sydney and the lives they must lead there, it's all magic, all mystery. The answer is here. An incredible sense of peace, the uneven sandstone of the heads - the waves - shhhhhh, and the Australian birds already visible from the harbour, in the low coastal shrubs, the waves undercutting the sandstone of the edges. This harbour, before my ancestors arrived and while yours were already here. The lazy clouds slowly circle Sydney's icons and always that late afternoon thunderstorm washes the dark streets clean. In the west - The Blue Mountains - the land from the harbour towards them, the rolling foothills, Parramatta and the Nepean River full of rich brown eels as sweet in life as the deep brown water. The woodland, the harsh blue olive woodland without a drop of moisture, all shrub and rocky outcrop.
In a way I am home. It is Cabarita Park along the Parramatta River where my father's work held its Christmas picnics - old coppers dressed up as elves and Santa Claus (the Chief Superintendant with zinc cream from ear to ear), finally arriving on a pair of water skis. Rocks slide down the hills and drop into the water. The tepid stillness as the salt is still and the thunderstorms build up - Heathcote Road, Royal National Park and Kuring-gai, the gentle humidity that retires in the miniature gorges cut through by highways on the way to the Illawarra. The gulls and black shags as dark as oil spills. The little views of sand and parks peak out - deep parks, bench seats, deep green emerald, cool and damp, as deep as summer at midday, childhood deep. We are too lucky to live here. Sometimes I think we take it for granted, or that we don't deserve to live here. Yet I love it so much. Just like you must. Finally, we are swallowed by the Sydney system. What are those chips embedded in the concrete stairways and underground walkways that sparkle beneath my feet? As if this was a universe so big that all my dreams could be projected into it forever and arrive nowhere. It is far easier to get lost while on the way to dreams, rather than to arrive and feel lost then. As I walk to the train, the grey station lights up, with eyes of stone. Yet this is Sydney - our beautiful city viewed from a ferry. It is the beginning of the continent through a harbour, where the most amazing journeys inland await you. All your life is here in this moment and all you need to know is here. |
