Monthly Archives: February 2025

Seeking Sydney, Episode 1: The desire to listen

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Seeking Sydney is a podcast that travels to the landscapes and landmarks of Sydney, adding the people and their stories. I will publish one episode every month for ten months.

In episode 1 I wander from Bondi to La Perouse, via Bronte, Centennial Park and Anzac Parade.

As Paul Irish says in this episode, ‘there’s actually layers to history in places like Sydney, just like anywhere in the world. And when you start to tune your eyes into them, suddenly they become really obvious. And you’re like, oh, okay, I now have a way of looking at that city that I didn’t have before.’

He’s talking about recognising the continuous presence of Aboriginal people in Sydney, but he could be describing Seeking Sydney.

I hope that in the future, if you go into Centennial Park you will seek out the Guriwal Trail and remember that emus were once hunted on this land. That you’ll nod to Patrick White and Manoly Lascaris in their home.

Then, as you go down Anzac Parade, past NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), you’ll think about Matthew Doyle and his didgeridoo playing, and his straight way of talking. I hope you’ll remember how he says that his mother’s and grandmother’s generation weren’t allowed to speak their own language, but ‘Doesn’t mean they forgot it. They just put it to bed for a while. And knowing that hopefully in the future, times change, then they’re going to bring it back out and start teaching it to their children and families and the community. And that’s what’s happening now.’

And, although I couldn’t fit it into the podcast, here’s a strange connection to think about: in his will Patrick White left a quarter of his capital to NAISDA (then known as National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association), where Matthew Doyle trained. The other three quarters were left to the Smith Family, the Art Gallery of NSW, and the Aboriginal Education Council of NSW.

I hope this podcast leaves you with an impression – of a city that extends in all directions, connected to other cities and countries, into the past and the future. These connections are through the heritage and legacies of the people who have lived here, through the lives of the people who are here now, through what has been said about Sydney and the books that have been written about it, through the long histories of its places. I hope this podcast gives you a sense of some of those histories and inspires you to seek out more.

After doing the first interview for this podcast one of the sound engineers, Zoe Hercus, said kindly, ‘You should try not to say mmm or yes so often when the other person is speaking.’ You’re right Zoe, but I just can’t stop myself. It feels so rude, when someone is telling you something interesting, to not respond. So you’ll hear a lot of ‘mmm’s and ‘yeh’s and ‘really!’s throughout the interviews. That’s me, being a bad interviewer. Sorry Zoe!

Interviewees for episode 1: my thanks to you all

Ben Ewald, former resident of Balmain and Hunters Hill

Matthew Doyle, Aboriginal Performing Artist. Find Matthew on Linked In and @wuruniri

Deborah Lennis, Cultural Advisor Inner West Council

Joss Bell, resident of Daceyville

Paul Irish, historian and archaeologist, author of Hidden in Plain View

Acknowledgements

Bronwyn Mehan, Spineless Wonders

Martin Gallagher, Echidna Audio: sound design

Zoe Hercus: publicity

Bettina Kaiser: artwork

Bondi: Historic Houses Trust, Bondi: a biography. Exhibition catalogue 2005.

Bondi name: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/bondi_rock_carvings

Bondi points: Val Attenbrow, Sydney’s Aboriginal Past. UNSW Press, 2010 p154 and p102. 

Bronte family: Lynne Reid Banks, Dark Quartet. Penguin, 1986.

Bertha Lawson affidavit: https://lsj.com.au/articles/divorce-have-attitudes-really-changed/

Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier. Penguin, 1982, p21-2.

Pre-colonial Aboriginal land and resource use in Centennial, Moore and Queens Parks, Val Attenbrow 2002: https://www.centennialparklands.com.au/getmedia/e32ae90a-e730-4c28-82c4-4b17e9e3c5e1/Appendix_S_-_Pre-colonial_Archaeology_report_Val_Attenbrow.pdf.aspx

Dugongs: https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/mammals/dugong/

Alexandra Canal is described as ‘the most severely contaminated canal in the southern hemisphere’: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/from_sheas_creek_to_alexandra_canal

The Cooks River has the unenviable title of ‘Australia’s most polluted river’: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cooks-river-20190110-h19wqs.html

Guriwal Trail: https://www.centennialparklands.com.au/learn/community/tours/bush-tucker-trail

David Marr, Patrick White: A Life. Vintage 1991.

