More than 30 years later, the same street in Darlington
maintains its mostly residential status, but the rusty, tin-roofed worker’s
cottage – where Flo raised four kids through the conservative post-war era, and
where the 90 year-old still resides – now shares the pavement with a boutique
construction fit-out company and a block of apartments with tasteful wrought
iron trimmings.
And still Flo, our Old Lady of Darlington – a historical
body of this changed and changing landscape – says “no pictures”, and “no”, she
will not talk to us.
Just when I’m thinking, mad old bird, we’ve made it too
late, she hands me an A4 piece of paper with some notes typed under the header,
‘Redfern/Chippendale’. They read:
“Famous people / Cardinal Gilroy / Kathy Gorran – Ballerina
/ George Wallace – Tivoli theatre / Phillis McDonald – Opera / Vaughn Hanley –
Violin. Plumbers / Crane-Read.
“More people here now, less of everything / Transport badly
needed, eg The old 300 Bus / The Picture Show was called the Lawson (TNT
towers) / The hotel was the Burdichon.
“The two Butchers were called “Chenery” and “Elvy” / The
wine bar/Eatery was normally Tom McCotters Office, Panel Beater/Truck bodies.
“Newsagent on Cleaveland st / General store near Edward St /
“Bakers” shop on Cleaveland St, opposite the Britannia Hotel / Small
Supermarket on corner, Abercrombie st / Ever a Saddler / Needed now a good
Butcher, Cake shop, Fish shop, Hairdresser and Hardware / ‘Chemist’ has been
added as an afterthought in pen.
“Open up the back gate to Station to let the ‘Mob’ through
so local people can walk Lawson St
in comfort.”
This is an historical document. In the white space around
these words there are a thousand stories, but Flo won’t tell us any, only names
of other old Darlington residents who “know
more”. The more names she mentions, the more evident it becomes that Flo’s
tight jaw and camera shyness is less about the police and more about her
feelings that nothing she could tell us is “newsworthy”. The last thing she
wants to become is fodder on the pages of the local rag.
But Flo, didn’t you get pinched? Fingerprints taken up at
the station when the SP bookies operating out of her backyard got done. “The
boys paid the fine,” she says. “I was just the front.” She makes it sound like
nothing.
It sounds like it was a very different time back then … “We
survived,” Flo says.
John, her
youngest son and now her carer, translates. There were seven of them in the
cottage – his mum and dad, three siblings and later a cousin. While it was a
tight squeeze, the doors were open and the kids spilled out onto the streets.
You left your money out the front for the milkman, and there was nothing
sinister about a man standing at your door offering to sharpen your scissors
and knives.
Wartimes were tough. At work, meat pies were wrapped around
light globes to warm them up for lunch. And it was nearly impossible to get a
job. After the grocery store they ran on Abercrombie Street, Flo’s husband was a
wharfie, a lift attendant, and he spent time in the railyards. Flo was a
seamstress in the city, “a stitch out of place and we had to unpick it all,”
she says.
“They raced greyhounds for a while too,” says John. “You made do and everyone helped,” says Flo.
As tough as it was, Flo says there was harmony – apart from
the four women beating a cab driver to death with their shoes!
The 70s saw bars go up and houses close, a response to the
crime associated with the arrival of smack and other drugs to the area. “We are
one of the only places on the street that hasn’t been broken into,” John says.
It was also around this time that the greening of Darlington began; marking a return to the area’s
namesake, The Darlington Nursery, planted by botanist William Shepard, and of
which the street names Ivy, Rose, Pine and Myrtle are a legacy.
For the working class, green was a colour of luxury. “We
used to be able to see the Central clock tower from the backyard,” says John.
Of the ‘pocket parks’ that Clover
Moore is busy opening, Flo says, “She’s doing all the fancy
work, what about the infrastructure?” With the loss of local amenities, the
lack of public transport has made it difficult for the elderly to live in the
area. “The new residents are all drivers,” Flo says.
And just as Flo starts to open up a little, flashing what
could be defined as a glint in the eye, she tells us she has to be somewhere at
2.30, “nowish”. Interview over.
Photo: Ali Blogg – Caption: John
and Florence
Source:
South Sydney Herald April 2008 – www.southsydneyherald.com.au