Woolloomooloo Read online

  In 1828 Bungaree and his Broken Bay clan occupied the Domain, which they shared with clans from Newcastle and Port Stephens, and one European remembered how as a boy he had come upon ‘a murdered blackfellow from the Broken Bay tribe’ near where St Mary’s now stands.

  Bungaree’s mob used to head down from the Domain into Woolloomooloo for ceremonies and ritual fighting with other clans. One exciting but torrid corroboree was witnessed by a reporter for the Sydney Herald in 1831:

  A ‘corrobbora’ of the aborigines took place at Woolloomooloo on Monday night. Young Bungaree did the honours of the ceremonies. Before the party broke up, his sable majesty became done up with bull: and in consequence of some pranks played by him he was floored by a waddie, on which a regular melee ensued, the company espousing different sides of the question; and after a hard fought battle.

  What amazed the reporter was that ‘they parted good friends, some of their cobberas having sustained considerable damage’.

  They were still fishing in the bay in the 1830s judging by a contemporary drawing by Charles Rodius (View from the Government Domain, Sydney, 1833). The women rest on the shore while the men wait patiently in the shallows for fish. They may be wearing cut-off trousers, but are still using their traditional pronged fishing spears.

  At the same time the top of the cliffs to the east was undergoing a dramatic transformation. This was a dreary wasteland of scrubby bush, stunted trees and infertile soil. In 1828 Governor Darling ordered Woolloomooloo Hill, as it was known, to be subdivided into allotments. By 1831 seventeen land grants had been given to the most wealthy and politically important men in the colony. The major conditions of the grants were that only one residence was to be built on each allotment to an approved design and it was to be surrounded by landscaped gardens. Seventeen houses were built, the most impressive and beautiful in Sydney. These villas had to face Government House across the bay, as if genuflecting to Darling’s vision. Because the mansions and villas were on the heights, they were above the stink and squalor of Sydney Town and were symbolic of the prosperity and progress of the colony.

  The name Woolloomooloo Hill was changed to Darlinghurst in honour of the Governor’s wife, but the main street remained Woolloomooloo Road until it was renamed Darlinghurst Road a few years later, and even into the 1840s the name Woolloomooloo was applied indiscriminately to Darlinghurst and East Sydney, as well as to the heights.

  Woollamoola House itself was home to a series of occupants, including the Archbishop of Sydney, but the house fell into disrepair and ti-tree scrub overran most of the land until Palmer’s once fashionable villa was demolished in the 1850s.

  The Riley Estate was broken up and in 1843 surveyors laid out allotments and a grid of streets as a matter of some urgency, as the city was desperate for cheap housing. The plan extended from Oxford Street to the high water mark of the bay. In 1831 Sir James Dowling, a judge, had been given a grant of three hectares bounded by William, Dowling and Victoria streets, and he now gave a portion of his land for the creation of Victoria Street (named after the Queen), Brougham Street (named after Lord Brougham), Duke Street (named in honour of the royal family, and later changed to McElhone Street), Forbes Street (named after Sir Francis Forbes, then Chief Justice), Dowling Street (an eponymic nod to himself) and, of course, Riley Street (named after the Riley family).

  The name Woolloomooloo now described a more specific area; the horseshoe-shaped valley sandwiched between the city on the western rise and the cliffs to the east. In other words, it was bordered on the west by Sir John Young Crescent, to the south by William Street and on the east by Brougham. Workingmen’s cottages began to be built and it was gazetted a suburb in 1848. There’s a painting by George Edwards Peacock of Woolloomooloo and the city in 1849. In the distance is St James’s church and St Mary’s Cathedral. Woolloomooloo is virtually undeveloped, with a cluster of just half a dozen small rows of houses at the top of what are now Dowling, McElhone and Forbes streets. This valley would be unrecognisable in ten years’ time when one of the most distinctive and melodious names in Australia began to develop a reputation totally at odds with its former prestige.

