A new walk to school

After getting off the bus and negotiating the madness of a five way intersection called Victoria Cross (which of course you should be awarded for successfully completing the transit), there was a hill to climb to school. This was a road lined on one side by boarding houses and on the other by a convent. The convent looked very grim, high walls and high spiked gates, everything painted grey. I would have mad dreams of being captured by a penguin and made to paint everything over and over. Which circle of hell is that I wonder?

Home

I've just found this image of the house I grew up in that I took four years ago when I last went back to Sydney. It was the youngest house in the street by about twenty five years when I was there. We were the family that lived in it longest from when it was built. It was a comfortable house with a big backyard, where Mum and Dad first attempted to encourage me - unsuccessfully - in the rudiments of gardening.

North Sydney

My new school was in North Sydney, already a place of office towers when I started there. Watching from a bus crawling through peak hour traffic over nine years I unconsciously learned about building and architecture. Where do shadows fall? Can you build large and have a human scale? This incredibly busy traffic junction was my new playground, morning and afternoon.

Changing Schools

When I was nine I left the local primary school and was sent to my elder brother's school. This meant catching the bus at either the top or bottom of the hill. It was a big change from the bush walk adventures in the morning and afternoon. Suddenly I had to operate in a world inhabited by other people who I didn't know. The randomness of those who got on and of the bus settled down into recognisable patterns after a week or two but the first couple of times were a challenge.

The Harbour Baths

I learned to swim in salt water. Lessons were held every Saturday morning at the large public baths at the head of one arm of the harbour. The walk down was steep, from Bonds Corner it was just street after street of steep. I was able to see all the different folk of the region deciding how they were going cope with jellyfish, small fish and elegant little sharks. I was never brave enough to dive of the board on the deep harbour side, not even at high tide.

The Knoll

There was a spot about five hundred yards from home that was higher than the rest of the suburb, that was too steep and rocky to be built on. It was surrounded by a circuit of houses, but once in the park it was another perfect adventure ground. From the summit you could see all the surrounding suburbs and the harbour. It was another place to pretend to be Robinson Crusoe (even before I read it). The trick was how to hold the imagination's eyes shut while hurrying from this high ground to the harbour side to look for a footprint.

The Fish Trap

My godparents lived at the foot of the hill, on the harbour. All the neighbours had manicured formal gardens, not this house, it had a jungle! After walking through darkest Africa we reached the lawn by the boatsheds. Barbeques and boat launching were the Sunday games. At some point in the afternoon a group would row the middle of the harbour, find the tiny float and haul up the line to the chicken wire fish trap. Barbequed leatherjackets, yum!