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| ISBN-13: | 9781742241562 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | NewSouth |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Bookwire |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 640 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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Kings Cross
A Biography
By Louis Nowra
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Louis NowraAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-655-0
CHAPTER 1
THEY'VE COME TO STAY
WHEN I WALK UP TO KINGS CROSS from the city I am conscious that my route down Market Street, through Hyde Park, past St Mary's Cathedral and then up the hill to the top of the ridge, was originally a path made by the Cadigal people, whose territory ranged from South Head to the Petersham area. They used what was just a track through the woods to cross over the ridge and head towards the eastern beaches.
The Cadigal were one of a number of bands that are loosely referred to as the Eora. They inhabited the land around what was to be called Port Jackson and lived primarily on the catch from the harbour. Men speared fish from rocks and women fished using a hook and line from a simple bark canoe. Their dwellings were caves and sandstone overhangs.
Before 1788 the harbour foreshores were galleries of paintings and engravings. Rock paintings were on the walls and ceilings of overhangs in and around Sydney. Among the prominent subjects were fish, whales and sharks. The importance of fish to the lives of the Eora is plain to see. There are few carvings of birds, but fish represent about a quarter of the petroglyphs around the harbour. There were probably about 1500 Aborigines in the Port Jackson area when the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove; of these there were about fifty to sixty Cadigals, but after a smallpox epidemic in 1789, only a handful were thought to have remained alive (there is some evidence that a number of Cadigals may have escaped the epidemic and settled in Concord).
For the first three years of white settlement the Aborigines kept their distance from the invaders, believing they were ghosts or reincarnations of their dead. But by late 1790 the Eora had come to the conclusion that the British had come to stay. Attracted by free food, especially bread and tea, alcohol and blankets, Aborigines from the far north shore and the south poured into the colony. As one colonist remarked of their numbers, 'The people can scarcely keep them out of their houses in daytime.' Of the remaining three Cadigals, David Collins, the Judge-Advocate of the First Fleet, wrote that they 'found themselves compelled to unite with some other tribe, not only for their personal protection, but to prevent the extinction of their tribe'.
There is a lack of information to determine what relationship the Cadigal had with the ridge that threads its way from Potts Point right through Darlinghurst to Waverley, though it's thought that the word Carrajeen (or Carragin) was Elizabeth Bay, Derawun was Potts Point, and Garden Island, Ba-ing-hoe. Given that the Eora seldom wore clothing, it's hard to imagine them living on the peninsula outcrop because, as everyone who lives in Kings Cross knows, the strong late afternoon winds can be bitterly cold and decidedly unpleasant even when one is rugged up. There is little evidence of rock carvings or occupation of the area. There are reports of rock engravings in Potts Point but, of course, they've been built over.
In 2000 two Aborigines protested against the Kings Cross injecting centre on the grounds it was an Aboriginal burial ground. They presented no evidence but I think this belief can be traced back to the early attempts to discover the original meaning of Woolloomooloo. In Our Antipodes (1846) Lieutenant-Colonel Mundy suggested that Woolloomooloo 'is merely a corruption of wala mala, the Aboriginal term for the place of tombs and that it was an old burial place of the blacks.' This may have been true but it would apply more to the present area of Woolloomooloo Bay than the sandstone escarpment, where digging graves would have been much more demanding.
But the meaning and pronunciation of Woolloomooloo has many theories and spellings. At the time of Governor Phillip, the Eora called the area 'Walla-bah-mullah' which may have meant a black male kangaroo; others thought it described a good place to fish. There were many variations on the way to spell it, from Walloomoola to Wallamullah. There was also the theory that the place the Aborigines called 'Woollooh-moollooh' was the name of a whirlpool, whirlwind or anything whirling around, and was used to denote the sounds of windmills along what became Woolloomooloo Hill. By 1864 a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald could come to no firm conclusion how the name came about, writing that, 'Some future topographer may, perhaps, unravel the knotty question.'
One of the fascinating aspects of the social and cultural interactions between the natives and the British was how the Aborigines came from afar to display their fighting prowess to the whites. These battles and duels were attended by hundreds of spectators, who appreciated the skill, daring and bravery of the warriors. One memorable event was held in March 1804 when four men from south of Jervis Bay who, the Sydney Gazette reported, 'were of hideous Aspect, wore frightful beards, and hitherto were estranged to every race but their own' staged a grand battle at 'Wooloomoola' (Woolloomooloo).
Whether this was on the 100 acres granted to Mr Commissary John Palmer in 1793 is unknown, but Palmer's land began at Woolloomooloo Bay (for years called Palmer's Cove) and stretched as far as present day Albion Street, Surry Hills, and from Hyde Park to the present Forbes Street, Darlinghurst. He established a model farm of five acres (which included a vineyard) and built a fine house.
Lachlan Macquarie was sworn in as Governor in 1810, intending to stay for only three or four years but continuing until replaced by Governor Brisbane in 1821. When he arrived he found the colony 'barely emerging from an infantile imbecility', the public buildings in ruins, the town devastated by rum, the educational system practically non-existent and the people morally debased. In transforming Sydney he paid particular attention to the Eora, believing that the way for them to survive was to adjust to European ways. As part of this process he opened the first school for Aborigines.