  THE MOTLEY CREW

  IN VAGRER, NATHAN ROCHE’S ROMAN À CLEF about the Old Fitzroy, Nathan describes how, on his first morning as barman, the publican’s first instruction to him was to look after the locals, ‘because they keep the place running. They usually order from the side of the bar, as soon as you see them, you serve them.’

  The locals are the regulars, those who turn up most days. There’s probably a dozen or so who comprise the nucleus of those who drink at the pub. Their habitual and consistent spending on alcohol is a permanent cash flow that Garry, the publican, depends upon. These are the patrons that one magazine said ‘treat the bar like their living room’, holding conversations across the room or outside as if no-one else is there, some paying in cash or others like me adding to a bar tab, which has such a rhythmic consistency that it reaches its limit on the exact day every four weeks.

  Yet this core of regulars has changed since I started to go there. At first I must have seemed a right ponce (to quote Withnail and I). There’s no doubt I stood out among the tradies and sparkies and chippies in their grimy work clothes and heavy boots. I had a lap dog, drank wine and wore a black suit. As a young lad from a housing commission estate, my sartorial aspiration was formed by a hero worship of the stylish, corrupt, handsome, insouciant black American politician Adam Clayton Powell. But my wife Mandy soon joined me at the pub, and the fact that I had an attractive wife who was totally at ease with everyone and could banter with the best, went some way towards establishing my credibility as a normal guy.

  Slowly friendships formed. Two people became important to Mandy and me: Graham and his partner, Kate. At first I couldn’t figure Graham out. There was the deliberate way he would try and provoke someone, for example, taking a political stance or telling a joke that was gross or offensive. It was as if he were a scientist conducting an experiment just to see how the subject would react. Conversation was a competition, a masculine contest, not of physical force but of mental dexterity. Once I understood that it was also a performance, I began to thoroughly enjoy his company.

  His weather-worn face was the product of many days outdoors and, although shorter than me, he had a nuggety body firm from years of hard physical work. He came from a working-class family of eight and, despite leaving school at fourteen after arguing with his teacher, had, through discipline and hard yakka, risen to a position where he now contracted out work. An autodidact, he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge. I had never known a man so quick-witted (with an unfortunate taste in puns), who could soak up information about philosophy, nature or anything mechanical, grasping the essentials with extraordinary alacrity. He was a natural storyteller with an Irish gift for highlighting the absurdities of human behaviour and was fascinated and amused by the myriad ways we humans fuck up.

  We duelled with wordplay, esoteric facts and stories and I learned much, more than he did from me. And, of course, my admiration was reinforced by the fact that he was a self-made man, something that, perhaps due to the influence of my father (who came from a bog Irish working-class background and rose from truckie to transport company owner) had always meant a lot to me, because it indicated an inner will that had never depended on wealth, class or parental influence.

  At the time we first met, he and Kate were renting an apartment on the Finger Wharf and he’d arrive at the pub before her, having started work earlier. Then we’d see Kate walking up Dowling Street, passing under the plane trees with her familiar steady gait, her attention centred on the music or audiobook being piped through her earphones (her reading was prodigious). She also came from a large family, Catholics, who seemed to comprise half the population of Delegate, a hamlet near the Victorian border. She worked for the Australian Hotels Association and once she sipped her first glass would forget her job and the AHA regulations, so she didn’t have to a
cknowledge any guidelines the pub broke.

  The circle of men who orbited Graham included Francis and Joel. Separately, they were intelligent, meticulous craftsmen; Francis’s hobby was creating sculptures using a chainsaw, Joel’s was appreciating gourmet food and contemplating the future of solar power. Together, they verged on the psychopathic. It was as if they egged one another on. They’d cut up kangaroos with a chainsaw and hoon about Joel’s country property while drunk, which meant that one afternoon they turned up at the Old Fitzroy in a taxi because they couldn’t drive. They cheerfully hobbled out of the cab with bandages around their foreheads and broken limbs, having crashed a car into a tree while pissed, and announced to the whole hotel that they intended to get drunk. One time they were stopped in Francis’s car near Rushcutters Bay Park for a breathalyser test. Without a moment’s consideration, as if they were one body, both took off across the park chased by the police. If there were pills with mysterious ingredients being given out, they’d gulp them down, daring one another to take more, which explained how they came to be kneeling before the meat section of Coles in Kings Cross one day, trying to eat the frozen meat and babbling in tongues. Even by the behaviour of most of the tradies, this seemed extreme.

