ten days in chippendale » redfern

day ten

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:51:51 +0000

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Bev Karonidis was born in 1936 in Redfern. It seems miraculous to me, but she remembers waking up early as a child to watch the elephants and animals of Wirth’s Circus walk down the street into Exhibition Park [now Prince Alfred Park]. The circus came to town every Easter. The local Redfern kids – considered to be disadvantaged – were given a free show, as well as ginger beer and hot cross buns, on Good Friday.

day three

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:56:22 +0000

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We’ve all heard of the Six O’clock Swill, but I had never heard of the phenomenon of men challenging each other to fight by placing their empty beer glass top down on the bar. Ted McDermott was born in Redfern in 1925 on what was then Castlereagh Street [now called Chalmers Street]. Ted describes with relish watching the fights that went on around his childhood neighbourhood – fights that spilled out of pubs such as the Australian Eleven Hotel and into Redfern Park and surrounding streets. He goes on to speak about a hotel on the corner of Redfern Street and Walker Street called the Albert View, which was nicknamed ‘The Bloodhouse’ because of the “terrific” fights that went on there – maybe five or six fights on at the one time.

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Living in ever-gentrifying Redfern as I do now, it’s hard for me to imagine just how industrial the suburb must have been in the ’30s. Ted describes big factories – such as Hunter’s Shoes and F. H. Fauldings – and horses and carts making their way along what is now Chalmers Street.

day two

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:50:06 +0000

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Jane Lanyon was born in 1920 in Balfour Street, Chippendale. Growing up poor in Depression-era Chippendale, Jane would busk out front of the Glengarry Hotel (on Lawson Street, Redfern) for spare change. I love this story of her singing for ha’pennies because I can imagine it so vividly, perhaps because I often drink at the Glengarry myself. In fact, we’ve nicknamed it the ‘People’s Pub’ – but I’m not quite sure why… I think because it has an amazing old table in the centre of the front bar that fits a lot of people! You can definitely imagine members of the Unemployed Workers Union sitting around that table and talking politics in the ’30s.

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Nowadays we might say that we were ‘born’ in a particular suburb, but we really mean it as the place where we grew up. But Jane Lanyon was literally born in Balfour Street – in the front room of one of three two-story terraces between Queen and Henrietta Streets. Seeing as Balfour Street is just around the corner I took a little walk to see if the house Jane describes in the interview is still standing – and it is! Jane was born in the middle terrace.