Patrick White, The Vivisector. Vintage, 1994.

Trams make way for buses: Greg Travers, From City to Suburb … a fifty year journey. The Sydney Tramway Museum, 1982.

NAISDA: https://naisda.com.au/

Jakelin Troy, The Sydney Language. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Dictionaries project and AIATSIS, Canberra 1993.

Daceyville: http://www.daceyville.com/heritage_documents/DACEY%20GARDEN%20SUBURB.pdf

Governor Phillip described the area towards Botany Bay as ‘a kind of heath, poor, sandy, and full of swamps.’: The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, London 1789 (facsimile edition Hutchinson 1982) p59.

Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View. Newsouth Publishing, 2017.

The Seeking Sydney podcast – coming soon!

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Many years ago I started writing a book about Sydney. Now that unpublished book has become the Seeking Sydney podcast. It looks at parts of Sydney, then looks at them again, adding the layers of people and stories. It is not a history, although it draws on histories. It is not an attempt to lay down facts as solid objects, but it does rely on truths – the truths of observation. This is a recording of Sydney as I, and others, see, hear and remember it. Together we show where it has come from, and the past that it relies on for its existence. History’s web of connections stretches tight, and that’s what interests me.

Seeking Sydney comes from reading something like this.

The University grounds are on part of a broad ridge system which forms the watershed between Port Jackson and Botany Bay. An arm of the ridge system extends north from the watershed down between Blackwattle Bay and Rozelle Bay and their respective tributaries.[i] 

That makes me rethink everything. To me, the university grounds (University of Sydney) are not ever ‘part of a broad ridge system’. Nor is that high bit of Sydney, for me, ‘the watershed between Port Jackson Bay and Botany Bay’. The University of Sydney is a cluttered collection of buildings and people, with narrow winding roads that I can only negotiate to reach Fisher Library. The university grounds are the bits of lawn and road that I walk through to get to the books.

Seeking Sydney also comes from reading something like this.

Albions? For kids who lived on the southside, Albions were regarded as queer old buses from the north. They didn’t even sound like buses. After all, we came from Leyland territory and Leylands sounded like a bus should. Any contact with an Albion was almost always an unfortunate experience, usually associated with homeward journeys on hot summer Sundays …[ii]

This shows me how big Sydney is, with groupings and tribes running across any number of lines – in this case, the type of bus you catch.

And then Sydney is small – small enough for me to be reading a book about one 19th century businessman – Thomas Holt – at night, while researching the University of Sydney during the day, and discovering that Holt and William Windeyer and John Le Gay Brereton (the father) all shared a passion for Turkish baths.

And Seeking Sydney comes from standing in a field in Brittany, France, and looking at megaliths that are, at most, 7000 years old – megaliths that are viewed by countless numbers of people every year, revered for their age and mystery – and knowing that back home in Australia we have much more ancient carvings and paintings. We can see them on rock ledges, in caves and overhangs, and they have a direct link to a living culture.

It’s thrilling to finally see this project come to life, and in a different form to what I originally intended. Thanks to Bronwyn Mehan of Spineless Wonders for suggesting a podcast in the first place; thanks to Martin Gallagher of Echidna Audio for sound design and to Zoe Hercus for recording the studio interviews, and for publicity. Thanks to Bettina Kaiser for the wonderful artwork. Thanks to all the people I interviewed. I’m sorry I had to cut out any of your words. They were all so inspiring.

[i] http://www.facilities.usyd.edu.au/documents/docs/gcp_chapter2.pdf. Summary History Of The Development Of The University Of Sydney

[ii] Neil Munro quoted in Greg Travers, From City to Suburb … a fifty year journey, The Sydney Tramway Museum, 1982, p164.