  Gradually Mandy and I became part of the regulars. It was more than a convivial crowd, they were enmeshed with the life of the pub and each other. One Christmas Eve every one of us turned up at the pub with platters of food and gifts. When anyone was cold they’d raid the Lost Property box. One night the Crew waltzed around in frayed cardigans and stained jumpers. If someone wanted a new suit or outfit then you ordered it from a local who would get it for you (‘cheap as chips’), having been stolen to order.

  It was easy to understand that from first meeting him some thought Graham abrasive and confrontational (‘a real hard-nut’, said one appalled visitor), but he was the most generous of us all. When Garry needed a new kitchen, Graham organised it, brought in his own workers, and rebuilt it from scratch. When Hope Street, the local Baptist charity, needed a new café, he did the same. Probably the worst thing you could do was thank him. So when I arrived at the pub one evening I was stunned to discover that he had paid my bar tab. It had become huge because both Mandy and I were broke at the time. We tried to thank him, but he waved me away as if it were nothing. He’d loan people money, sometimes considerable sums, knowing that some of them wouldn’t repay him. Among those who knew him closely, especially his workers, he inspired a fierce devotion.

  There are many examples of the other regulars helping out Garry. Brad found out a city hotel chain was throwing out practically new carpet and brought it in to replace the pub’s gossamer-thin and shiny-with-use grey carpet. Others have helped out with advice (freely given), and German Dave repeatedly repaired Garry’s early ’90s station wagon, which he said was so clapped out it would be worthless on the open market. Some like Curly Cole and Gordy have built sets and acquired props for the downstairs theatre. The Crew also helps each other with gifts of furniture, physical labour, gardening, cooking or visits to check on their health.

  A subtle but significant transition occurred when Graham and Kate shifted to Mooney Mooney. Graham had been such a compelling presence for the tradies and sparkies that after he left, they began slowly to drift away, one or two because of marriage, others went west to earn money in the mining industry, and some found that having babies meant home life took precedence over pub life. The complexion of the Old Fitzroy crew began to change, and a new rhythm established itself.

  Most days are quiet when the pub opens at 11 a.m. (Sundays, 3 p.m.). A local passing by may drop in for a drink, and professionals who work in the area come for lunch. Later in the afternoon there are periods when there are no patrons at all, then those workers who have started the day early begin to arrive. Among the first is the house painter Cockney Michael (as distinct from Michael with the hipster beard and passion for motorbikes). He comes up from Boomerang Street, his white pants dabbed with licks of coloured paint as if wearing a Jackson Pollock canvas. His conversations are peppered with rhyming slang (‘Me mate’s got Jimmy Dancer’) and the catchphrase ‘No shit, Sherlock’. Drew also arrives from Boomerang Street, dressed in his caretaker’s uniform of cloth cap and blue overalls. Although he has lived in Australia for over forty years, he hasn’t lost his Scottish accent. He plays in his band of a weekend and often shouts out his dislike of the music the younger staff play (especially rap and morose girl singers). He will sing along with tunes he likes, and has been known to lead the whole bar in singing the Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’. His other dislike is the quality of the Guinness available in Australia (he blames the local brewery). He and Cockney Michael have the physiques of jockeys and are close friends. Another musician is Juan, originally from the Philippines. He occasionally plays at the pub and has a residency at the Bells on Cowper Wharf Road of a Thursday night if he isn’t touring with John Paul Young, a gig he’s done for over twenty years.