In 1820 Macquarie chanced on the inlet next to Woolloomooloo Bay and christened it Elizabeth Bay in honour of his wife (like a narcissistic Adam he set about naming roads, rivers, islands and harbours after himself and his spouse). He thought the bay was perfect for his experiment in establishing a native village. Two years later he visited 'the native town' with his wife and son. By this stage his plan of 'civilising the adult natives' was in earnest. He had built for them a neat row of huts in the European style erected on high ground on a sheltered beach. Each hut had a small garden and there was also an orchard. There was a special fishing boat and salt and casks to preserve the fish. A convict servant lived on site to teach the Aborigines how to cultivate the soil. A month later Macquarie and his family returned for a breakfast with a 'few select Friends at Elizabeth Town, the Native Village, where we have established the Sydney Tribe ... We also treated 42 Natives to Breakfast and Tobacco.'
It all seemed to be going well. A road was built to Elizabeth Bay and on Sunday afternoons locals would drive out to gawk at the natives. Governor Macquarie believed he could make farmers or mechanics out of them but it didn't happen. Not long after Macquarie's visit the Aborigines demolished the huts to use as fuel or the sheets of bark were taken to Sydney to be exchanged for bread and drink. The gardener's position was abolished. The remaining Eora, who had borne the initial brunt of the arrival of the first Europeans, survived by fishing, bartering their catch for cast-off clothes, tobacco and, the most pernicious product of all, rum.
In 1825 Mr Justice Field wrote that it was useless to force and cajole Aborigines into European ways: 'They will not serve, and they are too indolent and poor in spirit to become masters ... They bear themselves erect, and address you with confidence, always with good humour, and often with grace. They are not common beggars, although they accept of our carnal things in return for the fish and oysters, which are almost all we have left them for their support ... They are carriers of news and fish; the gossips of the town, the loungers on the quay. They know everybody; and understand the nature of everybody's business, although they have none of their own – but this.'
The Eora gradually disappeared from around Sydney. Up along the ridge the Aboriginal presence was stronger on the southern side of what is now William Street, especially on Barcom Glen, the huge 75-acre estate of Thomas West, an emancipist carpenter who was the first European to settle between Oxford Street and Rushcutters Bay, utilising the water that ran through the valleys into the bay to power a watermill for milling grain. West's land extended from around the present site of St Vincent's Hospital to Rushcutters Bay. According to West's son, Obed, the land running down to Rushcutters Bay was a camping place for the blacks, particularly the slope on the Darlinghurst side. In the 1830s and 1840s West's estate was covered with bush and large gum trees. In Arthur Dowling's reminiscences, the bush was 'The resort of semi-civilised aboriginals, chiefly half-caste, where they formed a large camp, which was a nuisance to the neighbourhood.'
In On Darlinghurst Hill, John O'Brien, writing about the mid-nineteenth century, contends that, 'Along the ridge towards Kings Cross blacks were camped ... the Aborigines were numerous enough then, and continued so in places further out for some years.' If it's true, then this was not so much the Eora reclaiming their traditional ground as confirming their existence as fringe dwellers and drifters. This was a way of life forced on them, as the explorer and surveyor Thomas Mitchell realised very soon after arriving in Sydney in 1827. He pointed out there was scarcely a spot near Sydney or on the shores of Port Jackson where an Aborigine could camp without intruding on private property. But like many Europeans of the time, Mitchell believed that the relentless approach of civilisation meant the gradual extinction of the Aborigines and the only way they could survive was by assimilation.
Gwara was the Cadigal word for wind and it was one of the few sources of energy during the first years of the settlement. An early problem for the settlers was the grinding of wheat into flour. The answer was the humble windmill. The first one was erected on York Street in 1797 and a decade later there were seven windmills operating around Sydney. As anybody who has lived in Kings Cross knows, the early morning and late afternoon winds that rush up from the harbour can be robust enough to push you over, as I have seen happen to old people and toddlers (I witnessed one old woman's fall under the Coca-Cola sign turn into an undignified cartwheel). It was obvious then that the ridge was a logical site for windmills as the settlement gradually expanded eastwards.
Eventually out of the nineteen windmills in Sydney, six were in the Kings Cross and Darlinghurst areas. There were two windmills close together where Roslyn Street joins Darlinghurst Road. Thomas Barker built the first one in 1826, which was soon followed by one constructed and owned by a French-born convict, Francois Girard, who had arrived in 1820. Both Barker and Girard became wealthy from their flour milling. The two windmills were such prominent fixtures in the landscape that Macleay Street, formerly Woolloomooloo Road, was commonly known as Mill Hill Road.
