In her recently published autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson writes, “Where you are born – what you are born into, the place, the history of that place, how that history mates with your own – stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation say.” For Winterson, it’s Manchester, the rawness of the world’s first industrial city. For me, it’s Sydney, that sprawling urban tart just up the road.
But what is it, this city where I came into being? What is the history that, as Winterson says, mates with me?
I was born and raised on Sydney’s North Shore, amongst towering gums and argyle apples, the screech of rainbow lorikeets never far away, and possums in the roof – one time a pint-sized sugar-glider landed on the handlebars of the mower. Summer weekends at Freshwater Beach, boogie-boarding with my older brothers, on the return home Midnight Oil’s first album screaming out of the car stereo. Going into the city to meet friends, hooking up in Oxford Street, which back then I figured was just another inner-city through-way. Regular family holidays up into the Blue Mountains, where I imagined that dinosaurs lurked just around the corner. Trips down to Bowral in the Southern Highlands to visit my mother’s parents; the house was barely furnished, which wouldn’t do these days, would it.
So, the way I think about it, I was – we were – always leaving, always getting out. And who could blame us? Despite the gloss and glam and glitter, Sydney has the darkest of hearts, a twisted soul. It’s a city formed on the hardship of convicts, the majority male, many professional criminals. Famine caused by frequently failed agriculture. Disease: small pox, chicken pox, venereal disease, measles; one of these wiped out 90 percent of the local Aboriginal people so that their bodies could be seen floating in the harbour.
It’s said that Sydney was to be called New Albion. Albion: that poetic nickname for Britain. It’s a name that may have been inspired by a story about the 50 daughters of Syria’s king, who all got married on the same day and murdered their husbands on their wedding night; as punishment, they were set adrift in a ship before landing at Britain where they shacked up with the locals.
Sydney: she sure does stamp me out.
And there are days when I wish she wouldn’t.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 2 June 2012.)
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
6 comments
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June 3, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jun
Geoff
So, the way I think about it, I was – we were – always leaving, always getting out.
I like the way you say this Nigel. Truth enough … a lot of Australian experience is about this … the realisation of some deep-insecurity about our position in the place we call home (or do we really?) … every city I’ve lived in or visited has it’s population of “can’t wait to get outers” … “there’s nothing for me here-ers”… as though the grass really is greener somewhere else. I grew up a forces brat … we moved a bit and I changed schools every two years until late high school … by which time we’d ended up in Canberra. I finished high school, college, uni and have worked here since. It was the first place I really put down roots and … although I have this minor nagging that I should be somewhere else … that I now call home.
You know, I think I’ll take this post on your blog and expand upon it on my own blog 😉
Thank you.
June 3, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jun
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Geoff, thanks as always for your thoughtful comments.
I think it’s true that every town and city has people who can’t wait to leave, but I do think Sydney is special (wrong word) in that regard: because it’s foundation is one of dispossession, disease, hardship, and anarchy boiling away just beneath the surface. Sure that sense of dispossession spreads across the whole country, but it’s epicentre is Botany Bay.
I can’t wait to see how you approach this issue on your blog. Do let me know when it’s up, and also post the link here so others can find their way over to your online home.
June 4, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jun
Gabrielle Bryden
I started by reading your tags and ‘sprawling urban tarts’ made me laugh 😉 I could never live in Sydney though have visited often (my aunt’s family live on the north shore) – the traffic scares the bejeesus out of me (though Melbourne is worse with those trams and weird Melbourne specfic traffic rules).
June 4, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jun
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, well, now I know how to attract you into reading my posts! As to Melbourne: I’ve never known the attraction to the place.
July 8, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jul
tristanfoster
I’m a bit late on this one – I think I was on an escape of my own when you posted it – but Sydney was her tarty self today, all sprawled out, and so a response is apt.
On a recent lunch break I came across an exhibition of photographs by a young artist named Finn O’Hanlon. The shots depicted youths growing up on the Northern Beaches. The photos were Facebookish, which almost seems inevitable, but they were moody and stylish, their narrative compelling. They were glimpses into the dark heart you mention, of kids being “stamped out”.
The shots have obviously stayed with me, so I’d say that, artistically, they were a success. But I think they, and my own feelings, reinforce this argument of Sydney having a habit of stamping out. Whenever I leave, however briefly, I come back and can’t help a sigh and a shake of the head and thinking, “So much unfulfilled potential.”
July 8, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Jul
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Tristan, thanks for pointing me to Finn O’Hanlon’s work – I must check it out (in fact I’ve already had a look and I like it very much). And your point about ‘unfulfilled potential’? Surely there’s no better phrase to describe Sydney. Amazing, however, that despite all its flaws, I do find myself drawn to the place – if only in that dreadful car-crash way. For example, I like living in a town that is on City Rail, albeit the very last stop on the Southern Line. Why do I like being so close but so far away? Because the damn think stamps me out, and she probably always will. Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful comments.