  The only other person besides me who always wore a suit was Malcolm. In his late sixties, he had been a boxer, a private detective and a standover man. Now he was a debt collector for the casino and was on the skids. He had been the bodyguard for Kings Cross gangsters and although he had a rough pugalist’s face and heavy build, his voice was soft and posh, his grammar perfect — there was a touch of the toff about him. His tab would frequently run out and Garry wouldn’t take his cheques for a single glass of red wine because they’d bounce. I liked him, especially after he told me that the first time he saw me in the pub I looked like ‘a proper gentleman’. A sucker for that sort of praise, I’d give him money for drinks. He took to having a fit on Friday afternoons on the floor of the pub in the faint hope he would be rushed to hospital and therefore avoid weekend detention at Silverwater jail, where he was serving a two-year sentence.

  One of the smartest blokes is Carl, who was employed in IT for years, here and in America, was once a male model and is at university working towards a PhD in robotics. It is believed that he has tinkered with his vacuum cleaner to such an extent he has transformed it into a basic robot. He can have the tendency, after a few beers, to engage in monologues of such scientific complexity that no-one understands him (his enthusiastic explanation of the Higgs-boson experiments was mind-boggling, at least to me). He and his friend Woolley like to attend free lectures at universities (preferably with cheese and wine on offer) on such diverse topics as black holes and climate change. Woolley is the nickname of another Graeme and it was given to him by — and here pick your story — one, a woman who was amused by a huge woollen jumper he wore, or two, a woman who adored his wild white beard and hair. If he hasn’t had a haircut for a while he is likened to Santa Claus, and when he has been to the hairdresser and trimmed his beard, many have pointed out his remarkable resemblance to the singer Kenny Rogers.

  His arrival times are erratic. He may be there at lunch time or come later in the afternoon, either from his unit in McElhone Street (part of a block he calls ‘The Ponderosa’) or the Frisco Hotel, sometimes with Chemical Frank (with his mop of pure white hair cut in a pageboy style) or occasionally with cheerful and loud Vince, who views the world from an odd angle and has a puppy-dog affection for women that can be quite alarming to them. Vince may be a gentle soul but he has an imposing body, like that of a bouncer, combined with wire-rimmed glasses and a wild grin that emphasises his chipped teeth. Incapable of lying because an eye twitch gives him away, he often wears sunglasses. He has no idea how loud and eccentric he seems to others, especially women. Once I saw him sitting on his stool at the bar talking loudly and intensely to a new barmaid: ‘I’ve got so much power, you wouldn’t believe. I can buy any woman I want. And I want you. Do you know what that feels like? To have money and women at your fingertips? The power is earth shattering. Where do you live? You know I’m keen on you.’ When he finished he offered her thousands of dollars to go out with him, incapable of reading her expression of unease. He used to attend TAFE courses out
at Leichhardt because after classes it was only a short distance to a hotel renowned for its topless waitresses. When he heard that his favourite titty bar was closing, he was distraught. ‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ he kept saying, shaking his head at the terrible news.

  Shelley comes down from Kings Cross where she works at the injecting centre. Blonde, and looking much younger than her age (late fifties), she’s a nurse. Her long-time partner, Alex, strolls up from the Plunkett Street School where he works as a distance education teacher.

  As Nathan writes in his novel, the hotel ‘really didn’t pick up until around four or five. Prime time for the locals to arrive.’ By the time I head down to the hotel between 4.30 and 5.00, many of the regulars are there.

  Smiling Sam doesn’t frequent the pub as much since he became a father, but is remembered for his schemes. One day when he heard that a stranded whale had died in the harbour he thought he could make a fortune by stealing some of its teeth and selling them on eBay. He and his mate bought white lab coats to make themselves look like scientists, borrowed a couple of hacksaws and claw hammers and drove to the site only to find out from a news report on the car radio that only sperm whales had teeth and this was a Right whale. Back at the hotel Smiling Sam was relieved they hadn’t gone through with their plan: ‘We would have seemed like right dickheads.’

  The three Coles are Tourette’s Cole (who often wears an overcoat with an upturned collar that makes him resemble a grumpy penguin), Cole the earnest schoolteacher, and Curly Cole, who is a tradie, solid, and has long curly black hair and a baseball cap perched unsteadily on top of it.