Another mill was erected near Craigend Street and a couple more along the ridge. A Joseph Fowles painting of the late 1840s shows a half a dozen windmills along the ridge like a bucolic scene in the English countryside. Just before he died in 1902, Judge James Dowling, whose father built the splendid mansion Brougham Lodge in the 1830s, reminisced about the mills: 'They were picturesque features of the district, and equally so whether the sails were in a quiescent state or yielding to favouring winds.' The last of the windmills were demolished in the late 1860s, but by then Woolloomooloo Hill had changed beyond recognition.
CHAPTER 2DONCASTER HALL
DONCASTER HALL IS NEAR THE TOP of William Street. I've lived for over a decade in this seven-storey building constructed in 1922, when it was one of the tallest in Kings Cross. Its facade is topped by two A-shaped turrets which have wrought-iron Juliet balconies. Joining the turrets together is a roof of ochre-coloured terracotta tiles in the Spanish Mission style, hinting that the interior has a similar romantic Spanish influence, but the reality is that the building is a basic box structure with two flats on the ground and top floors and four per storey, making a total of twenty-four apartments. The mortar between the bricks that make up the facade is host to ferns and grasses. The rooftop has glorious 360-degree views far across to the North Shore and south to the airport.
The long foyer has faux stucco yellowish-white walls and a polished terrazzo floor that is cold and uninviting. It's so narrow that it's barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. You can tell that there is a considerable turnover of tenants by the always full return-to-sender box, which is bigger than the residents' mailboxes. The lift is the original Otis, featuring a clattering concertina gate and an outer half-door you have to slam to make sure that the lock is firmly in place. It's so temperamental that residents like me take the bare concrete stairs, having been stranded in it once too often when it's broken down. There have been numerous cases of our geriatric tenants being stuck for up to half a day waiting to be freed. Sometimes the capricious lift stops temptingly near a landing and many of us, especially in the early hours of the morning, when a lack of sobriety has made us reckless and impatient, have pulled open the door and squeezed out through a small gap onto the landing, risking decapitation if the lift had suddenly started up again.
I don't use the lift ever since one early Sunday morning I was stuck in it. Realising that a repairer would not be available for hours I had no way of escaping except to smash the lift window. The problem was that it was only the size of a tabloid newspaper. But, given I had had many glasses of wine at the annual Kings Cross ball, it seemed possible. I grabbed hold of two bars on the ceiling and swung myself at the window, smashing it with my boots. I gingerly plucked the rest of the broken glass from its frame and, grabbing the bars again, swung myself out, managing in one miraculous (i.e. accidental) movement to pass through the small rectangle and land on my feet on the landing, spooking a jittery ice-addled Ted, a hulking barman who had just come up the stairs because the lift didn't work.
The creaking of the lift door opening and the echoing bang of it closing can easily be heard inside the apartments, so you always know when someone is arriving on your landing. However, I can barely hear it from my desk, which is in a small enclosed balcony out at the front of my third-storey flat. The wooden window frames of my study are rotting and the sulphur-crested cockatoos have taken so much of the grouting that when it rains water leaks onto my desk and papers. Although it has to be said the cockatoos haven't caused as much damage as they have in the nearby art deco buildings of Elizabeth Bay, where residents have tried to get rid of them using flashing lights, rubber snakes, spikes on sills, mirrors on windows, water pistols and hoses.
A whisper of a woman in her eighties, with cheaply dyed red hair the airy texture of fairy floss, took delight in feeding the cockatoos, but if she was late the manic birds would fill in the time by knocking their beaks on the front windows of the other apartments to get attention and food, and if it didn't eventuate they'd revenge themselves by ripping out the grouting keeping the glass in the window frames. The bird-woman's eccentricities developed into the daffiness of senility, and when she was found wandering the streets of the Cross in her dressing gown once too often, she was placed in a nursing home, the cockatoos lingering around our windows noisily demanding to be fed before thankfully vanishing for good.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Kings Cross by Louis Nowra. Copyright © 2013 Louis Nowra. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Author's Note 1
Map of Kings Cross 2
Prologue 4
They've Come To Stay 10
Doncaster Hall 17
The Quarrel 31
Falling 44
William Street 50
The Swells of Woolloomooloo Hill 61
Brougham Street 68
A tap on the car window 75
The Revolutionary and the Book Collector 83
Victoria Street 97
'The Golden Age' 109
Neon 125
The Underbelly of Australia's Montmartre 133
Last orders 148
'There was a Disgraceful State of Things Going on There' 153
Fire 161
Reaching for the Sky 169
Beggars 179
Kings Cross is Different 190
Kellett Street 209
Little Europe 221
The Devil is a woman 228
Kings Cross Road 244
Septic Tanks 251
'You find this ugly, I find it lovely' 262
Bayswater Road 269
The Neon Lights are being Turned on Again 277
Women on the Edge 290
Llankelly Place 299
The Glittering Mile 306
Roslyn Street 321
'It Was Like a Horror Movie in Slow Motion' 330
Fitzroy Gardens 344
Kitchen of Hell 362
MacLeay Street 380
Halfway Between a Circus and a Sewer 389
The performing self 402
Rejuvenation 412
Darlinghurst Road 429
We ♥ Kings Cross 442
Notes 455
Acknowledgements 499