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!

The Long Stairs

At the bottom of the steep hill we lived on was bush to the waterfront. The bus terminus lurked there. I always thought the buses had a good nap their before launching themselves up the hill.

There was a concrete path leading down to the harbour from the slumbering buses. This became a rivulet of stairs cascading down the scrubby outcrops. At the last dogleg a large rock platform jutted out ten metres above the waters of Middle Harbour.

When you got to the little beach there was a small netted pool. There you could happily swim with the baby sharks before they got big enough to be scary.

The Shops

A walk to the shops was always a choice. Did I mean Bonds Corner 300 metres up the road from home, the school shops a kilometer away or the junction shops a mile away in the old money.

Bonds Corner was lollies, or alcohol it was a schizophrenic shop. The school shops were a mix of small dressmakers, accountants, a chemist and the milk bar newsagent. Lollies galore and all sorts of interesting magazines to covet. The junction shops was a large conglomeration of banks, doctors, chemists, hardware and fruit and veg shops. It also had the Sydney cream tiled pub.

The Fifth Hole

The fifth hole on the harbour golf adventure is a par three. The tee is high above the harbour at the edge of a bluff. The green is thirty metres below, with only rock and scrub between. Immediately behind the green is the harbour, surrounding it are sand traps. This is the place that golf is an exercise in vain hope. When returning from my morning expedition as a marooned pirate I would see hope after hope be offered to the spirits of whimsy. It was a great place to collect golfballs for resale.

An Elderly Primary School

The school was built in the 40s, brick and concrete. Late 50s timber temporary sheds shared space near the red clay tennis courts with flash new metal and vinyl temporary sheds. I remember listening to the ABC radio for children, posh voices floating from the woven soft center of the largest brown biscuit I had ever seen, fixed above the blackboard. Just thinking of blackboards now, I remember the delight I felt when it was my turn to beat the chalk out of the dusters. I loved making so many clouds.

The school at the bottom of my garden

This walk to school I always thought of as a walk through my extended garden. It was all cared for except where it was wonderfully wild. The road turned left following the bay, then it turns right away from water. There is the oval, the brick grandstand, the primary school, the first shops.

Harbour Glimpses

The walk to school through the bush allowed me to see the water in all weathers narrowly catching the lights between steep slopes of grey green tree. The water was at the foot of any gully you looked down. Muddy strands of dinghies, rowing for their fishtraps at moonlight.

The Walk to School

When you got to the top of our hill but before the golf course the road took a dogleg. All the way to school a kilometre away the road ran along a ridge; the houses and the footpath were on the north side, the wild bush golf tracks terracing steeply down to Middle Harbour. There were so many areas of bush that you could hide and get lost in on the walk to school. I would leave early to give myself time for scrambling, and sitting.

Marooned!

We lived on a steep hill. The other side of the hill was a wild golf course, covered in bush to the harbours edge. In the morning I could get up and "go bush" down to a cove out of any house view. At low tide a ribbed keel emerged on the quiet beach, out of the mist in winter.

I was a pirate, I was marooned,  I was the Phantom, I retrieved golf balls from the bush on the way home.

The Coathanger

My first time on the Harbour Bridge, was probably on a bus into town when Mum went city shopping. Watching dusty red worms of trains race us across the bridge, sun on the left in the morning heading in; setting sun on the left heading home.

Sometimes the music from someone's transistor radio would match the rhythm of shadows cast by the big curve rising and falling. Then night lights grace the maths and steel in green flood and street light. At night rarely the only car.

Falling in love with the harbour happens as you cross on foot.

Earliest Memory

Not surprisingly my earliest memory of Sydney is of water. But not the Harbour, rather the water of Broken Bay to the north. There is an inlet there graced with the name Bobbin Head - I'm not sure now whether that describes a local natural landscape or a local activity. It is a delightful body of water filled with yachts and motor cruisers. As a family we would drive their for a picnic and a dive through the local bushland of Kuringai Chase National Park. There was sometimes a frisson of goulish excitement on my part aged about ten. There were a series of boating accidents involving petrol engined cruisers exploding - I was always hoping I would see it happen, so I could brag to my friends at school. My wishes thankfully were never fulfilled.

Perverse Tourist

A new blog for my class, all of us (including me) have to create a new blog this week about their home town.

So this blog is about Sydney, the place I grew up from 2 until 23.

A place I took for granted - as we all do with our homes if we never move while growing up.

I haven't lived in Sydney for 22 years, I have only returned four times for two weddings a religious festival and for a personal development course. The idea of this blog is to recall the city of my childhood and integrate these memories with my experience of being a tourist in my childhood's landscape.